mixed-initiative issues in masma - an agent-based meeting scheduler - research review by cristina...
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Mixed-Initiative Issues in MASMA - an Agent-Based Meeting Scheduler -
Research review by
Cristina Boicu
IT 803 – Mixed-Initiative Intelligent SystemsProfessor: Dr Gheorghe Tecuci
March 1-8, 2004
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Brief Introduction
Consider several mixed-initiative issues in the context of a specific personal assistant, a meeting scheduler.
MASMA (Multi-Agent System for Meeting Automation) is used to study the interaction between agents and users
The authors claim that, in interactive applications, agents are more effective when associated with human users to form an integrated mixed initiative system
the agent-user couple is a multi-agent system that should avoid conflicts in order to work effectively
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MASMA Mixed-Initiative System
MASMA = Multi-Agent System for Meeting Automation
MASMA - a personal assistant that supports users in managing their personal agenda and in organizing and scheduling appointments, meetings, conferences and seminars.
It has a multi-agent architecture
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Outline
The meeting scheduling problem Illustrative Example of the interaction in MASMA Mixed-initiative definition and related aspects Mixed-initiative issues in MASMA
architecture, task, control, awareness, communication, evaluation
Summary Lessons learned References
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The Meeting Scheduling Problem
Question
When organizing a meeting of several persons what problems may appear and what it requires?
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The Meeting Scheduling Problem
Scheduling meetings for a set of users requires: a massive organizational effort
complex negotiation strategies
a large number of communication acts (e-mail messages, phone calls, faxes)
It generally requires a compromise among: the different users’ constraints
the availability of the resources
the need to satisfy the highest number of people
When organizing a meeting of several persons what problems may appear and what it requires ?
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The Meeting Scheduling Problem
Given: a set U of n users
Goal: organize a meeting M on a particular subject and with specific resource requirements (dimension of the room, equipment)
The meeting concerns a number of invited users I (subset-of U) subdivided among: necessary invitees N, such that the meeting cannot take place if
one of them is not available optional invitees O whose participation is not strictly necessary
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The Meeting Scheduling Problem
One user U0 acts as the organizer or host of the meeting.
The users’ availability over intervals of time is defined by using the set of preference values: {high; medium; low; null}
An interval of time has availability null when either a previous meeting exists in that interval or the user explicitly sets his unavailability.
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Outline
The meeting scheduling problem Illustrative Example of the interaction in MASMA Mixed-initiative definition and related aspects Mixed-initiative issues in MASMA
architecture, task, control, awareness, communication, evaluation
Summary Lessons learned References
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Illustrative Example
Three persons: Amedeo, Daniela and Marcello
Each is represented by a Meeting Agent, respectively labeled as MAA, MAD and MAM
The users are able to set the level of autonomy they allow to their personal agents
Amedeo has been using MAA for a long time so he delegates it a lot of decisions
Marcello is more careful in his use of MAM
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Illustrative Example (cont)
Marcello has been hired by the firm ‘XYX’ and his boss is Amedeo
He is involved in the project ‘Masma’ in which Daniela is also working as a project leader
Daniela wants to organize a meeting with Marcello about ‘Masma’
Before filling in an announcement, she consults her agenda and notices that on November 16th she has a short meeting at 11 o’clock
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Illustrative Example (cont)
Daniela organizes the new meeting filling in the dialogue window ‘Organize meeting’: Sets the environment (‘XYZ’)
and the subject Sets the meeting priority to 8 in
the range 0-10 Decides the meeting duration
of 2 hr Sets the place of the meeting Sets the dates of the meeting
(hour, day, month, year) Marcello, being a project scientist,
will be a necessary invitee Amedeo, Marcello’s boss, will also
be invited but, since the meeting is a technical one, his attendance is not necessary (optional attendant)
Cesta and D. D'Aloisi. 1999. Page 15.Mixed-Initiative Issues in an Agent-Based Meeting Scheduler.
