Response Generation in Collaborative Negotiation

Response Generation in Collaborative Negotiation* Jennifer Chu-Carroll and Sandra Carberry Department of Computer and Information Sciences University of Delaware Newark, DE 19716, USA E-marl: {jchu,carberry} @cis.udel.edu Abstract In collaborative planning activities, since the agents are autonomous and heterogeneous, it is inevitable that conflicts arise in their beliefs during the planning process. In cases where such conflicts are relevant to the t~t~k at hand, the agents should engage in collaborative ne- gotiation as an attempt to square away the dis- crepancies in their beliefs. This paper presents a computational strategy for detecting conflicts regarding proposed beliefs and for engaging in collaborative negotiation to resolve the con- flicts that warrant resolution. Our model is capable of selecting the most effective aspect to address in its pursuit of conflict resolution in cases where multiple conflicts arise, and of se- lecting appropriate evidence to justify the need for such modification. Furthermore, by cap- turing the negotiation process in a recursive Propose-Evaluate.Modify cycle of actions, our model can successfully handle embedded ne- gotiation subdialogues. 1 Introduction In collaborative consultation dialogues, the consultant and the executing agent collaborate on developing a plan to achieve the executing agent's domain goal. Since agents are autonomous and heterogeneous, it is inevitable that conflicts in their beliefs arise during the planning pro- cess. In such cases, collaborative agents should attempt to square away (Joshi, 1982) the conflicts by engaging in collaborative negotiation to determine what should con- stitute their shared plan of actions and shared beliefs. Collaborative negotiation differs from non-collaborative negotiation and argum_entation mainly in the attitude of the participants, since collaborative agents are not self- centered, but act in a way as to benefit the agents as This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IRI-9122026. a group. Thus, when facing a conflict, a collaborative agent should not automatically reject a belief with which she does not agree; instead, she should evaluate the belief and the evidence provided to her and adopt the belief if the evidence is convincing. On the other hand, if the evalua- tion indicates that the agent should maintain her original belief, she should attempt to provide sufficient justifica- tion to convince the other agent to adopt this belief if the belief is relevant to the task at hand. This paper presents a model for engaging in collabo- rative negoa~ion to resolve conflicts in agents' beliefs about domain knowledge. Our model 1) detects con- flicts in beliefs and initiates a negotiation subdialogue only when the conflict is relevant to the current ta.~k, 2) selects the most effective aspect to address in its pursuit of conflict resolution when multiple conflicts exist, 3) selects appropriate evidence to justify the system's pro- posed modification of the user's beliefs, and 4) captures the negotiation process in a recursive Propose-Evaluate- Mod/fy cycle of actions, thus enabling the system to han- dle embedded negotiation sulxlialognes. 2 Related Work Researchers have studied the analysis and generation of arguments (Birnbaum et al., 1980; Reichman, 1981; …

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