C. Jonker | Delft University of Technology (original) (raw)
Papers by C. Jonker
Socially intelligent systems exhibit, understand, and reason about social behavior, in order to s... more Socially intelligent systems exhibit, understand, and reason about social behavior, in order to support people in their daily lives. We claim that a fundamental new approach based on social concepts is needed to build these socially intelligent systems. In this paper, we explore how the concepts of social practices and social identities can be used to structure deliberations about actions. We then show the consequences for the architecture and reasoning capabilities of these systems.
Studies in Computational Intelligence, 2013
Social activities account for a large amount of travel, yet due to their irregularity and the num... more Social activities account for a large amount of travel, yet due to their irregularity and the number of options regarding location, participants, and timing, they are difficult to model and predict. We assume that social activities are constrained by one's social network, which consists of people you are close to, both socially and spatially. Therefore, a model of social activity behaviour should be sensitive to the network. In this paper, an agent-based model to describe social activities between two people over time is described and four different input networks (random, based on spatial distance, based on social distance, based on both distances) are experimented with. The results show that the overall social network has an effect on the number of activities generated in the entire system and also between pairs of friends.
The impact of ubiquitous technology and social media on our lives is rapidly increasing. We expli... more The impact of ubiquitous technology and social media on our lives is rapidly increasing. We explicitly need to consider personal values affected or violated by these systems. Value-sensitive design can guide a designer in building systems that account for human values. However, the framework lacks clear steps to guide elicitation of stakeholders' values. We argue that developing tools for value elicitation that designers can use or give to stakeholders is a feasible solution to this challenge. Crucial in eliciting values is that a stakeholder has to have an understanding about her own values and how they relate in importance. This requires self-reflection. Self-reflection, in turn, requires thinking or analysing one's behaviour in meaningful moments over a long period of time. In this paper, we investigate how current methods from various disciplines can be combined and applied in a tool supporting reflection on personal values. We present an exploratory study investigating photo elicitation and a value questionnaire as methods for expressing and eliciting values with a tool. Based on the results we present an envisioned mobile personal informatics application that triggers people to reflect about their values in real-life contexts.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012
An adaptive language modeling method is proposed in this paper. Instead of using one static model... more An adaptive language modeling method is proposed in this paper. Instead of using one static model for all situations, it applies a set of specific models to dynamically adapt to the discourse. We present the general structure of the model and the training procedure. In our experiments, we instantiated the method with a set of domain dependent models which are trained according to different socio-situational settings (ALMOSD). We compare it with previous topic dependent and socio-situational setting dependent adaptive language models and with a smoothed n-gram model in terms of perplexity and word prediction accuracy. Our experiments show that ALMOSD achieves perplexity reductions up to almost 12% compared with the other models.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2009
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2011
In this paper, a first step towards a computational model of the self-attribution of agency is pr... more In this paper, a first step towards a computational model of the self-attribution of agency is presented, based on Wegner's theory of apparent mental causation. A model to compute a feeling of doing based on first-order Bayesian network theory is introduced that incorporates the main contributing factors to the formation of such a feeling. The main contribution of this paper is the presentation of a formal and precise model that can be used to further test Wegner's theory against quantitative experimental data.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012
An important aim in bilateral negotiations is to achieve a win-win solution for both parties; the... more An important aim in bilateral negotiations is to achieve a win-win solution for both parties; therefore, a critical aspect of a negotiating agent's success is its ability to take the opponent's preferences into account. Every year, new negotiation agents are introduced with better learning techniques to model the opponent. Our main goal in this work is to evaluate and compare the performance of a selection of state-of-the-art online opponent modeling techniques in negotiation, and to determine under which circumstances they are beneficial in a real-time, online negotiation setting. Towards this end, we provide an overview of the factors influencing the quality of a model and we analyze how the performance of opponent models depends on the negotiation setting. This results in better insight into the performance of opponent models, and allows us to pinpoint well-performing opponent modeling techniques that did not receive much previous attention in literature.
