Gorgias: Applying Argumentation

This paper presents the past and present efforts of developing real-life applications of argumentation with the Gorgias preference-based structured argumentation framework of Logic Programming with Priorities. Since its free availability on the web in 2003, the Gorgias system has been used by different groups in a variety of real-life applications in areas such as medical support, network security, business computing, ambient intelligence and, recently, in the area of cognitive personal assistants. We briefly review the Gorgias framework and its past applications and present an emerging general methodological approach for developing "decision making" applications of argumentation. This approach allows the development of real world applications directly from their high-level requirements expressed in the language of the application without the need for familiarity with the underlying technical details of argumentation. A new tool, called Gorgias-B, supports this high-level development of applications and automatically generates the underlying argumentation theory in Gorgias code. The paper also reports on ongoing real-life applications in two domains: an eye-clinic assistant for first level support, and systems for patient data access and data sharing agreements according to the relevant legislation and contracts or policies of the several stakeholders involved. The proposed approach is quite general for this type of applications of argumentation and, thus, it can be used with any preference-based argumentation framework.