Cognitive Developmental Pattern Recognition: Learning to learn DRAFT NOT FOR PUBLICATION

It can be very difficult to create software systems which capture the knowledge of an expert. It is an expensive and laborious process that often results in a suboptimal solution. This article proposes an approach which is different from ’manual’ knowledge construction. The described system is relevant and usable for the end user, from the beginning of its development. It is continuously being trained by the experts while they are using it. This paper shows an example and explains how the computer learns from the experts. In order to provide a general mechanism, the principle of learning to learn is proposed and applied to the problem of handwriting recognition. The study pays attention to the development of the hypotheses that the developing system uses as it adapts to feedback it receives from its own actions on itself, on objects, on the users of the system and the reflection on this feedback. The ultimate goal is the creation of a system that learns to ’google’ through handwritten documents, starting from scratch with a pile of raw images.