Specifying and Resolving Temporal Commitments

Abstract

Commitments are a powerful representation for modeling multiagent protocols, especially for applications such as electronic commerce, where contracts are a natural component of the desired interactions. Previous approaches have considered the semantics of commitments and how to check compliance with them. However, these approaches, although valuable, do not capture some of the subtleties that arise in applications of commitments in real-life settings. In particular, practical contracts and institutions have subtle temporal properties. The present thesis develops a rich representation for the temporal content of commitments. This enables us to capture realistic contracts and institutions rigorously, and avoid subtle ambiguities. Consequently, this approach enables us to reason about questions of great practical import, for example, whether and when exactly a commitment is satisfied or breached and whether it is or ever becomes unenforceable.