A retrospective view of the Hearsay-II architecture

  • Authors:

  • Victor R. Lesser;Lee D. Erman

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Mass., Amherst, Mass. and Department of Computer Science, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Mass., Amherst, Mass. and Department of Computer Science, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

  • Venue:
  • IJCAI'77 Proceedings of the 5th international joint conference on Artificial intelligence - Volume 2
  • Year:
  • 1977

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Abstract

The Hearsay model has heen presented as a paradigm for attacking errorful knowledge-intensive problems requiring multiple, cooperating knowledge sources. The Hearsay-II architecture is the latest attempt to explore the model. This paper describes experiences gained while successfully applying this architecture to the problem of speech understanding. The major conclusions are: 1. The paradigm of viewing problem solving in terms of hypothesize-and-test actions distributed among distinct representations of the problem has been shown to be computationally feasible. 2. A global working memory (the "blackboard"), in which the distinct representations are integrated in a uniform manner, has made it convenient to construct and integrate the individual sources of knowledge needed for the problem solution. 3. The use of a uniform data-directed structure for controlling knowledge-source activity has made the system easy to understand and modify. 4. A solution has been demonstrated to the problem of focus-of-attention in this type of control environment. This solution does not need to be modified when the sources of knowledge in the system are changed.