Knowledge Level Learning in Soar

Book One

Volume

Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 6

Machine Learning and Knowledge Acquisition

In this article we demonstrate how knowledge level learning can be performed within the Soar architecture. That is, we demonstrate how Soar can acquire new knowledge that is not deductively implied by its existing knowledge. This demonstration employs Soar’s chunking mechanism-a mechanism which acquires new productions from goal-baaed experience-as its only learning mechanism. Chunking has previously been demonstrated to be a useful symbol level learning mechanism, able to speed up the performance of existing systems, but this is the first demonstration of its ability to perform knowledge level learning. Two simple declarative-memory tasks are employed for this demonstration: recognition and recall.