Argumentation-Based multi-agent dialogues for deliberation

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2011

Agents engage in deliberation dialogues to collectively decide on a course of action. To solve conflicts of opinion that arise, they can question claims and supply arguments. Existing models fail to capture the interplay between the provided arguments as well as successively selecting a winner from the proposals. This paper introduces a general framework for agent deliberation dialogues that uses an explicit reply structure to produce coherent dialogues, guides in outcome selection and provide pointers for agent strategies.

1998

... 337-346. 22. [22] CH Heidrich, Montague-grammars for argumentative dialogues, in: Argumentation: Approaches to Theory Formation, Barth and Martens, eds, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1982. 23. [23] NI Karacapilidis and T. Gordon, Dialectical planning, in: Proc. ...

1998

One focus of our work at Queen Mary and Westfield College is the development of multi-agent systems which deal with real world problems, an example being the diagnosis of faults in electricity distribution networks (Jennings et al. 1996). These systems are mixed-initiative in the sense that they depend upon interactions between agents--no single agent has sufficient skills or resources to carry out the tasks which the multi-agent system as a whole is faced with.

Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 2002

Ai Communications, 1998

This paper describes a Group Decision Support System for cooperative or non-cooperative argumentative discourses. The system provides agents means of expressing and weighing their individual arguments and preferences, in order to argue for or against the selection of a certain choice. It supports defeasible and qualitative reasoning in the presence of illstructured information. Argumentation is performed through a set of discourse acts which call a variety of procedures for the propagation of information in the corresponding discussion graph. The system incorporates Case Based Reasoning to resolve current issues by using previous similar situations. Cases are not mere representations of past data, but flexible entities associated with the underlying viewpoint of an agent and the evolution of the corresponding discussion. The paper provides an object-oriented description of the elements involved, and illustrates their dependencies through a comprehensive example. 1 the term informal logic was primarily used to denote an approach to argument interpretation and evaluation that is distinct from traditional, formal logic. AI Communications 0 () 0

2014

Argumentation-based negotiation (ABN) is a prevailing approach for automated negotiation. It is based on the exchange of arguments that allow an agent to acquire additional information about the other agents and the particular circumstances of the negotiation, and can be used for attacking or justifying offers. This is an important element in resolving conflicts that very often are due to the assumptions agents have made when making decisions and which may be found to be false in the course of the negotiation. Argumentation-based negotiation can be characterized in terms of three main topics, namely a) the reasoning mechanisms the agents use for negotiating and which are based on argumentation, b) the protocols the agents use for conveying arguments and offers and, c) the strategies that determine their choices at each step of the negotiation. This chapter presents argumentationbased negotiation by discussing representative works dealing with these three topics.

2011

We present an empirical simulation-based study of the use of valuebased argumentation in two-party deliberation dialogues, investigating the impact that argumentation can have on the quality of the outcome reached. Our simulation allows us to vary the number of values, actions and arguments that appear in the system; we investigate how the behaviour of the system changes as these parameters vary. This parameter sensitivity analysis tells us whether a value-based deliberation dialogue system may be useful for a particular real-world application. We measure the quality of the dialogue outcome (i.e. the action that the agents agree to) against a global view of whether that action would be agreeable to each agent if all of the agents' knowledge were taken into account. We compare the deliberation outcome with a simple consensus forming procedure (where no arguments are exchanged). Our results show that the deliberation dialogue system we present outperforms consensus forming.

2003

Many techniques for coordinating agents require that the agents communicate, and many of the requisite communications need more than the exchange of a few terse illocutions. In other words they require some form of dialogue. This paper discusses one way to create such dialogues, the use of argumentation, and illustrates the use of this approach in the definition of dialogues about joint plans.

Models of deliberative dialogue are fundamental for developing autonomous systems that support human practical reasoning. However, we must consider whether these existing models are able to capture the complexity and richness of natural deliberation for developing real applications. In real contexts, circumstances relevant to the decision can change rapidly. In this paper, we introduce an extension to today's leading model of deliberation dialogue to capture dynamic changes of circumstances during dialogue. Moreover, in natural deliberation, a dialogue may be successful even if a decision on what to do has not been made. A set of criteria is proposed to address the problem of when to close off the practical reasoning phase of dialogue. We then discuss some initial efforts to introduce those characteristics within an existing model of deliberation for agent collaboration. We believe that our extended model of dialogue may represent that richness of natural deliberative dialogue that is yet to be addressed in existing models of agent deliberation.

2006

In this paper we present a prototype of a tool that demonstrates how existing limitations in ensuring an agent’s compliance to an argumentation-based dialogue protocol can be overcome. We also present the implementation of compliance enforcement components for a deliberation dialogue protocol, and an application that enables two human participants to engage in an efficiently moderated dialogue, where all inappropriate utterances attempted by an agent are blocked and prevented from inclusion within the dialogue.