From: AAAI-02 Proceedings. Copyright © 2002, AAAI (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. Development and Deployment of a Disciple Agent for Center of Gravity Analysis Gheorghe Tecuci1,2, Mihai Boicu1, Dorin Marcu1, Bogdan Stanescu1, Cristina Boicu1, Jerry Comello2, Antonio Lopez2, James Donlon1,2, William Cleckner2 1 Learning Agents Laboratory, Computer Science Department, MS 4A5, George Mason University, 4400 University Dr, Fairfax, VA 22030 {tecuci, mboicu, dmarcu, bstanesc, ccascava}@gmu.edu, http://lalab.gmu.edu 2 Center for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College, 650 Wright Ave, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013 ComelloJ@awc.carlisle.army.mil, tlopez@xula.edu, james.donlon@us.army.mil, william.cleckner@csl.carlisle.army.mil Abstract This paper presents new significant advances in the Disciple approach for building knowledge-based systems by subject matter experts. It describes the innovative application of this approach to the development of an agent for the analysis of strategic centers of gravity in military conflicts. This application has been deployed in several courses at the US Army War College, and its use has been evaluated. The presented results are those of a multi-faceted research and development effort that synergistically integrates research in Artificial Intelligence, Center of Gravity analysis, and practical deployment of an agent into Education. 1 Introduction The Learning Agents Laboratory of George Mason University is developing a theory, methodology and a family of tools, called the Disciple approach, for building instructable knowledge-based systems or agents (Tecuci 1998). This effort directly addresses the knowledge acquisition bottleneck which we consider to be one of the major barriers in the development and maintenance of Artificial Intelligence applications. The Disciple approach relies on a powerful learning agent shell that can be trained to solve problems by a subject matter expert, requiring only limited assistance from a knowledge engineer. As an expert system shell (Clancey 1984), the Disciple learning agent shell includes a general problem solving engine that can be reused for multiple applications. In addition, it includes a multistrategy learning engine for building the knowledge base through a mixed-initiative interaction with the subject matter expert. As the Disciple approach evolved, we have developed a series of increasingly advanced learning agent shells forming the Disciple family. The most recent family member, Disciple-RKF, represents a significant advancement over its predecessors: Disciple-WA (Tecuci et al. 1999) and Disciple-COA (Tecuci et al. 2001). All these three systems were developed as part of the “High Copyright © 2002, American Association for Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. Performance Knowledge Bases” and “Rapid Knowledge Formation” programs supported by DARPA and AFOSR (Burke 1999). Both programs emphasized the use of innovative challenge problems to focus and evaluate the research and development efforts. Disciple-RKF is the result of a multi-objective collaboration between the Learning Agent Laboratory of George Mason University and the Center for Strategic Leadership of the US Army War College that synergistically integrates research in Artificial Intelligence (AI), with research in military Center of Gravity (COG) analysis (Clausewitz 1832), and the practical use of agents in education. The AI research objective is to develop the technology that will enable subject matter experts who do not have computer science or knowledge engineering experience to develop instructable agents that incorporate their problem solving expertise. The COG research objective is to clarify and formalize the process of the identification of the centers of gravity for enemy and friendly forces at the strategic and operational levels of war, and to enable the development of an intelligent assistant for solving this complex problem. Finally, the educational objective is to enhance the educational process of senior military officers through the use of intelligent agent technology. Each of these three objectives is recognized as important and difficult in its own right. Our experience with addressing them together in a synergistic manner has resulted in faster progress in each of them. Moreover, it offers a new perspective on how to combine research in AI, with research in a specialized domain, and with the development and deployment of prototype systems in education and practice. The paper presents the current status of this research and development effort. The next section presents the COG challenge problem. This is followed by an end-user perspective on the developed Disciple-RKF/COG agent. Section 4 presents an overview of the Disciple-RKF shell and its use to build the Disciple-RKF/COG agent, emphasizing its new capabilities with respect to the previous Disciple shells. Then section 5 discusses the deployment and evaluation of Disciple in two courses at the US Army War College, “Case Studies in Center of Gravity IAAI-02 853 Analysis,” and “Military Applications of Artificial Intelligence.” The paper concludes with a summary of the synergistic aspects of this collaborative work. 2 The Center of Gravity Problem The military literature distinguishes between three levels of conflicts: a strategic level focusing on winning wars, an operational level focusing on winning campaigns, and a tactical level focusing on winning battles. One of the most difficult problems that senior military leaders face at the strategic level is the determination and analysis of the centers of gravity for friendly and opposing forces. Originally introduced by Clausewitz in his classical work “On War” (1832), the center of gravity is now understood as representing “those characteristics, capabilities, or