Arguing for gaining access to information

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a protocol for agents engaged in argumentation over access to information sources. Obtaining relevant information is essential for agents engaged in autonomous, goal-directed behavior, but access to such information is usually controlled by other autonomous agents having their own goals. Because these various goals may be in conflict with one another, rational interactions between the two agents may take the form of a dialog, in which requests for information are successively issued, considered, justified and criticized. Even when the agents involved in such discussions agree on all the arguments for and the arguments against granting access to some information source, they may still disagree on their preferences between these arguments.

To represent such situations, we design a protocol for dialogs between two autonomous agents for seeking and granting authorization to access some information source. This protocol is based on an argumentation dialog where agents handle specific preferences and acceptability over arguments.

REFERENCES

• 1: Leila Amgoud , Claudette Cayrol, Inferring from Inconsistency in Preference-Based Argumentation Frameworks, Journal of Automated Reasoning, v.29 n.2, p.125-169, 2002 [doi>10.1023/A:1021603608656]
• 2: L. Amgoud, S. Parsons, and L. Perrussel. An Argumentation Framework based on contextual Preferences. In Proc. of FAPR'00, London, pages 59--67, January 2000.
• 3: T. J. M. Bench-Capon. Persuasion in practical argument using value-based argumentation frameworks. J. Log. Comput., 13(3):429--448, 2003.
• 4: Guido Boella , Joris Hulstijn , Leendert van der Torre, Argument Games for Interactive Access Control, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence, p.751-754, September 19-22, 2005 [doi>10.1109/WI.2005.35]
• 5: Pieter Dijkstra , Floris Bex , Henry Prakken , Kees De Vey Mestdagh, Towards a multi-agent system for regulated information exchange in crime investigations, Artificial Intelligence and Law, v.13 n.1, p.133-151, March 2005 [doi>10.1007/s10506-006-9005-1]
• 6: S. Doutre, P. McBurney, L. Perrussel, and J.-M. Thevenin. Arguing for Gaining Access to Information. Research report IRIT/RR-2006-26-FR, IRIT, 2006.
• 7: Sylvie Doutre , Peter McBurney , Michael Wooldridge, Law-governed Linda as a semantics for agent dialogue protocols, Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems, July 25-29, 2005, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/1082473.1082721]
• 8: Phan Minh Dung, On the acceptability of arguments and its fundamental role in nonmonotonic reasoning, logic programming and n-person games, Artificial Intelligence, v.77 n.2, p.321-357, Sept. 1995 [doi>10.1016/0004-3702(94)00041-X]
• 9: FIPA. FIPA, 'Agent communication language', FIPA 97 Specification, Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents edition, 1997.
• 10: S. Parsons, M. Wooldridge, and L. Amgoud. Properties and complexity of some formal inter-agent dialogues. J. Log. Comput., 13(3):347--376, 2003.
• 11: Henry Prakken, Coherence and Flexibility in Dialogue Games for Argumentation, Journal of Logic and Computation, v.15 n.6, p.1009-1040, December 2005 [doi>10.1093/logcom/exi046]
• 12: Iyad Rahwan , Sarvapali D. Ramchurn , Nicholas R. Jennings , Peter Mcburney , Simon Parsons , Liz Sonenberg, Argumentation-based negotiation, The Knowledge Engineering Review, v.18 n.4, p.343-375, December 2003 [doi>DOI:10.1017/S0269888904000098]
• 13: D. Walton and E. Krabbe. Commitments in Dialogue: Basic Concepts of Interpersonal Reasoning. SUNY Press, 1995.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
        I.2.11 Distributed Artificial Intelligence

General Terms:
Languages

Keywords:
argumentation, dialogue, permission