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| On the convergence of retrieval, structured search and trust in distributed systems |
| Karl Aberer (EPF Lausanne, Switzerland) |
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| Abstract |
| The database and information retrieval communities have long been
recognized as being irreconcilable. Today, however, we witness a surprising
convergence of the techniques used by both communities in decentralized,
large-scale environments. The newly emerging field of reputation based
trust management, borrowing techniques from both communities, best
demonstrates this claim. We argue that incomplete knowledge and
increasing autonomy of the participating entities are the driving forces
behind this convergence, pushing the adoption of probabilistic
techniques typically borrowed from an information retrieval context.
We argue that using a common probabilistic framework would be an important
step in furthering this convergence and enabling a common treatment and
analysis of distributed complex systems. We will provide a first sketch of
such a framework and illustrate it with examples from our previous work on
information retrieval, structured search and trust assessment.
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| Semantic Methods for Peer-To-Peer Query Routing |
| Steffen Staab (U Koblenz, Germany) |
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| Abstract |
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Knowledge sharing in a virtual organization
requires a knowledge life cycle including knowledge provisioning,
terminology alignment, determination of resource location, query
routing, and query answering.
In this talk we focus on the issue of determining a relevant resource
in a completely decentralized setting such
as necessitated by peer-to-peer knowledge management in virtual
organizations.
Requirements for this task include, e.g., full autonomy of peers
as well as full control over own resources and therefore preclude
prominent resource location and query routing schemes such as
distributed hash tables.
In order to tackle given requirements we use a resource location and
query routing approach
that exploits social metaphors of topical experts and experts' experts
as well
as semantic similarity of queries and information sources.
The approach has been fully tested in simulation runs and
partially implemented in the system Bibster
(http://bibster.semanticweb.org).
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| Programming Cognitive Agents |
| John-Jules C. Meyer (U Utrecht, The Netherlands) |
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| Abstract |
| Although there is a lot of theory around about cognitive agents since
the seminal work by researchers such as Bratman, Cohen & Levesque,
Rao & Georgeff, practice of programming 'truly' cognitive agents is
still in its infancy.
Of course, several architectures have been proposed and even
occasionally been implemented, and there is a prospect of many
potential applications of agent-based systems, but is there a truly
systematic way of programming agents with cognitive / mental
attitudes such beliefs, desires, intentions, goals, plans,
commitments, emotions...? We believe that for this dedicated
agent-oriented languages are needed. A number of these have been
developed in the last decade or so. But programming in them is still
hard. Is there a methodology for agent-oriented programming? Can one
structure agent programs better making use of cognitive notions? And
how to verify that an agent program is correct? And how is this
combined with programming *multi*-agent systems and agent societies
where coordination of these autonomous agents and more generally
social notions such as norms seem most important? In this talk a
number of these issues will be discussed on the basis of work done in
Utrecht around the agent language 3APL.
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| Emergent Semantics in Multi-Agent Systems |
| Luc Steels (SONY Computer Science Lab Paris and
Free University of Brussels (VUB)) |
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| Abstract |
| The talk presents recent research showing how a population of
distributed autonomous agents might be able to self-organise a
communication system without central control nor prior design. The
agents engage in situated language games in which they negotiate not
only the linguistic conventions they are going to use in their
communication but also the underlying ontologies. I will also discuss
applications of this techniques for peer-to-peer information exchange.
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