Organizing meeting dialog
Environment
Subject:
Priority:
Duration:
Place:
XYX
MASMA
8
2
Office 16
Period:
hour: day: month: year:
Date from:
Date to:
Guests
Select guest from list or type
Environment guest list Guest list
Mark as necessary Add
OrganizeCancel
Amedeo
Rodolfo
AmedeoMarcelloMarcello
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Illustrative Example (cont)
Daniela’s agent sends the meeting announcement to Amedeo’s and Marcello’s agents (MAA and MAM)
Amedeo’s agent evaluates the meeting relevance and decides that Amedeo is not interested in it The relevance is established based on a set of preference
rules previously given by Amedeo. These rules may take into account:
the meeting subject (technical, managerial) his attendance (optional, necessary) his schedule (busy, free) the meeting priority
MAA being set on autonomous decision for that step, sends MAD its rejection
MAD continues the scheduling of the meeting for the remaining participants (because Amedeo was marked as optional invitee)
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Illustrative Example (cont)
Marcello is more careful in using his agent MAM
MAM evaluates the meeting positively
In accordance with its settings, turns to Marcello for a final decision providing him with the suggestion to Accept the meeting The suggestion is based on
the current preference rules. Such a rule might be that all
the meetings requested by the Daniela (the project leader) need to be accepted
Marcello accepts the suggestion and MAM sends a confirmation to MAD
Cesta and D. D'Aloisi. 1999. Page 15.Mixed-Initiative Issues in an Agent-Based Meeting Scheduler.
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At this point a negotiation begins between MAD and MAM to actually schedule the meeting.
MAD asks MAM for time intervals with high availability.
If no satisfactory interval is found, it will ask MAM for medium availability and afterwards for low.
In case no agreement is reached MAD asks for relaxation of constraints.
MAM cannot decide by itself since Marcello requires to be explicitly asked at critical points (a critical decision may cause the cancellation of a meeting previously fixed and a costly reorganization)
Illustrative Example (cont)
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MAM’s first choice is to ask Marcello to cancel a meeting with Amedeo (his boss) Marcello refuses this possibility
Cesta and D. D'Aloisi. 1999. Page 15.Mixed-Initiative Issues in an Agent-Based Meeting Scheduler.
Relax request advice
Relax request for meeting Daniela-9
Environment: XYX
Host: Daniela
Subject : MASMA
Dates to relax: Relative relevant Agenda data:
15:00 16/11/1998 Fixed by Amedeo-12
Select date to relax and a new available value:
Selected date: New available value:
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The agent gives a second possible change in Marcello’s schedule: removing his usual
meeting with Rodolfo, another project scientist in the ‘Masma’ project
13:00 16/11/1998
Relax request advice
Relax request for meeting Daniela-9
Environment: XYX
Host: Daniela
Subject : MASMA
Dates to relax: Relative relevant Agenda data:
Select date to relax and a new available value:
Selected date: New available value:
12:00 16/11/1998 Fixed by Rodolfo-7
13:00 16/11/1998 Fixed by Rodolfo - 7
Cesta and D. D'Aloisi. 1999. Page 15.Mixed-Initiative Issues in an Agent-Based Meeting Scheduler.
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Marcello considers this meeting less relevant than Daniela’s and accepts this relaxation advice, canceling the meeting with Rodolfo and indicating that he will be highly available at that time.
MAM announces MAD of this new available time.
At this point the meeting is fixed and MAD sends confirmation and MAM informs Marcello and updates his agenda.
13:00 16/11/1998
Relax request advice
Relax request for meeting Daniela-9
Environment: XYX
Host: Daniela
Subject : MASMA
Dates to relax: Relative relevant Agenda data:
Select date to relax and a new available value:
Selected date: New available value:
12:00 16/11/1998 Fixed by Rodolfo-7
13:00 16/11/1998 Fixed by Rodolfo - 7
Cesta and D. D'Aloisi. 1999. Page 15.Mixed-Initiative Issues in an Agent-Based Meeting Scheduler.
