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Identifying prohibition norms in agent societies

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Abstract

In normative multi-agent systems, the question of “how an agent identifies norms in an open agent society” has not received much attention. This paper aims at addressing this question. To this end, this paper proposes an architecture for norm identification for an agent. The architecture is based on observation of interactions between agents. This architecture enables an autonomous agent to identify prohibition norms in a society using the prohibition norm identification (PNI) algorithm. The PNI algorithm uses association rule mining, a data mining approach to identify sequences of events as candidate norms. When a norm changes, an agent using our architecture will be able to modify the norm and also remove a norm if it does not hold in the society. Using simulations of a park scenario we demonstrate how an agent makes use of the norm identification framework to identify prohibition norms.

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Notes

  1. This is true in most countries.

  2. In this work, we do not model how humans learn about norms in societies. However, the model proposed for artificial agents is inspired by how humans learn (e.g. observational learning, experiential learning and communication-based learning (Hamada 2008)).

  3. Beliefs are statements of properties of the world the agent is situated in that can either be true or false; desires are states/situations that an agent prefers to bring about or actions that it wants to perform and intentions are those feasible actions, plans or desired situations that an agent has selected and committed to performing or achieving (c.f. Dignum et al. 2002).

  4. Some works in the legal domain have investigated the extraction of rules from large databases using association rule mining approach (Bench-Capon et al. 2000; Governatori and Stranieri 2001). In the work of Bench-Capon et al. (2000), rules are identified from large sets of legal description data stored in a database. In a similar vein, Governatori and Stranieri (2001) employ association rule mining to extract rules and have used defeasible logic to formally encode the knowledge extracted. Our work is different from these two works employing association rule mining. First, those works identify rules rather than norms. Second, sanctions are not considered in these works. In our work the starting point of norm identification is the recognition of sanctions. Third, the data considered in those works comes from stored data repository which is static, while the data in our work is highly dynamic since it is based on observation of an agent which changes from time to time. Fourth, the notion of distributed agents each inferring norms in our work is unique. These works on the other hand explore rule extraction using a centralized component.

  5. In this work we consider only punishments, although the process developed in this work can also be applied to rewards.

  6. The term base is used to represent the repository used by an agent (e.g. an agent’s run-time memory or a persistent storage used by an agent such as a database).

  7. Our usage of signalling in this work differs from the views in Biology and Economics. Biologists have observed that animals send signals to indicate that they are a desirable mate (Smith and Harper 2003). For example, a peacock displays its quality to peahens through its bright plumage and a long ornate tail. Economists have noted that human agents send signals to others that they are credible through some form of signalling (e.g. acquiring a university degree signals that someone has skills for a particular job (Spence 1973)). In our work, signalling is special type of event whose occurrence can be interpreted as a punishment signal (a sanction). These signals are responses or feedback of the observing agents on the actions performed by the observed agent. While the actions performed by agents themselves are viewed as signals in disciplines such as Biology and Economics, the signals in our work are the feedback of other agents on the actions performed by an agent

  8. The sanction can also be any other disapproval gesture.

  9. If the event is not a special event, nothing happens. We have only shown the branching conditions which have some consequences in Fig. 1.

  10. Please refer to work of Savarimuthu et al. (2010).

  11. An agent may collect more evidence about sanctions if it waits for certain period of time.

  12. In human societies norm re-evaluation happens rarely as the norms tend to be largely permanent (e.g. the norms of cooperation and reciprocity). However, some social norms may change (e.g. smoking in a restaurants which was originally permitted is now prohibited) that require re-evaluation on the part of agents. We believe, in virtual environments, the norms can change at a faster rate as the composition of an open agent society changes. Hence, agents need to re-evaluate norms in regular intervals of time. We note that an agent can modify how often it re-evaluates norms using a parameter which can be used to model either frequent or rare re-evaluations.

  13. Note that how an agent internalizes a norm is out of the scope of this work. Other researchers have studied how norms are internalized (Verhagen 2001). The focus of our work is on norm identification.

  14. We have experimented with two types of scenarios where agents remember the norms of the society they leave and where agents remove the norms of the society they leave.

  15. The reasons for asking another agent just for verification are twofold. First, an agent entering a society may not be interested to find out all the norms of a society (an agent might give a long list of norms followed in the society). It may be interested to find the norms in a particular context. An agent has to first infer what the context is (by observing the interactions) and then it can ask another agent in the neighborhood if its inference of a norm is valid (e.g. Am I obliged to tip in this society?). In our view this is more effective (in terms of computation and memory required) than asking another agent what the norms are, as there could be a long list of norms that apply, and most of those may not be of interest to an agent. The agent employing the architecture will be able to infer what the potential norms might be. Hence, it can be confident in asking for norm referral, as the actual norm might be one of the candidate norms in its list. The search space for the actual norm has been narrowed by the norm identification process. An agent can also precisely formulate a query for another agent (e.g. Is it prohibited to litter in this society?). Second, an agent may not completely trust other agents in an open society. When an agent asks another agent without norm inference, the other agent could potentially lie about a norm (Savarimuthu et al. 2011). So, an agent may want to make sure that it identifies candidate norms, before it asks for norm verification. This process helps an agent from being misled by the referring agent if it were to ask what the norm is, since it knows that one of the candidate norms could potentially be a norm. Note that this does not solve the lying problem, since the referrer agent can lie when an agent asks if something is a norm in the society. At the least, the mechanism we use here allows the agent to have a set of candidate norms. We discuss a potential solution to the lying problem in Sect. 10.

