A Conceptual Analysis of Commitments in Multiagent Systems
Munindar P. Singh · NCSU Libraries Repository (North Carolina State University Libraries) · 1996
The notion of commitment is central to understanding agents and multiagent systems.At least two kinds of commitment can be identi ed in the AI literature|the internal or psychological and the external or social.While these notions must not be con ated with each other, they are not entirely unrelated.We review the historical development of commitments in AI and distributed computing, and show the various roles they might play in multiagent systems.We discuss the key interrelationships among these concepts, and study their implementational aspects, both in traditional individual agents, and in agents that are recursively created as systems of other agents.We close with a discussion of the key research challenges.This is a considerably revised version of a DFKI Technical Memo.Parts of it were presented at a panel discussion at the 1991 AAAI Fall Symposium on Knowledge and Action at the Social and Organizational Levels.An invited presentation in a panel on Agents and Commitments at the 1995