[mod.ai] Seminar - Programming Descriptive Analogies by Example

FAWCETT@RED.RUTGERS.EDU (Tom Fawcett) (11/09/86)

On Tuesday November 25th, Henry Lieberman of MIT will speak on 
"Programming Descriptive Analogies by Example".  The abstract follows.
(The exact time will be decided later - it will probably be 
10 AM in Hill-250.)

                Programming Descriptive Analogies By Example

                              Henry Lieberman
                     Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
                   Massachusetts Institute of Technology


This paper describes a system for "programming by analogy", called Likewise.
Using this new approach to interactive knowledge acquisition, a programmer
presents specific examples and points out which aspects of the examples are
"slippable" to more general situations.  The system constructs a general
rule which can then be applied to "analogous" examples.  Given a new
example, the system can then construct an analogy with the old example by
trying to instantiate new descriptions which correspond to the descriptions
constructed for the first example.  If a new example doesn't fit an old
concept exactly, a concept can be generalized or specialized incrementally
to make the analogy go through.  Midway between "programming by example" and
inductive inference programs, Likewise attacks the more modest goal of being
able to communicate to the computer an analogy which is already understood
by a person.  Its operation on a typical concept learning task is presented
in detail.