A Multi-Agent Design of a PeerHelp Environment
Julita Vassileva
Computer Science Department
University of Saskatchewan
ARIES Lab at Department of
Comp Science at the U of S
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Jim Greer
Gord McCalla
John Cooke
Julita Vassileva
Ralph Deters
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Chhaya Mudgal
Vive Kumar
Diego Zapata
Mike Winter
Lori Kettel
Kamal Elbashir
Shawn Grant
Kevin Kostuik
Adaptation in a Distributed Environment
Finding an Appropriate Resource
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Key Problems:
• location of resources
(human or electronic)
• matching resources to need
• motivation to participate
I-Help: a Peer Help Environment
in University Class
Why?
• Peer help is inexpensive
• Encourages sense of community
• The helper also learns
I-Help: a Peer Help Environment
in University Class
How?
• Asynchronous (discussion forum): CPR
• On-line resources created by students
• Synchronous help: PHelpS
Multi-Agent Architecture
User Model: a Resource
Repository for the Personal Agent
User Resources
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Knowledge
Social Capabilities
Relationships
Time
Currency
Matchmaking ...
Data Base
Data Base
Data Base
The Issue of Motivation
• Why would busy people offer help?
– to build relationships / obligations
– if it’s part of organizational culture
– if there is a reward
• class participation points ...
• performance review
• Adding extrinsic motivation
– currency in exchange for help???
• Money reflects real social costs and benefits
A Global View: Agent Economy
Questions:
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What economy type: barter or market?
What real world equivalent for virtual currency?
Zero-sum game or cumulative w.r.t. some resource?
Social control and protection mechanisms?
An experiment (fall 99)
• Student peer help for sale!!
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65 students in 3rd year Comp.Sci. class
the I-Help architecture engineered for this class
students use I-Help throughout the class
helpers get paid, helpees pay
rate of pay negotiable (by agents)
User-Agent Relationship
• What to do if the user
doesn’t keep the contracts
made by her agent?
– Agent negotiates with or
persuades the user to
adopt some goal
– User has to pay a penalty:
I.e. Agent punishes the
user
Human-Agent Interaction
Anthropomorphic Agents:
– How much autonomy?
– What type of relationship?
– Agent “Persona” ?
Supporting Communication
• Finding peers who are ready, willing and
able to help
• Supporting effective interaction and
collaboration
• Motivating users to help
• A new dimension of communication:
between human world and agent world
Possible Business Applications
In workplace environments:
• Team formation: locating competent &
available employees
• Supporting training on the job, just in time
• Establishing peer-help networks, reinforcing
the “weak ties” in the company
• Capturing and developing repositories of
organizational knowledge
More Business Applications…
Enhancing customer support and helpdesk
services:
• Automatic dispatching of help-requests to the
competent helpdesk employees who are
available and managing the waiting lists
• Offloading helpdesk employees by shifting
most of the requests to the customers
En Example Session:
• Domain: Helping secretaries to work with
MS Office
• Personal Agent (IKE) provides help to the
user by:
– Finding the related MS Help entry
– Finding related materials on the web
– Finding a peer helper who is competent and
currently on-line to help with the problem
The users enter their competence in their user profiles when they use the system first
The user needs help – she calls IKE, her agent
The user types her question
The agent has identified the topics from the question and searches for related
materials on the Web
The agent has found the related MS-Word help entry
The user wants peer help: IKE finds a list of people
who are on-line and know about the topic of the question; the user has to select one
The agent of the selected helper alerts him that someone needs his help
The agent of the person asking for help tells her that the selected helper has agreed to help
The help session happens: The users talk via a chat tool
The chat has finished, each partner has to evaluate the session and the other one;
The results of the evaluation are used to update the user profiles
IKE has done his job and thanks the user for agreeing to help