Using argumentative agents to manage communities of Web services

This paper presents a framework for specifying Web services communities. A Web service is an accessible application that humans, software agents, and other applications in general can discover, compose, and invoke in order to satisfy users\u27 needs like hotel booking. Web services providing the same functionality are gathered into one community, independently of their origins. This framework shows how software agents that are able to argue, negotiate, and reason about Web services can be used to specify these Web services and to manage their respective communities. The use of what we call argumentative agents helps Web services in being better organized within communities and in achieving the goals for which they are conceived. The community is led by a master component, which among others attracts new Web services to the community, retains existing Web services in the community, and identifies the Web services in the community that will participate in composite Web services. All these operations are managed by interacting agents through flexible conversations made up by argumentation, persuasion, and negotiation phases called dialogue games. © 2007 IEEE

Sensemaking on the Pragmatic Web: A Hypermedia Discourse Perspective

The complexity of the dilemmas we face on an organizational, societal and global scale forces us into sensemaking activity. We need tools for expressing and contesting perspectives flexible enough for real time use in meetings, structured enough to help manage longer term memory, and powerful enough to filter the complexity of extended deliberation and debate on an organizational or global scale. This has been the motivation for a programme of basic and applied action research into Hypermedia Discourse, which draws on research in hypertext, information visualization, argumentation, modelling, and meeting facilitation. This paper proposes that this strand of work shares a key principle behind the Pragmatic Web concept, namely, the need to take seriously diverse perspectives and the processes of meaning negotiation. Moreover, it is argued that the hypermedia discourse tools described instantiate this principle in practical tools which permit end-user control over modelling approaches in the absence of consensus

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N

Trust Strategies for the Semantic Web

Everyone agrees on the importance of enabling trust on the SemanticWebto ensure more efficient agent interaction. Current research on trust seems to focus on developing computational models, semantic representations, inference techniques, etc. However, little attention has been given to the plausible trust strategies or tactics that an agent can follow when interacting with other agents on the Semantic Web. In this paper we identify five most common strategies of trust and discuss their envisaged costs and benefits. The aim is to provide some guidelines to help system developers appreciate the risks and gains involved with each trust strategy

