Words as social tools: flexibility, situatedness, language and sociality in abstract concepts. Reply to comments on “Words as social tools: language, sociality and inner grounding in abstract concepts”

The article is a reply to comments by other authors on the topic of abstract concepts

Curious Negotiator

n negotiation the exchange of information is as important as the exchange of offers. The curious negotiator is a multiagent system with three types of agents. Two negotiation agents, each representing an individual, develop consecutive offers, supported by information, whilst requesting information from its opponent. A mediator agent, with experience of prior negotiations, suggests how the negotiation may develop. A failed negotiation is a missed opportunity. An observer agent analyses failures looking for new opportunities. The integration of negotiation theory and data mining enables the curious negotiator to discover and exploit negotiation opportunities. Trials will be conducted in electronic business

OWL-POLAR : semantic policies for agent reasoning

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.comPostprin

From Physical to Virtual: Widening the Perspective on Multi-Agent Environments

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23850-0_9Since more than a decade, the environment is seen as a key element when analyzing, developing or deploying Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) applications. Especially, for the development of multi-agent platforms it has become a key concept, similarly to many application in the area of location-based, distributed systems. An emerging, prominent application area for MAS is related to Virtual Environments. The underlying technology has evolved in a way, that these applications have grown out of science fiction novels till research papers and even real applications. Even more, current technologies enable MAS to be key components of such virtual environments. In this paper, we widen the concept of the environment of a MAS to encompass new and mixed physical, virtual, simulated, etc. forms of environments. We analyze currently most interesting application domains based on three dimensions: the way different "realities" are mixed via the environment, the underlying natures of agents, the possible forms and sophistication of interactions. In addition to this characterization, we discuss how this widened concept of possible environments influences the support it can give for developing applications in the respective domains.Carrascosa Casamayor, C.; Klugl, F.; Ricci, A.; Boissier, O. (2015). From Physical to Virtual: Widening the Perspective on Multi-Agent Environments. En Agent Environments for Multi-Agent Systems IV. 4th International Workshop, E4MAS 2014 - 10 Years Later, Paris, France, May 6, 2014. 133-146. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23850-0_9S133146Aggarwal, J.K., Ryoo, M.S.: Human activity analysis: a review. ACM Comput. 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Agents and Ambient Intelligence, Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, pp. 17–31. IOS Press, Amsterdam (2012)Ferber, J.: Multi-Agent Systems: An Introduction to Distributed Artificial Intelligence. Addison Wesley Longman, Harlow (1999)Gelernter, D.: Mirror Worlds - or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox: How it Will Happen and What it Will Mean. Oxford University Press, New York (1992)Gibson, W.: Neuromancer. Ace, New York (1984)Klügl, F., Fehler, M., Herrler, R.: About the role of the environment in multi-agent simulations. In: Weyns, D., Van Parunak, H.D., Michel, F. (eds.) E4MAS 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3374, pp. 127–149. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)Krueger, M.: Artificial Reality II. Addison-Wesley, New York (1991)Luck, M., Aylett, R.: Applying artificial intelligence to virtual reality: intelligent virtual environments. Appl. Artif. Intell. 14(1), 3–32 (2000)Dorigo, M., Floreano, D., Gambardella, L.M., et al.: Swarmanoid: a novel concept for the study of heterogeneous robotic swarms. IEEE Robot. Autom. Mag. 20(4), 60–71 (2013)Milgram, P., Kishino, A.F.: Taxonomy of mixed reality visual displays. IEICE Trans. Inf. Syst. E77–D(12), 1321–1329 (1994)Olsson, T., Salo, M.: Online user survey on current mobile augmented reality applications. In: Proceedings of the 2011 10th IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, ISMAR 2011, pp. 75–84. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA (2011)Saunier, J., Balbo, F., Pinson, S.: A formal model of communication and context awareness in multiagent systems. J. Logic Lang. Inform. 23(2), 219–247 (2014)Stephenson, N.: Snow Crash. Bantam Books, New York (1992)Tummolini, L., Castelfranchi, C.: Trace signals: the meanings of stigmergy. In: Weyns, D., Van Parunak, H.D., Michel, F. (eds.) E4MAS 2006. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4389, pp. 141–156. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)Weyns, D., Omicini, A., Odell, J.: Environment as a first class abstraction in multiagent systems. Auton. Agent. Multi-Agent Syst. 14(1), 5–30 (2007)Weyns, D., Schelfthout, K., Holvoet, T., Lefever, T.: Decentralized control of e’gv transportation systems. In: Proceedings of the Fourth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pp. 67–74. ACM (2005)Weyns, D., Schumacher, M., Ricci, A., Viroli, M., Holvoet, T.: Environments in multiagent systems. Knowl. Eng. Rev. 20(2), 127–141 (2005

AGI and the Knight-Darwin Law: why idealized AGI reproduction requires collaboration

Can an AGI create a more intelligent AGI? Under idealized assumptions, for a certain theoretical type of intelligence, our answer is: “Not without outside help”. This is a paper on the mathematical structure of AGI populations when parent AGIs create child AGIs. We argue that such populations satisfy a certain biological law. Motivated by observations of sexual reproduction in seemingly-asexual species, the Knight-Darwin Law states that it is impossible for one organism to asexually produce another, which asexually produces another, and so on forever: that any sequence of organisms (each one a child of the previous) must contain occasional multi-parent organisms, or must terminate. By proving that a certain measure (arguably an intelligence measure) decreases when an idealized parent AGI single-handedly creates a child AGI, we argue that a similar Law holds for AGIs

Normative Multi-Agent Programs and Their Logics

Multi-agent systems are viewed as consisting of individual agents whose behaviors are regulated by an organization artefact. This paper presents a simplified version of a programming language that is designed to implement norm-based artefacts. Such artefacts are specified in terms of norms being enforced by monitoring, regimenting and sanctioning mechanisms. The syntax and operational semantics of the programming language are introduced and discussed. A logic is presented that can be used to specify and verify properties of programs developed in this language

Normative Autonomy and Normative Co-ordination: Declarative Power, Representation, and Mandate

In this paper we provide a formal analysis of the idea of normative co-ordination. We argue that this idea is based on the assumption that agents can achieve flexible co-ordination by conferring normative positions to other agents. These positions include duties, permissions, and powers. In particular, we explain the idea of declarative power, which consists in the capacity of the power-holder of creating normative positions, involving other agents, simply by "proclaiming" such positions. In addition, we account also for the concepts of representation, namely the representative's capacity of acting in the name of his principal, and of mandate, which is the mandatee's duty to act as the mandator has requested. Finally, we show how the framework can be applied to represent the contract-net protocol. Some brief remarks on future research and applications conclude this contribution