1,376 research outputs found
Synergistic Team Composition
Effective teams are crucial for organisations, especially in environments
that require teams to be constantly created and dismantled, such as software
development, scientific experiments, crowd-sourcing, or the classroom. Key
factors influencing team performance are competences and personality of team
members. Hence, we present a computational model to compose proficient and
congenial teams based on individuals' personalities and their competences to
perform tasks of different nature. With this purpose, we extend Wilde's
post-Jungian method for team composition, which solely employs individuals'
personalities. The aim of this study is to create a model to partition agents
into teams that are balanced in competences, personality and gender. Finally,
we present some preliminary empirical results that we obtained when analysing
student performance. Results show the benefits of a more informed team
composition that exploits individuals' competences besides information about
their personalities
Weaving a fabric of socially aware agents
The expansion of web-enabled social interaction has shed light on social aspects of intelligence that have not been typically studied within the AI paradigm so far. In this context, our aim is to understand what constitutes intelligent social behaviour and to build computational systems that support it. We argue that social intelligence involves socially aware, autonomous individuals that agree on how to accomplish a common endeavour, and then enact such agreements. In particular, we provide a framework with the essential elements for such agreements to be achieved and executed by individuals that meet in an open environment. Such framework sets the foundations to build a computational infrastructure that enables socially aware autonomy.This work has been supported by the projects EVE(TIN2009-14702-C02-01) and AT (CSD2007-0022)Peer Reviewe
Automating decision making to help establish norm-based regulations
Norms have been extensively proposed as coordination mechanisms for both
agent and human societies. Nevertheless, choosing the norms to regulate a
society is by no means straightforward. The reasons are twofold. First, the
norms to choose from may not be independent (i.e, they can be related to each
other). Second, different preference criteria may be applied when choosing the
norms to enact. This paper advances the state of the art by modeling a series
of decision-making problems that regulation authorities confront when choosing
the policies to establish. In order to do so, we first identify three different
norm relationships -namely, generalisation, exclusivity, and substitutability-
and we then consider norm representation power, cost, and associated moral
values as alternative preference criteria. Thereafter, we show that the
decision-making problems faced by policy makers can be encoded as linear
programs, and hence solved with the aid of state-of-the-art solvers
Online Automated Synthesis of Compact Normative Systems
Peer reviewedPostprin
Decentralized dynamic task allocation for UAVs with limited communication range
We present the Limited-range Online Routing Problem (LORP), which involves a
team of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with limited communication range that
must autonomously coordinate to service task requests. We first show a general
approach to cast this dynamic problem as a sequence of decentralized task
allocation problems. Then we present two solutions both based on modeling the
allocation task as a Markov Random Field to subsequently assess decisions by
means of the decentralized Max-Sum algorithm. Our first solution assumes
independence between requests, whereas our second solution also considers the
UAVs' workloads. A thorough empirical evaluation shows that our workload-based
solution consistently outperforms current state-of-the-art methods in a wide
range of scenarios, lowering the average service time up to 16%. In the
best-case scenario there is no gap between our decentralized solution and
centralized techniques. In the worst-case scenario we manage to reduce by 25%
the gap between current decentralized and centralized techniques. Thus, our
solution becomes the method of choice for our problem
On the use of multiple criteria distance indexes to find robust cash management policies
[EN] Cash management decision-making can be handled from a
multiobjective perspective by optimizing not only cost but also risk.
Nevertheless, choosing the best policies under a changing context is
by no means straightforward. To this end, we rely on compromise
programming to incorporate robustness as an additional goal to cost
and risk within a multiobjective framework. As a result, we propose to
calculate robustness as a multiple criteria distance index that is able to
identify the best compromise policies in terms of cost and risk. Such
policies are also robust to cash flow regime changes. We show its
utility by transforming the Miller and Orr s cash management model
into its robust counterpart using real data from an industrial company.Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad [grant number Collectiveware TIN2015-66863-C2-1-R], [grant number 2014 SGR 118]. Work partially funded by projects Collectiveware TIN2015-66863-C2-1-R (MINECO/FEDER) and 2014 SGR 118.Salas-Molina, F.; Rodriguez-Aguilar, JA.; Pla Santamaría, D. (2019). On the use of multiple criteria distance indexes to find robust cash management policies. INFOR Information Systems and Operational Research. 57(3):345-360. https://doi.org/10.1080/03155986.2017.1282291S34536057
Characterizing compromise solutions for investors with uncertain risk preferences