Research opportunities for argumentation in social networks

Nowadays, many websites allow social networking between their users in an explicit or implicit way. In this work, we show how argumentation schemes theory can provide a valuable help to formalize and structure on-line discussions and user opinions in decision support and business oriented websites that held social networks between their users. Two real case studies are studied and analysed. Then, guidelines to enhance social decision support and recommendations with argumentation are provided.This work summarises results of the authors joint research, funded by an STMS of the Agreement Technologies COST Action 0801, by the Spanish government grants [CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 CSD2007-00022, and TIN2012-36586-C03-01] and by the GVA project [PROMETEO 2008/051].Heras Barberá, SM.; Atkinson, KM.; Botti Navarro, VJ.; Grasso, F.; Julian Inglada, VJ.; Mcburney, PJ. (2013). Research opportunities for argumentation in social networks. 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In: Proceedings of the second international conference on computational models of argument (COMMA 2008), pp 116–127Chesñevar C, McGinnis J, Modgil S, Rahwan I, Reed C, Simari G, South M, Vreeswijk G, Willmott S (2006) Towards an argument interchange format. Knowl Eng Rev 21(4):293–316Chesñevar CI, Maguitman AG, Gonzàlez MP (2009) Empowering recommendation technologies through argumentation. Argumentation in artificial intelligence. Springer, Berlin, pp 403–422García AJ, Dix J, Simari GR (2009) Argument-based logic programming. Argumentation in artificial intelligence. Springer, BerlinGolbeck J (2006) Generating predictive movie recommendations from trust in social networks. In: Proceedings of the fourth international conference on trust management, LNCS, vol 3986, 93–104Gordon T, Prakken H, Walton D (2007) The Carneades model of argument and burden of proof. Artif Intell 171(10–15):875–896Guha R, Kumar R, Raghavan P, Tomkins A (2004) Propagating trust and distrust. In: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on, World Wide Web, pp 403–412Heras S, Navarro M, Botti V, Julián V (2009) Applying dialogue games to manage recommendation in social networks. In: Proceedings of the 6th international workshop on argumentation in multi-agent aystems, ArgMASHeras S, Atkinson K, Botti V, Grasso F, Julián V, McBurney P (2010a) How argumentation can enhance dialogues in social networks. In: Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on computational models of argument, COMMA, vol 216, pp 267–274Heras S, Atkinson K, Botti V, Grasso F, Julián V, McBurney P (2010b) Applying argumentation to enhance dialogues in social networks. In: ECAI 2010 workshop on computational models of natural argument, CMNA, pp 10–17Karacapilidis N, Tzagarakis M (2007) Web-based collaboration and decision making support: a multi-disciplinary approach. Web-Based Learn Teach Technol 2(4):12–23Kim D, Benbasat I (2003) Trust-related arguments in internet stores: a framework for evaluation. J Electron Commer Res 4(2):49–64Kim D, Benbasat I (2006) The effects of trust-assuring arguments on consumer trust in internet stores: application of Toulmin’s model of argumentation. Inf Syst Rese 17(3):286–300Laera L, Tamma V, Euzenat J, Bench-Capon T, Payne T (2006) Reaching agreement over ontology alignments. In: Proceedings of the 5th international semantic web conference (ISWC 2006)Lange C, Bojãrs U, Groza T, Breslin J, Handschuh S (2008) Expressing argumentative discussions in social media sites. In: Social data on the web (SDoW2008) workshop at the 7th international semantic web conferenceLinden G, Smith B, York J (2003) Amazon.com recommendations: item-to-item collaborative filtering. IEEE Internet Comput 7(1):76–80Linden G, Hong J, Stonebraker M, Guzdial M (2009) Recommendation algorithms, online privacy and more. Commun ACM, 52(5)Mika P (2007) Ontologies are us: a unified model of social networks and semantics. J Web Semant 5(1):5–15Montaner M, López B, de la Rosa JL (2002) Opinion-based filtering through trust. In: Cooperative information agents VI, LNCS, vol 2446, pp 127–144Ontañón S, Plaza E (2008) Argumentation-based information exchange in prediction markets. In: Proceedings of the 5th international workshop on argumentation in multi-agent systems, ArgMASPazzani MJ, Billsus D (2007) Content-based recommendation systems. In: The adaptive web, LNCS, vol 4321, pp 325–341Rahwan I, Zablith F, Reed C (2007) Laying the foundations for a world wide argument web. Artif Intell 171(10–15):897–921Rahwan I, Banihashemi B (2008) Arguments in OWL: a progress report. In: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on computational models of argument (COMMA), pp 297–310Reed C, Walton D (2007) Argumentation schemes in dialogue. In: Dissensus and the search for common ground, OSSA-07, volume CD-ROM, pp 1–11Sabater J, Sierra C (2002) Reputation and social network analysis in multi-agent systems. In: Proceedings of the 1st international joint conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems, vol 1, pp 475–482Schafer JB, Konstan JA, Riedl J (2001) E-commerce recommendation applications. Data Min Knowl Discov 5:115–153Schafer JB, Frankowski D, Herlocker J, Sen S (2007) Collaborative filtering recommender systems. In: The adaptive web, LNCS, vol 4321, pp 291–324Schneider J, Groza T, Passant A (2012) A review of argumentation for the aocial semantic web. Semantic web-interoperability, usability, applicability. IOS Press, Washington, DCTempich C, Pinto HS, Sure Y, Staab S (2005) An argumentation ontology for distributed, loosely-controlled and evolvInG Engineering processes of oNTologies (DILIGENT). In: Proceedings of the 2nd European semantic web conference, ESWC, pp 241–256Toulmin SE (1958) The uses of argument. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UKTrojahn C, Quaresma P, Vieira R, Isaac A (2009) Comparing argumentation frameworks for composite ontology matching. in: Proceedings of the 6th international workshop on argumentation in multi-agent systems, ArgMASTruthMapping. http://truthmapping.com/Walter FE, Battiston S, Schweitzer F (2007) A model of a trust-based recommendation system on a social network. J Auton Agents Multi-Agent Syst 16(1):57–74Walton D, Krabbe E (1995) Commitment in dialogue: basic concepts of interpersonal reasoning. State University of New York Press, New York, NYWalton D, Reed C, Macagno F (2008) Argumentation schemes. Cambridge University Press, CambridgeWells S, Gourlay C, Reed C (2009) Argument blogging. Computational models of natural argument, CMNAWyner A, Schneider J (2012) Arguing from a point of view. 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Developing Interoperable Collaboration Services to Sustain Activities of Communities of Practice