Novel Insights in Agent-based Complex Automated Negotiation, 2014
Studies in Computational Intelligence, 2013
In every negotiation with a deadline, one of the negotiating parties has to accept an offer to av... more In every negotiation with a deadline, one of the negotiating parties has to accept an offer to avoid a break off. A break off is usually an undesirable outcome for both parties, therefore it is important that a negotiator employs a proficient mechanism to decide under which conditions to accept. When designing such conditions one is faced with the acceptance dilemma: accepting the current offer may be suboptimal, as better offers may still be presented. On the other hand, accepting too late may prevent an agreement from being reached, resulting in a break off with no gain for either party. Motivated by the challenges of bilateral negotiations between automated agents and by the results and insights of the automated negotiating agents competition (ANAC), we classify and compare state-of-the-art generic acceptance conditions. We focus on decoupled acceptance conditions, i.e. conditions that do not depend on the bidding strategy that is used. We performed extensive experiments to compare the performance of acceptance conditions in combination with a broad range of bidding strategies and negotiation domains. Furthermore we propose new acceptance conditions and we demonstrate that they outperform the other conditions that we study. In particular, it is shown that they outperform the standard acceptance condition of comparing the current offer with the offer the agent is ready to send out. We also provide insight in to why some conditions work better than others and investigate correlations between the properties of the negotiation environment and the efficacy of acceptance conditions.
Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 2014
Proceedings of the 2014 Workshop on Intelligent Agents and Technologies for Socially Interconnected Systems - IAT4SIS '14, 2014
Socially interconnected systems should be able to exhibit, understand, and reason about social be... more Socially interconnected systems should be able to exhibit, understand, and reason about social behavior, in order to support lasting interconnections that show realistic and desirable properties. We claim that a fundamental new approach based on social concepts is needed to build agents functioning in these socially interconnected systems. In this paper, we explore how the concepts of social practices and social identities can be used to structure deliberations about interactions. We then show the consequences for the architecture and reasoning capabilities of these systems.
Motivation-Elicitation of preferences is crucial in negotiation support. This is a non-trivial ta... more Motivation-Elicitation of preferences is crucial in negotiation support. This is a non-trivial task which could be supported by computers. Research approach-Experiment in which 32 participants have to order holidays using different preference elicitation techniques including a navigational task and affective scoring. The results were used as input for a lexicographic ordering algorithm. Findings/design-Traditional property rating approach seems most preferred by the participants and resulted in one of the best orderings of the outcomes space to match their preferences, at least when using the lexicographic algorithm. Originality/value-The elicitation process is approached from an algorithmic perspective as well as from a user-centred perspective for both navigation and affective attitude. Take away message-A multi-angle approach gives a richer understanding of the process of preference elicitation.
Engineering Societies in the Agents World X, 2009
Organizational notions such as roles, norms (e.g., obligations and permissions), and services are... more Organizational notions such as roles, norms (e.g., obligations and permissions), and services are increasingly viewed as natural concepts to manage the complexity of software development. In particular in the context of multi-agent systems, agents are expected to be organization-aware, i.e., to understand and reason about the structure, work processes, and norms of the agent organization in which they operate. In this paper, we analyze which kinds of reasoning an agent should be able to do to function in an organization. We categorize these kinds of reasoning with respect to several dimensions, and distinguish three general approaches on how these might be integrated in existing agent programming languages. Through this, we provide a research agenda on what needs to be addressed when developing techniques for programming organization-aware agents.