localities from which a military force derives its freedom of action, physical strength, or will to fight” (Department of the Army 2001). A combatant should eliminate or influence the enemy’s strategic center of gravity, while adequately protecting its own (Giles and Galvin 1996). Correctly identifying the centers of gravity of the opposing forces is of highest importance in any conflict. Therefore, in the education of strategic leaders at all the US senior military service colleges, there is a great emphasis on the center of gravity analysis (Strange 1996). COG determination requires a wide range of background knowledge, not only from the military domain, but also from the economic, geographic, political, demographic, historic, international, and other domains. In addition, the situation, the adversaries involved, their goals, and their capabilities can vary in important ways from one scenario to another. When performing this analysis, experts rely on their own professional experience and intuitions, without following a rigorous approach. Recognizing these difficulties, the Center for Strategic Leadership of the US Army War College started in 1993 an effort to elicit and formalize the knowledge of a number of experts in center of gravity. This research resulted in a COG monograph (Giles and Galvin 1996), which provided a basis for the application of Disciple to this high value application domain, and to the development of the Disciple-RKF/COG instructable agent presented in the next section. 3 A Disciple Agent for COG Analysis Disciple-RKF/COG is an agent used in the US Army War College course titled “Case Studies in Center of Gravity Analysis.” In this course Disciple-RKF/COG supports the students to develop a center of gravity analysis report for a war scenario. First, a personal copy of Disciple-RKF/COG guides the student to identify, study and describe the aspects of a scenario (such as the 1945 US invasion of the island of Okinawa) that are relevant for COG analysis. The studentagent interaction takes place as illustrated in Figure 1. The left part of the window is a table of contents, whose elements indicate various aspects of the scenario. When the student selects one such aspect, Disciple asks specific questions intended to acquire from the student a description Figure 1: Scenario specification interface 854 IAAI-02 of that aspect, or to update a previously specified description. All the answers are in natural language. Taking the Okinawa_1945 scenario as our example, Disciple starts by asking for a name and a description of the scenario, and then asks for the opposing forces. Once the student indicates Japan_1945 and US_1945 as opposing forces, Disciple includes them in the table of contents, together with their characteristics that the student needs to specify (see the left hand side of Figure 1). Then, the student may click on any of these aspects (e.g. “Industrial capacity” under “Economic factors” of Japan_1945) and the agent guides the student in specifying it. The student’s specification may prompt additional questions from Disciple, and a further expansion of the table of contents. An orange, yellow, or white circle marks each title in the table of contents, indicating respectively that all, some, or none of the corresponding questions of Disciple have been answered. The student is not required to answer all the questions and Disciple can be asked, at any time, to identify and test the strategic center of gravity candidates for the current specification of the scenario. The right hand side of Figure 2 shows some of the solutions generated by Disciple for the Okinawa_1945 scenario. Each solution identifies an entity as a strategic COG candidate and then indicates whether or not it can be eliminated. In the case of Japan_1945, some of the identified strategic center of gravity candidates are Emperor Hirohito, Japanese Imperial General Staff, the industrial capacity of Japan, and the military of Japan. When a solution is selected in the right hand side of the problem solving interface, its justification, at various levels of abstractions, is displayed in the left hand side. The left-hand side of Figure 2 shows the detailed justification for the identification and testing of Emperor Hirohito as a strategic COG candidate. Disciple uses the task reduction paradigm to perform the top level problem solving task: “Identify and test a strategic COG candidate for the Okinawa_1945 scenario.” To perform this task, Disciple asks itself a series of questions. The answer of each question allows Disciple to reduce the current task to a simpler one, until Disciple has enough information to first identify a strategic COG candidate, and then to determine whether it should be eliminated or not. Emperor Hirohito is identified as a strategic COG candidate for Japan_1945 in the Okinawa_1945 scenario because, as the feudal god-king of Japan, he is its main controlling element. After being identified as a candidate, Emperor Hirohito is analyzed based on various elimination tests, but he passes all of them. Because the people of Japan see him as divine, and his will is actually their will, Emperor Hirohito could impose them to accept the unconditional surrender of Japan, which is the main strategic goal of the US. As god-king of Japan and commander in chief of the military, he can also impose his will on the military of Japan. Also, as head of the government, he can impose the government of Japan to accept unconditional surrender. Being able to impose his will on the Clausewitz’s trinity of power (people, military and government), Emperor Hirohito is very likely to be the strategic center of gravity of Japan in 1945. Figure 2: The problem solving interface of Disciple-RKF/COG IAAI-02 855 As another example, consider the industrial capacity of Japan_1945, which is another source of