Achieving Intelligence Using Prototypes, Composition, and Analogy

In this paper, I summarize the results of a decade-plus of research and development driven by the vision that human knowledge can be grounded in a small number of prototypical components that can be extended through composition and analogy. This vision has been embodied in a system called AURA, which has been used to engineer an expressive knowledge base for an intelligent biology textbook. The focus of the current paper is to abstract away from the specifics and, to instead describe the core ideas in such a manner that they can be transferred and applied in different contexts, and to relate those ideas to the ongoing research by others.