Goal Recognition Design

Source: DOI Authors: Sarah Keren, Avigdor Gal, Erez Karpas Date: 2014

Core idea

Goal recognition can be improved by designing environments so that an actor’s goals become distinguishable earlier; legibility is itself a design choice.

Key claims

• Ambiguity about goals is not fixed; systems can be structured to reduce or preserve it.
• Useful goal recognition requires thinking about what observations would disambiguate candidate goals.
• Observation design matters as much as inference quality.

Harness takeaway

An observed-goals ledger should not merely infer aims after the fact. It should deliberately add checkpoints, receipts, and clarifying actions that make goals more legible without pretending early guesses are certain.