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Outline
The meeting scheduling problem Illustrative Example of the interaction in MASMA Mixed-initiative definition and related aspects Mixed-initiative issues in MASMA
architecture, task, control, awareness, communication, evaluation
Summary Lessons learned References
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Necessary Abilities for MI Interaction
The agents need at least three types of ‘abilities’: adapt their behavior to the user they are supporting follow some principles of initiative shift between
them, their users and other agents in the environment.
leave the user a level of ‘super-control’ in order to enhance his sense of trust towards them. The user should be able to inspect the agent, to may prevent any undesirable operations and failures.
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Definition of Mixed-Initiative
DEFINITION: In an agent-based system, in which the actors are a user and his personal agent, the flow of initiative and the flow of decisions coincide. At any moment, the initiative is held by the actor able to decide the next step. A mixed-initiative agent-based system is a user-agent pair in which the decision making is shared between the user and the agent.
The analysis of the initiative turns is related to who decides at a certain moment.
Although the definition of initiative means making a decision on what to do, it does not imply the decision will be acted upon.
The agent may also execute actions based on the user’s choices or decisions.
Question: Is always necessary for the flow of initiative and the flow of decision to coincide?
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Initiative and the Role of Control
Control = the possibility for one actor to supervise and influence an ongoing process
Initiative and control are different, since the user has the possibility to inspect and verify the agent behavior even when it is the agent who is to decide
COROLLARY: In an user-agent pair, the control and the initiative are separate. For instance, an actor may hold initiative but not control. Also the execution and the initiative are separate. For instance, an actor can decide but not necessarily implement the decision.
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Interaction Protocol
The interaction protocols drive the initiative flow according to:
the user’s profile and preferences,
a list of constraints on the degrees of freedom allowed to the agent,
the criticality of a decision,
an analysis of the current situation and the past history of the interaction
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Interaction Protocol (cont)
The analysis of a behavior protocol allows for establishing who takes the initiative (not necessarily who is performing the current actions).
The evaluation of how many times the agent takes the initiative gives a measure of the agent autonomy.
A completely autonomous agent will never relinquish the initiative, while a slave agent will only be able to execute the user’s directions.
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Outline
The meeting scheduling problem Illustrative Example of the interaction in MASMA Mixed-initiative definition and related aspects Mixed-initiative issues in MASMA
architecture, task, control, awareness, communication, evaluation
Summary Lessons learned References
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MASMA Architecture
MASMA has a multi-agent architecture, consisting of: a Meeting Agent: a personal assistant for each user three service (middle) agents that are shared among
the community, and execute tasks for other agents requiring that service
The service agents are : Server Agent Resource Agent Travel Agent
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MASMA Architecture
Each agent is an instance of a general agent model
The architecture follows a Body/Head/Mouth metaphor
It consists of three components: The body is in charge of task execution The head is devoted to coordinating different
functionalities The interface is in charge of communication with the
user, other agents and the environment
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MASMA Architecture - Body
The body is in charge of task execution.
It carries out the specific tasks of the agent in the application domain.
Examples:
Inspecting and updating the user agenda are part of the Meeting Agents’ body.
Accessing a database of travel information is part of the Travel Agent’s body.
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MASMA Architecture - Head
The head is devoted to: coordinating the different functionalities; managing the representation of the external world, of
the agent and of the current state of affairs; reasoning, solving problems and taking decisions; coordinating and negotiating with other agents
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MASMA Architecture – Head The head consists of four components:
controller reasoner knowledge base working memory
The controller: guarantees the basic level of functionality continuously checks for new information activates a task for the body to execute
When a conflict arises about the next step to be taken, the controller gives responsibility to the reasoner to perform higher level functionalities and to decide the more appropriate future plan. The reasoner puts the results of the reasoning process in the working memory. Then the controller searches the working memory for actions to be executed.
