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The Role of Abstraction and Generalization in Program Search
Abstraction is crucial for generalization in thinking and reasoning processes. Every thought is a combination of two types of thinking. Abstraction differs between continuous and discrete spaces, requiring the identification of analogies in each. Program search enables broad generalization from a few examples by creating a search space from scratch and testing its fit with training data. This approach deviates from traditional machine learning by constructing new solutions rather than interpolating between existing examples. The concept originated with the flash fill feature in Microsoft Excel, which could generate programming code based on a few examples to generalize transformations across a spreadsheet. The integration of neural networks or a neural engine like GPT-3 has enhanced the effectiveness of discreet program search.