strength, power and resistance because it produces the war materiel and transports of Japan. Disciple, however, eliminates this strategic COG candidate, because the military and the people of Japan_1945 are determined to fight to death and not surrender even with diminished war materiel and transports. In the example scenario portrayed here, Disciple eliminates all but two candidates for Japan -- Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese Imperial General Staff -- and suggests that the student should select one of them as the strategic Center of Gravity of Japan in 1945. It is important to point out that this example is only a representative approach to the analysis of Japan’s center of gravity for the Okinawa campaign. We recognize that subject matter experts often differ in their judgments as to the identification and analysis of center of gravity candidates for any particular scenario. The important point for agent development is that the Disciple agent can accommodate the preferences of the expert who teaches it. To our knowledge, this is the first time that an intelligent agent for the strategic COG identification and testing has been developed. More details about its specific use in the COG and MAAI classes are presented in section 4. 4 Agent Development with Disciple-RKF The Disciple-RKF/COG agent presented in the previous section was developed by using the Disciple-RKF learning agent shell, as will be described in this section. DiscipleRKF consists of an integrated set of knowledge acquisition, learning and problem solving modules for a generic knowledge base having two main components: an object ontology that defines the concepts from a specific application domain, and a set of task reduction rules expressed with these concepts. Disciple-RKF represents a significant evolution compared to the previous Disciple shells. It implements more powerful knowledge representation and reasoning mechanisms, and has an improved interface that facilitates mixed-initiative reasoning. Even more significantly, Disciple-RKF incorporates new modules that allow a subject matter expert to perform additional knowledge engineering tasks, such as scenario specification, modeling of his problem solving process, and task formalization. In general, the process of developing a specific knowledge-based agent with Disciple-RKF consists of two major stages: 1) the development of the object ontology by the knowledge engineer and the subject matter expert, and 2) the training of Disciple by the subject matter expert. In the first development stage, a knowledge engineer works with a subject matter expert to specify the type of problems to be solved by the Disciple agent, to clarify how these problems could be solved using Disciple’s task reduction paradigm, and to develop an object ontology. A fragment of the object ontology developed for the COG domain is shown in Figure 3. The object ontology 856 IAAI-02 <object> Scenario Major_theater_ of_war_scenario Agent Force_goal Small_scale_ contigency_scenario Controlling_element Strategic_COG_relevant_factor Political_factor Governing_body Other_relevant_factor Economic_factor Geographic_factor Established_governing_body Ad_hoc_ governing_body Resource_or_ infrastructure_element Historic_factor Demographic_factor Military_factor Civilization_factor Psychosocial_factor State_government Group_ governing_body Other_type_of_ governing_body Other_political_ factor International_ factor Figure 3: A fragment of the COG object ontology consists of hierarchical descriptions of objects and features, represented as frames, according to the knowledge model of the Open Knowledge Base Connectivity (OKBC) protocol (Chaudhri et al. 1998). Disciple-RKF includes several types of ontology browsers and editors that facilitate the ontology development process. The careful design and development of the object ontology is of utmost importance because it is used by Disciple as its generalization hierarchy for learning. A new capability of Disciple-RKF is that ontology development includes the definition of elicitation scripts for objects and features. These scripts guide the expert to define the instances that occur in a scenario (such as Okinawa_1945 or Emperor Hirohito, as illustrated in Section 3). Figure 4 shows the elicitation scripts associated with the “Scenario” object. The top script specifies the question to be asked by Disciple to elicit the name of the scenario, how the user’s answer should be used to update the ontology, what other scripts should be called after updating the ontology, and even the appearance of the Scenario elicitation_scripts Script: Elicit instances of Scenario Control: Question: “Provide a name for the scenario to be analyzed:” Answer variable: <scenario-name> Default value: new-scenario Control type: single-line Ontology action: <scenario-name> instance-of Scenario Script calls: Elicit the superconcepts of the instance <scenario-name> of Scenario Elicit the features of the instance <scenario-name> of Scenario Script: Elicit the superconcepts of the instance <scenario-name> of Scenario Control: Question: “What kind of scenario is” <scenario-name> “?” Answer variable: <scenario-type> Default value: Major_theater_of_war_scenario Control type: single-selection-list Possible values: the elementary subconcepts of Scenario Ontology action: <scenario-name> instance-of <scenario-type> Script: Elicit the features of the instance <scenario-name> of Scenario Script calls: Elicit the feature brief_description for <scenario-name> Elicit the feature description for <scenario-name> Elicit the feature has_as_opposing_force for <scenario-name> Figure 4: Sample elicitation scripts <object> Scenario Force Force_goal Strategic_COG_relevant_factor resource_ or_ infrastructure_element Strategic_ Operational_ goal goal Other_relevant_factor Demographic_factor Civilization_factor