The knowledge base is managed by a deductive information retriever where information is represented as assertions and rules. It contains the user's mental attitudes, plan libraries, beliefs on other agents, on the external environment and on the application domain.
The working memory is managed by a deductive information retriever.
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MASMA Architecture - Interface
The interface is in charge of the communication with the user, other agents and the environment.
It consists of: a Message Manager to support the interactions
between agents a set of Sensors and Actuators to exchange data with
the software environment. They generally consist of the instruction set of the operating system. The actuators can influence the status of the environment (can modify databases, activate printers, faxes, phones or other resources)
a User Interface Manager to communicate with the users
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The Meeting Agent
A Meeting Agent is associated with each user and acts as a personal assistant specialized in meeting organization.
The Meeting Agent main tasks are: To manage the user’s agenda To maintain the user’s profile To negotiate with other agents to determine meetings
schedules
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The Meeting Agent
Both the agent and the user can access the user’s electronic agenda.
The agenda is a separate software module The user manipulates the agenda separately through his
preferred interface. Due to a mechanism for concurrency control, the
common data structure allows both the user and the meeting agent to independently access and write information about appointments.
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The Meeting Agent
In the organizational process, the Meeting Agent represents the user according to his profile.
The user’s profile contains: the user’s preference values assigned to the different
dates and times data about the user’s general interests
The user profile will be presented in more details later.
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The Meeting Agent (cont)
The process of determining a meeting needs a negotiation phase to decide the date, place and duration of the event.
The Meeting Agent can play the role of organizer or attendee by applying a corresponding negotiation protocol.
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The Meeting Agent (cont)
A Meeting Agent can also interact with a service agent to obtain information.
In this case the control moves temporarily to such a service agent.
The three middle agents work as specialized knowledge servers to which some tasks have been delegated.
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The Server Agent
The Server Agent is in charge of: managing the network addresses maintaining a knowledge base with the users’
network addresses by respecting their privacy needs
In case of new users, it is able to get the addresses by querying an external server.
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The Server Agent (cont.)
It also manages a service of free distribution of announcements about conferences, workshops and seminars.
The users can subscribe to the service by transmitting a list of keywords and topics they are interested in.
The keywords are inserted in a database managed by the Server Agent so that it can help the organizer’s agent to make announcements in a selective way without disturbing all the connected users.
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The Resource Agent
The Resource Agent adopts a centralized administration of the common resources.
Each site is characterized by <attribute-value> pairs that describe it.
The Resource Agent maintains the database and provides the Meeting Agent with a list of structures satisfying the problem constraints
Example: provides a list of rooms with a capacity of at least 20 people and having a slide projector
When a decision is taken, the agent carries out the operations necessary to reserve the place.
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The Travel Agent
The Travel Agent helps the user to mechanize the last step in organizing a meeting, the lodging and travel decisions.
The agent can connect the user to train and flight timetables, decide the best path between two places, inform him about prices, show a list of possible hotels.
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Outline
The meeting scheduling problem Illustrative Example of the interaction in MASMA Mixed-initiative definition and related aspects Mixed-initiative issues in MASMA
architecture, task, control, awareness, communication, evaluation
Summary Lessons learned References
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Task issue
It is not specifically discussed in the paper.
The following remarks are my own interpretation related to this issue.
However, the way in which the control is encoded in the system suggests how the division of tasks is made.
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Task issue (cont.)
