SAMY@gmr.COM ("R. Uthurusamy") (01/05/88)
Seminar at the General Motors Research Laboratories in Warren, Michigan. Wednesday, January 20, 1988 at 10 a.m. RECOVERY FROM INCORRECT KNOWLEDGE IN SOAR JOHN E. LAIRD Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Dept. The University of Michigan ABSTRACT: In previous work, we have demonstrated some of the generality of Soar's problem solving and learning capabilities. We even gone so far as to hypothesize that the simple learning mechanism in Soar, chunking, combined with its general problem solving capabilities, is sufficient for all cognitive learning. This is a radical hypothesis especially when we consider Soar's difficulty with recovery from incorrect knowledge. Soar acquires incorrect knowledge whenever it chunks over invalid inductive inferences made during problem solving. Recovery requires some form of identification and correction of the incorrect knowledge. Recovery is complicated in Soar by the fact that we have made the following assumptions: chunking is the only learning mechanism; long-term knowledge, represented as production rules, is only added, never forgotten, modified or replaced; and the productions are not open for direct examination by the learning mechanism or the problem solver. In this talk I will review chunking in Soar and present recent results in developing a domain-independent approach for the recovery from incorrect knowledge in Soar. This approach does not require any change to the Soar architecture, but uses chunking to learn rules that overcome the incorrect knowledge. The key is to use the problem solving to deliberately reconsider decisions that might be in error. If a decision is found to be incorrect, the problem solving corrects it and a new chunk is learned that will correct the decision in the future. Non-GMR personnel interested in attending this seminar please contact R. Uthurusamy [ samy@gmr.com ] 313-986-1989 -------------------------------------------