Architectures That Have Hierarchical Organization

Hierarchical architectures are composed of several levels, each of which builds on the lower levels to achieve more and more complex and adaptive behavior. Newell claims that intelligent systems must be hierarchical. For our purposes, we define a system as hierarchical if the system implements new capabilities as a new level on top of existing levels. This is in constrast to modular architectures, which implement new capabilities by adding new components to the system.

The following architectures are hierarchical in nature:


Click here to see a discussion on the dichotomy between modular and hierarchical design.
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