Agents
Norms, Institutions, and Robots
Tomic, Stevan, Pecora, Federico, Saffiotti, Alessandro
Interactions within human societies are usually regulated by social norms. If robots are to be accepted into human society, it is essential that they are aware of and capable of reasoning about social norms. In this paper, we focus on how to represent social norms in societies with humans and robots, and how artificial agents such as robots can reason about social norms in order to plan appropriate behavior. We use the notion of institution as a way to formally define and encapsulate norms. We provide a formal framework built around the notion of institution. The framework distinguishes between abstract norms and their semantics in a concrete domain, hence allowing the use of the same institution across physical domains and agent types. It also provides a formal computational framework for norm verification, planning, and plan execution in a domain.
Efficiency, Sequenceability and Deal-Optimality in Fair Division of Indivisible Goods
Beynier, Aurélie, Bouveret, Sylvain, Lemaître, Michel, Maudet, Nicolas, Rey, Simon
In fair division of indivisible goods, using sequences of sincere choices (or picking sequences) is a natural way to allocate the objects. The idea is as follows: at each stage, a designated agent picks one object among those that remain. Another intuitive way to obtain an allocation is to give objects to agents in the first place, and to let agents exchange them as long as such "deals" are beneficial. This paper investigates these notions, when agents have additive preferences over objects, and unveils surprising connections between them, and with other efficiency and fairness notions. In particular, we show that an allocation is sequenceable iff it is optimal for a certain type of deals, namely cycle deals involving a single object. Furthermore, any Paretooptimal allocation is sequenceable, but not the converse. Regarding fairness, we show that an allocation can be envy-free and non-sequenceable, but that every competitive equilibrium with equal incomes is sequenceable. To complete the picture, we show how some domain restrictions may affect the relations between these notions. Finally, we experimentally explore the links between the scales of efficiency and fairness. Keywords: Multiagent Resource Allocation, Fair Division, Efficiency, Distributed Resource Allocation 1. Introduction In this paper, we investigate fair division of indivisible goods.
General Video Game AI: a Multi-Track Framework for Evaluating Agents, Games and Content Generation Algorithms
Perez-Liebana, Diego, Liu, Jialin, Khalifa, Ahmed, Gaina, Raluca D., Togelius, Julian, Lucas, Simon M.
General Video Game Playing (GVGP) aims at designing an agent that is capable of playing multiple video games with no human intervention. In 2014, The General Video Game AI (GVGAI) competition framework was created and released with the purpose of providing researchers a common open-source and easy to use platform for testing their AI methods with potentially infinity of games created using Video Game Description Language (VGDL). The framework has been expanded into several tracks during the last few years to meet the demand of different research directions. The agents are required to either play multiples unknown games with or without access to game simulations, or to design new game levels or rules. This survey paper presents the VGDL, the GVGAI framework, existing tracks, and reviews the wide use of GVGAI framework in research, education and competitions five years after its birth. A future plan of framework improvements is also described.
Agent cognition through micro-simulations: Adaptive and tunable intelligence with NetLogo LevelSpace
We present a method of endowing agents in an agent-based model (ABM) with sophisticated cognitive capabilities and a naturally tunable level of intelligence. Often, ABMs use random behavior or greedy algorithms for maximizing objectives (such as a predator always chasing after the closest prey). However, random behavior is too simplistic in many circumstances and greedy algorithms, as well as classic AI planning techniques, can be brittle in the context of the unpredictable and emergent situations in which agents may find themselves. Our method, called agent-centric Monte Carlo cognition (ACMCC), centers around using a separate agent-based model to represent the agents' cognition. This model is then used by the agents in the primary model to predict the outcomes of their actions, and thus guide their behavior. To that end, we have implemented our method in the NetLogo agent-based modeling platform, using the recently released LevelSpace extension, which we developed to allow NetLogo models to interact with other NetLogo models. As an illustrative example, we extend the Wolf Sheep Predation model (included with NetLogo) by using ACMCC to guide animal behavior, and analyze the impact on agent performance and model dynamics. We find that ACMCC provides a reliable and understandable method of controlling agent intelligence, and has a large impact on agent performance and model dynamics even at low settings.
