Orion Overview

We build an internal model of the world, so we can predict future behaviour - we make the model out of active structure so it is interoperable with other structure - we elaborate the structure over time - we pass complex messages through the structure - why not make machines that can do all these things too Active Structure

ORION Knowledge about the problem area is turned into a structure, made up of variables, operators and links. The structure is active, undirected, long- lived, extensible and self-modifiable

A Simple Structure The structure can propagate a wide range of entities through its connections, and the information can flow in any direction, and the operators can operate on analytic or experiential information, and the structure can change itself.

Users can turn what they know into a shareable and reusable piece of knowledge by describing relations among objects - the system will use the relations any way it needs to, when it needs to. The user can refine their thinking by observing a model of it in operation. The System as a Thinking Tool Orion

Combining Knowledge Domains Assemble Pieces of Knowledge Into an Active Object Which Itself Can be Assembled... Airframe Performance Avionics

Structural Backtrack Some decisionmaking needs to be tentative... Backtrack allows the system to try something, observe the result, and then proceed further, or undo it and try something else. While trying something, it may need to erect new structure - “to build a castle in the air” - then undo all that as well. This is the “constructionist” approach to problem solving. Structural backtrack relies on all of the states being in the structure - no stack, no algorithm, nothing else.

Using the System

Logic Editor - Used to enter declarative knowledge in textual form. The text is immediately transformed into active model structure - what you see here is a textual view of the structure.

Network Display The user can: trace the structure of the network observe the values in particular components set and unset values trace the source of inconsistencies debug the network by halting propagation and observing states

Analysis and Visualization List Editor Variable Directory Stochastic Editor Drawing Editor

Data Miner One of the shortcomings of existing data mining technologies is that in order to use the findings, the user needs to understand them. The reason is that the technologies used for mining are different to those used in operational systems. With Orion, the same technology is used for both tasks. The Miner actually morphs newly found correlations in the data into an active component of the operational system. The system can start with mined data, then “learn on the run” from new transactions.

Additional tools and facilities Structural debugger Script editor Control Panel Simulator Graphing and Gantt charts Time Series Analysis Embedded System

Applications Strategic Planning Program/Project Management - development projects Scheduling - Aircraft maintenance and operations Analysis - Financial, Engineering, Marketing, Risk Simulation - Dynamic Financial Analysis Knowledge Representation - support of complex interactions Information Extraction from text

Waves of Technology for a Telco

Development Projects Development projects, where what is being developed is changing as the project progresses, are the most appropriate targets for the kind of holistic approach the technology supports. A model of the end product becomes part of the project plan.

Model the Problem Area Programmatic approach Orion Business Domain Household Commercial Property Quota Share treaty Surplus treaty Risk Access treaty Catastrophe treaty The model takes the form of the business structure it represents. It is “alive” all the time, every piece of it is visible and accessible.

Earthquake Knowledge

Retail Market Analysis A Fast-Changing Analytic Environment

The quake struck A network of operators linking parts of speech is being used to disambiguate the sentence before integrating it into knowledge about earthquakes. This part of the network is dynamic, and will disappear on completion. The quake, with an estimated magnitude of 4.75, struck Athens around 0725.

The Holistic Approach All the processes proceed simultaneously and synergistically, opportunistically using any information coming from any direction to shrink the ambiguity

Police Intelligence - An incoming event may cause generation and analysis of other events

What’s the Point? We need to build structure to handle every state transition - we can’t use the crutches of program stacks or ‘directed dataflow’ or ‘natural order of calculation’. If we do this, we can handle complex and dynamic interactions beyond the reach of programming The structure can be modified on the run, it can see activity within itself, it can adapt and extend itself or merge with other structure, it can backtrack out of a scenario it has constructed and analysed.