A model for informed negotiating agents

We propose that the key to building intelligent negotiating agents is to take an agent's historic observations as primitive, to model that agent's changing uncertainty in that information, and to use that model as the foundation for the agent's reasoning. We describe an agent architecture, with an attendant theory, that is based on that model. In this approach, the utility of contracts, and the trust and reliability of a trading partner are intermediate concepts that an agent may estimate from its information model. This enables us to describe intelligent agents that are not necessarily utility optimisers, that value information as a commodity, and that build relationships with other agents through the trusted exchange of information as well as contracts.