Refinement of Adaptivity by Reflection

Adaptivity is a system's ability to respond flexibly to dynamically changing needs. Adaptivity to human needs, wishes and desires-even to those that might be unconsciously present-is a particularly ambitious task. A digital system which is expected to behave adaptively has to learn about the needs and desires to which it shall adapt. Advanced adaptivity requires learning on the system's side. Under realistic application conditions, information about a human user available to a computerized system usually is highly incomplete. Therefore, the system's learning process is unavoidably error-prone and the knowledge on which the system's adaptive behavior has to rely is hypothetical by nature. Adaptive system behavior is improved by the system's ability to reflect on the reliability of its current hypothetical knowledge.