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John-Jules Meyer

Possible papers associated with this exact author name in Arrow. This page groups case-insensitive exact name matches and is not a full identity disambiguation profile.

23 papers
1 author row

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23

JAAMAS Journal 2019 Journal Article

A formal framework for reasoning about opportunistic propensity in multi-agent systems

  • Jieting Luo
  • John-Jules Meyer
  • Max Knobbout

Abstract Opportunism is an intentional behavior that takes advantage of knowledge asymmetry and results in promoting agents’ own value and demoting others’ value. It is important to eliminate such selfish behavior in multi-agent systems, as it has undesirable results for the participating agents. In order for monitoring and eliminating mechanisms to be put in the right place, it is needed to know in which context agents are likely to perform opportunistic behavior. In this paper, we develop a formal framework to reason about agents’ opportunistic propensity. Opportunistic propensity refers to the potential for an agent to perform opportunistic behavior. Agents in the system are assumed to have their own value systems and knowledge. With value systems, we define agents’ state preferences. Based on their value systems and incomplete knowledge about the state, they choose one of their rational alternatives to perform, which might be opportunistic behavior. We then characterize the situation where agents are likely to perform opportunistic behavior and the contexts where opportunism is impossible to occur, and prove the computational complexity of predicting opportunism.

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AAMAS Conference 2018 Conference Paper

Eliminating Opportunism using an Epistemic Mechanism

  • Jieting Luo
  • Max Knobbout
  • John-Jules Meyer

Opportunism is a behavior that takes advantage of knowledge asymmetry and results in promoting agents’ own value and demoting other agents’ value. It is important to eliminate such a selfish behavior in multi-agent systems, as it has undesirable results for the participating agents. However, as the context we study here is multi-agent systems, system designers actually might not be aware of the value system for each agent thus they have no idea whether an agent will perform opportunistic behavior. Given this fact, this paper designs an epistemic mechanism to eliminate opportunism given a set of possible value systems for the participating agents: an agent’s knowledge gets updated so that the other agent is not able to perform opportunistic behavior, and there exists a balance between eliminating opportunism and respecting agents’ privacy.

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AAMAS Conference 2017 Conference Paper

Towards a Framework for Predicting Opportunism in Multi-agent Systems

  • Jieting Luo
  • John-Jules Meyer
  • Max Knobbout

Opportunism is a behavior that takes advantage of knowledge asymmetry and results in promoting agents’ own value and demoting others’ value. We propose a framework to reason about agents’ opportunistic propensity and characterize the situation where agents will perform opportunistic behavior.

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KR Conference 2016 Conference Paper

Preference and priorities: a study based on contraction

  • Marlo Souza
  • Alvaro Moreira
  • Renata Vieira
  • John-Jules Meyer

Preference models lie at the core of the formalization for several related notions, such as non-monotonic reasoning, obligations, goals, beliefs, etc. Recently, the interest in integrating dynamic operators in the logics of belief, preference and obligation has gained momentum. This integration sheds light on similarities among several change operations traditionally studied independently of each other. While a prolific approach, important operations, such as the well-known contraction of beliefs or derogation of norms studied in the AGM tradition, have not received proper attention in this framework. In this work, we study codifications of contraction operations, stemming from the work on iterated belief change, in the logic of preferences, by means of both semantically defined operations and their counterpart in syntactical priority structures.

KER Journal 2012 Journal Article

Norms, organizations, and semantics

  • Olivier Boissier
  • Marco Colombetti
  • Michael Luck
  • John-Jules Meyer
  • Axel Polleres

Abstract This paper integrates the responses to a set of questions from a distinguished set of panelists involved in a discussion at the Agreement Technologies workshop in Cyprus in December 2009. The panel was concerned with the relationship between the research areas of semantics, norms, and organizations, and the ways in which each may contribute to the development of the others in support of next generation agreement technologies.

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AAMAS Conference 2012 Conference Paper

Testing the Benefits of Structured Argumentation in Multi-Agent Deliberation Dialogues

  • Eric Kok
  • John-Jules Meyer
  • Henry Prakken
  • GERARD VREESWIJK

Work on argumentation-based dialogue systems often assumes that the adoption of argumentation leads to improved efficiency and effectiveness. Several studies have taken an experimental approach to prove these alleged benefits, but none has so far supported the expressiveness of a logic for structured argumentation. This paper shows how the use of argumentation in deliberation dialogues can be tested while supporting goal-based agents that use the ASPIC framework for structured argumentation.

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AAMAS Conference 2010 Conference Paper

Emotions to Control Agent Deliberation

  • Bas Steunebrink
  • Mehdi Dastani
  • John-Jules Meyer

The execution of an artificial agent is usually implemented with a sense-reason-act cycle. This cycle includes tasks such as event processing, generating and revising plans, and selecting actions to execute. However, there are typically many choices in the design of such a cycle, which are often hard-coded in the cycle in an ad hoc way. The question of this paper is how one decides, in a principled way, how often and which reasoning rules to apply, how to interleave the execution of plans, or when to start replanning. This paper proposes and formalizes the eliciting conditions of hope, fear, joy, and distress according to a well-known psychological model of human emotion. These conditions are then used to reduce the choices an agent can make in each state. They formalize the idea that emotions focus an agent's attention on what is important in each state.