Psychosocial_factor Economic_factor Historical_factor Geographical_factor International_factor Object ontology Political_factor Military_factor Scenario specification Modeling Task and rule learning Task and rule refinement Problem solving <object> Object ontology Scenario Force Force_goal Other_relevant_factor Civilization_factor Psychosocial_factor Economic_factor Historical_factor Geographical_factor insta nc e_ of Scenarios (elicited) resource_ or_ 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Anglo_allies ?O2 has_ as_industrial_fac tor ?O3 Conclude ?O2 has_as _ind ustrial_fac tor ?O3 ?O3 IS _1943 Indus ctor ?O3apacity_of_US_ IS _1943 Industrial_fa IS Industrial_capacity _of_U S_ 1943 ?O3 IS Indust rial_c 1943ctor candidatefor a state?O2 whichISis aUS member ofa_ma aforc eForc for a state?O2 whichISis aUS mem be?O ris_ of2a_ma a forc eForce ISjor_ge e is_a_ ISjor_ _1943?O2 _1943 expla nat ion tion is_ nerator_of ?O4 ge nerator_of ?O4 ?O3 major_ ge nerator_of ?O4 candidate ?O3 isexplana _a_m ajor_genera tor_of ?O4 is_a_ma jor_generator_of ?O4 THEN is ?O2is_a_major_generator_of P la?O4 us ible Upper Bo und Condition THEN Pla usCondition ible Upper Bound Condition Plausible Lower Bo und Condition Plausible Lower Bound has_a s_industrial_fac tor ?O3 has_a s_industrial_fac tor ?O3 Thestate?O4 The state is ? O2 has _as_ industrial_ factor ?O3 has _as_ in dustrial_ factor ?O3 ?O 2 has_as _indus trial_fac tor ?O3 ?O2 ha3s_a s_ind ustriateriel l_f actor ?O4 ISUS strate gically_essential_ goods_or_materiel ?O4 ISUS stra tegic ally_e ssentia l_goo ds_?O3 or_materiel ?O4 ISglo_a ntial_goods_o _materiel ?O4 IS _ess ential_goods_o_ma IS Wa r_omic mate and_transports _of_ _19 43 ?O4 ISan Wa r_materiel_ and_transports _194 Conclude t an econ fact or is Strate astrategic C_esse OG Conclude ec?O1 onomic r is3aStrategically strate gic COG ?O1 IS Force ?O1 IS_of_ Force ?O1 ISriel_ An lliesgically _1943 ISfacto Anglo_allies The forceistha ?O1 forceisthat ?O1 ?O3 IS Industrial_fac ?O IS _1943 Industrial_fa ?O3 IS Indust rial_capacity_of_US _1943 ?O3 IS Industrial_cap acity_of_US_ 1943 ?O3 tor is_a_major_generator_of ?O4 The ?O3ctor is_a_major_generator_of ?O4 candidatefor a state?O2 which membe r ofa_ma a forc eForce candidate for astate?O2 whichISisaUS member ofa_ma aforce ISjor_ ISjor_ Force ISis aUS _1943?O2 _1943?O2 is_ ge nerator_of ?O4 is_ ge ne ?O4_essential_goods_or_materiel Theeconomic ?O3major_gene The eco nomic isis_a_ ?O3major_generator_of THENfactor isis_a_ Plausible Bound Condition THstate EN Plaus ible Urator_of pper Bound rator_of ?O4 ?O4 ?O 4Upper IS strategic ally_ es sential_goods_ or_m aterie l factor ?O4 ISstrategically Plausible Lower Bound Condition Pla_as_ usible Lower Bound Co ndition has_a s_industrial_fa ctor ?O3 has_a s_ind ustrial_fac torCondition ?O3 The state is ?O2 The is ?O2 has _as_ industrial_factor ?of_US O3esse_194 has industrial_ factor ?O3 ?O4 IS is aStrate teriel ?O 4 Anglo_allies_ ISisaStrate gically _esse ntial_goods_o_ma teriel ?O4 IS Wa r_materiel_ and_transports_ 3 ?O4 IS Wa r_materiel_ and_tran sports US_194 3 Conclude t an economic or strategic Conc lude t an econom ic strategic COG ?O1gically_ IS COG Forcential_goods_o_ma ?O1 IS_of_ Force ?O1 ISfact Anglo_allies _1943 ?O1 ISfactor 1943 The forceistha ?O1 The forc e istha ?O1 ?O3apacity_of_US IS Industrial_fa ?O3 ISity_of_ Indu strial_fa ?O3 IS Indust rial_c _1943ctor ?O3 IS Industrial_capac US_ 1943ctor Pla ibleUpper Bound Condition Plaus ible Upper Bound Condition IS us ?O2 IS candidate forfac a state whic hISis aUS mem ber?O2 ofa_ma a forc eForce candidate forfac astate whic hISisaUS membe risof ama fo rc eForce ?O2 _1943 ?O2 _1943 The economic tor is ?O3major_generator_of The economic tor is ?O3 is_ jor_ generator_of ?O4 _a_ jor_ generator_of ?O4 THEN THEN is_a_ ?O4 is_ a_major_generato r_o f ?O1 ?O4 Plausible Lowe r Bound Condition Plaus ible Lower Bound Condition ?O ISindust Force ISindus Force The state is ?O2 Thestateis ?O2 has1_as_ rial_factor ?O3 teriel has_gically as_ trial_factor ?O3 has _as_ industrial_ ?O3 has _as _indu strial_ facto rorts ?O3 ?O4 ISisaSfactor trategically _ess ?O4 IS _esse o_materiel ?O4thaIS Wa r_materiel_ and_transports USential_goods_o_ma _1943 ?O4 ISan War_ materiel_ and_transp _of_ US_ntial_goods_ 1943 Conclud t an econom ic strate gic COG Conclude ec?O1 onom ic or is Strate astrategic Ctria OG ?O1 ISfactor Anglo_allies ISfactAnglo_allies _19 ?O IS_of_ Force ?O2_of_U IS43 Force The forcee is ?O1 The forceisthat ?O1 ?O3 acity_of_US_ IS 2_1943 Indust rial_fac tor ?O3 IS Indus l_factor ?O3 IS In dustrial_cap 1943 ?O3 IS Industrial_capacity S_ 1943 candidate for astate?O2 which isaUS mem be3r of aforce candidatefor a state?O2 which is aUS member of aforc e_as _194 _1943is_ has_a s_industrial_fac has _indu strial_factor The economic is ?O3IS Theeconomic factor is?O3IS is_a_m ajor_gene rator_of tor ?O4 ?O3 a_ma jor_ge nerator_of ?O4 ?O3 TH ENfactor THEN ?O4 ?O4 Pla_as_ usible Lower Bound Co ndition Plausible Lower Bou nd Condition The state is ?O2is_a_major_generator_of The stateis ?O2is_a_major_generator_of has industrial_ factor ?O3essential_goods_o_m has _as_ indus trial_ fa ?O3 ?O ISsports Industrial_fa ctor ?O3 ISctor Indus trial_ ?O4 ISis3aStrateg ic ally_ ateriel ?O4 IS gic ally ntial_goods_o _materiel ?O4 IS Wa r_materiel_ and_tran _of_ US_194 3 IS Wa r_omic mate and_transports _of_ USfactor _19 43 Conc lude t an econom ic factor strategic COG Conclude t an econ fact or is Strate astrategic C_esse OG ?O1 IS Anglo_allies_ 1943 ?O1 ISriel_ An glo_allies _1943 The force istha ?O1 The force?O4 istha ?O1 ?O3 IS Industrial_capac ity_of_US_ge 1943 ?O3 IS Industrial_capacity_o f_U S_1943 ajor_g candidate for astatewhic hISisaUS membe ris_ ofa_major_ aforce nerator_of ?O4 candidateforfactor a state which membe ris of_a_m a forc e enerator_of ?O4 _1943 ?O2 ISis aUS _1943 The econo mic ?O3 is ?O3major_ge is_ a_major_generato of ?O4 is_a_ nerator_of ?O4 TH ENfactor is?O2 THEN Plausible B ound Plausible Lower Condition ?O 4Lower ISr_l_ Strate _essential_goods_o_materiel Theeconomic ?O4 IS Bound Strategically_es Thestateis ?O2 The state is ?O2 ha s_as_ industria factogically rCondition ?O3 has _as_ industrial_factor ?O3 sential_goods_o_materiel ?O4 ISan War_ materiel_ and_transp orts _of_ US_1943 ?O4 IS Wa r_materie l_ and_ _of_ US_1943 Conclude econom ic or is astrategic COG Conclude t an economic or is atransports strategic COG ?O1 ISfactAnglo_allies _1943 ?O1 ISfact Anglo_allies _1943 The forceisthat ?O1 The forceistha ?O1 ?O3 IS Industrial_capacity _of_U S_1943 ?O3 IS Indust rial_c apacity_of_US_ 1943 candidatefor a state?O2 whichIS aUS_1 member of Bound aforceCondition candidatefor a state?O2 whichIS aUS mem be forcde Condition Pis lausible Lower Pis lausib le Lowe Boun 943 _19 43r ofr a Theeconomic ?O3major_generator_of The economic factor isis_a_ ?O3ma THENfactor isis_a_ THEN ?O4 jor_generator_of ?O4 Thestateis ?O2 The state is ?O2 ?O1 IS Anglo _allies _194 3 ?O1 IS Anglo_ allie s_19 43 has_ as_indus trial_factor ?O3 has _as_industrial_ factor ?O3US_1943 ?O4 IS Wa r_omic mate riel_or and_transports US_1943 ?O4 IS r_materiel_ and_transports Conclude t an econ is astrategic_of_ COG Conclude t an Wa economic factor is943 a strategic_of_ COG The forceistha ?O1 The force istha ?O1 ?O2 ISfact USl_c _1943 ?O2Ind IS US_1 ?O3 IS Indus tria apacity_of_US_1943 ?O3 IS ustrial_capa city_of_US_1943 candid ateforfactor a state which is_as_ amembe r of a fac forctor e candidate forfactor astate wh ichha is a mem bertrial_fac of a forctor e The economic isis_ ?O3 The economic isis_a_ ?O3 has industrial_ s_as _indus THEN THEN a_ma jor_generator_of ?O4 ?O3 major_generator_of ?O4 ?O3 The state?O4 is ?O2?O3War_ma The state?O4 is ?O2?O3Wa IS Indust rial_capacity_of_US _1943943 IS In dus trial_ca _of__of_ US_19 terie l_a s_of_US_1 r_materiel_a nd_trans US43 _1943 Conclude thaIS t an economic fact ornd is_transport astrategic COG ConcludethaIS t an econom ic factor isapacity straports tegic COG The forceis ?O1 The force is ?O1 erator_of _major_ generator_o candidatefor a stateis_a_ whicmajor_gen h is amem ber of a forc?O4 e candidate for astateis_a whic h isa membe r of afforc?O4 e The economic tor is The economic factor is ?O3 THE Nfac TH EN ?O4 IS?O3 War_materiel_and_transports_of_US_1943 The state is ?O2 The sta te?O4 is ?O2IS War_materiel_and_transports_of_US_1943 Conclude that an economic factor isastrategicCOG Conclude The force is ?O1 The forceisthat ?O1an economicfactor is astrategic COG THEN THEN candidate forfactor a state ichisa member of a force candidate forfactor a state The economic iswh ?O3 The economic iswhic ?O3h is amember of aforce Conclud e tha t an economic factor isa strategicCOG Conclude t an economic factor is a strategic COG The state is ?O2 The stateis tha ?O2 candidate candidate The force isfor ?O1astatewhich isa member of aforce The forceis for ?O1a state which is a memberof a force state is ?O2 Thestate is?O2 The ecThe onomic factor is ?O3 Theeconomic factor is?O3 Theforce is ?O1 Theforce is?O1 Theeconomic factor is ?O3 Theeconomicfactoris?O3 insta nc e_o f “c ombine d and j oint o per ations” No rt hwe st_ Af ric a_A ir _Fo r ce General tasks and rules (learned) Figure 5: The main phases of the agent training process interface. The use of the elicitation scripts allows a knowledge engineer to rapidly build customized interfaces for Disciple agents, such as the one illustrated in Figure 1, thus effectively transforming this software development task into a knowledge engineering one. The result of the first development stage is a customized Disciple agent. This agent is trained to solve problems by a subject matter expert, with very limited assistance from a knowledge engineer, in the second major stage of agent development. Figure 5 shows the main phases of the agent training process, which starts with a knowledge base that contains only a general object ontology (but no instances, no problem solving tasks, and no task reduction rules), and ends with a knowledge base that incorporates expert problem solving knowledge. During the Scenario specification phase, the Scenario Specification module (which is a new module of DiscipleRKF) guides the expert in describing the objects that define a specific strategic scenario (e.g. the US invasion of the island of Okinawa in 1945). The expert does not work directly with the object ontology in order to specify the scenario. Instead, the expert-agent interaction takes place as presented in section 3 and illustrated in Figure 1, this all being directed by the execution of the elicitation scripts. Experimental results show that the experts can easily perform this task. After the expert has specified the Okinawa_1945 scenario, he can start the Modeling of his COG reasoning for this particular scenario. The expert uses the Modeling module (which is another new module of Disciple-RKF) to express his reasoning in English as a sequence of task reduction steps like the ones illustrated in the left hand side of Figure 2. An example of one task reduction step, defined during modeling, is illustrated in the left hand side of Figure 6. The top task is the current task that needs to be reduced. The expert has to define a question that is relevant to the reduction of this task, then answer the question, and reduce the top task to a simpler one that incorporates the information from the answer. Experimental results show that this is the most challenging agent training activity for the expert. In the Task and rule learning phase, Disciple learns general tasks and general rules from the task reduction steps defined in the modeling phase. For instance, consider the reduction step from the left hand side of Figure 