Learning to Search. From Weak Methods to Domain-Specific Heuristics.

Abstract

Learning from experience involves three distinct components - generating behavior, assigning credit, and modifying behavior. This document discusses these components in the context of learning search heuristics, along with the types of learning that can occur. The author then focus on SAGE, a system that improves its search strategies with practice. The program is implemented as a production system, and learns by creating and strengthening rules for proposing moves. SAGE incorporates five different heuristics for assigning credit and blame, and employs a discrimination process to direct its search through the space of rules. The system has shown its generality by learning heuristics for directing search in six different task domains. In addition to improving its search behavior on practice problems, SAGE is able to transfer its expertise to scaled-up versions of a task, and in one case transfers its acquired search strategy to problems with different initial and goal states. Originator-supplied key words include: Artificial intelligence, SAGE Computer program, Tower of Hanoi.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1984
Accession Number
ADA149949

Entities

People

  • P. Langley

Organizations

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Acquisition
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Classification
  • Cognitive Science
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Contrast
  • Detectors
  • Discrimination
  • Law
  • Learning
  • Production
  • Psychology
  • Standards
  • Trees (Data Structures)

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Artificial Intelligence

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Machine Learning Algorithms
  • Space