Showing papers by "Munindar P. Singh published in 1992"

A critical examination of the Cohen-Levesque theory of intentions

Abstract: We examine the formal theory of intentions recently proposed by Cohen & Levesque 2]. We evaluate the assumptions made by this theory and their consequences relative to fairly general intuitions about intentions, especially as they are applied in AI domains. We show that the theory is conceptually problematic and that certain technical claims made by the authors are false or counterintuitive in most natural scenarios. Keywords: intentions, logic in AI.

On the semantics of protocols among distributed intelligent agents

Abstract: A theory of the interaction among agents and a formal semantics for their interactions are presented. The semantics of the messages exchanged, not the process of exchanging them, is emphasized. A recent theory of communication that gives the object model-theoretic semantics for speech acts is applied to this problem. This allows the important properties of protocols to be formalized abstractly, i.e. at the level of the application, not of the implementation. Further constraints on good designs can also be stated, which simplify the requirements imposed on the member agents. The resulting theory not only provides some insights into designing distributed intelligence systems, but also helps in their validation. As an example, it is applied to a logical reconstruction of the classical Contract Net protocol. >

Computing the temporal structure of events in natural language

Abstract: A key step in Natural Language Process- ing is creating representations of sentences and dis- courses. Sentences describe states and events. Thus a crucial component of semantically interpreting them is determining the temporal structure of the events they describe. We present a general and declarative approach to doing so. This approach is based on an algebraic semantics of events and objects. Keywords: situation type, aspect, events.