Center for Analysis and Design of Intelligent Agents

T-720-ATAI-2016

What it is	Monicker that refers to software development methodologies that require an intelligent designer – the software programmer as “construction worker”.
Why it's important	All traditional software development methodologies are constructionist methodologies.
What it's good for	Works well for constructing controllers of Closed Problems where (a) the Solution Space can be defined fully or largely before the controller is constructed, (b) there is a single identifiable and clearly definable top-level Goal, and ( c) the Task assigned to the controller will not change throughout its lifetime (i.e. the controller does not have to generate new sub-Goals).
Key Implementation Method	Hand-coding using programming language and methods targeted for human-level intelligences.
Limitations	Key limitation is reliance on hand-coding – the requirement of human-level intelligence. Another way to look at it: Over-reliance on an outside designer.
Result	In the context of artificial intelligences that can handle highly novel Tasks, Problems, Situations, Environments and Worlds, no constructionist methodology will suffice.
Contrast with	Constructivist AI

Static	System components that are fairly static. Manual construction limits the complexity that can be built into each component.
Size	The sheer number of components that can form a single architecture is limited by what a designer or team can handle.
Scaling	The components and their interconnections in the architecture are managed by algorithms that are hand-crafted themselves, and thus also of limited flexibility.
Result	Together these three problems remove hopes of autonomous architectural adaptation and system growth.

EOF