6, consisting of a task, a question, an answer, and a subtask. Because all these expressions are in natural language, the expert and the agent collaborate to translate them into the formal logical expressions on the right hand side of Figure 6. First the natural language expression of each task is structured into an abstract phrase called the task name, which does not contain any instance, and several specific phrases representing the task’s features. The formalization is proposed by the agent and may be modified by the expert. Next the expert and the agent collaborate to also formalize the question and the answer from the left hand side of Figure 6 into the explanation on the right hand side of Figure 6. This explanation represents the best approximation of the meaning of the question-answer pair that can be formed with the elements of the object ontology. In essence, the agent will use analogical Natural Language Test whether the Will_of_the_People_of_US_1945 can cause US_1945 to accept US_giving_honorable_end_of_hostilities_to_Japan Question: Does the Will_of_the_People_of_US_1945 have the power to cause the Military_of_US_1945 to accept US_giving_honorable_end_of_hostilities_to_Japan? Answer: Yes, because US_1945 is a representative democracy and the Will_of_the_People_of_US_1945 dictates the Will_of_the_Military_of_US_1945 Test whether the Will_of_the_People_of_US_1945, that can impose its will on the Military_of_US_1945, can cause US_1945 to accept US_giving_honorable_end_of_hostilities_to_Japan Logic Test whether the will of the people can cause a state to accept a goal The will of the people is Will_of_the_People_of_US_1945 The state is US_1945 The goal is US_giving_honorable_end_of_hostilities_to_Japan Explanation: US_1945 has_as_governing_body Government_of_US_1945 Government_of_US_1945 IS Representative_democracy US_1945 has_as_military_force Military_of_US_1945 Military_of_US_1945 has_as_will Will_of_the_Military_of_US_1945 Will_of_the_Military_of_US_1945 reflects Will_of_the_People_of_US_1945 Test whether the will of the people, that can impose its will on the military, can cause a state to accept a goal The will of the people is Will_of_the_People_of_US_1945 The military is Military_of_US_1945 The state is US_1945 The goal is US_giving_honorable_end_of_hostilities_to_Japan Figure 6: Mixed-initiative language to logic translation IAAI-02 857 Test whether the ?O1 can cause ?O2 to accept ?O3 Test whether the will of the people can cause a state to accept a goal The will of the people is ?O1 The state is ?O2 The goal is ?O3 Plausible Upper Bound Condition ?O1 is Strategic_cog_relevant_factor ?O2 is Agent is Strategic_cog_relevant_factor ?O3 is Force_goal Plausible Lower Bound Condition ?O1 is Will_of_the_People_of_US_1945 ?O2 is US_1945 ?O3 is US_giving_honorable_end_of_hostilities_to_Japan Figure 7: Task learned from the example in Figure 6 reasoning and guidance from the expert to propose a set of plausible explanation pieces from which the expert will select the most appropriate ones (Tecuci et al. 2001). Based on the formalizations from Figure 6 and the object ontology from Figure 3, the Disciple agent learns the general task shown in Figure 7 and the general rule shown in Figure 8. Both the learned task and the learned rule have an informal structure (that preserves the natural language of the expert and is used in agent-user communication), and a formal structure (that is used in the internal formal reasoning of the agent). Initially, when the agent has no rules and no tasks, the expert teaches Disciple how to solve problems and Disciple generates partially learned tasks and rules, as indicated above. As Disciple learns from the expert, the interaction between the expert and Disciple evolves from a teacherstudent interaction, toward an interaction where both collaborate in solving a problem. During this mixedinitiative Problem Solving phase, Disciple learns not only from the contributions of the expert, but also from its own successful or unsuccessful problem solving attempts. The learned formal rule in Figure 8 includes two applicability conditions, a plausible upper bound (PUB) condition, and a plausible lower bound (PLB) condition. The PUB condition allows the rule to be applicable in many analogous situations, but the result may not be correct. The PLB condition allows the rule to be applicable only in the situation from which the rule was learned. The agent will apply this rule to solve new problems and the feedback received from the expert will be used to further refine the rule. In essence, the two conditions will converge toward one another (usually through the specialization of the PUB condition and the generalization of the PLB condition), both approaching the exact applicability condition of the rule. Rule refinement could lead to a complex task reduction rule, with additional Except-When conditions which should not be satisfied in order for the rule to be applicable. Tasks are refined in a similar way. It is important to stress that the expert does not deal directly with the learned tasks and rules, but only with their examples used in problem solving. Therefore, the complex knowledge engineering operations of defining and debugging problem solving rules are replaced in the 858 IAAI-02 Disciple approach with the much simpler operations of defining and critiquing specific examples. After the Disciple agent has been trained, it can be used in the autonomous problem solving mode, to identify and test the strategic COG candidates for a new scenario, as was illustrated in Section 3. 