  16. Permutations with repetitions are considered, because an agent does not know whether littering once (l) is a reason for sanction or littering twice (ll) is the reason for the sanction. It could be that littering once may be allowed but an agent littering twice may be punished.

  17. Other alternative mechanisms are also possible. For example, an agent can verify whether its candidate norms hold by undertaking actions that it observes to be sanctioned (e.g. dropping a litter). Based on the outcome of tests the agent carries out it can infer what the norms could be. This is a meta-level norm testing mechanism of an agent.

  18. It could be that there are no sanctions in the society because all the agents have internalized a norm (i.e. they abide by the norm). However, the process of norm internalization has not been considered in this work. Norm internalization can depend upon the personality of agents (e.g. social agents, rebellious agents). We note this can be included in our architecture. Additionally, norm internalization is a separate issue from the issue of norm identification studied here.

  19. A toroidal grid is constructed from a rectangular grid (shown in Fig. 5) by gluing both pairs of opposite edges together. This forms a three dimensional space (a donut shape) where agents move in circles (Weisstein 2010).

  20. We note that other mechanisms are also possible. For example, an agent can ask certain number of agents in its vicinity instead of asking just one. In this work, agents ask one other agent for norm verification. There is a parameter in the system which can be used to change the number of agents that are asked for verifying a norm. This is akin to the referral process which has been studied by other researchers (Candale and Sen 2005; Yu and Singh 2002) which show that increasing the number of referrals leads to faster convergence.

  21. This information can be obtained either through gossip (Boyd et al. 2006; Paolucci et al. 2000) or common knowledge (Chwe 2001).

  22. The simulation of this scenario can be viewed http://unitube.otago.ac.nz/view?m=3d8h11fu1xa.

  23. This was because the probability of a punishment for littering was higher than eating. In the opposite case, the norm against littering would have been found first.

  24. In this work we have focused on simple co-existing norms (e.g. norms against eating and littering).

  25. We have used a value of 5 in our simulations to model small fluctuations (increase or decrease) in the NIF value. This discrete amount is a parameter in our system which can be changed.

  26. We assume that the agent knows when it enters a new society. For example, the agent may know the physical boundaries of the society in which it is situated. For example, an avatar in SecondLife explicitly knows that it is moving from one community to another.

  27. Cleaning commons area such as a public park that has been littered would be at a cost which would be paid by the rate-payers of the city. From this point of view, bearing the cost of a litter has been distributed to all members of the society including the litterer.

  28. Simulation can be viewed at http://unitube.otago.ac.nz/view?m=SE7M11esZnI. The litterers are in black, non-litterers are in green and the punishers are in red.

  29. We note this is an improvement from the game-theory based works which have typically considered only two options for agents based on coordination or cooperation games (Pujol 2006; Sen and Airiau 2007; Shoham and Tennenholtz 1992; Villatoro et al. 2009) (e.g. drive on the left or the right). Additionally those works do not deal with sanctions, therefore only cater for recognizing a convention.

  30. We acknowledge that the scenarios that can be modeled using Second Life are far richer than the ones presented in this paper. Those scenarios will require richer norm identification mechanisms.

  31. This has been demonstrated by Savarimuthu et al. (2010). In the case of identifying both types of norms together, first obligation norms should be inferred followed by the prohibition norms in order to avoid false positives of prohibition norms (future work).

  32. This is a granularity issue. An agent can choose to record all the events or only some of the key events that happen around it. By choosing to record key events, the agent may have a coarser but longer history which can be used to infer norms. Additionally, if sanction follows long after the action has been performed, it is difficult to associate a sanction with the action that triggered it (i.e. it is computationally expensive).

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  1. University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu, Stephen Cranefield, Maryam A. Purvis & Martin K. Purvis

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  1. Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu
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Appendix

Appendix

Acronyms and expansions of the terms used in this paper are given below based on the alphabetical ordering of the acronyms (Table 3).

Table 3 Acronyms used and the corresponding expansions
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Savarimuthu, B.T.R., Cranefield, S., Purvis, M.A. et al. Identifying prohibition norms in agent societies. Artif Intell Law 21, 1–46 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-012-9126-7

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