User: Defines/Modifies his profile
(giving rules to the agent) Updates his calendar Defines meeting requests Takes decisions in the
critical points of negotiations (e.g. canceling a meeting)
Inspects and controls the agent behavior
Meeting Agent: Communicates with the
other agents announcing and negotiating meetings
Based on the user's profile suggests relaxations of the user's current agenda
If delegated it may take automatic decisions during the negotiations
Updates the user calendar with the scheduled meetings
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Outline
The meeting scheduling problem Illustrative Example of the interaction in MASMA Mixed-initiative definition and related aspects Mixed-initiative issues in MASMA
architecture, task, control, awareness, communication, evaluation
Summary Lessons learned References
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Types of Interaction
MASMA has three different types of interaction: human user vs (personal) meeting agent meeting agent vs meeting agent meeting agent vs service agent
The user can control the autonomy of its agent
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Control Mechanisms
User centered control through personalization. The system contains mechanisms that allow the user to describe his way of solving the problem of meeting scheduling to his personal agent.
Task driven control of the initiative. This is the way to define the rules for relinquishing control during standard problem solving activity. This initiative flow can be modified by the information in the user’s profile and by the direct intervention of the user.
Mechanisms to allow control by the user. The user is allowed to observe the current negotiation going on and to influence the negotiation behavior of the agents.
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User centered control through personalization
Modeling the agent on the user’s behavior makes a system able to decide and solve problems following the same rules and laws of the user.
MASMA allows the user to build a knowledge base concerning his preferences and his rules of behavior, that form the user’s profile.
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User Profile
In MASMA, the user directly and interactively defines and maintains his profile.
The profile contains a formal representation of the user’s standard behavior in meeting scheduling.
The profile is internally represented in: a database of rules, describing behaviors in a database of facts, representing
preferences
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Partitions in User Profile
Temporal preferences: Expressed by availability rules The user can specify a level of availability of different time
intervals The preferences can be manually set by the user or deduced by
the agent from the defined preference rules The agent automatically sets the availability to null on time
intervals in which appointments have already been fixed. For the free intervals (no appointment) the agent fixes a value
according to the preference rules.
Example: from March to December the user is not available for meetings on Monday from 3 to 5 p.m.
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The agent offers tools to update the profile.
Cesta and D. D'Aloisi. 1999. Mixed-Initiative Issues in an Agent-Based Meeting Scheduler. Page 19.
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Question
What are the advantages/disadvantages to learn the user’s profile vs. letting the user to define and update the profile?
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Answer
Advantages to learn the user’s profile: the user does not need to learn how to represent such
rules in a language that the agent understands useful when the rules’ structure is very complex increases the trust of the user in the agent’s
capabilities
Disadvantages to learn the profile: requires a lot of examples the agent will make mistakes requires a more complex implementation
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Partitions in User Profile
Contextual preferences:
Used to insert information about usual habits concerning the content of a meeting (e.g., who is organizing the meeting, the place of the meeting, its subject).
Used to force automated behavior according to this contextual information without entering into dialogue with the user.
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Partitions in User Profile
Types of contextual preferences:
user’s bias towards personal appointments (colleagues, relatives) sets priority values on a person or classes of people who are potential organizers of meetings (e.g. for a meeting with user’s spouse set ‘never cancel unless it is my boss calling me’)
predisposition to different types of engagements (e.g., working groups, project meetings, conferences)
options on traveling and accommodation (e.g. the user could be afraid of flying: consequently any invitation for conference overseas should be automatically rejected)
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Partitions in User Profile
Autonomy preferences: general preferences that influence the level of
autonomy of the agent with respect to the user.Preferences:
Type of information about the agenda to be passed to other agents (ex: the user could specify that only dates with ‘high’ or ‘medium’ availability can be passed to other Meeting Agents organizing a meeting)
An autonomy flag (‘true’ gives the agent the authority to directly make appointments without asking confirmation to its user)
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Task driven control of the initiative
Use negotiation protocols to regulate the behavior of the actors during the decision making for each meeting.
When executed, such protocols follow a standard behavior which is personalized by the user profile
Since a Meeting Agent can play the role of organizer or attendee, two different basic protocol –one for each role– have been defined.
According to the steps in the protocol, the initiative shifts from one agent to another or from a personal agent to its user and back.
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Task driven control of the initiative
A main goal of meeting agents is to achieve an agreement maximizing the personal utility of the users:
The organizer agent maximizes a common utility function and minimizes the requests for constraints relaxation.