5 Deployment and Evaluation of Disciple-RKF/COG The US Army War College regularly offers the courses “Case Studies in Center of Gravity Analysis” and “Military Applications of Artificial intelligence.” In the first course (the COG course), the students use Disciple-RKF/COG as an intelligent assistant that supports them to develop a center of gravity analysis report for a war scenario, as described in section 3. In the second course (the MAAI course), the students act as subject matter experts that teach personal Disciple-RKF agents their own reasoning in IF: Test whether the ?O1 can cause ?O2 to accept ?O3 Question: Does the ?O1 have the power to cause the ?O4 to accept ?O3? Answer: Yes, because ?O2 is a representative democracy and the ?O1 dictates the ?O5 THEN: Test whether the ?O1, that can impose its will on the ?O4, can cause ?O2 to accept ?O3 IF: Test whether the will of the people can cause a state to accept a goal The will of the people is ?O1 The state is ?O2 The goal is ?O3 Explanation ?O2 has_as_governing_body ?O6 ?O6 IS Representative_democracy ?O2 has_as_military_force ?O4 has_as_will ?O5 reflects ?O1 Plausible Upper Bound Condition ?O1 is Will_of_agent ?O2 is Force has_as_military_force ?O4 has_as_governing_body ?O6 ?O3 is Force_goal ?O4 is Military_force has_as_will ?O5 ?O5 is Will_of_agent reflects ?O1 ?O6 is Representative_democracy Plausible Lower Bound Condition ?O1 is Will_of_the_People_of_US_1945 ?O2 is US_1945 has_as_military_force ?O4 has_as_governing_body ?O6 ?O3 is US_giving_honorable_end_of_hostilities_to_Japan ?O4 is Military_of_US_1945 has_as_will ?O5 ?O5 is Will_of_the_Military_of_US_1945 reflects ?O1 ?O6 is Government_of_US_1945 THEN: Test whether the will of the people, that can impose its will on the military, can cause a state to accept a goal The will of the people is ?O1 The military is ?O4 The state is ?O2 The goal is ?O3 Figure 8: Rule learned from the example in Figure 6 Center of Gravity analysis, as described in section 4. As briefly illustrated in section 3, Disciple-RKF/COG guides the student to identify, study and describe the relevant aspects of the opposing forces in a particular scenario. Then Disciple identifies and tests the strategic center of gravity candidates and generates a draft analysis report that the student needs to finalize. The student must examine Disciple’s reasoning, correct or complete it, or even reject it and provide an alternative line of reasoning. This is productive for several reasons. First the given agent generates its proposed solutions by applying general reasoning rules and heuristics learned previously from the course’s instructor, to a new scenario described by the student. Secondly, COG analysis is influenced by personal experiences and subjective judgments, and the student (who has unique military experience and biases) may have a different interpretation of certain facts. This requirement for the critical analysis of the solutions generated by the agent is an important educational component of military commanders that mimics military practice. Commanders have to critically investigate several courses of actions proposed by their staff and to make the final decision on which one to use. During the 2001 academic year, Disciple was successfully used in both the Winter and Spring sessions of the COG course. As a result of this initial success, the USAWC decided to continue and expand the integration of Disciple in this course for the next academic year and beyond. At the end of the courses the students completed detailed evaluation forms about Disciple and its modules, addressing a wide range of issues, ranging from judging its usefulness in achieving course’s objectives, to judging its methodological approach to problem solving, and to judging the ease of use and other aspects of various modules. For instance, on a 5-point scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree, 7 out of 13 students agreed and the other 6 s trongly agreed that the Scenario Specification module should be used in future versions of the course. Furthermore, 8 out of 11 students agreed, 1 strongly agreed, and 2 were neutral that subject matter experts who are not computer scientists can learn to express their reasoning process using the task reduction paradigm. As another example, 10 out of 13 students agreed, 1 strongly agreed, 1 disagreed and 1 strongly disagreed that the Scenario Specification tool is easy to use. Several of the students that took the COG course in the Winter 2001 session, together with additional students, took the “Military Applications of Artificial Intelligence Course” in the Spring 2001 session. In this course the students were given a general overview of Artificial Intelligence, as well as an introduction to Disciple-RKF. These students used Disciple-RKF as subject matter experts. The students were organized in five two-person teams, with each team given the project to train a personal Disciple-RKF agent shell according to its own reasoning in COG identification for its historical scenario. All five teams succeeded in developing working agents, with each team addressing a unique scenario: 1) the capture of the Leyte Island by the US forces in 1944; 2) the Inchon landing during the Korean War in 1950; 3) the Falklands war between Argentina and Britain in 1982; 4) the stabilization mission in the Grenada Island in 1983; and 5) the US invasion of Panama in December 1989. In the last two 3-hour class sessions, all the five teams participated in a controlled agent development experiment that was videotaped in its entirety. Each team was again provided with a copy of Disciple-RKF that contained the generic object ontology from Figure 3, but no specific instances, no tasks and no rules. They received a 7-page report describing the Okinawa scenario, and were asked to train their Disciple agent to identify center of gravity candidates, based on that scenario. After each significant phase of agent training and knowledge base development (i.e. scenario specification, modeling, rule learning, and rule refinement) a knowledge engineer reviewed their work, and the team then made any necessary corrections