Abstract
An agent may decide to delegate tasks to others. The act of delegating a task by one autonomous agent to another can be carried out by the performance of one or more imperative communication acts. In this paper, the semantics of imperatives are specified using a language of actions and states. It is further shown how the model can be used to distinguish between whole-hearted and mere extensional satisfaction of an imperative, and how this may be used to specify the semantics of imperatives in agent communication languages. The act of delegating a task from one agent to another can be carried out through the performance of one or more imperative communication acts. In this paper, the semantics of such imperatives are specified using a language of actions and states. The logical system that is developed then supports a notion of responsibility. An agent may not only be issued an imperative to directly carry out an event, or achieve some state, but also to be responsible for an event being carried out or state achieved - and these latter commitments might then be serviced through a subsequent act of delegation. The model thus clearly distinguishes between different classes of responsibility and different forms of delegation, and it is shown how this sound theoretical foundation can then be applied in specifying the semantics of imperatives in agent communication languages.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
L. Åqvist. A new approach to the logical theory of interrogatives. Tubingen, TBL Verlag Gunter Barr, 1975.
J.L. Austin. How to do things with words. Oxford University Press, 1962.
M. Barbuceanu and M. S. Fox. Integrating communicative action, conversations and decision theory to coordinate agents. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents, pages 47–58, 1997.
C. Castelfranchi. Modelling social action for AI agents. Artificial Intelligence, 103:157–182, 1998.
C. Castelfranchi and R. Falcone. Principles of trust for MAS: Cognitive anatomy, social importance, and quantification. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, pages 72–79, 1998.
B. F. Chellas. Modal logic: An introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1980.
B. F. Chellas. Time and modality in the logic of agency. Studia Logica, 51(3/4):485–517, 1992.
P. R. Cohen and H. J. Levesque. Communicative actions for artificial agents. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, pages 65–72, 1995.
F. Dignum. Using transactions in integrity constraints: Looking forward or backwards, what is the difference? In Proceedings of the Workshop on Applied Logics, 1992.
T. Finin, D. McKay, R. Fritzson, and R. McEntire. KQML: An information and knowledge exchange protocol. In K. Funchi and T. Yokoi, editors, Knowledge Building and Knowledge Sharing. Ohmsha and IOS Press, 1994.
Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents. FIPA communicative act library specification: XC00037H, 2000. http://www.fipa.org/.
H. P. Grice. Meaning. Philosophical review, 66:377–388, 1957.
C. L. Hamblin. Imperatives. Basil Blackwell, 1987.
H. L. A. Hart. Bentham on legal rights. In A. W. B. Simpson, editor, Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence, 2, pages 171–201. Oxford University Press, 1973.
J. Hintikka, I. Halonen, and A. Mutanen. Interrogative logic as a general theory of reasoning. unpublished manuscript, 1996.
J. F. Horty and N. Belnap. The deliberative stit: A study of action, omission, ability, and obligation. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 24:583–644, 1995.
A. I. J. Jones and M. J. Sergot. A formal characterisation of institutionalised power. Journal of the IGPL, 4(3):429–445, 1996.
L. Kagal, T. Finin, and Y. Peng. A delegation based model for distributed trust. In Proceedings of the IJCAI 2001 Workshop on Autonomy, Delegation and Control: Interacting with Agents, 2001.
S. Kumar, M. J. Huber, D. R. McGee, P. R. Cohen, and H. J. Levesque. Semantics of agent communication languages for group interaction. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 42–47, 2000.
L. Lindahl. Position and change: A study in law and logic D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, 1977.
J. McCarthy and P. Hayes. Some philosophical problems from the standpoint of artificial intelligence. In D. Michie and B. Meltzer, editors, Machine Intelligence, volume 4, pages 463–502. Edinburgh University Press, 1969.
A. Newell. The knowledge level. Artificial Intelligence, 18:87–127, 1982.
T. J. Norman and C. A. Reed. Group delegation and responsibility. In Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 2002.
P. Panzarasa, N. R. Jennings, and T. J. Norman. Formalising collaborative decision making and practical reasoning in multi-agent systems. Journal of Logic and Computation, 12(1):55–117, 2002.
I. Pörn. The logic of power. Basil Blackwell, 1970.
C. A. Reed. Dialogue frames in agent communication. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, pages 246–253, 1998.
C. A. Reed, T. J. Norman, and N. R. Jennings. Negotiating the semantics of agent communication languages. Computational Intelligence, to appear.
J. R. Searle. Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge University Press, 1969.
M. J. Sergot. Normative positions. In P. McNamara and H. Prakken, editors, Norms, Logics and Information Systems. ISO Press, 1998.
M. Shanahan. Solving the Frame Problem: A Mathematical Investigation of the Common Sense Law of Inertia. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1997.
I. A. Smith, P. R. Cohen, J. M. Bradshaw, M. Greaves, and H. Holmback. Designing conversation policies using joint intention theory. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, pages 269–276, 1998.
G. H. von Wright. An essay in deontic logic and the general theory of action, volume 21 of Acta philosophica Fennica. North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1968.
D. N. Walton and E. C. W. Krabbe. Commitment in dialogue: Basic concepts of interpersonal reasoning. SUNY, New York, 1995.
M. J. Wooldridge. Reasoning about rational agents. MIT Press, 2000.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Norman, T.J., Reed, C. (2002). A Model of Delegation for Multi-agent Systems. In: d’Inverno, M., Luck, M., Fisher, M., Preist, C. (eds) Foundations and Applications of Multi-Agent Systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2403. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45634-1_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45634-1_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-43962-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45634-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive