A Formal Model for Designing Dialogue Strategies

Leila Amgoud (1, 2) , Nabil Hameurlain (3)

1 IRIT-ADRIA - Argumentation, Décision, Raisonnement, Incertitude et Apprentissage
2 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
3 LIUPPA - Laboratoire Informatique de l'Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour

Modeling different types of dialogue between autonomous agents is becoming an important research issue. Several proposals exist with a clear definition of the dialogue protocol, which is the set of rules governing the high level behaviour of the dialogue. However, things seem different with the notion of strategy. There is no consensus on the definition of a strategy and on the parameters necessary for its definition. Consequently, there are no methodology and no formal models for strategies.This paper argues that a strategy is a two steps decision process: i) to select the type of act to utter at a given step of a dialogue, and ii) to select the content which will accompany the act. The first step consists of selecting among all the acts allowed by the protocol, the best option which according to some strategic beliefs of the agent will at least satisfy the most important strategic goals of the agent. The second step consists of selecting among different alternatives (eg. different offers), the best one which, according to some basic beliefs of the agent, will satisfy the functional goals of the agent. The paper proposes then a formal model based on argumentation for computing on the basis of the above kinds of mental states, the best move (act + content) to play at a given step of the dialogue.

Domaines: Intelligence artificielle [cs.AI]

Leila Amgoud, Nabil Hameurlain. A Formal Model for Designing Dialogue Strategies. 5th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2006), 2006, Hakodate, Japan. pp.414-416, ⟨10.1145/1160633.1160706⟩. ⟨hal-00408556⟩