Learning to Solve and Optimize by Evolving Code

Combinatorial and optimization problems are fundamental to many industrial AI applications. Solving large-scale real-world instances of such problems typically requires careful problem formalization, specialized solvers, and expert-designed heuristics. Thus, experts need to specify not only what solutions are, but also how they are derived. By introducing the tool CHECKMATE, we show that algorithm generation via code evolution represents a paradigm shift by eliminating the need to formulate the how. CHECKMATE solely relies on the what. Specifically, a formal specification ensures solutions' correctness and enables systematic performance evaluation of the generated programs, while a natural language description guides the evolutionary process. The effectiveness of our method is demonstrated on selected problems from two industrial domains: configuration and scheduling. In all cases, the evolved algorithms consistently outperform state-of-the-art solvers. This underscores the potential of formal methods in guiding code evolution for automatically solving complex real-world problems.

XAI-LAW: A Logic Programming Tool for Modeling, Explaining, and Learning Legal Decisions

We propose an approach to model articles of the Italian Criminal Code (ICC), using Answer Set Programming (ASP), and to semi-automatically learn legal rules from examples based on prior judicial decisions. The developed tool is intended to support legal experts during the criminal trial phase by providing reasoning and possible legal outcomes. The methodology involves analyzing and encoding articles of the ICC in ASP, including "crimes against the person" and property offenses. The resulting model is validated on a set of previous verdicts and refined as necessary. During the encoding process, contradictions may arise; these are properly handled by the system, which also generates possible decisions for new cases and provides explanations through a tool that leverages the "supportedness" of stable models. The automatic explainability offered by the tool can also be used to clarify the logic behind judicial decisions, making the decision-making process more interpretable. Furthermore, the tool integrates an inductive logic programming system for ASP, which is employed to generalize legal rules from case examples.