Preparing for Melbourne

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Preparing for Melbourne

• About social commitments
• (of)
• Frank Dignum

2
Contents

• (Social) commitments
• Use of commitments in AC
• Nature of commitments
• Definition
• Use in AC
• Commitment strategies
• Conclusions

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Commitments in agents

• Cohen Levesque (commitment strategy)
• (P-GOAL x p) (GOAL x (LATER p)) ? (BEL x p) ?
• BEFORE ((BEL x p) ? (BEL x ? p))
• (GOAL x (LATER p))
• Rao Georgeff (commitment strategy)
• INTEND(inevitable?F) ? inevitable(INTEND(inevitabl
  e ?F) ? BEL(F))

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Social commitments

• Castelfranchi
• (S-COMM x y z a) ? (OUGHT x (DOES x a))
• (HONEST x) (S-COMM x y z a) ? (I-COMM x a)
• Singh
• P-commitment
• S-commitment
• (beliefs and actions)

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Semantics of Agent Communication
lti, inform(j,X)gt FP BiX ??Bi(BjX? Bj?X ? UjX ?
Uj?X) RE BjX

• Problem
• How to check the beliefs of the agents?
• They are private and not accessible from the
  outside.

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Social Commitments in Agent Communication

• inform(x,y,p) SC(x,y,p)
• promise(x,y,?) SC(x,y,?)
• A speech act leads to a social commitment
• which is visible from outside.
• Walton Krabbe use commitment stores

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Some questions

• What are the consequences for an agent when it
  has a social commitment?
• Connection between mental attitudes and
  commitment?
• Connection between social and private commitment?
• Connection between commitments and
  norms/obligations?
• Committing vs. commitment

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Commitment

• Definitions (Websters, Wordweb)
• The act of binding yourself (intellectually or
  emotionally) to a course of action or a purpose
• A (message that makes a) pledge or promise

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Commitment

• Mental attitudes involved
• Choice should be possible
• Knowledge vs. belief
• Degrees of commitment
• When to abandon a commitment?
• Little possibilities for revision
• Many supports that should be revised
• Rf. Epistemic entrenchment

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Commitment

• A commitment of an agent to a mental attitude
  (like belief, goal or intention) is the degree to
  which the agent is prepared to stick to the
  choice by which she created that mental attitude.
• COMMIT(x,ma,d)
• ma Bx(F) Gx(F) INTx(?)
• d ? (0,1
• We assume
• Bx(F) ? COMMIT(x, Bx(F),d)
• Gx(F) ? COMMIT(x, Gx(F),d)
• INTx(?) ? COMMIT(x, INTx(?),d)

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Commitment

• Primary citizen or derived?
• Is commitment merely calculated from an existing
  web of mental attitudes?
• I.e. is it an intrinsic aspect of every mental
  attitude?
• Or can we have a commitment and derive some
  mental attitudes from it?

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Social Commitment

• SOC-COMMIT(x,y,ma,d)
• COMMIT(x, ma,d) ? Ox,y(ma)
• The private part of a social commitment is a
  private commitment which is made under complete
  autonomy by the agent
• The social or public part of a social commitment
  is an obligation!

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Social Commitment

• The obligation in a social commitment comes about
  by an act of the agent that is obliged.
• Therefore it is often assumed that that agent is
  also having a commitment
• But this needs not be true!

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Social Commitment and AC

• inform(x,y,p) Ox,y(B(x,p))
• promise(x,y,?) Ox,y(INT(x, ?))
• The resulting obligation might lead to a decision
  to create or increase a commitment to the mental
  attitude.
• So, a speech act leads to an obligation
• Only when an agent is sincere it will lead to a
  social commitment.

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Example I

• INFORM(x,y,the weather in Melbourne is nice)
• Now y infers Ox,y(B(x,the weather in Melbourne
  is nice))
• Suppose B(x,the weather in Melbourne is nice)

• It seems x created a dichotomy between its mental
  states and obligations. This will lead to
  stress in subsequent conversations.
• Because x voluntarily and autonomously provided
  the information and we assume that x tries to
  avoid unnecessary violations/stress we usually
  conclude that x also is committed to what it
  says.

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Example II

• INFORM(x,y,this car is nice)
• Now y infers Ox,y(B(x,this car is nice))
• Suppose B(x,this car is nice)
• Now x continues
• INFORM(x,y,you can buy it for only ?10.000)
• x created a dichotomy between its mental states
  and obligations for a reason! The information is
  needed to support his subsequent offer.
• In this situation we still belief that x has an
  obligation to belief what he said, but we do not
  assume that he actually believes it!

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Connection between Social Commitment and mental
attitudes

• Ox,y(B(x,p)) ? B(x,p) ? Violation
• However, the violation cannot be detected from
  the mental attitude directly!
• Only acts from which this belief can be inferred
  can be used to detect a violation.
• E.g. inform(x,y,B(x,p)),
• or a failure to defend B(x,p) in an
  argumentation

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Conclusions

• Commitments are private
• Obligations are public (and can be committed to)
• Commitments say more about the change of mental
  attitudes than that they are mental attitudes
  themselves
• There is a lot of future work to do (in Melbourne)

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