Steps Toward Building a Dynamic Memory

Abstract

Al researchers have come to precious few agreements about their field, but there is at least one area where we have reached consensus: AI programs require vast amounts of knowledge, organized in a manner that facilitates its use. Not only must such a memory be able to retrieve relevant information for a wide variety of tasks, but it must be able to add to and modify itself: no useful body of knowledge is ever complete and unchanging. An expanding system of knowledge, organized to facilitate retrieval for a variety of disparate tasks will be referred to here as a dynamic memory [319] The diversity of recall strategies is an important constraint on the organization of knowledge in the system. The categories that are used to identify similar memories may differ from task to task. New connections between categories or between primitives and categories may be required for different strategies. It is an important goal of the memory building system to prepare for different kinds of recall. A good design for one type of recall may interfere with the design for another. Designing for many types of recall tasks can place very strong demands on a storage system, thereby directing the evolution of the system.