Using argumentation to model and deploy agent-based B2B applications
TL;DR: An agent-based framework for modeling and deploying Business-to-Business (B2B) applications, where autonomous agents act on behalf of the individual components that form these applications, using a formal model based on computational argumentation theory through a persuasion protocol to detect and resolve conflicts.
Abstract: This paper presents an agent-based framework for modeling and deploying Business-to-Business (B2B) applications, where autonomous agents act on behalf of the individual components that form these applications. This framework consists of three levels identified by strategic, application, and resource, with focus in this paper on the first two levels. The strategic level is about the common vision that independent businesses define as part of their decision of partnership. The application level is about the business processes that get virtually combined as result of this common vision. As conflicts are bound to arise among the independent applications/agents, the framework uses a formal model based on computational argumentation theory through a persuasion protocol to detect and resolve these conflicts. In this protocol, agents reason about partial information using partial arguments, partial attack, and partial acceptability. Agents can then jointly find arguments that support a new solution for their conflicts, which is not known by any of them individually. Termination, soundness, and completeness properties of this protocol are provided. Distributed and centralized coordination strategies are also supported in this framework, which is illustrated with an online-purchasing example.
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TL;DR: A comprehensive trust framework as a multi-factor model, which applies a number of measurements to evaluate the trust of interacting agents, and its novelty in after-interaction investigation and performance analysis prove the applicability of the proposed model in distributed multi-agent systems.
Abstract: In open multi-agent systems, agents engage in interactions to share and exchange information. Due to the fact that these agents are self-interested, they may jeopardize mutual trust by not performing actions as they are expected to do. To this end, different models of trust have been proposed to assess the credibility of peers in the environment. These frameworks fail to consider and analyze the multiple factors impacting the trust. In this paper, we overcome this limit by proposing a comprehensive trust framework as a multi-factor model, which applies a number of measurements to evaluate the trust of interacting agents. First, this framework considers direct interactions among agents, and this part of the framework is called online trust estimation. Furthermore, after a variable interval of time, the actual performance of the evaluated agent is compared against the information provided by some other agents (consulting agents). This comparison in the off-line process leads to both adjusting the credibility of the contributing agents in trust evaluation and improving the system trust evaluation by minimizing the estimation error. What specifically distinguishes this work from the previous proposals in the same domain is its novelty in after-interaction investigation and performance analysis that prove the applicability of the proposed model in distributed multi-agent systems. In this paper, the agent structure and interaction mechanism of the proposed framework are described. A theoretical analysis of trust assessment and the system implementation along with simulations are also discussed. Finally, a comparison of our trust framework with other well-known frameworks from the literature is provided.
70 citations
Cites background or methods from "Using argumentation to model and de..."
...…responses and any corrections to: E-mail: corrections.esch@elsevier.sps.co.in Fax: +31 2048 52799 Dear Author, Please check your proof carefully and mark all corrections at the appropriate place in the proof (e.g., by using on-screen annotation in the PDF file) or compile them in a separate…...
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...In the whole process, the direct interaction assessment is combined with the suggested ratings by the consulting agents....
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TL;DR: This work model users of the social networks as agents that represent their users’ privacy constraints as semantic rules, and argues with each other on propositions that enable their privacy rules by generating facts and assumptions from their ontology.
Abstract: Preserving users’ privacy is important for Web systems. In systems where transactions are managed by a single user, such as e-commerce systems, preserving privacy of the transactions is merely the capability of access control. However, in online social networks, where each transaction is managed by and has effect on others, preserving privacy is difficult. In many cases, the users’ privacy constraints are distributed, expressed in a high-level manner, and would depend on information that only becomes available over interactions with others. Hence, when a content is being shared by a user, others who might be affected by the content should discuss and agree on how the content will be shared online so that none of their privacy constraints are violated. To enable this, we model users of the social networks as agents that represent their users’ privacy constraints as semantic rules. Agents argue with each other on propositions that enable their privacy rules by generating facts and assumptions from their ontology. Moreover, agents can seek help from others by requesting new information to enrich their ontology. Using assumption-based argumentation, agents decide whether a content should be shared or not. We evaluate the applicability of our approach on real-life privacy scenarios in comparison with user surveys.
53 citations
TL;DR: A new technique for model checking the logic of knowledge and commitments (CTLKC+) is presented and it is proved that the complexity of the proposed approach is P-complete with regard to the size of the model and length of the formula, which makes it efficient.
42 citations
Cites background from "Using argumentation to model and de..."
...Another line of research in MASs was concentrated on agent communication, a core element of any dynamic system of agents [8,12,19]....
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TL;DR: This paper addresses the problem of ontology-based process representation based on expert's knowledge, considering both tasks executed by means of web services and tasks executedBy persons, and proposes a model based on the set of situations that can be identified by an expert in a given process and the actions required in each situation.
Abstract: Semantic knowledge representation is the key for the development of present intelligent systems. Furthermore, the Semantic Web provide a formal representation and knowledge-driven set of technologies to enable automation of business processes. Despite the new trends on business process automation based on semantic technologies and Web Services, a number of business processes still require human intervention. In this paper we address the problem of ontology-based process representation based on expert's knowledge, considering both tasks executed by means of web services and tasks executed by persons. In this way, fully-automated and semi-automated processes (guided by a person) could be represented and executed. The proposed model is based on the set of situations that can be identified by an expert in a given process and the actions required in each situation. For validating our approach, a sales supporting system based on the proposed architecture has been developed. The proof-of concept system has been running for a remarkably time, supporting the sales process for non-expert sellers.