Decision Support Systems, 2014
In every negotiation with a deadline, one of the negotiating parties must accept an offer to avoi... more In every negotiation with a deadline, one of the negotiating parties must accept an offer to avoid a break off. As a break off is usually an undesirable outcome for both parties, it is important that a negotiator employs a proficient mechanism to decide under which conditions to accept. When designing such conditions, one is faced with the acceptance dilemma: accepting the current offer may be suboptimal, as better offers may still be presented before time runs out. On the other hand, accepting too late may prevent an agreement from being reached, resulting in a break off with no gain for either party. Motivated by the challenges of bilateral negotiations between automated agents and by the results and insights of the automated negotiating agents competition (ANAC), we classify and compare state-of-the-art generic acceptance conditions. We perform extensive experiments to compare the performance of various acceptance conditions in combination with a broad range of bidding strategies and negotiation scenarios. Furthermore we propose new acceptance conditions and we demonstrate that they outperform the other conditions. We also provide insight into why some conditions work better than others and investigate correlations between the properties of the negotiation scenario and the efficacy of acceptance conditions.
Cognition, Technology & Work, 2011
We investigate people's attitudes toward the possible use of negotiation support systems (NSS) in... more We investigate people's attitudes toward the possible use of negotiation support systems (NSS) in different social contexts and the consequences for their design. To explore functional requirements and social acceptance in different use contexts, we followed a threestep approach. In the first step, we conducted a number of focus groups with negotiation experts. Second, we conducted focus groups with potential users. The focus groups were a qualitative exploration of people's ideas about NSS that led to design guidelines for mobile NSS. Third, we conducted an online survey (a) to find out in which situations people consider a mobile NSS socially acceptable, (b) to find the factors and relationships that influence this acceptance in the different situations and social contexts, and (c) to investigate the consequences of people's attitudes toward NSS for the system's design. The data showed that subjective norm is an important factor influencing the intention to use the system and that the acceptance of NSS depends on the use context. Therefore, we argue that NSS should be designed not only merely as tools being used in the actual negotiation but also as social devices harnessing social networks to provide support in all negotiation phases.
Artificial Intelligence, 2013
This paper presents an in-depth analysis and the key insights gained from the Second Internationa... more This paper presents an in-depth analysis and the key insights gained from the Second International Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC 2011). ANAC is an international competition that challenges researchers to develop successful automated negotiation agents for scenarios where there is no information about the strategies and preferences of the opponents. The key objectives of this competition are to advance the state-of-the-art in the area of practical bilateral multi-issue negotiations, and to encourage the design of agents that are able to operate effectively across a variety of scenarios. Eighteen teams from seven different institutes competed. This paper describes these agents, the setup of the tournament, including the negotiation scenarios used, and the results of both the qualifying and final rounds of the tournament. We then go on to analyse the different strategies and techniques employed by the participants using two methods: (i) we classify the agents with respect to their concession behaviour against a set of standard benchmark strategies and (ii) we employ empirical game theory (EGT) to investigate the robustness of the strategies. Our analysis of the competition results allows us to highlight several interesting insights for the broader automated negotiation community. In particular, we show that the most adaptive negotiation strategies, while robust across different opponents, are not necessarily the ones that win the competition. Furthermore, our EGT analysis highlights the importance of considering metrics, in addition to utility maximisation (such as the size of the basin of attraction), in determining what makes a successful and robust negotiation agent for practical settings.
Abstract. Prominent agent-oriented software engineering methodologies such as Tropos support the ... more Abstract. Prominent agent-oriented software engineering methodologies such as Tropos support the engineer throughout most of the development process. Though in this method attention is paid to system stakeholders by explicitly modeling them, potential harms and benefits of ...
Searching for good bids in a utility space based on multiple, dependent issues in general is intr... more Searching for good bids in a utility space based on multiple, dependent issues in general is intractable. Tractable algorithms do exist for independent issue sets, so one idea is to eliminate the dependencies by approximating the more complex utility space with issue dependencies. It has been shown that an approximation may give reasonable results when some structural features of the negotiation domain and preference profile are exploited. Of course, there is a risk that approximation results in significantly different negotiation outcomes. In this paper, we present a checking procedure to mitigate this risk and show that by tuning the parameters of this procedure the outcome deviation can be controlled. These parameters allow for a trade-off between computational cost and accuracy of negotiation outcome. Based on experimental results we propose specific values for the parameters of the checking procedure that provide a good balance between computational costs and accuracy. Additionally, we show how different values of these parameters influence the computational costs of negotiating multiple issues with dependencies.
