Discussion of Research Plan and Milestones

Thoughts following on from 18 January’s supervisor meeting.

Discussion of Reseach Plan
As well as further reading into and understanding of the open issues mentioned previously, the initial plan is as follows:

Firstly, identify and classify the different types of dialogue (enquiry, information-seeking, persuasion, negotiation, eristic etc). Of particular interest will be the work of Douglas Walton [1] and Peter Mcburney [2]. At this stage, to look at these dialogues independent of argumentation. Following on from this, if possible, to bring the different dialogues together into a single all-incorporating approach, and to consider the role argumentation can play in this.

Secondly, work on argumentation for/with dialogues. Of particular interest will be the work of Henry Prakken, Leila Amgoud, Simon Parsons, Chris Reed and Peter McBurney. Argumentation will be investigated as a tool and way of serving the purpose of communication, that is:
- Achieving the different types of dialogue;
- “implementing” negotiation;
- building a joint line of reasoning between agents, i.e., expressing and sharing internal evaluations of argument pros and cons;
- agents working together to come up with plans of action.

These first two issues can be seen as two separate levels:
Firstly, the specification. What are the different ways of making communication? What different dialogues are there? What are the requirements of the communication?
Secondly, the realisation. How can the communication be modelled? Can the different types of dialogue be tied together using argumentation? If so, how? If not, to what extent can argumentation be used to bring various communication dialogues together?

Thirdly, investigate possible architectures for negotiating agents (i.e. what goes on inside the agents and guides the dialogues), starting from the abstract BDI framework.

Discussion of Milestones
There are four main milestones that will guide the work. These are as follows:

Firstly, decide upon an agent model – possibly the BDI approach, with bridge rules linking the beliefs, desires and intentions. At this stage, to keep the formalisation simple and abstract, since the purpose here is to create a generic model.

Secondly, build a negotiation model where dialogues incorporate
- persuasion
- information-seeking
- inquiry (for pooling joint knowledge)
- negotiation
- deliberation (for agreeing on a joint action, possibly by modifying desires)
These features should co-exist in the new model to provide the outcome we need, which is to increase the number of solutions than would be possible by a subset of these alone. Another possibility to be considered is nested dialogues (i.e. one dialogue within another). To start with, the work of Simon Parsons and Peter McBurney will be checked, as well as the work of Douglas Walton and Erik Krebbe.

Thirdly, define agent policies – required for examples and beyond. The policies are concrete definitions of the agent behaviour. They determine how agents are to go about achieving the negotiation, and the outcomes resulting from agent dialogues.

Fourthly, realisation by means of making concrete choices:
- Dialogue constraints
- Argumentation
- Concrete agent architecture – for example, KGP-like. Making decisions on how we are going to do it. For example, deciding where the knowledge comes from.
This will be the final stage which will be close to (and lend itself to) implementation. Note that realisation does not mean implementation per se.

Further Discussion
The possibility of doing a survey paper on ‘Argumentation for Negotiation’ or going through the different approaches/aspects to argumentation in negotiation, such as priorities in rules, defeasibility etc. The objective will be to avoid making a waffly in favour of a more technical survey.

Also, to consider allowing for agent goals to change. Since the goal pretty much characterises the agent, this may not be possible except by agents shifting between (a set of) pre-defined goals rather than goals completely anew. Of initial interest is the work of Antonis Kakas [3] about goal decision in autonomous agents.