Tim Baarslag

Date: 16:00 – 16:30, Thursday, 12.11.2020
Location: Teams ICS Colloquium

Title: Coordination of Intelligent Systems Through Negotiation
Abstract: Complex and social systems consist of many interacting nodes that exchange information and can compete and/or collaborate with each other. For these nodes to coordinate effectively, they need to engage in joint decision making through the process of negotiation.

In this talk, I will present my ongoing research on intelligent and autonomous systems that can negotiate in a wide variety of upcoming domains, such as smart energy trading, the Internet of Things, and digital privacy. One of the key challenges in designing a successful automated negotiator is that only limited information is available about the other parties. Therefore, we need to investigate various decision and learning techniques to determine what questions to ask, what offers
to make, and when to accept. I will provide some intuition behind some of the solution concepts (e.g. Pandora’s Rule, optimal stopping), which have a wide range of potential applications. I will also illustrate the current challenges in automated negotiation, together with a roadmap for the successful design of intelligent negotiation systems.