Semantical Considerations on Some Primitives for Agent Specification

. Intelligent agents, invented in artificial intelligence (AI), are finding application in a number of traditional areas. Classical AI notions such as knowledge and intentions can serve as natural primitives for the specification of agents. However, in order for them to live up to their promise, these notions must be given rigorous definitions. We propose formal definitions for intentions, knowledge, and know-how in a general model of actions and time. Our definitions are conceptually simple and are designed to be modular, in the sense of being orthogonal to one another. Using these definitions, we are able to prove a success result for agents that is akin to the notion of liveness in traditional computing. Others have been able to prove similar results only with the support of rather strong additional assumptions. 1 Introduction Agents have garnered much research interest of late. Like many previous artificial intelligence (AI) ideas, as agent technology matures, it is moving into mo..

Contributions to an anthropological approach to the cultural adaptation of migrant agents

This thesis proposes the use of Cultural Anthropology as a source of inspiration for solutions to the problem of adaptation of autonomous, intelligent, computational agents that migrate to societies of agents with distinctive features from the ones of the society where those agents were originally conceived. This has implications for interoperation of disparate Multi-Agent Systems. In particular, the cognitive approach to anthropology is argued to be a suitable theoretical foun-dation for this topic. Fieldwork practice in social anthropology is also indicated as an useful source of ideas. A pragmatic theory of intensionality is incorporated in this anthropological approach, resulting in a mechanism that allows agents to ascribe intensional ontologies of terms to societies that use unfamiliar means of communication; also, taxonomical relations among the terms in such ontologies can be retrieved, by means of a process inspired by the counterpart activity of ethnographers. This is presented using the Z notation for formal specification of systems, and illustrated on a set of terms from the game of cricket. Subsequently, a simulation of a game of cricket is described where one of the players is unfamiliar with the game, and therefore needs to learn the game by observing the other players. A reasonable behaviour for such a player is obtained, and the simulation offers grounds for further anthropologically-based studies. Further, a study of theories of moral sentiments is presented, and the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma is used in simulations based on those ideas. The results of the simulations show clearly the positive impact, on groups of agents, of altruistic behaviour; this can only be coherently obtained in autonomous agents by modelling emotions, which are relevant for this project as anthropologists recognise them as an essential cross-cultural link. Finally, the consequences of this project to conceptions of Distributed Artificial Intelligence are discussed