Google to place AI-powered virtual agents in call centres
Google has announced it is working with several partners like Cisco and Genesys to build Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that will replace some of the work in call centres. The software is called "Contact Center AI" which will install "virtual agents" that will be the first to pick up the phone when a customer connect to a call centre. "When the customer asks something that the AI cannot do, it will automatically forward the call to a human," said Fei-Fei Li, Chief Scientist at Google, during the Cloud Next conference here late on Tuesday. "Our true goal is to empower a contact centre's human agents, as well as the customers that rely on them. "To do this, we built a complete solution with our partners that includes Dialogflow Enterprise Edition, as well as additional capabilities that are particularly useful for contact centres," Li added.
A Heuristic Search Algorithm Using the Stability of Learning Algorithms in Certain Scenarios as the Fitness Function: An Artificial General Intelligence Engineering Approach
This paper presents a non-manual design engineering method based on heuristic search algorithm to search for candidate agents in the solution space which formed by artificial intelligence agents modeled on the base of bionics.Compared with the artificial design method represented by meta-learning and the bionics method represented by the neural architecture chip,this method is more feasible for realizing artificial general intelligence,and it has a much better interaction with cognitive neuroscience;at the same time,the engineering method is based on the theoretical hypothesis that the final learning algorithm is stable in certain scenarios,and has generalization ability in various scenarios.The paper discusses the theory preliminarily and proposes the possible correlation between the theory and the fixed-point theorem in the field of mathematics.Limited by the author's knowledge level,this correlation is proposed only as a kind of conjecture.
Multi-Agent Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning
Song, Jiaming, Ren, Hongyu, Sadigh, Dorsa, Ermon, Stefano
Imitation learning algorithms can be used to learn a policy from expert demonstrations without access to a reward signal. However, most existing approaches are not applicable in multi-agent settings due to the existence of multiple (Nash) equilibria and non-stationary environments. We propose a new framework for multi-agent imitation learning for general Markov games, where we build upon a generalized notion of inverse reinforcement learning. We further introduce a practical multi-agent actor-critic algorithm with good empirical performance. Our method can be used to imitate complex behaviors in high-dimensional environments with multiple cooperative or competing agents.
Decentralized Cooperative Planning for Automated Vehicles with Hierarchical Monte Carlo Tree Search
Kurzer, Karl, Zhou, Chenyang, Zöllner, J. Marius
Today's automated vehicles lack the ability to cooperate implicitly with others. This work presents a Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) based approach for decentralized cooperative planning using macro-actions for automated vehicles in heterogeneous environments. Based on cooperative modeling of other agents and Decoupled-UCT (a variant of MCTS), the algorithm evaluates the state-action-values of each agent in a cooperative and decentralized manner, explicitly modeling the interdependence of actions between traffic participants. Macro-actions allow for temporal extension over multiple time steps and increase the effective search depth requiring fewer iterations to plan over longer horizons. Without predefined policies for macro-actions, the algorithm simultaneously learns policies over and within macro-actions. The proposed method is evaluated under several conflict scenarios, showing that the algorithm can achieve effective cooperative planning with learned macro-actions in heterogeneous environments.
ASU engineers earn NSF CAREER Awards
Two faculty members in Arizona State University's Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering have earned the highly competitive and prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation. Heni Ben Amor and Yezhou Yang, both assistant professors of computer science and engineering studying robotics in the School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering, represent two of ASU's three winners (the third is Nicholas Stephanopoulos, assistant professor in the School of Molecular Sciences). These researchers continue the long history of junior faculty receiving this honor in the Fulton Schools. Over the past five years, 30 Fulton Schools faculty have earned NSF CAREER Awards. "I'm proud we're continuing to attract faculty whose powerful ideas lead to discoveries of foundational value to their fields with potentially transformational breakthrough applications," said Kyle Squires, dean of the Fulton Schools.
Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) Industry
Germany Market Analysis Table 35: German Recent Past, Current & Future Analysis for Artificial Intelligence Analyzed with Annual Revenue Figures in US$ Million for Years 2015 through 2024 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) 9.4.3 Italy Market Analysis Table 36: Italian Recent Past, Current & Future Analysis for Artificial Intelligence Analyzed with Annual Revenue Figures in US$ Million for Years 2015 through 2024 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) 9.4.4