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AAMAS Conference 2010 Conference Paper

Programming Norm Change

  • Nick Tinnemeier
  • Mehdi Dastani
  • John-Jules Meyer

To adequately deal with the unpredictable and dynamic environments normative frameworks are typically deployed in, mechanisms for modifying the norms at runtime are crucial. We present the syntax and operational semantics of generic programming constructs to facilitate runtime norm modification, allowing a programmer to specify when and how the norms may be changed by external agents or by the normative framework. The norms take on the form of conditional obligations and prohibitions, which instantiate detached obligations and prohibitions (instances). We present rule-based constructs for runtime modification of the norms and their instances, and a mechanism for automatically updating the instances when their underlying norms change.

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AAMAS Conference 2009 Conference Paper

Roles and Norms for Programming Agent Organizations

  • Nick Tinnemeier
  • Mehdi Dastani
  • John-Jules Meyer

We present a programming language for implementing multiagent systems consisting of a set of individual agents that interact with a computational organization specified in terms of roles, norms and sanctions. We provide an operational semantics of the language that can serve as a basis for the implementation of organizational platforms. The view on roles is motivated by four key properties we deem important for an efficient implementation of agent organizations.

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AAMAS Conference 2008 Conference Paper

Achieving Efficient and Equitable Collaboration among Selfish Agents using Spender-Signed Currency

  • Geert Jonker
  • Frank Dignum
  • John-Jules Meyer

We study collaboration among selfish agents in the tactical airport planning domain. This can be seen as a social exchange scenario, in which the efforts of performing tasks are the resources that are being exchanged. We investigate conditions under which a market mechanism with the use of standard currency leads to efficient and equitable exchange among benevolent agents. We show that, if some agents are selfish, the mechanism can become inequitable and therefore unacceptable. A straight forward penalty rule is not enough to restore equity, as it is attractive to deviate from such a rule. As a solution, we present an novel currency system, under which malicious agents can be punished, resulting in efficient and equitable exchange.

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AAMAS Conference 2008 Conference Paper

Reasoning about agent deliberation

  • Natasha Alechina
  • Mehdi Dastani
  • Brian Logan
  • John-Jules Meyer

We present a logic for reasoning about properties of agent programs under different agent execution strategies. Using the agent programming language SimpleAPL as an example, we show how safety and liveness properties can be expressed by translating agent programs into expressions of the logic. We give sound and complete axiomatizations of two different program execution strategies for SimpleAPL programs, and, for each of those strategies, prove a correspondence between the operational semantics of SimpleAPL and the models of the corresponding logic.

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AAMAS Conference 2007 Conference Paper

Achieving Cooperation among Selfish Agents in the Air Traffic Management Domain using Signed Money

  • Geert Jonker
  • Frank Dignum
  • John-Jules Meyer

We present a monetary system by which selfish agents can cooperate reciprocally. We show that a straight-forward market mechanism can lead to unfair situations when agents misuse key positions. We show that it is not easy to retaliate wrongdoers, as there is a dominant strategy that deviates from the retaliating strategy. We present a monetary system in which every user can issue money and every user is required to sign each credit it issues or circulates. By using a trust-based credit-valuation function, wrongdoers are retaliated and it is no longer dominant to deviate from the retaliating strategy.

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KER Journal 2004 Journal Article

An agent-mediated approach to the support of knowledge sharing in organizations

  • Virginia Dignum
  • Frank Dignum
  • John-Jules Meyer

The realization that knowledge management (KM) is primarily a management science and not a computer science implies a different role for technology in KM. This role is concerned with supporting and extending human interaction and learning, and has therefore the need for intelligence-enhanced, integrated and personalized solutions including agent-based approaches. A people-centered view of KM requires support systems that enable the flexible integration of organizational and individual requirements and objectives. This paper introduces the OperA model for organizations that supports individual initiative and collaboration while prescribing a formal structure for organizational processes. The paper introduces the main aspects of the model and describes a case study where OperA is applied to the development of a knowledge-sharing support system.

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TCS Journal 2001 Journal Article

Regular database update logics

  • Paul Spruit
  • Roel Wieringa
  • John-Jules Meyer

We study regular first-order update logic (FUL), which is a variant of regular dynamic logic in which updates to function symbols as well as to predicate symbols are possible. We first study FUL without making assumptions about atomic updates. Second, we look at relational algebra update logic (RAUL), which can be viewed as an extension of relational algebra with assignment. RAUL is an instantiation of FUL. Third, we study dynamic database logic (DDL), which is another version of FUL, in which the atomic updates can be “bulk updates” of predicates and updates of updateable functions. In all three cases, we define syntax, declarative semantics, axiomatizations, and operational semantics of the logic. All axiom systems are shown to be sound. Assuming the domain closure and unique naming assumptions, we also give a proof sketch of completeness of the axiomatization of DDL. The operational semantics presented in the paper are shown to be equivalent to the declarative semantics for certain classes of databases. We give examples of correctness proofs in RAUL and in DDL. Finally, we compare our approach to that of others and show how DDL can be used as a logic in which to specify and reason about updates to an object-oriented database system.

Details DOI
v2026.09.13