41 citations
09 Sep 2013
TL;DR: This paper proposes a tool that supports a group of experts to collaboratively reconcile a set of matched correspondences and represents the expert’s views as arguments to enable formal reasoning on the assertions of the experts.
Abstract: Schema matching is the process of establishing correspondences between the attributes of database schemas for data integration purpose Although several schema matching tools have been developed, their results are often incomplete or erroneous To obtain correct attribute correspondences, in practice, human experts edit the mapping results and fix the mapping problems As the scale and complexity of data integration tasks have increased dramatically in recent years, the reconciliation phase becomes more and more a bottleneck Moreover, one often needs to establish the correspondences in not only between two but a network of schemas simultaneously In such reconciliation settings, it is desirable to involve several experts In this paper, we propose a tool that supports a group of experts to collaboratively reconcile a set of matched correspondences The experts might have conflicting views whether a given correspondence is correct or not As one expects global consistency conditions in the network, the conflict resolution might require discussion and negotiation among the experts to resolve such disagreements We have developed techniques and a tool that allow approaching this reconciliation phase in a systematic way We represent the expert’s views as arguments to enable formal reasoning on the assertions of the experts We detect complex dependencies in their arguments, guide and present them the possible consequences of their decisions These techniques thus can greatly help them to overlook the complex cases and work more effectively
30 citations
Cites background from "Using argumentation to model and de..."
...In e-commerce systems [3], argumentation is used for solving conflicts that may arise among distributed providers in large scale networks of web services and resources, thus improving the automation level of business processes....
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References
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TL;DR: By showing that argumentation can be viewed as a special form of logic programming with negation as failure, this paper introduces a general logic-programming-based method for generating meta-interpreters for argumentation systems, a method very much similar to the compiler-compiler idea in conventional programming.
4,386 citations
"Using argumentation to model and de..." refers background in this paper
...In the remainder of this section, we suppose that the persuasion topic is represented by the wff p....
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Book•
01 Jan 1995TL;DR: In this paper, commitment in dialogue basic concepts of interpersonal reasoning have been discussed and discussed in the context of interactive dialogues, and the authors propose a commitment-in-discriminative dialogue framework.
Abstract: Thank you very much for reading commitment in dialogue basic concepts of interpersonal reasoning. As you may know, people have look hundreds times for their favorite readings like this commitment in dialogue basic concepts of interpersonal reasoning, but end up in harmful downloads. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some harmful virus inside their laptop.
1,170 citations
"Using argumentation to model and de..." refers background in this paper
...As defined by Walton and Krabbe [27], the inquiry dialogues rise from an initial situation of general ignorance and the purpose is to achieve the growth of knowledge and agreements....
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...As defined by Walton and Krabbe [27], the inquiry dialo gues rise from an initial situation of general ignorance and the purpose is to achieve the growth of knowledge and agreement....
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TL;DR: A number of foundational contributions provided the basis for the formulation of argumentation models and their promotion in AI related settings and then a number of new themes that have emerged in recent years are considered, many of which provide the principal topics of the research presented in this volume.
1,002 citations
"Using argumentation to model and de..." refers background in this paper
...Although argumentation has been extensively investigated in the last decade and many interesting frameworks are proposed [3], limited efforts have been put into using this theory in concrete applications [23]....
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TL;DR: The work reported here introducesdefeasible Logic Programming (DeLP), a formalism that combines results of Logic Programming and Defeasible Argumentation and a defeasible argumentation inference mechanism for warranting the entailed conclusions.
Abstract: The work reported here introduces Defeasible Logic Programming (DeLP), a formalism that combines results of Logic Programming and Defeasible Argumentation. DeLP provides the possibility of representing information in the form of weak rules in a declarative manner, and a defeasible argumentation inference mechanism for warranting the entailed conclusions. In DeLP an argumentation formalism will be used for deciding between contradictory goals. Queries will be supported by arguments that could be defeated by other arguments. A query $q$ will succeed when there is an argument ${\mathcal A}$ for $q$ that is warranted, i.e. the argument ${\mathcal A}$ that supports $q$ is found undefeated by a warrant procedure that implements a dialectical analysis. The defeasible argumentation basis of DeLP allows to build applications that deal with incomplete and contradictory information in dynamic domains. Thus, the resulting approach is suitable for representing agent's knowledge and for providing an argumentation based reasoning mechanism to agents.
878 citations
TL;DR: Four key issues for Web service composition are described, which offer developers reuse possibilities and users seamless access to a variety of complex services.
Abstract: Web service composition lets developers create applications on top of service-oriented computing's native description, discovery, and communication capabilities. Such applications are rapidly deployable and offer developers reuse possibilities and users seamless access to a variety of complex services. There are many existing approaches to service composition, ranging from abstract methods to those aiming to be industry standards. The authors describe four key issues for Web service composition.
770 citations