1983 Reports

RESEARCHER: An Overview

Lebowitz, Michael

Described in this paper is a computer system, RESEARCHER, being developed at Columbia that reads natural language text in the form of patent abstracts and creates a permanent long-term memory based on concepts generalized from these texts, forming an intelligent information system. This paper is intended to give an overview of RESEARCHER. We will describe briefly the four main areas dealt with in the design of RESEARCHER: 1) knowledge representation, where a canonical scheme for representing physical objects has been developed, 2) memory-based text processing, 3) generalization and generalization-based memory organization that treats concept formation as an integral part of understanding, and 4) generalization-based question answering.