GenAI4ELab/papercli-papers huggingface dataset:
Preferred Reasoning in ABA by Cycle-Breaking
Authors: Kiet Nguyen Anh; Markus Ulbricht
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: We develop a fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) algorithm for skeptical preferred reasoning in assumption-based argumentation (ABA). To this end we make use of so-called backdoors, i.e. sets of assumptions that need to be evaluated s.t. the remaining ABA framework (ABAF) belongs to a computational beneficial sub-class. In order to identify such target classes, we employ a suitable notion of a dependency graph of an ABAF. We show that these graphs can be constructed in polynomial time and that one can efficiently check sufficient properties ensuring that reasoning in the underlying ABAF is tractable. After establishing the theoretical foundations, we test our implementation against the ASPforABA solver which convincingly won the ABA track of the ICCMA'23 competition. As it turns out, our algorithm outperforms ASPforABA on instances with small backdoor sizes.
A Logic for Reasoning about Aggregate-Combine Graph Neural Networks
Authors: Pierre Nunn; Marco Sälzer; François Schwarzentruber; Nicolas Troquard
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: We propose a modal logic in which counting modalities appear in linear inequalities. We show that each formula can be transformed into an equivalent graph neural network (GNN). We also show that a broad class of GNNs can be transformed efficiently into a formula, thus significantly improving upon the literature about the logical expressiveness of GNNs. We also show that the satisfiability problem is PSPACE-complete. These results bring together the promise of using standard logical methods for reasoning about GNNs and their properties, particularly in applications such as GNN querying, equivalence checking, etc. We prove that such natural problems can be solved in polynomial space.
Towards a Principle-based Framework for Assessing the Contribution of Formulas on the Conflicts of Knowledge Bases
Authors: Badran Raddaoui; Christian Straßer; Said Jabbour
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Logical conflicts are likely to arise in logic-based intelligent systems. Managing these conflicts has been intensely studied in various parts of Artificial Intelligence (AI). So far, the AI research community has paid more attention to measuring the degree of inconsistency of knowledge bases. The key question we address in the present paper is how much a given formula contributes to the inconsistency of a knowledge base. Different such measures are studied and compared in a principle-based way against the backdrop of a list of desiderata. Two families of inconsistency measures are introduced and compared with measures from the literature: one is based on the notion of problematic formulas, while the other one is defined via the notion of free formulas in knowledge bases.
The Transformation Logics
Authors: Alessandro Ronca
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: We introduce a new family of temporal logics designed to finely balance the trade-off between expressivity and complexity. Their key feature is the possibility of defining operators of a new kind that we call transformation operators. Some of them subsume existing temporal operators, while others are entirely novel. Of particular interest are transformation operators based on semigroups. They enable logics to harness the richness of semigroup theory, and we show them to yield logics capable of creating hierarchies of increasing expressivity and complexity which are non-trivial to characterise in existing logics. The result is a genuinely novel and yet unexplored landscape of temporal logics, each of them with the potential of matching the trade-off between expressivity and complexity required by specific applications.
Agentive Permissions in Multiagent Systems
Authors: Qi Shi
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: This paper proposes to distinguish four forms of agentive permissions in multiagent settings. The main technical results are the complexity analysis of model checking, the semantic undefinability of modalities that capture these forms of permissions through each other, and a complete logical system capturing the interplay between these modalities.
On the Power and Limitations of Examples for Description Logic Concepts
Authors: Balder ten Cate; Raoul Koudijs; Ana Ozaki
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Labeled examples (i.e., positive and negative examples) are an attractive medium for communicating complex concepts. They are useful for deriving concept expressions (such as in concept learning, interactive concept specification, and concept refinement) as well as for illustrating concept expressions to a user or domain expert. We investigate the power of labeled examples for describing description-logic concepts. Specifically, we systematically study the existence and efficient computability of finite characterizations, i.e. finite sets of labeled examples that uniquely characterize a single concept, for a wide variety of description logics between EL and ALCQI, both without an ontology and in the presence of a DL-Lite ontology. Finite characterizations are relevant for debugging purposes, and their existence is a necessary condition for exact learnability with membership queries.
Optimisation and Approximation in Abstract Argumentation: The Case of Stable Semantics
Authors: Matthias Thimm
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: We analyse two soft notions of stable extensions in abstract argumentation, one that weakens the requirement of having full range and one that weakens the requirement of conflict-freeness. We then consider optimisation problems over these two notions that represent optimisation variants of the credulous reasoning problem with stable semantics. We investigate the computational complexity of these two problems in terms of the complexity of solving the optimisation problem exactly and in terms of approximation complexity. We also present some polynomial-time approximation algorithms for these optimisation problems and investigate their approximation quality experimentally.
