Promises, Impositions, and other Directionals

TL;DR

This paper analyzes voluntary co-operational methods called directionals, focusing on promises and impositions, and models their dynamics, trust, and credibility updates through detailed examples involving autonomous agents and human behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a formal notation for expressing residual fragments of directionals and demonstrates their dynamics with extensive examples, including trust and credibility updates.

Findings

Trust and credibility levels influence promise and imposition handling.

Formal notation captures residual fragments of directionals.

Examples illustrate dynamics in autonomous and human-agent interactions.

Abstract

Promises, impositions, proposals, predictions, and suggestions are categorized as voluntary co-operational methods. The class of voluntary co-operational methods is included in the class of so-called directionals. Directionals are mechanisms supporting the mutual coordination of autonomous agents. Notations are provided capable of expressing residual fragments of directionals. An extensive example, involving promises about the suitability of programs for tasks imposed on the promisee is presented. The example illustrates the dynamics of promises and more specifically the corresponding mechanism of trust updating and credibility updating. Trust levels and credibility levels then determine the way certain promises and impositions are handled. The ubiquity of promises and impositions is further demonstrated with two extensive examples involving human behaviour: an artificial example about an agent planning a purchase, and a realistic example describing technology mediated interaction concerning the solution of pay station failure related problems arising for an agent intending to leave the parking area.