: We consider socio-technical processes, i.e. processes where machines as well as humans participate. Typical examples occur in sales processes in e-commerce. Three modeling tasks are selected: Modeling user preferences and utilities, modeling evaluations and modeling influence factors. A central concept representing knowledge is the notion of similarity. The major technique discussed is machine learning. Two application scenarios and simulation results are presented: Learning utility functions and performing dialogs with customers. 1 Motivation Socio-technical processes are processes where humans and machines interact in various ways. We restrict ourselves to situations where the machines are represented by software agents. A typical example is buying a (complex) product from an e-commerce shop which provides an intelligent software agent to support the sales process. To design, plan and execute such processes a careful division of labor is necessary. There are different kinds of mode...
Michael M. Richter, Armin Stahl