The project tackles the problem of information overload in a novel way -- by shifting the burden away from the information seeker and onto the information provider. Rather than obliging an information seeker to trawl through sources of information the emphasis is instead squarely upon the information provider to persuade clients that the information they have on offer is of value.
The solution relies upon the representation of uses interests in a multi-agent system, upon the societal roles employed, and upon argumentation theoretic commitment-based interaction between the agents in that system. In particular, the project has the following aims:
To develop a coherent model of commitment, dialogue and social context for multi-agent systems;
To build a test bed for the evaluation of this model; and
To evaluate the model within the domain of distributed information management.