Chapter 48. Dealing with Adaptive Behaviors

Key Topics

• What's the Problem?

• Solid Software Engineering

• Robust Design

• Methodologies

In each part of this book dealing with learning technology, prototypes that adapt to solve the problem online are presented. These situations are particularly tricky, and specific solutions are required to deal with them. Building on Chapter 35, "Designing Learning AI," this chapter unravels the problems with adaptation and introduces tricks to deal with them.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• The different kinds of problems with adaptive AI, each with its own symptoms and corresponding diagnostic. Possible remedies are presented briefly in the first section.

• Particular solutions from software engineering, providing a foundation for analyzing and dealing with adaptation.

• The important role of design in terms of adaptation. Modeling the problem is discussed first, along with feedback mechanisms—which are particularly difficult to deal with. Specific architectures are also appropriate to cope with online learning.

• Development methodologies that reduce the problems with adaptive AI.

The tricks presented in the next few pages are applicable to most other systems that need to achieve adaptation effectively.