Computational logics and verification techniques of multi-agent commitments: survey

Agent communication languages (ACLs) are fundamental mechanisms that enable agents in multi-agent systems totalk, communicate with each other in order to satisfy their individual and social goals in a cooperative and competitive manner. Social approaches are advocated to overcome the shortcomings of ACL semantics delineated by using mental approaches in the figure of agents’ mental notions. Over the last two decades,socialcommitments have been the subject of considerable research in some of those social approaches as they provide a powerful representation for modeling and reasoning upon multi-agent interactions in the form of mutual contractual obligations. They particularly provide a declarative, flexible, verifiable, and social semantics for ACL messages while respecting agents’ autonomy, heterogeneity, and openness.In this manuscript, we go through prominent and predominate proposals in the literature to explore the state of the art on how temporal logics can be devoted to define a formal semantics for ACL messages in terms of social commitments and associated actions. We explain each proposal and point out if and how it meetssevencrucial criteria, four of them introduced by Munindar P. Singh to have a well-defined semantics for ACL messages. Far from deciding the best proposal, our aim is to present the advantages (strengths) and limitations of those proposals to designers and developers using a concrete running example and to compare between them, so that they can make the best choice with regard to their needs. We explore and evaluate current specification languages and different verification techniques that have been discussed within those proposals to, respectively, specify and verify commitment-based protocols. We also investigate logical languages of actions advocated to specify, model, and execute commitment-based protocols in other contributed proposals. Finally, we suggest some solutions that can contribute to address the identified limitations.

The Science of Social Emergence

Sociology should be the foundational science of social emergence. But to date, sociologists have neglected emergence, and studies of emergence are more common within microeconomics. Moving forward, I argue that a science of social emergence requires two advances beyond current approaches—and that sociology is better positioned than economics to make these advances. First, consistent with existing critiques of microeconomics, I argue that we need a more sophisticated representation of individual agents. Second, I argue that multi-agent models need a more sophisticated representation of interaction processes. The agent communication languages currently used by multi-agent systems researchers are not appropriate for modeling human societies. I conclude by arguing that the scientific study of interaction and emergence will have to migrate out of microeconomics and become a part of sociology. Sociologists, for their part, should embrace multi-agent modeling to pursue a more rigorous study of these traditional sociological issues.

On the Formal Semantics of Speech-Act Based Communication in an Agent-Oriented Programming Language

Research on agent communication languages has typically taken the speech acts paradigm as its starting point. Despite their manifest attractions, speech-act models of communication have several serious disadvantages as a foundation for communication in artificial agent systems. In particular, it has proved to be extremely difficult to give a satisfactory semantics to speech-act based agent communication languages. In part, the problem is that speech-act semantics typically make reference to the "mental states" of agents (their beliefs, desires, and intentions), and there is in general no way to attribute such attitudes to arbitrary computational agents. In addition, agent programming languages have only had their semantics formalised for abstract, stand-alone versions, neglecting aspects such as communication primitives. With respect to communication, implemented agent programming languages have tended to be rather ad hoc. This paper addresses both of these problems, by giving semantics to speech-act based messages received by an AgentSpeak agent. AgentSpeak is a logic-based agent programming language which incorporates the main features of the PRS model of reactive planning systems. The paper builds upon a structural operational semantics to AgentSpeak that we developed in previous work. The main contributions of this paper are as follows: an extension of our earlier work on the theoretical foundations of AgentSpeak interpreters; a computationally grounded semantics for (the core) performatives used in speech-act based agent communication languages; and a well-defined extension of AgentSpeak that supports agent communication.

Using conversation policies to solve problems of ambiguity in argumentation and artificial intelligence

This investigation joins recent research on problems with ambiguity in two fields, argumentation and computing. In argumentation, there is a concern with fallacies arising from ambiguity, including equivocation and amphiboly. In computing, the development of agent communication languages is based on conversation policies that make it possible to have information exchanges on the internet, as well as other forms of dialogue like persuasion and negotiation, in which ambiguity is a problem. Because it is not possible to sharply differentiate between problems arising from ambiguity and those arising from vagueness, obscurity and indeterminacy, some study of the latter is included. The semantic web is based on what are called ontologies, or systems of classification of concepts, shown to be useful tools for dealing with these problems.

Operating instructions for intelligent agent coordination

In contrast to standard approaches based on agent communication languages (ACLs), environment-based coordination is emerging as an interesting alternative for structuring interactions in multiagent systems (MASs). In particular, the notion of coordination artifacts has been proposed as an engineering methodology to build runtime abstractions effectively providing collaborating agents with specifically designed coordination tasks.In this paper, we study the semantics for the interaction of agents with coordination artifacts playing the same role of ACL semantics, that is, supporting semantic interoperability between agents developed by different parties through the connection between rationality and interaction. Our approach is rooted on the notion of operating instructions of coordination artifacts, which—as with a manual for a human exploiting a device—describe the interaction protocols the agent can follow as well as the mentalistic semantics of each single interaction. By tackling some of the most relevant issues raised in the context of ACL semantics, our framework allows intelligent, BDI-like agents to carry on complex interactions through coordination artifacts in a rational way.