A Tensor-Based Formalization of the Event Calculus
Authors: Efthimis Tsilionis; Alexander Artikis; Georgios Paliouras
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: We present a formalization of the Event Calculus (EC) in tensor spaces. The motivation for a tensor-based predicate calculus comes from the area of composite event recognition (CER). As a CER engine, we adopt a logic programming implementation of EC with optimizations for continuous narrative assimilation on data streams. We show how to evaluate EC rules algebraically and solve a linear equation to compute the corresponding models. We demonstrate the scalability of our approach with the use of large datasets from a real-world application domain, and show it outperforms significantly symbolic EC, in terms of processing time.
Structured d-DNNF Is Not Closed under Negation
Authors: Harry Vinall-Smeeth
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Both structured d-DNNF and SDD can be exponentially more succinct than OBDD. Moreover, SDD is essentially as tractable as OBDD. But this leaves left two important open questions. Firstly, does OBDD support more tractable transformations than structured d-DNNF? And secondly, is structured d-DNNF more succinct than SDD? In this paper, we answer both questions in the affirmative. For the first question we show that, unlike OBDD, structured d-DNNF does not support polytime negation, disjunction, or existential quantification operations. As a corollary, we deduce that there are functions with an equivalent polynomial-sized structured d-DNNF but with no such representation as an SDD, thus answering the second question. We also lift this second result to arithmetic circuits (AC) to show a succinctness gap between PSDD and the positive AC analogue to structured d-DNNF.
NELLIE: A Neuro-Symbolic Inference Engine for Grounded, Compositional, and Explainable Reasoning
Authors: Nathaniel Weir; Peter Clark; Benjamin Van Durme
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Our goal is to develop a modern approach to answering questions via systematic reasoning where answers are supported by human interpretable proof trees grounded in an NL corpus of facts. Such a system would help alleviate the challenges of interpretability and hallucination with modern LMs, and the lack of grounding of current explanation methods (e.g., Chain-of-Thought). This paper proposes a new take on Prolog-based inference engines, where we replace handcrafted rules with a combination of neural language modeling, guided generation, and semiparametric dense retrieval. Our implementation, NELLIE, is the first system to demonstrate fully interpretable, end-to-end grounded QA as entailment tree proof search, going beyond earlier work explaining known-to-be-true facts from text. In experiments, NELLIE outperforms a similar-sized state-of-the-art reasoner while producing knowledge-grounded explanations. We also find NELLIE can exploit both semi-structured and NL text corpora to guide reasoning. Together these suggest a new way to jointly reap the benefits of both modern neural methods and traditional symbolic reasoning.
Temporal Inductive Logic Reasoning over Hypergraphs
Authors: Yuan Yang; Siheng Xiong; Ali Payani; James C. Kerce; Faramarz Fekri
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Inductive logic reasoning is a fundamental task in graph analysis, which aims to generalize patterns from data. This task has been extensively studied for traditional graph representations, such as knowledge graphs (KGs), using techniques like inductive logic programming (ILP). Existing ILP methods assume learning from KGs with static facts and binary relations. Beyond KGs, graph structures are widely present in other applications such as procedural instructions, scene graphs, and program executions. While ILP is beneficial for these applications, applying it to those graphs is nontrivial: they are more complex than KGs, which usually involve timestamps and n-ary relations, effectively a type of hypergraph with temporal events. In this work, we propose temporal inductive logic reasoning (TILR), an ILP method that reasons on temporal hypergraphs. To enable hypergraph reasoning, we introduce the multi-start random B-walk, a novel graph traversal method for hypergraphs. By combining it with a path-consistency algorithm, TILR learns logic rules by generalizing from both temporal and relational data. To address the lack of hypergraph benchmarks, we create and release two temporal hypergraph datasets: YouCook2-HG and nuScenes-HG. Experiments on these benchmarks demonstrate that TILR achieves superior reasoning capability over various strong baselines.
Explaining Arguments’ Strength: Unveiling the Role of Attacks and Supports
Authors: Xiang Yin; Nico Potyka; Francesca Toni
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Quantitatively explaining the strength of arguments under gradual semantics has recently received increasing attention. Specifically, several works in the literature provide quantitative explanations by computing the attribution scores of arguments. These works disregard the importance of attacks and supports, even though they play an essential role when explaining arguments' strength. In this paper, we propose a novel theory of Relation Attribution Explanations (RAEs), adapting Shapley values from game theory to offer fine-grained insights into the role of attacks and supports in quantitative bipolar argumentation towards obtaining the arguments' strength. We show that RAEs satisfy several desirable properties. We also propose a probabilistic algorithm to approximate RAEs efficiently. Finally, we show the application value of RAEs in fraud detection and large language models case studies.