under the supervision of the knowledge engineer. Each team succeeded in specifying the scenario and training the agent, in a very short time, as indicated in Figure 9. The top table in Figure 9 shows the size of the initial object ontology. Each team interacted with Disciple to populate this ontology with different instances and features representing the Okinawa scenario. After that, each team taught its Disciple agent to identify COG candidates for this scenario. The bottom table in Figure 9 indicates both the time spent by each team, and the number of knowledge elements defined during this time. On average they defined 85.4 instances and 93.8 feature values in 1 hour and 6 minutes. The average number of rules per team was 18.8, and the average time interval was 4 hours and 7 minutes. Although obviously incomplete (both because of the use of a single training scenario, and because of incomplete training for that scenario), the knowledge bases were good enough for identifying correct COG candidates not only for the Okinawa (evaluation) scenario, but also for “new” scenarios whose inputs were taken from the class projects. At the end of this final experiment, the students completed a detailed questionnaire, containing questions about the main components of Disciple. One of the most significant results was that 7 out of the 10 experts agreed, 1 expert strongly agreed and 2 experts were neutral with respect to the statement: “I think that a subject matter expert can use Disciple to build an agent, with limited assistance from a knowledge engineer.” We consider this experiment to be a very significant success. Indeed, to our knowledge, this is the first time that subject matter experts Initial KB Generic Object Ontology Concepts Features 144 79 Okinawa Scenario General Tasks and Rules Teams Instances Feat Val Time Tasks Rules Time Team 1 94 103 1h 21min 18 17 3h 52min Team 2 78 86 55min 23 22 4h 21min Team 3 72 79 52min 22 19 4h 35min Team 4 105 111 1h 23min 18 17 3h 58min Team 5 78 90 59min 20 19 3h 46min Average 85.4 93.8 1h 06min 20.2 18.8 4h 07min Figure 9: Knowledge base development during the final experiment IAAI-02 859 have trained an agent their own problem solving expertise, with very limited assistance from a knowledge engineer. The deployment and evaluation of Disciple have also revealed several limitations of this approach and have provided numerous ideas for improvement. For instance, while the subject matter expert has an increased role and independence in agent development, the knowledge engineer still has a critical role to play. He has to assure the development of a fairly complete object ontology. He also has to develop a generic modeling of the problem solving process based on the task reduction paradigm. Even guided by this generic modeling, and using natural language, the subject matter expert has difficulties in expressing his reasoning process. Therefore more work is needed to develop methods for helping the expert in this task. Several other research groups are addressing the problem of direct knowledge acquisition from subject matter experts, as part of the DARPA’s “Rapid Knowledge Formation” program (Burke 1999). These groups, however, are currently emphasizing the acquisition of textbook knowledge, relying primarily on reusing knowledge from existing knowledge repositories. In contrast, the emphasis of our research is on acquiring expert’s problem solving knowledge that is not normally represented in textbooks, and relies primarily on teaching and learning. 6 Conclusions This paper presented the current status of a multi-faceted research and development effort that synergistically integrates research in AI, research in COG analysis, and the practical application to education. The AI research in knowledge bases and agent development by subject matter experts has benefited from the COG domain that provided a complex challenge problem. Identification and testing of strategic COG candidates exemplifies expert problem solving that relies on a wide range of domain knowledge, a significant part of which is tacit. This research has also benefited from its practical application to education. The COG and MAAI courses allowed us to perform thorough experimentation with real experts, resulting in the validation of our methods and providing ideas for future improvements. The research in COG analysis has benefited from the AI research in that the agent development has helped clarify and formalize the COG identification and testing process. The COG reasoning models developed were validated in the COG and MAAI classes, and are leading to a significant revision and improvement of the COG monograph of Giles and Galvin (1996). Finally, the innovative application of the AI and COG research to education through the use of the Disciple agent, has had a significant impact on improving the COG and MAAI courses. Done as a very successful experiment in 2001, it was made a regular part of the syllabi for 2002, to be continued in the following years. 860 IAAI-02 Acknowledgments This paper is dedicated to Mihai Draganescu who supported the first research projects on the Disciple approach at the Research Institute for Informatics and the Romanian Academy. The research described in this paper was sponsored by DARPA, AFRL, AFMC, USAF, under agreement number F30602-00-2-0546, by AFOSR under grant no. F49620-00-1-0072, and by the US Army War College. Michael Bowman, Catalin Balan, Marcel Barbulescu, Xianjun Hao and other members of the LALAB contributed to the development of Disciple-RKF. References Burke, M. 1999. Rapid Knowledge Formation Program Description, http://www.darpa.mil/ito/research/rkf/ Chaudhri, V. K.; Farquhar, A.; Fikes, R.; Park, P. D.; and Rice, J. P. 1998. OKBC. A Programmatic Foundation for Knowledge Base Interoperability. 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