[EN] The optimum portfolio selection for an investor with particular preferences was proven to lie on the normalized efficient frontier between two bounds defined by the Ballestero (1998) bounding theorem. A deeper understanding is possible if the decision-maker is provided with visual and quantitative techniques. Here, we derive useful insights as a way to support investor's decision-making through: (i) a new theorem to assess balance of solutions; (ii) a procedure and a new plot to deal with discrete efficient frontiers and uncertain risk preferences; and (iii) two quality metrics useful to predict long-run performance of investors.Work partially funded by projects Collectiveware TIN2015-66863-C2-1-R (MINECO/FEDER) and 2014 SGR 118Salas-Molina, F.; Rodriguez-Aguilar, JA.; Pla Santamaría, D. (2019). Characterizing compromise solutions for investors with uncertain risk preferences. Operational Research. 19(3):661-677. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-017-0309-6S661677193Amiri M, Ekhtiari M, Yazdani M (2011) Nadir compromise programming: a model for optimization of multi-objective portfolio problem. Expert Syst Appl 38(6):7222–7226Ballestero E (1998) Approximating the optimum portfolio for an investor with particular preferences. J Oper Res Soc 49:998–1000Ballestero E (2007) Compromise programming: a utility-based linear-quadratic composite metric from the trade-off between achievement and balanced (non-corner) solutions. Eur J Oper Res 182(3):1369–1382Ballestero E, Pla-Santamaria D (2004) Selecting portfolios for mutual funds. Omega 32(5):385–394Ballestero E, Pla-Santamaria D, Garcia-Bernabeu A, Hilario A (2015) Portfolio selection by compromise programming. In: Ballestero E, Pérez-Gladish B, Garcia-Bernabeu A (eds) Socially responsible investment. A multi-criteria decision making approach, vol 219. Springer, Switzerland, pp 177–196Ballestero E, Romero C (1996) Portfolio selection: a compromise programming solution. J Oper Res Soc 47(11):1377–1386Ballestero E, Romero C (1998) Multiple criteria decision making and its applications to economic problems. Kluwer Academic Publishers, BerlinBilbao-Terol A, Pérez-Gladish B, Arenas-Parra M, Rodríguez-Uría MV (2006) Fuzzy compromise programming for portfolio selection. Appl Math Comput 173(1):251–264Bravo M, Ballestero E, Pla-Santamaria D (2012) Evaluating fund performance by compromise programming with linear-quadratic composite metric: an actual case on the caixabank in spain. J Multi-Criteria Decis Anal 19(5–6):247–255Ehrgott M, Klamroth K, Schwehm C (2004) An MCDM approach to portfolio optimization. Eur J Oper Res 155(3):752–770Fawcett T (2006) An introduction to ROC analysis. Pattern Recognit Lett 27(8):861–874Hernández-Orallo J, Flach P, Ferri C (2013) ROC curves in cost space. Mach Learn 93(1):71–91Markowitz H (1952) Portfolio selection. J Finance 7(1):77–91Pla-Santamaria D, Bravo M (2013) Portfolio optimization based on downside risk: a mean-semivariance efficient frontier from dow jones blue chips. Ann Oper Res 205(1):189–201Ringuest JL (1992) Multiobjective optimization: behavioral and computational considerations. Springer Science & Business Media, BerlinSteuer RE, Qi Y, Hirschberger M (2007) Suitable-portfolio investors, nondominated frontier sensitivity, and the effect of multiple objectives on standard portfolio selection. Ann Oper Res 152(1):297–317Xidonas P, Mavrotas G, Krintas T, Psarras J, Zopounidis C (2012) Multicriteria portfolio management. Springer, BerlinYu P-L (1973) A class of solutions for group decision problems. Manag Sci 19(8):936–946Yu P-L (1985) Multiple criteria decision making: concepts, techniques and extensions. Plenum Press, BerlinZeleny M (1982) Multiple criteria decision making. McGraw-Hill, New Yor
Instilling moral value alignment by means of multi-objective reinforcement learning
AI research is being challenged with ensuring that autonomous agents learn to behave ethically, namely in alignment with moral values. Here, we propose a novel way of tackling the value alignment problem as a two-step process. The first step consists on formalising moral values and value aligned behaviour based on philosophical foundations. Our formalisation is compatible with the framework of (Multi-Objective) Reinforcement Learning, to ease the handling of an agent's individual and ethical objectives. The second step consists in designing an environment wherein an agent learns to behave ethically while pursuing its individual objective. We leverage on our theoretical results to introduce an algorithm that automates our two-step approach. In the cases where value-aligned behaviour is possible, our algorithm produces a learning environment for the agent wherein it will learn a value-aligned behaviour
Trust-Based Mechanisms for Robust and Efficient Task Allocation in the Presence of Execution Uncertainty
Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanisms are often used to allocate tasks to selfish and rational agents. VCG mechanisms are incentive-compatible, direct mechanisms that are efficient (i.e. maximise social utility) and individually rational (i.e. agents prefer to join rather than opt out). However, an important assumption of these mechanisms is that the agents will always successfully complete their allocated tasks. Clearly, this assumption is unrealistic in many real-world applications where agents can, and often do, fail in their endeavours. Moreover, whether an agent is deemed to have failed may be perceived differently by different agents. Such subjective perceptions about an agent’s probability of succeeding at a given task are often captured and reasoned about using the notion of trust. Given this background, in this paper, we investigate the design of novel mechanisms that take into account the trust between agents when allocating tasks. Specifically, we develop a new class of mechanisms, called trust-based mechanisms, that can take into account multiple subjective measures of the probability of an agent succeeding at a given task and produce allocations that maximise social utility, whilst ensuring that no agent obtains a negative utility. We then show that such mechanisms pose a challenging new combinatorial optimisation problem (that is NP-complete), devise a novel representation for solving the problem, and develop an effective integer programming solution (that can solve instances with about 2×105 possible allocations in 40 seconds).
Communicating open systems
Just as conventional institutions are organisational structures for coordinating the activities of multiple interacting individuals, electronic institutions provide a computational analogue for coordinating the activities of multiple interacting software agents. In this paper, we argue that open multi-agent systems can be effectively designed and implemented as electronic institutions, for which we provide a comprehensive computational model. More specifically, the paper provides an operational semantics for electronic institutions, specifying the essential data structures, the state representation and the key operations necessary to implement them. We specify the agent workflow structure that is the core component of such electronic institutions and particular instantiations of knowledge representation languages that support the institutional model. In so doing, we provide the first formal account of the electronic institution concept in a rigorous and unambiguous way
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