Benefits awareness-based norm adoption framework for multi-agents system

• Main Author: Al-Mutazbellah Khamees Itaiwi, Dr.
• Format: text::Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2023

In open normative multi-agent communities, agents adopt new norms to increase their utilities. Several studies have developed mechanisms for agents to adopt new norms, which are based on sanction, imitation, or social learning. The limitation of these mechanisms is that over time, all agents adopt new norms, while in real-life situations, there are always a number of agents that persistently reject the norms for their benefits. This work advocates that intelligent agents should adopt new norms based on their awareness of expected benefits of the norms on their utilities, and not just by sanctions or imitating other agents. This thesis presents the concept of norms benefit awareness which is inspired by, and extends the concept of norms detection in open normative multi-agent communities. In such communities, agents adopt the norms that are not explicitly given and agents have free and unrestricted movement from one community to another to achieve their goal. In such situations, agents must be equipped with detection tools to adapt to the open communities. An intelligent agent should be able to autonomously evaluate its ‘awareness’ of the norms benefits and recognize the positive norms from the negative ones, while acting in situations it has never experienced before. Failure to detect or discover a society’s norms could subject the agent to probable sanction or penalty if it rejects the regulative norms. On the other hand, succeeding in discovering the norms earns the agent rewards, or at least avoids penalties. If a visitor agent is equipped with mechanisms to detect norms of a system, then it becomes more flexible and is able to adapt itself to changes in the environment or its goals. Consequently, this thesis presents a conceptual framework for agents’ ‘awareness’ of norms benefits in open normative multi-agent communities. The work on norms benefit awareness is a relatively new concept in terms of the approach used in multi-agent systems. The thesis shows an approach of interpreting and modulating the agent’s behaviour. In the proposed framework, four parameters constitute agents’ awareness of the norms benefits, namely Norm’s Yields; Norm’s Morality; Norm’s Trust, and Norm’s Adoption Ratio. Using these parameters agents are able to evaluate the benefits of observed norms and subsequently determine whether the norms increase or decrease their utilities for eventual adoption or rejection. The norms benefit awareness is simulated to validate the applicability and functionality of the awareness of norms benefit framework. Simulation results show a favourable application of the techniques and theory in open multi-agent communities.