The Trembling-Hand Problem for LTLf Planning
Authors: Pian Yu; Shufang Zhu; Giuseppe De Giacomo; Marta Kwiatkowska; Moshe Vardi
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Consider an agent acting to achieve its temporal goal, but with a ``trembling hand". In this case, the agent may mistakenly instruct, with a certain (typically small) probability, actions that are not intended due to faults or imprecision in its action selection mechanism, thereby leading to possible goal failure. We study the trembling-hand problem in the context of reasoning about actions and planning for temporally extended goals expressed in Linear Temporal Logic on finite traces (LTLf), where we want to synthesize a strategy (aka plan) that maximizes the probability of satisfying the LTLf goal in spite of the trembling hand. We consider both deterministic and nondeterministic (adversarial) domains. We propose solution techniques for both cases by relying respectively on Markov Decision Processes and on Markov Decision Processes with Set-valued Transitions with LTLf objectives, where the set-valued probabilistic transitions capture both the nondeterminism from the environment and the possible action instruction errors from the agent. We formally show the correctness of our solution techniques and demonstrate their effectiveness experimentally through a proof-of-concept implementation.
Fine-tuning Pre-trained Models for Robustness under Noisy Labels
Authors: Sumyeong Ahn; Sihyeon Kim; Jongwoo Ko; Se-Young Yun
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: The presence of noisy labels in a training dataset can significantly impact the performance of machine learning models. In response to this issue, researchers have focused on identifying clean samples and reducing the influence of noisy labels. Recent works in this field have achieved notable success in terms of generalizability, albeit at the expense of extensive computing resources. Therefore, reducing computational costs remains a crucial challenge. Concurrently, in other research areas, there has been a focus on developing fine-tuning techniques to efficiently achieve high generalization performance. Despite their proven efficiently achievable generalization capabilities, these techniques have seen limited exploration from a label noise point of view. In this research, we aim to find an effective approach to fine-tune pre-trained models for noisy labeled datasets. To achieve this goal, we empirically investigate the characteristics of pre-trained models on noisy labels and propose an algorithm, named TURN. We present the results of extensive testing and demonstrate both efficient and improved denoising performance on various benchmarks, surpassing previous methods.
Contract Scheduling with Distributional and Multiple Advice
Authors: Spyros Angelopoulos; Marcin Bienkowski; Christoph Dürr; Bertrand Simon
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Contract scheduling is a widely studied framework for designing real-time systems with interruptible capabilities. Previous work has showed that a prediction on the interruption time can help improve the performance of contract-based systems, however it has relied on a single prediction that is provided by a deterministic oracle. In this work, we introduce and study more general and realistic learning-augmented settings in which the prediction is in the form of a probability distribution, or it is given as a set of multiple possible interruption times. For both prediction settings, we design and analyze schedules which perform optimally if the prediction is accurate, while simultaneously guaranteeing the best worst-case performance if the prediction is adversarial. We also provide evidence that the resulting system is robust to prediction errors in the distributional setting. Last, we present an experimental evaluation that confirms the theoretical findings, and illustrates the performance improvements that can be attained in practice.
Contrastive Learning Is Not Optimal for Quasiperiodic Time Series
Authors: Adrian Atienza; Jakob Bardram; Sadasivan Puthusserypady
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Despite recent advancements in Self-Supervised Learning (SSL) for Time Series analysis, a noticeable gap persists between the anticipated achievements and actual performance. While these methods have demonstrated formidable generalization capabilities with minimal labels in various domains, their effectiveness in distinguishing between different classes based on a limited number of annotated records is notably lacking. Our hypothesis attributes this bottleneck to the prevalent use of Contrastive Learning, a shared training objective in previous state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods. By mandating distinctiveness between representations for negative pairs drawn from separate records, this approach compels the model to encode unique record-based patterns but simultaneously neglects changes occurring across the entire record. To overcome this challenge, we introduce Distilled Embedding for Almost-Periodic Time Series (DEAPS) in this paper, offering a non-contrastive method tailored for quasiperiodic time series, such as electrocardiogram (ECG) data. By avoiding the use of negative pairs, we not only mitigate the model's blindness to temporal changes but also enable the integration of a "Gradual Loss (L_gra)" function. This function guides the model to effectively capture dynamic patterns evolving throughout the record. The outcomes are promising, as DEAPS demonstrates a notable improvement of +10% over existing SOTA methods when just a few annotated records are presented to fit a Machine Learning (ML) model based on the learned representation.
