Teleological Reasoning in Adaptive Software Design Ashok K' Goel

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Teleological Reasoning in Adaptive Software
DesignAshok K. Goel Spencer RugaberGeorgia
Institute of TechnologyNSF SoD-Team Award
0613744
We believe that future software agents will
evolve by adapting their designs to new goals and
environments. We are investigating the role of
teleological models of software agents in
reasoning about their designs and enabling design
adaptations in multiplayer strategy games such as
FreeCiv (screen shot is shown on the right). In
particular, we seek to (1) characterize the modes
of software evolution, (2) understand how
teleological models can be used to reason about
adaptations, and (3) use insights from the above
to develop interactive tools that facilitate
software adaptations by partially automating
required modifications, and by providing
assistance in the form of recommendations to
software engineers. In this project that started
in November 2006, we have so far analyzed and
classified over three hundred modifications to
game-playing software agents from the FreeCiv
source code repository. We have also composed
usage scenarios for an interactive tool intended
to support the making of various types of
modifications.

• Adapt to a world without guns?
• What happens when diplomacy breaks down?
• "Guns or butter"?