Socially intelligent systems exhibit, understand, and reason about social behavior, in order to s... more Socially intelligent systems exhibit, understand, and reason about social behavior, in order to support people in their daily lives. We claim that a fundamental new approach based on social concepts is needed to build these socially intelligent systems. In this paper, we explore how the concepts of social practices and social identities can be used to structure deliberations about actions. We then show the consequences for the architecture and reasoning capabilities of these systems.
Studies in Computational Intelligence, 2013
Social activities account for a large amount of travel, yet due to their irregularity and the num... more Social activities account for a large amount of travel, yet due to their irregularity and the number of options regarding location, participants, and timing, they are difficult to model and predict. We assume that social activities are constrained by one's social network, which consists of people you are close to, both socially and spatially. Therefore, a model of social activity behaviour should be sensitive to the network. In this paper, an agent-based model to describe social activities between two people over time is described and four different input networks (random, based on spatial distance, based on social distance, based on both distances) are experimented with. The results show that the overall social network has an effect on the number of activities generated in the entire system and also between pairs of friends.
The impact of ubiquitous technology and social media on our lives is rapidly increasing. We expli... more The impact of ubiquitous technology and social media on our lives is rapidly increasing. We explicitly need to consider personal values affected or violated by these systems. Value-sensitive design can guide a designer in building systems that account for human values. However, the framework lacks clear steps to guide elicitation of stakeholders' values. We argue that developing tools for value elicitation that designers can use or give to stakeholders is a feasible solution to this challenge. Crucial in eliciting values is that a stakeholder has to have an understanding about her own values and how they relate in importance. This requires self-reflection. Self-reflection, in turn, requires thinking or analysing one's behaviour in meaningful moments over a long period of time. In this paper, we investigate how current methods from various disciplines can be combined and applied in a tool supporting reflection on personal values. We present an exploratory study investigating photo elicitation and a value questionnaire as methods for expressing and eliciting values with a tool. Based on the results we present an envisioned mobile personal informatics application that triggers people to reflect about their values in real-life contexts.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012
An adaptive language modeling method is proposed in this paper. Instead of using one static model... more An adaptive language modeling method is proposed in this paper. Instead of using one static model for all situations, it applies a set of specific models to dynamically adapt to the discourse. We present the general structure of the model and the training procedure. In our experiments, we instantiated the method with a set of domain dependent models which are trained according to different socio-situational settings (ALMOSD). We compare it with previous topic dependent and socio-situational setting dependent adaptive language models and with a smoothed n-gram model in terms of perplexity and word prediction accuracy. Our experiments show that ALMOSD achieves perplexity reductions up to almost 12% compared with the other models.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2009
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2011
In this paper, a first step towards a computational model of the self-attribution of agency is pr... more In this paper, a first step towards a computational model of the self-attribution of agency is presented, based on Wegner's theory of apparent mental causation. A model to compute a feeling of doing based on first-order Bayesian network theory is introduced that incorporates the main contributing factors to the formation of such a feeling. The main contribution of this paper is the presentation of a formal and precise model that can be used to further test Wegner's theory against quantitative experimental data.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012
An important aim in bilateral negotiations is to achieve a win-win solution for both parties; the... more An important aim in bilateral negotiations is to achieve a win-win solution for both parties; therefore, a critical aspect of a negotiating agent's success is its ability to take the opponent's preferences into account. Every year, new negotiation agents are introduced with better learning techniques to model the opponent. Our main goal in this work is to evaluate and compare the performance of a selection of state-of-the-art online opponent modeling techniques in negotiation, and to determine under which circumstances they are beneficial in a real-time, online negotiation setting. Towards this end, we provide an overview of the factors influencing the quality of a model and we analyze how the performance of opponent models depends on the negotiation setting. This results in better insight into the performance of opponent models, and allows us to pinpoint well-performing opponent modeling techniques that did not receive much previous attention in literature.
