EUMAS 08 Conference

Attended and presented at the EUMAS conference last week in Bath. Received some useful questions/feedback to think about, as follows:

• The title ('On the benefits of argumentation for negotiation - preliminary version') is a bit misleading (given the narrow scope of this work). Also, should think about potential/real drawbacks of using argumentation for negotiation as well as its benefits, i.e. look at things more objectively.


• Look at game-theoretic models. Contrast my work with theirs. Agents providing reasons/justifications with requests as in this paper would not be enough (in and of itself) to argue argumentation-based negotiation (ABN) over game-theoretic (GT) approaches. For example, the act of an agent providing a reason with a request may not always be advantageous; providing a reason could rule out an "offer" (in the mind of the recipient agent) that would otherwise have been acceptable. It may (also) not always be strategically advantageous for an agent to provide reasons with its requests since the recipient agent could use this against the requesting agent.


• Agents providing reasons with dialogue moves doesn't increase the number of solutions possible unless agents provide their overlying goals with their reasons, like the "hammer and nail" example in an earlier paper. Otherwise agents are only justifying their dialogue moves.


• How come reasons can be provided with a 'refuse' response but not with an 'accept'?


• The work of Nicolas Hormazabal ('Trust aware negotiation') could be useful.


• The presentation was perhaps overly simplistic. Looks a bit like I have created/used a problem/solution to justify argumentation and not the other way round, i.e. rather than creating/using an argumentative approach to solve a real problem. Also, sequences/concurrency of the dialogues: it was not clear from the presentation; it came across as though only one dialogue move/instance is made at a time in sequence regardless of the number of agents in the agent system.


• A story from Cuba (spurred by my bilateral agent negotiation approach): each person prefers the house of his neighbour (only) over his own, creating a big circle of potential swaps. Eventually, (if/) once the circle is established/known, each person moves into the house of his neighbour resulting in a happier society. Point being: why not have everyone report their desires/preferences publicly and have the final result/allocation decided upon centrally like in an auction? Wouldn't that be easier?