The attendees’ agents try to protect their users, and they apply a strategy to safeguard their privacy and to avoid the relaxation of important constraints.
Question: How would you define the utility function?
Question: How can an agent protect the user’s privacy?
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Task driven control of the initiative
How would you define the utility function?• Maximize the number of guests that may participate to the meeting
How can an agent protect the user’s privacy ?• Send as few as necessary information about the user’s agenda to the other agents during negotiations• Incrementally send the information (not all available dates, but one by one as negotiation requires)
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Organizer Protocol
define meeting announce meeting to all participants collect answer if a necessary participant rejects
then pass control to the user else
while not find a solution do• if other possible dates
then ask possible dates for the participants else ask relaxed dates
if solution is found • then organize meeting• else cancel meeting
Adapted from Cesta and D. D'Aloisi. 1999. Page 22.Mixed-Initiative Issues in an Agent-Based Meeting Scheduler.
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Mechanisms to allow control by the user
An agent should have the capability of acting and autonomously propose solutions according to the current problem
The user must have the possibility of controlling and inspecting the agent decisions.
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Mechanisms to allow control by the user
The need for control emerges at different phases in an agent life-cycle:
Training phase: the user observes the agent behavior to decide about its reliability. The user sets his profile but he prefers to maintain the control and the initiative since he is likely not to trust the agent yet.
Working phase: after a while the user achieves a level of trust towards his agent and can leave decisions to it.
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Mechanisms to allow control by the user
The agents involves the user according to the relevance (in the user’s view) of decisions.
It is the user who decides when to relinquish the initiative to the agent, because the relevance of a decision is assessed by the user through his preferences.
The level of autonomy of the agent is not decided according to its knowledge of the current decision but on the criticality of the decision for the user.
Another feature to allow the user to increase his sense of control is the possibility of inspection of the agent behavior.
The agent is endowed with an inspection mode about its activities.
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Mechanisms to allow control by the user
MASMA has an inspection facility that allows the user to observe the agent behavior, to analyze the running processes, to verify the information and data at agent disposal or to interfere or take the agent over if necessary.
The user can influence the organization and negotiation processes by dynamically modifying the preferences and rules.
Example: The user may remember he is engaged on November 16th: he
accesses his calendar and turns the preference value to ‘null’. The agent records the change and modifies its negotiation
parameters.
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Inspection interface
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Outline
The meeting scheduling problem Illustrative Example of the interaction in MASMA Mixed-initiative definition and related aspects Mixed-initiative issues in MASMA
architecture, task, control, awareness, communication, evaluation
Summary Lessons learned References
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Awareness in MASMA
Variable levels of awareness:
The user may configure the level of autonomy assigned to his agent (e.g. may or may not delegate the agent for automatic scheduling);
If the agent has a low degree of autonomy, the agent will ask the user for most of the decisions, therefore the user will permanently be aware of the agent's actions
If the agent has a high degree of autonomy, most of the agent's decisions will not be directly communicated to the user
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Awareness in MASMA
The shared awareness: Is maintained through the system calendar, which both the
user and his agent can access and modify independently;
When the user modifies the calendar his agent is immediately announced, and takes into consideration the modification;
The user is immediately announced when conflicts or schedule changes appear
The inspection facility can be used by the user to observe and be aware of the agent’s actions
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Outline
The meeting scheduling problem Illustrative Example of the interaction in MASMA Mixed-initiative definition and related aspects Mixed-initiative issues in MASMA
architecture, task, control, awareness, communication, evaluation
Summary Lessons learned References
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Communication in MASMA
Human-agent communication: Realized through a graphical user interface; Fixed and predefined type of interaction allowed (i.e.
descriptions of the commands are obtained by selecting values for predefined parameters)
The agent generates predefined structured information dialogs (e.g. suggestion advise to accept a meeting)
Agent-agent communication: The interface part of each agent has a message
manager; The agents communicate among them through these
messages
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Outline
The meeting scheduling problem Illustrative Example of the interaction in MASMA Mixed-initiative definition and related aspects Mixed-initiative issues in MASMA
architecture, task, control, awareness, communication, evaluation
Summary Lessons learned References
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Evaluation of MASMA
No evaluation was presented in any of the papers that I found about this system.
