5 Cooperation

Question 1

Independent/Self-Interested Agents

Answer 1

• act to further their own interests, possibly at the expense of others
• Potential for conflict
• If agents represent individuals or organizations, then we cannot make the benevolence assumption (e.g. buyers/sellers in e-commerce)

> > > complicates the design task enormously!

Question 2

Self-Interested Agents/Discrete Agents

Answer 2

• Independent agents, Each agent pursues its own agenda
• The agendas of the agents bear no relation to one another
  »> no cooperation

Example: filter email, crawl web

Question 3

Self-Interested Agents/Emergent Agents

Answer 3

• Agents can cooperate with no intention of doing so
• The system can exhibit high-level, complex, intelligent, coordinated behaviour without any designed coordination mechanisms, just as a side effect of the interactions among agents (remember reactive architecture)
• Agents don’t know about each other and don’t communicate
• The environment as a communication mechanism

> > > cooperation with no intention of doing so
(Reactive)

Example: pick up stones, mars explorer

Question 4

Coordination

Answer 4

“Coordination is the process of managing interdependencies between activities”

To use when

• The choice of actions affects the performance of an agent or of others
• The order in which actions are carried out affects performance
• The time at which actions are carried out affects performance

Question 5

Benevolent Agents

Answer 5

• our best interest is their best interest, agents help each other whenever asked
• cooperative distributed problem solving

> > > simplifies the system design task enormously!

Question 6

Benevolent Agents/Explicit/Deliberative

Answer 6

• intentional sending and receiving of communicative signals
• via a common blackboard or via messages
• Agents with inference and planning capabilities
• based on information exchange, addressed to solve a probl. collectively
• PGP: Partial Global Planning
• Coalition Formation

Question 7

Benevolent Agents/Explicit/Negotiators

Answer 7

• Negotiate in case of limited resources, competition, conflicts, allocate goods, resolve conflicts
• Agents reach compromises
• Contract Net
• Auctions
• Voting

Question 8

Benevolent Agents/Implicit

Answer 8

• without explicit messages
• observing and reacting to the behaviour of the other agents of the system
• Organizational Structures