Novel Insights in Agent-based Complex Automated Negotiation, 2014
Studies in Computational Intelligence, 2013
In every negotiation with a deadline, one of the negotiating parties has to accept an offer to av... more In every negotiation with a deadline, one of the negotiating parties has to accept an offer to avoid a break off. A break off is usually an undesirable outcome for both parties, therefore it is important that a negotiator employs a proficient mechanism to decide under which conditions to accept. When designing such conditions one is faced with the acceptance dilemma: accepting the current offer may be suboptimal, as better offers may still be presented. On the other hand, accepting too late may prevent an agreement from being reached, resulting in a break off with no gain for either party. Motivated by the challenges of bilateral negotiations between automated agents and by the results and insights of the automated negotiating agents competition (ANAC), we classify and compare state-of-the-art generic acceptance conditions. We focus on decoupled acceptance conditions, i.e. conditions that do not depend on the bidding strategy that is used. We performed extensive experiments to compare the performance of acceptance conditions in combination with a broad range of bidding strategies and negotiation domains. Furthermore we propose new acceptance conditions and we demonstrate that they outperform the other conditions that we study. In particular, it is shown that they outperform the standard acceptance condition of comparing the current offer with the offer the agent is ready to send out. We also provide insight in to why some conditions work better than others and investigate correlations between the properties of the negotiation environment and the efficacy of acceptance conditions.
Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 2014
Proceedings of the 2014 Workshop on Intelligent Agents and Technologies for Socially Interconnected Systems - IAT4SIS '14, 2014
Socially interconnected systems should be able to exhibit, understand, and reason about social be... more Socially interconnected systems should be able to exhibit, understand, and reason about social behavior, in order to support lasting interconnections that show realistic and desirable properties. We claim that a fundamental new approach based on social concepts is needed to build agents functioning in these socially interconnected systems. In this paper, we explore how the concepts of social practices and social identities can be used to structure deliberations about interactions. We then show the consequences for the architecture and reasoning capabilities of these systems.
Motivation-Elicitation of preferences is crucial in negotiation support. This is a non-trivial ta... more Motivation-Elicitation of preferences is crucial in negotiation support. This is a non-trivial task which could be supported by computers. Research approach-Experiment in which 32 participants have to order holidays using different preference elicitation techniques including a navigational task and affective scoring. The results were used as input for a lexicographic ordering algorithm. Findings/design-Traditional property rating approach seems most preferred by the participants and resulted in one of the best orderings of the outcomes space to match their preferences, at least when using the lexicographic algorithm. Originality/value-The elicitation process is approached from an algorithmic perspective as well as from a user-centred perspective for both navigation and affective attitude. Take away message-A multi-angle approach gives a richer understanding of the process of preference elicitation.
Engineering Societies in the Agents World X, 2009
Organizational notions such as roles, norms (e.g., obligations and permissions), and services are... more Organizational notions such as roles, norms (e.g., obligations and permissions), and services are increasingly viewed as natural concepts to manage the complexity of software development. In particular in the context of multi-agent systems, agents are expected to be organization-aware, i.e., to understand and reason about the structure, work processes, and norms of the agent organization in which they operate. In this paper, we analyze which kinds of reasoning an agent should be able to do to function in an organization. We categorize these kinds of reasoning with respect to several dimensions, and distinguish three general approaches on how these might be integrated in existing agent programming languages. Through this, we provide a research agenda on what needs to be addressed when developing techniques for programming organization-aware agents.
Decision Support Systems, 2014
In every negotiation with a deadline, one of the negotiating parties must accept an offer to avoi... more In every negotiation with a deadline, one of the negotiating parties must accept an offer to avoid a break off. As a break off is usually an undesirable outcome for both parties, it is important that a negotiator employs a proficient mechanism to decide under which conditions to accept. When designing such conditions, one is faced with the acceptance dilemma: accepting the current offer may be suboptimal, as better offers may still be presented before time runs out. On the other hand, accepting too late may prevent an agreement from being reached, resulting in a break off with no gain for either party. Motivated by the challenges of bilateral negotiations between automated agents and by the results and insights of the automated negotiating agents competition (ANAC), we classify and compare state-of-the-art generic acceptance conditions. We perform extensive experiments to compare the performance of various acceptance conditions in combination with a broad range of bidding strategies and negotiation scenarios. Furthermore we propose new acceptance conditions and we demonstrate that they outperform the other conditions. We also provide insight into why some conditions work better than others and investigate correlations between the properties of the negotiation scenario and the efficacy of acceptance conditions.
