CMSC 491M/691M - Spring 2003

Discussion Questions for Class #11, March 3

Reading: Wooldridge, Geoorgeff et al.

What is the difference between a desire and an intention?
Discuss the key roles of intentions (Wooldridge p. 25).
What are intention-belief inconsistency and intention-belief incompleteness? Do you think that people exhibit these behaviors in their reasoning? Do you think that agents ever should?
What are the limitations of the simple control loop in Wooldridge's Figure 2.1?
What is the difference between a plan and an intention in Wooldridge's framework? What's the difference (if any) between an intention and a goal in AI planning?
The notion of a commitment is useful for at least two things: (1) interacting with other agents (e.g., in joint intentions theory, which we'll discuss later in the semester) and (2) validating agent designs (i.e., ensuring that agents really do what they decide to do). But are they really useful for building agents, or are they just nice theoretical constructs?
Are the commitment strategies listed on pages 33-34 sufficiently rich to represent the range of possible commitment strategies? Discuss commitment (and commitment strategies) in some real-world environments.
Do the results of the bold vs. cautious agent experiments tell us anything non-obvious? Can you think of a more useful experimental design for exploring the behavior of different commitment strategies?
Do you think that the "intentional stance" vs. "design stance" distinction is similar to the cognitive vs. behaviorist approaches in psychology?

After reading the discussion by the "experts," what do you think are the key limitations, strengths, and research directions for BDI?
What is the role of BDI as related to more computational approaches such as Prodigy and Soar?