Modeling user preferences in the design of decision-making agents

这项研究的重点是代表用户做出决策的智能代理的设计，例如在购买、销售和交易商品、服务和信息的电子市场中。这就要求有能力对用户的偏好进行建模，在面对不完整的信息时做出决策，并与其他竞争代理进行协商。这样的代理不仅可以帮助代表用户做出某些决策，前提是用户已经对自动化系统产生了足够的信任，但它也可以是一个有价值的工具，用于帮助用户自己更好地理解问题和可用的选择，问自己问题，并确保她自己的信念和偏好是一致的。作为用户的斗争与信息过载的问题，预计这种自动代理将继续获得的importance.这项工作涉及智能代理的发展，以用于代表用户的决策，并在适应他们的行为，每个用户的喜好和目标的改进技术。该研究项目将包括几个子项目，包括在偏好诱导中有效的查询选择，预测未知偏好和自动谈判中的对手建模。

This research focuses on the design of intelligent agents that make decisions on a user's behalf, such as in electronic markets where goods, services and information are purchased, sold and traded. This requires an ability to model a user's preferences, to make decisions when faced with incomplete information, and to negotiate with other competing agents.Not only can such an agent aid in making certain decisions on behalf of a user, provided that the user has developed sufficient trust in the automated system, but it can also be a valuable tool for helping the user herself to gain a better understanding of problems and of the choices that are available, to ask herself questions, and to ensure that her own beliefs and preferences are consistent. As users struggle with the problem of information overload, it is anticipated that such automated agents will continue to gain in importance.This work involves the development of improved techniques for intelligent agents to use in making decisions on behalf of users and in adapting their behaviour to the preferences and goals of each individual user. This research project will include several subprojects, including work on effective query selection in preference elicitation, on predicting unknown preferences and on opponent modeling in automated negotiation.