Cutting the Black Box: Conceptual Interpretation of a Deep Neural Net with Multi-Modal Embeddings and Multi-Criteria Decision Aid
Authors: Nicolas Atienza; Roman Bresson; Cyriaque Rousselot; Philippe Caillou; Johanne Cohen; Christophe Labreuche; Michele Sebag
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: This paper tackles the concept-based explanation of neural models in computer vision, building upon the state of the art in Multi-Criteria Decision Aid (MCDA). The novelty of the approach is to leverage multi-modal embeddings from CLIP to bridge the gap between pixel-based and concept-based representations. The proposed Cut the Black Box (CB2) approach disentangles the latent representation of a trained pixel-based neural net, referred to as teacher model, along a 3-step process. Firstly, the pixel-based representation of the samples is mapped onto a conceptual representation using multi-modal embeddings. Secondly, an interpretable-by-design MCDA student model is trained by distillation from the teacher model, using the conceptual sample representation. Thirdly, the alignment of the teacher and student latent representations spells out the concepts relevant to explaining the teacher model. The empirical validation of the approach on ResNet, VGG, and VisionTransformer on Cifar-10, Cifar-100, Tiny ImageNet, and Fashion-MNIST showcases the effectiveness of the interpretations provided for the teacher models. The analysis reveals that decision-making predominantly relies on few concepts, thereby exposing potential bias in the teacher's decisions.
On the Computation of Example-Based Abductive Explanations for Random Forests
Authors: Gilles Audemard; Jean-Marie Lagniez; Pierre Marquis; Nicolas Szczepanski
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: We show how to define and compute example-based abductive explanations. Such explanations are guaranteed to be 100% correct, fairly general, and persuasive enough since they cover sufficiently many reference instances furnished by the explainee. We prove that the latter coverage condition yields a complexity shift to the second level of the polynomial hierarchy. We present a CEGAR-based algorithm to derive such explanations, and show how to modify it to derive most anchored example-based abductive explanations, i.e., example-based abductive explanations that cover as many reference instances as possible. We also explain how to reduce example-based abductive explanations to get subset-minimal explanations. Experiments in the case of random forest classifiers show that our CEGAR-based algorithm is quite efficient in practice.
Deriving Provably Correct Explanations for Decision Trees: The Impact of Domain Theories
Authors: Gilles Audemard; Jean-Marie Lagniez; Pierre Marquis; Nicolas Szczepanski
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: We are interested in identifying the complexity of computing local explanations of various types given a decision tree, when the Boolean conditions used in the tree are not independent. This is usually the case when decision trees are learned from instances described using numerical or categorical attributes. In such a case, considering the domain theory indicating how the Boolean conditions occurring in the tree are logically connected is paramount to derive provably correct explanations. However, the nature of the domain theory may have a strong impact on the complexity of generating explanations. In this paper, we identify the complexity of deriving local explanations (abductive or contrastive) given a decision tree in the general case, and under several natural restrictions about the domain theory.
Online Learning with Off-Policy Feedback in Adversarial MDPs
Authors: Francesco Bacchiocchi; Francesco Emanuele Stradi; Matteo Papini; Alberto Maria Metelli; Nicola Gatti
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: In this paper, we face the challenge of online learning in adversarial Markov decision processes with off-policy feedback. In this setting, the learner chooses a policy, but, differently from the traditional on-policy setting, the environment is explored by means of a different, fixed, and possibly unknown policy (named colleague's policy). The off-policy feedback presents an additional issue that is not present in traditional settings: the learner is charged with the regret of its chosen policy but it observes only the rewards gained by the colleague's policy. First, we present a lower-bound for the setting we propose, which shows that the optimal dependency of the sublinear regret is w.r.t. the dissimilarity between the optimal policy in hindsight and the colleague's policy. Then, we propose novel algorithms that, by employing pessimistic estimators---commonly adopted in the off-line reinforcement learning literature---ensure sublinear regret bounds depending on the desired dissimilarity, even when the colleague's policy is unknown.
Ansatz-Agnostic Exponential Resource Saving in Variational Quantum Algorithms Using Shallow Shadows
Authors: Afrad Basheer; Yuan Feng; Christopher Ferrie; Sanjiang Li
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQA) have been identified as a promising candidate for the demonstration of near-term quantum advantage in solving optimization tasks in chemical simulation, quantum information, and machine learning. The standard model of training requires a significant amount of quantum resources, which led researchers to use classical shadows to devise an alternative that consumes exponentially fewer quantum resources. However, the approach only works when the observables are local and the ansatz is the shallow Alternating Layered Ansatz (ALA), thus severely limiting its potential in solving problems such as quantum state preparation, where the ideal state might not be approximable with an ALA. In this work, we present a protocol based on shallow shadows that achieves similar levels of savings for almost any shallow ansatz studied in the literature, when combined with observables of low Frobenius norm. We show that two important applications in quantum information for which VQAs can be a powerful option, namely variational quantum state preparation and variational quantum circuit synthesis, are compatible with our protocol. We also experimentally demonstrate orders of magnitude improvement in comparison to the standard VQA model.