63, A Redefinition of Arguments in Defeasible Logic Programming

A paper ('A Redefinition of Arguments in Defeasible Logic Programming', 2009, by Ignaccio Viglizzo, Fernando Tohme, Guillermo Simari) I had to read and be a 'discussant' for at the 'Uses of Computational Argumentation' workshop (held at Washington DC) I attended earlier this month (part of the AAAI 2009 Fall Symposium Series).

Good paper. Well written. Easy to follow/understand. Quite similar in what it does to the paper I presented ('Assumption-Based Argumentation for Communicating Agents') at the workshop - doing for DLP (partially) what I did for ABA, i.e. a step towards making it applicable for multi-agent contexts.

Attempts at summing up my PhD

A couple of attempts with two different people from the last two days to sum up my PhD...

Attempt 1:

... the rough area is "distributed artificial intelligence". The concept of "artificial intelligence" (AI) is to make smart computer programs. Within AI is the concept of "agents" - autonomous, proactive, reactive computer programs - that, given a goal or task, should be able to go off, work out how best to achieve it and achieve it. I look at a specific problem (can explain upon request) making use of "multi-agent systems", where multiple "agents" have to collaborate/cooperate/dialogue (can elaborate upon request) to achieve their individual goals, and as a result the "society" of agents also benefits...

Attempt 2:

... the rough area is "distributed artificial intelligence", or, more specifically "multi-agent systems". An "agent" is an "autonomous", "proactive", "reactive" computer program - that, given a "goal" or "task", should be able to go off, work out how best to achieve it and achieve it. I model my agents, their internal reasoning/decision-making mechanisms, using a form of logic based on "argumentation", and the interactions between the agents by means of communication protocols termed "dialogues". Concretely, I am trying to apply my framework to a specific problem (the "resource reallocation problem" - can explain upon request) where multiple agents have to collaborate/cooperate/dialogue to achieve their individual goals, and as a result the "society" of agents also benefits...

I thought I was getting better at explaining my PhD topic. From the responses I received, apparently not!