Communities of Practice (CoPs) have attracted the interest of professionals and researchers as successful environments for enhancing, developing and improving practices through collaboration between their members. More and more, CoPs are choosing virtual environments and services to support their activities. However, recent research has underlined the lack of adequate scaffolding in terms of technical support and appropriate use of technology for communication and collaboration. The paper argues in favour of a collaborative design methodology for the development of services based on new technologies, open-source or open-source minded . Producing interoperable, evolutionary, flexible and truly collaborative services appears of major interest to sustain activities of distributed CoPs. The paper uses as a case study the description of collaboratively designed services addressing the needs of distributed CoPs within the European Project PALETTE. The example of PALETTE shows that in complex project situations, collaborative design sustained by Actor-Network Theory is a helpful framework to reach the goals of the project

E-portfolio in education. Practices and reflections

The main activities of the digiFolio Project include: Building a common knowledge base supported by research work on the theory of portfolio usage; Paper and online publication of the results of the research work; Establishment of the pedagogical model for the training course; Analysis of the existing technological infrastructures for digital portfolio usage; Adjustment of the best tools and training course setup; Piloting and evidencing of the training course; Monitoring of the trainees' work by using a specific online teachers' support structure; International seminar. Website: http://digifolioseminar.org/?The present publication addresses the use of digital portfolios in educational context and it is one of the latest dissemination activities of the Digifolio project – Digital Portfolio as a strategy for teachers’ professional development, a COMENIUS 2.1 project which was carried out between 2005 and 2008. It involved several universities and teacher training institutions from five different European countries. The project, which main focus was the reflection on the potentialities of portfolios and digital technologies in the perspective of teachers’ professional development, came to its end with an international seminar which aimed at disseminating the work produced in the frame of a previous teachers training course, as well as allowing and welcoming the contribution of other education professionals with their practices and reflections on the above-mentioned thematic.Europeen Comissio

Case-based argumentation infrastructure for agent societies

In this work, we propose an infrastructure to develop and execute argumentative agents in an open multi-agent system. This infrastructure offers the necessary components to develop agents with argumentation capabilities, including the communication skills and the argumentation protocol, and it offers support for agent societies and their agents' social context. The main advantage of having this infrastructure is that it is possible to create agents with argumentation capabilities to resolve a specified problem. In the argumentation dialogue the agents try to reach an agreement about the best solution to apply for each proposed problem. The proposed infrastructure has been validated with a real example and it has been evaluated obtaining, with argumentation strategies, better performance than other reasoning approaches that do not include argumentation.Jordán Prunera, JM. (2011). Case-based argumentation infrastructure for agent societies. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/15362Archivo delegad

Specifying and verifying communities of Web services using argumentative agents

This thesis includes two main contributions: the first one is specifying the use of argumentative agents in the design and development of communities of Web services; the second is using a formal technique to verify communication protocols against given properties for these communities. Web services that provide a similar functionality are gathered into a single community, independently of their origins, locations, and ways of doing. Associating Web services with argumentative agents that are able to persuade and negotiate with others organizes these Web services in a better way so that they can achieve the goals they set in an efficient way. A community is led by a master component, which is responsible among others for attracting new Web services to the community, retaining existing Web services in the community, and identifying the Web services in the community that will participate in composite scenarios. Besides FIPA-ACL, argumentative dialogue games are also used for agent interaction. In this thesis, we use tableau-based model checking algorithm to verify our argumentative agent-base community of Web services negotiation protocol. This algorithm aims at verifying systems designed as a set of autonomous interacting agents. We provide the soundness, completeness, termination and complexity results. We also simulate our specification with Jadex BDI programming language and implement our verification with a modified and enhanced version of CWB-NC model checker. Keywords. Multi-agent systems, BDI agent architecture, model checking, agent oriented programming, FIPA-ACL, dialogue game, agent-based negotiation protocol, Jadex, CWB-NC