Computational Approaches to Creativity Through Goal-Directed Cross-Domain Analogy

随着人类对计算工具的依赖增加，不仅需要支持日常任务，而且需要支持创造性活动。这项研究的目的是增加我们对创造性认知的计算特征的理解，并将这种理解转化为支持人类创造性过程的人工制品。我们将专注于跨领域类比的使用和检索，这是一种与创造性认知有关的能力。拟议的研究将产生一类新的方法，通过跨领域类比展示计算创造力，并涉及两种想法的新颖组合。一是类比映射和类比提取的过程是目标导向的，这对它们的操作施加了很强的约束。另一个是，问题陈述和解决方案的抽象模式，支持检索的相关结构，即使他们有最小的表面相似性索引。总之，这些假设应该支持跨领域类比的强大检索和映射，这反过来又会导致新的软件工具，帮助人类的创造力。虽然这个项目的主要重点是科学的创造力，同样的机制和技术将被证明是有用的，在各种目标导向的设置，涉及计算机介导的创造性工作，包括设计的许多方面。除了发表科学论文外，还将向更广泛的科学界提供类比绘图和检索软件。从长远来看，根据抽象模式对结构进行索引的技术在帮助设计过程和改进万维网上的内容搜索方面具有相当大的潜力。

As human reliance on computational tools increases, there is a critical need to support not only routine tasks but also creative activities. The aims of this research are to increase our understanding of the computational character of creative cognition and to transform this understanding into artifacts that support the creative processes in humans. We will focus on the use and retrieval of cross-domain analogies, an ability that has been implicated in creative cognition.The proposed research will produce a new class of methods that exhibit computational creativity through cross-domain analogy and that involve a novel combination of two ideas. One is that the processes of analogical mapping and retrieval are goal directed, which places strong constraints on their operation. The other is that problem statements and solutions are indexed by abstract schemas that support the retrieval of relevant structures even when they have minimal surface similarity. Together, these assumptions should support robust retrieval and mapping of cross-domain analogies, which in turn should lead to novel software tools that aid human creativity. Although the primary focus of this project is on scientific creativity, the same mechanisms and techniques will prove useful in a variety of goal-directed settings that involve computer-mediated creative work, including many aspects of design. In addition to publishing scientific papers, the software for analogical mapping and retrieval will be available to the broader scientific community. In the longer term, the techniques for indexing structures in terms of abstract schemas have considerable potential for aiding the design process and for improving search for content on the World Wide Web.