University of Calgary
A Challenge for Multi-Party Decision Making: Malicious Argumentation Strategies
Kuipers, Andrew (University of Calgary) | Denzinger, Jörg (University of Calgary)
We present the concept of malicious argumentation strategies that extends malicious argumentation tactics to manipulate the outcome of an argumentation based decision making process with resource limits. We give an example of such a strategy, Exhaust and Protract, and show in a decision making example how Exhaust and Protract can be used to change the result of the decision making process.
Expectile Matrix Factorization for Skewed Data Analysis
Zhu, Rui (University of Alberta) | Niu, Di (University of Alberta) | Kong, Linglong (University of Alberta ) | Li, Zongpeng (University of Calgary)
Matrix factorization is a popular approach to solving matrix estimation problems based on partial observations. Existing matrix factorization is based on least squares and aims to yield a low-rank matrix to interpret the conditional sample means given the observations. However, in many real applications with skewed and extreme data, least squares cannot explain their central tendency or tail distributions, yielding undesired estimates. In this paper, we propose expectile matrix factorization by introducing asymmetric least squares, a key concept in expectile regression analysis, into the matrix factorization framework. We propose an efficient algorithm to solve the new problem based on alternating minimization and quadratic programming. We prove that our algorithm converges to a global optimum and exactly recovers the true underlying low-rank matrices when noise is zero. For synthetic data with skewed noise and a real-world dataset containing web service response times, the proposed scheme achieves lower recovery errors than the existing matrix factorization method based on least squares in a wide range of settings.
The Gold Standard: Automatically Generating Puzzle Game Levels
Williams-King, David (University of Calgary) | Denzinger, Jörg (University of Calgary) | Aycock, John (University of Calgary) | Stephenson, Ben (University of Calgary)
KGoldrunner is a puzzle-oriented platform game with dynamic elements. This paper describes Goldspinner, an automatic level generation system for KGoldrunner. Goldspinner has two parts: a genetic algorithm that generates candidate levels, and simulations that use an AI agent to attempt to solve the level from the player's perspective. Our genetic algorithm determines how "good" a candidate level is by examining many different properties of the level, all based on its static aspects. Once the genetic algorithm identifies a good candidate, simulations are performed to evaluate the dynamic aspects of the level. Levels that are statically good may not be dynamically good (or even solvable), making simulation an essential aspect of our level generation system. By carefully optimizing our genetic algorithm and simulation agent we have created an efficient system capable of generating interesting levels in real time.
Behavior Learning-Based Testing of Starcraft Competition Entries
Blackadar, Michael (University of Calgary) | Denzinger, Jörg (University of Calgary)
In this paper, we apply the idea of testing games by learning interactions with them that cause unwanted behavior of the game to test the competition entries for some of the scenarios of the 2010 StarCraft AI competition. By extending the previously published macro action concept to include macro action sequences for individual game units, by adjusting the concept to the real-time requirements of StarCraft, and by using macros involving specific abilities of game units, our testing system was able to find either weaknesses or system crashes for all of the competition entries of the chosen scenarios. Additionally, by requiring a minimal margin with respect to surviving units, we were able to clearly identify the weaknesses of the tested AIs.