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Outline
The meeting scheduling problem Illustrative Example of the interaction in MASMA Mixed-initiative definition and related aspects Mixed-initiative issues in MASMA
architecture, task, control, awareness, communication, evaluation
Summary Lessons learned References
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Summary
In contexts where agents manage personal data and take decisions that might be critical for the user (his personal agenda), the user probably prefers to maintain continuous control over the process since he is not likely to immediately trust how his agent could act on his behalf.
MASMA:
Is a multi-agent system addressing the meeting scheduling problem
Incorporates mechanisms to constrain the agent autonomy while preserving the user’s own autonomy
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Summary
The delegation of tasks between the user and the agent is controlled via a negotiation protocol
It is possible to select what decisions (or classes of decisions) can be relinquished to the agent and decide when the initiative can be relinquished to the agent. In both cases the choice is made according to the criticality of decisions
The user can always maintain the control on his agent and interfere and influence its actions.
The user can dynamically influence the negotiation process by changing the constraints on line.
After a testing phase, the user can decide to leave more decision steps to his agent although the possibility remains of inspecting and interfering in its behavior.
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Outline
The meeting scheduling problem Illustrative Example of the interaction in MASMA Mixed-initiative definition and related aspects Mixed-initiative issues in MASMA
architecture, task, control, awareness, communication, evaluation
Summary Lessons learned References
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Lessons Learned
The user must maintain the control of the decisions which are considered critical
The shared awareness may be implemented through a tool that is currently used by the user (e.g. the system calendar)
It is important for the user to be able to vary the level of the agent’s autonomy
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Outline
The meeting scheduling problem Illustrative Example of the interaction in MASMA Mixed-initiative definition and related aspects Mixed-initiative issues in MASMA
architecture, task, control, awareness, communication, evaluation
Summary Lessons learned References
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Papers Used for Presentation
A. Cesta and D. D'Aloisi. Mixed-Initiative Issues in an Agent-Based Meeting Scheduler. International Journal on User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, 9(1/2):45-78, April 1999.
A. Cesta, D. D' Aloisi and R. Brancaleoni. Considering the User in Mixed-Initiative Meeting Management. In the Second ERCIM Workshop on "User Interfaces for All“. 1996
Cesta, A., Collia, M. and D’Aloisi, D.1998. Tailorable interactive agents for scheduling meetings. In: F. Giunchiglia (ed.): Intelligence: Methodology, Systems and Applications. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Berlin: Springer, 153–166.
Daniela D’Aloisi, Amedeo Cesta and Rodolfo Brancaleoni. Mixed-Initiative Aspects in an Agent-Based System. Computational Models for Mixed Initiative Interactions. AAAI 1997 Spring Symposia Series. Stanford University.
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Other Interesting Papers
Computational Models for Mixed Initiative Interactions. AAAI 1997 Spring Symposia Series. Stanford University. March 24-26, 1997http://www.aaai.org/Press/Reports/Symposia/Spring/ss-97-04.html
A. Cesta and D. D'Aloisi. Active Interfaces as Personal Assistants: a Case Study. SIGCHI Bulletin, 28(3):108-113, July 1996.
A. Cesta and D. D’Ailoisi. Building Interfaces as Personal Agents: A Case Study. 1996.
Cesta, A., D’Aloisi, D. and Giannini, V.: 1995, Active interfaces for useful software tools. In: Y.Anzai, K.Ogawa, and H.Mori (eds.): Symbiosis of Human and Artifacts. New York: Elsevier Science, 225–230.