Abstraction in Artificial Intelligence and Complex Systems

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Springer Science & Business Media, Jun 5, 2013 - Computers - 484 pages
Abstraction is a fundamental mechanism underlying both human and artificial perception, representation of knowledge, reasoning and learning. This mechanism plays a crucial role in many disciplines, notably Computer Programming, Natural and Artificial Vision, Complex Systems, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Art, and Cognitive Sciences. This book first provides the reader with an overview of the notions of abstraction proposed in various disciplines by comparing both commonalities and differences. After discussing the characterizing properties of abstraction, a formal model, the KRA model, is presented to capture them. This model makes the notion of abstraction easily applicable by means of the introduction of a set of abstraction operators and abstraction patterns, reusable across different domains and applications. It is the impact of abstraction in Artificial Intelligence, Complex Systems and Machine Learning which creates the core of the book. A general framework, based on the KRA model, is presented, and its pragmatic power is illustrated with three case studies: Model-based diagnosis, Cartographic Generalization, and learning Hierarchical Hidden Markov Models.
 

Contents

1 Introduction
2
2 Abstraction in Different Disciplines
11
3 Abstraction in Artificial Intelligence
49
4 Definitions of Abstraction
64
5 Boundaries of Abstraction
117
6 The KRA Model
141
7 Abstraction Operators and Design Patterns
178
8 Properties of the rrr Model
223
13 Conclusion
407
Appendix AConcrete Art Manifesto
413
Appendix BCartographic Results for Roads
415
Appendix CRelational Algebra
417
Appendix DBasic Notion of First Order Logics
421
Appendix EAbstraction Operators
426
Appendix FAbstraction Patterns
441
Appendix GAbstraction of Michalskis Train Problem
443

9 Abstraction in Machine Learning
273
10 Simplicity Complex Systems and Abstraction
328
11 Case Studies and Applications
363
12 Discussion
389
Appendix HColor Figures
445
References
455
Index
479
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