OperA/ALIVE/OperettA

Comprehensive models for organizations must, on the one hand, be able to specify global goals and requirements but, on the other hand, cannot assume that particular actors will always act according to the needs and expectations of the system design. Concepts as organizational rules (Zambonelli 2002), norms and institutions (Dignum and Dignum 2001; Esteva et al. 2002), and social structures (Parunak and Odell 2002) arise from the idea that the effective engineering of organizations needs high-level, actor-independent concepts and abstractions that explicitly define the organization in which agents live (Zambonelli 2002).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

On the role of dialogue models in the age of large language models.

We argue that Machine learning, in particular the currently prevalent generation of Large Language Models (LLMs), can work constructively with existing normative models of dialogue as exemplified by dialogue games, specifically their computational applications within, for example, inter-agent communication and automated dialogue management. Furthermore we argue that this relationship is bi-directional, that some uses of dialogue games benefit from increased functionality due to the specific capabilities of LLMs, whilst LLMs benefit from externalised models of, variously, problematic, normative, or idealised behaviour. Machine Learning (ML) approaches, especially LLMs , appear to be making great advances against long-standing Artificial Intelligence challenges. In particular, LLMs are increasingly achieving successes in areas both adjacent to, and overlapping with, those of interest to the Computational Models of Natural Argument community. A prevalent opinion, not without some basis, within the ML research community is that many, if not all, AI challenges, will eventually be solved by ML models of increasing power and utility, negating the need for alternative or traditional approaches. An exemplar of this position, is the study of distinct models of dialogue for inter-agent communication when LLM based chatbots are increasingly able to surpass their performance in specific contexts. The trajectory of increased LLM capabilities suggests no reason that this trend will not continue, at least for some time. However, it is not the case that only the one, or the other approach, is necessary. Despite a tendency for LLMs to feature creep, and to appear to subsume additional areas of study, there are very good reasons to consider three modes of study of dialogue. Firstly, LLMs as their own individual field within ML, secondly, dialogue both in terms of actual human behaviour, which can exhibit wide quality standards, but also in terms of normative and idealised models, and thirdly, the fertile area in which the two overlap and can operate collaboratively. It is this third aspect with which this paper is concerned, for the first will occur anyway as researchers seek to map out the boundaries of what LLMs, as AI models, can actually achieve, and the second will continue, because the study of how people interact naturally through argument and dialogue will remain both fascinating and of objective value regardless of advances made in LLMs. However, where LLMs, Dialogue Models, and, for completion, people, come together, there is fertile ground for the development of principled models of interaction that are well-founded, well-regulated, and supportive of mixed-initiative interactions between humans and intelligent software agents

Policy-driven planning in coalitions - A case study

(c)IFAAMASPeer reviewedPostprin

Norm-Establishing and Norm-Following in Autonomous Agency

Living agency is subject to a normative dimension (good-bad, adaptive-maladaptive) that is absent from other types of interaction. We review current and historical attempts to naturalize normativity from an organism-centered perspective, identifying two central problems and their solution: (1) How to define the topology of the viability space so as to include a sense of gradation that permits reversible failure, and (2) how to relate both the processes that establish norms and those that result in norm-following behavior. We present a minimal metabolic system that is coupled to a gradient-climbing chemotactic mechanism. Studying the relationship between metabolic dynamics and environmental resource conditions, we identify an emergent viable region and a precarious region where the system tends to die unless environmental conditions change. We introduce the concept of normative field as the change of environmental conditions required to bring the system back to its viable region. Norm-following, or normative action, is defined as the course of behavior whose effect is positively correlated with the normative field. We close with a discussion of the limitations and extensions of our model and some final reflections on the nature of norms and teleology in agency

An empirical study of argumentation schemes in deliberative dialogue

Publisher PD

Automated Negotiation for Provisioning Virtual Private Networks Using FIPA-Compliant Agents

This paper describes the design and implementation of negotiating agents for the task of provisioning virtual private networks. The agents and their interactions comply with the FIPA specification and they are implemented using the FIPA-OS agent framework. Particular attention is focused on the design and implementation of the negotiation algorithms

Extend Commitment Protocols with Temporal Regulations: Why and How

The proposal of Elisa Marengo's thesis is to extend commitment protocols to explicitly account for temporal regulations. This extension will satisfy two needs: (1) it will allow representing, in a flexible and modular way, temporal regulations with a normative force, posed on the interaction, so as to represent conventions, laws and suchlike; (2) it will allow committing to complex conditions, which describe not only what will be achieved but to some extent also how. These two aspects will be deeply investigated in the proposal of a unified framework, which is part of the ongoing work and will be included in the thesis.Comment: Proceedings of the Doctoral Consortium and Poster Session of the 5th International Symposium on Rules (RuleML 2011@IJCAI), pages 1-8 (arXiv:1107.1686