Context -sensitive asynchronous memory: A general experience-based method for managing information access in cognitive agents

Retrieving useful answers from large knowledge bases given under-specified questions is an important problem in the construction of general intelligent agents. The core of this problem is how to get the information an agent needs when it doesn't know how to ask the right question and doesn't have the time to exhaustively search all available information.;Context-sensitive asynchronous memory is a model of memory retrieval that solves this problem. The context-sensitive asynchronous memory approach exploits feedback from the task and environment to guide and constrain memory search by interleaving memory retrieval and problem solving. To achieve this behavior, a context-sensitive asynchronous memory uses an asynchronous retrieval system to manage a context-sensitive search process operating over a content-addressable knowledge base. Solutions based on this approach provide useful answers to vague questions efficiently, based on information naturally available during the performance of a task.;The core claims of this approach are: Claim 1: An efficient, domain-independent solution to the problem of retrieving useful answers from large knowledge bases given under-specified queries is to interleave memory retrieval with task performance and use feedback from the task or environment to guide the search of memory. Claim 2: Interleaving memory retrieval with and exploiting feedback from task performance can be achieved in a domain-independent way using a context-sensitive, asynchronous memory retrieval process. Claim 3: A rich, reified, grounded semantic network representation enables context-sensitive memory retrieval processes to retrieve useful information in a domain-independent way for a wide variety of tasks. Claim 4: To effectively use a context-sensitive asynchronous memory to retrieve useful answers, a task must be able to work in parallel with a memory process, communicate with it, provide feedback to it, and must possess integration mechanisms to incorporate asynchronous retrievals provided by the memory.;The context-sensitive asynchronous memory approach is applicable to tasks and domains which exhibit the following criteria: problems are difficult to solve, questions are difficult to formulate, a large knowledge base is available yet contains only a small selection of relevant information, and, most importantly, the environment is regular, in that solutions in the knowledge base occur in patterns and relationships similar to those found in situations in which the solutions are likely to be applicable in the future. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).