32, Reaching Agreements Through Argumentation

Notes taken from 'Reaching agreements through argumentation: a logical model and implementation' (1998), Sarit Kraus, Katia Sycara, Amir Evenchik

1, Introduction

2, The Mental Model

Classification of intentions:
- "Intend-to-do", refers to actions within the direct control of the agent.
- "Intend-that", refers to propositions not directly within the agent's realm of control, that the agent must rely on other agents for satisfying.

(The Formal Model, Syntax, Semantics)

Agent Types: Bounded Agent, An Omniscient Agent, A Knowledgeable Agent, An Unforgetful Agent, A Memoryless Agent, A Non-observer, Cooperative Agents

3, Axioms for Argumentation and for Argument Evaluation

The argument types we present (in order of decreasing strength) are:
(1) Threats to produce goal adoption or goal abandonment on the part of the persuadee.
(2) Enticing the persuadee with a promise of a future reward.
(3) Appeal to past reward.
(4) Appeal to precendents as counterexamples to convey to the persuadee a contradiction between what she/he says and past actions.
(5) Appealing to "prevailing practice" to convey to the persuadee that the proposed action will further his/her goals since it has furthered others' goals in the past.
(6) Appeal to self-interest to convince a persuadee that taking this action will enable achievement of a high-importance goal.

"... Agents with different spheres of expertise may need to negotiate with each other for the sake of requesting each others' services. Their expertise is also their bargaining power..."

(Arguments Involving Threats, Evaluation of Threats, Promise of a Future Reward, Appeal to Past Promise, Appeal to "Prevailing Practice", Appeal to Self Interest, Selecting Arguments by an Agent's Type, An Example: Labor Union vs. Management Negotiation, Contract Net Example)

4, Automated Negotiation Agent (ANA)

The general structure of an agent consists of the following main parts:
- Mental state (beliefs, desires, goals, intentions)
- Characteristics (agent type, capabilities, belief verification capabilities)
- Inference rules (mental state update, argument generation, argument selection, request evaluation)

(The Structure of an Agent and its Life Cycle, Inference Rules for Mental State Changes, Argument Production and Evaluation, Argument Selection Rules, Request Evaluation Rules, The Blocks World Environment, Simulation of a Blocks World Scenario)

5, Related Work

(Mental State, Agent Oriented Languages, Multi-agent Planning, Automated Negotiation, Defeasible Reasoning and Computational Dialectics, Game Theory's Models of Negotiation, Social Psychology)

6, Conclusions