Cognition, Technology & Work, 2011
We investigate people's attitudes toward the possible use of negotiation support systems (NSS) in... more We investigate people's attitudes toward the possible use of negotiation support systems (NSS) in different social contexts and the consequences for their design. To explore functional requirements and social acceptance in different use contexts, we followed a threestep approach. In the first step, we conducted a number of focus groups with negotiation experts. Second, we conducted focus groups with potential users. The focus groups were a qualitative exploration of people's ideas about NSS that led to design guidelines for mobile NSS. Third, we conducted an online survey (a) to find out in which situations people consider a mobile NSS socially acceptable, (b) to find the factors and relationships that influence this acceptance in the different situations and social contexts, and (c) to investigate the consequences of people's attitudes toward NSS for the system's design. The data showed that subjective norm is an important factor influencing the intention to use the system and that the acceptance of NSS depends on the use context. Therefore, we argue that NSS should be designed not only merely as tools being used in the actual negotiation but also as social devices harnessing social networks to provide support in all negotiation phases.
Artificial Intelligence, 2013
This paper presents an in-depth analysis and the key insights gained from the Second Internationa... more This paper presents an in-depth analysis and the key insights gained from the Second International Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC 2011). ANAC is an international competition that challenges researchers to develop successful automated negotiation agents for scenarios where there is no information about the strategies and preferences of the opponents. The key objectives of this competition are to advance the state-of-the-art in the area of practical bilateral multi-issue negotiations, and to encourage the design of agents that are able to operate effectively across a variety of scenarios. Eighteen teams from seven different institutes competed. This paper describes these agents, the setup of the tournament, including the negotiation scenarios used, and the results of both the qualifying and final rounds of the tournament. We then go on to analyse the different strategies and techniques employed by the participants using two methods: (i) we classify the agents with respect to their concession behaviour against a set of standard benchmark strategies and (ii) we employ empirical game theory (EGT) to investigate the robustness of the strategies. Our analysis of the competition results allows us to highlight several interesting insights for the broader automated negotiation community. In particular, we show that the most adaptive negotiation strategies, while robust across different opponents, are not necessarily the ones that win the competition. Furthermore, our EGT analysis highlights the importance of considering metrics, in addition to utility maximisation (such as the size of the basin of attraction), in determining what makes a successful and robust negotiation agent for practical settings.
Abstract. Prominent agent-oriented software engineering methodologies such as Tropos support the ... more Abstract. Prominent agent-oriented software engineering methodologies such as Tropos support the engineer throughout most of the development process. Though in this method attention is paid to system stakeholders by explicitly modeling them, potential harms and benefits of ...
Searching for good bids in a utility space based on multiple, dependent issues in general is intr... more Searching for good bids in a utility space based on multiple, dependent issues in general is intractable. Tractable algorithms do exist for independent issue sets, so one idea is to eliminate the dependencies by approximating the more complex utility space with issue dependencies. It has been shown that an approximation may give reasonable results when some structural features of the negotiation domain and preference profile are exploited. Of course, there is a risk that approximation results in significantly different negotiation outcomes. In this paper, we present a checking procedure to mitigate this risk and show that by tuning the parameters of this procedure the outcome deviation can be controlled. These parameters allow for a trade-off between computational cost and accuracy of negotiation outcome. Based on experimental results we propose specific values for the parameters of the checking procedure that provide a good balance between computational costs and accuracy. Additionally, we show how different values of these parameters influence the computational costs of negotiating multiple issues with dependencies.