Case-Based Argumentation Framework. Strategies

Abstract

In agent societies, agents perform complex tasks that require different levels of intelligence and give rise to interactions among them. From these interactions, conflicts of opinion can arise, specially when MAS become adaptive and open with heterogeneous agents dynamically entering in or leaving the system. Therefore, software agents willing to participate in this type of systems will require to include extra capabilities to explicitly represent and generate agreements on top of the simpler ability to interact. In addition, agents can take advantage of previous argumentation experiences to follow dialogue strategies and easily persuade other agents to accept their opinions. Our insight is that CBR can be very useful to manage argumentation in open MAS and devise argumentation strategies based on previous argumentation experiences. To demonstrate the foundations of this suggestion, this report presents the work that we have done to develop case-based argumentation strategies in agent societies. Thus, we propose a case-based argumentation framework for agent societies and define heuristic dialogue strategies based on it. The framework has been implemented and evaluated in a real customer support application.