CEC'03 Tutorials: 

1. Agent Technologies for e-Commerce and e-Services

Jane Hsu, Associate Professor, National Taiwan University
http://hugo.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~yjhsu/
Time: 8:00-10:00, June 24, 2003 (Tuesday)

Abstract:

The Internet has revolutionalized how business transactions are conducted. Recent developments in web services standards and tools will further evolve the Web from a platform for information sharing into a global, dynamic, and open ecosystem of e-services delivering information, knowledge, decision support, transactions, and applications. Autonomous software agents with the capabilities of planning, learning, cooperation, and mobility provide some promising technologies for e-services. This tutorial will present an overview of intelligent software agents in a variety of e-commerce applications. We will then examine key ideas in multi-agent system, semantic web, agent-mediated negotiation, and contextualization that can help automate the process of e-service discovery, composition, and delivery.


2. Trust and Mechanism Design in Electronic Markets

Sviatoslav Braynov, Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
210 Bell Hall
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260
e-mail: sbraynov@cse.buffalo.edu
Time: 10:30-12:30, June 24, 2003 (Tuesday)

Abstract:

Mechanism design has been a subject of continuous interest in e-commerce, multiagent systems, game theory, and computational economics. The primary objective of mechanism design is to develop and implement optimal market rules that maximize some desirable criterion of efficiency (social welfare, an agent’s revenue, etc.).

In the tutorial we present and discuss various market mechanisms that ensure and promote trustworthy behavior on the part of untrustworthy agents. The mechanisms are self-enforcing in the sense that they are not based on trusted third parties or centralized databases such as reputation systems.

The tutorial presents two classes of mechanisms: negotiation-based and auction-based The negotiation-based mechanisms are based on the idea that if sufficient economic incentives are present, an agent can truthfully report his level of trustworthiness at the beginning of every transaction. Honest reporting at the first stage of interaction informs other agents about possible interaction risks and helps them form realistic expectations about possible outcomes.

The auction-based mechanisms are based on the idea that different auction rules could be designed to separate trustworthy from untrustworthy bidders. That is, all trustworthy bidders choose one schedule, while untrustworthy bidders choose another. This eliminates information asymmetry, and allows the auctioneer to evaluate bids using the actual bidders’ trustworthiness. Mechanism design for trust-building could help reduce the cost of trust management and eliminate many market failures and inefficiencies caused by lack of trust. Trust-based mechanism design could be implemented as a complimentary alternative to many infrastructures for risk assessment and fraud protection, such as reputation databases, recommender systems and trusted third parties.

Short Bio:

Dr. Braynov is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, State University of New York at Buffalo. He received his M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria, 1987. In 1998 he obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the Computer Center of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia. In 1996 Dr. Braynov specialized in the AI Lab, Vrije Universiteit, Brussels. In 1996 he finished a two-year gradate program in Economics at the University of Delaware. From 1998 to 2000 he was a post-doctoral research associate at Washington University, St. Louis. Dr. Braynov has published more than 20 papers in refereed conferences and journals, including the American National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the European Conference on AI (ECAI), the First ACM Conferenceon Electronic Commerce, the The International Conference on Multiagent Systems (ICMAS), etc. He is a program chair of the ACM SAC special track on ECommerce technologies. His research interests include multiagent systems, electronic commerce, artificial intelligence and game theory.