Structured World Representations in Maze-Solving Transformers

Transformer models underpin many recent advances in practical machine learning applications, yet understanding their internal behavior continues to elude researchers. Given the size and complexity of these models, forming a comprehensive picture of their inner workings remains a significant challenge. To this end, we set out to understand small transformer models in a more tractable setting: that of solving mazes. In this work, we focus on the abstractions formed by these models and find evidence for the consistent emergence of structured internal representations of maze topology and valid paths. We demonstrate this by showing that the residual stream of only a single token can be linearly decoded to faithfully reconstruct the entire maze. We also find that the learned embeddings of individual tokens have spatial structure. Furthermore, we take steps towards deciphering the circuity of path-following by identifying attention heads (dubbed $\textit{adjacency heads}$), which are implicated in finding valid subsequent tokens.

Bounded Combinatorial Reconfiguration with Answer Set Programming

We develop an approach called bounded combinatorial reconfiguration for solving combinatorial reconfiguration problems based on Answer Set Programming (ASP). The general task is to study the solution spaces of source combinatorial problems and to decide whether or not there are sequences of feasible solutions that have special properties. The resulting recongo solver covers all metrics of the solver track in the most recent international competition on combinatorial reconfiguration (CoRe Challenge 2022). recongo ranked first in the shortest metric of the single-engine solvers track. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of bounded combinatorial reconfiguration, and present an ASP encoding of the independent set reconfiguration problem that is one of the most studied combinatorial reconfiguration problems. Finally, we present empirical analysis considering all instances of CoRe Challenge 2022.

Towards end-to-end ASP computation

We propose an end-to-end approach for answer set programming (ASP) and linear algebraically compute stable models satisfying given constraints. The idea is to implement Lin-Zhao's theorem \cite{Lin04} together with constraints directly in vector spaces as numerical minimization of a cost function constructed from a matricized normal logic program, loop formulas in Lin-Zhao's theorem and constraints, thereby no use of symbolic ASP or SAT solvers involved in our approach. We also propose precomputation that shrinks the program size and heuristics for loop formulas to reduce computational difficulty. We empirically test our approach with programming examples including the 3-coloring and Hamiltonian cycle problems. As our approach is purely numerical and only contains vector/matrix operations, acceleration by parallel technologies such as many-cores and GPUs is expected.

Learning State Transition Rules from Hidden Layers of Restricted Boltzmann Machines

Understanding the dynamics of a system is important in many scientific and engineering domains. This problem can be approached by learning state transition rules from observations using machine learning techniques. Such observed time-series data often consist of sequences of many continuous variables with noise and ambiguity, but we often need rules of dynamics that can be modeled with a few essential variables. In this work, we propose a method for extracting a small number of essential hidden variables from high-dimensional time-series data and for learning state transition rules between these hidden variables. The proposed method is based on the Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM), which treats observable data in the visible layer and latent features in the hidden layer. However, real-world data, such as video and audio, include both discrete and continuous variables, and these variables have temporal relationships. Therefore, we propose Recurrent Temporal GaussianBernoulli Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RTGB-RBM), which combines Gaussian-Bernoulli Restricted Boltzmann Machine (GB-RBM) to handle continuous visible variables, and Recurrent Temporal Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RT-RBM) to capture time dependence between discrete hidden variables. We also propose a rule-based method that extracts essential information as hidden variables and represents state transition rules in interpretable form. We conduct experiments on Bouncing Ball and Moving MNIST datasets to evaluate our proposed method. Experimental results show that our method can learn the dynamics of those physical systems as state transition rules between hidden variables and can predict unobserved future states from observed state transitions.

Action Languages Based Actual Causality in Ethical Decision Making Contexts

Moral responsibility is closely intermixed with causality, even if it cannot be reduced to it. Besides, rationally understanding the evolution of the physical world is inherently linked with the idea of causality. It follows that decision making applications based on automated planning, especially if they integrate references to ethical norms, have inevitably to deal with causality. Despite these considerations, much of the work in computational ethics relegates causality to the background, if not ignores it completely. This paper contribution is double. The first one is to link up two research topics$\unicode{x2014}$automated planning and causality$\unicode{x2014}$by proposing an actual causation definition suitable for action languages. This definition is a formalisation of Wright's NESS test of causation. The second is to link up computational ethics and causality by showing the importance of causality in the simulation of ethical reasoning and by enabling the domain to deal with situations that were previously out of reach thanks to the actual causation definition proposed.

Learning First-Order Rules with Differentiable Logic Program Semantics

Learning first-order logic programs (LPs) from relational facts which yields intuitive insights into the data is a challenging topic in neuro-symbolic research. We introduce a novel differentiable inductive logic programming (ILP) model, called differentiable first-order rule learner (DFOL), which finds the correct LPs from relational facts by searching for the interpretable matrix representations of LPs. These interpretable matrices are deemed as trainable tensors in neural networks (NNs). The NNs are devised according to the differentiable semantics of LPs. Specifically, we first adopt a novel propositionalization method that transfers facts to NN-readable vector pairs representing interpretation pairs. We replace the immediate consequence operator with NN constraint functions consisting of algebraic operations and a sigmoid-like activation function. We map the symbolic forward-chained format of LPs into NN constraint functions consisting of operations between subsymbolic vector representations of atoms. By applying gradient descent, the trained well parameters of NNs can be decoded into precise symbolic LPs in forward-chained logic format. We demonstrate that DFOL can perform on several standard ILP datasets, knowledge bases, and probabilistic relation facts and outperform several well-known differentiable ILP models. Experimental results indicate that DFOL is a precise, robust, scalable, and computationally cheap differentiable ILP model.

Generating Explainable Rule Sets from Tree-Ensemble Learning Methods by Answer Set Programming

We propose a method for generating explainable rule sets from tree-ensemble learners using Answer Set Programming (ASP). To this end, we adopt a decompositional approach where the split structures of the base decision trees are exploited in the construction of rules, which in turn are assessed using pattern mining methods encoded in ASP to extract interesting rules. We show how user-defined constraints and preferences can be represented declaratively in ASP to allow for transparent and flexible rule set generation, and how rules can be used as explanations to help the user better understand the models. Experimental evaluation with real-world datasets and popular tree-ensemble algorithms demonstrates that our approach is applicable to a wide range of classification tasks.

Partial Evaluation of Logic Programs in Vector Spaces

In this paper, we introduce methods of encoding propositional logic programs in vector spaces. Interpretations are represented by vectors and programs are represented by matrices. The least model of a definite program is computed by multiplying an interpretation vector and a program matrix. To optimize computation in vector spaces, we provide a method of partial evaluation of programs using linear algebra. Partial evaluation is done by unfolding rules in a program, and it is realized in a vector space by multiplying program matrices. We perform experiments using randomly generated programs and show that partial evaluation has potential for realizing efficient computation in huge scale of programs.

Characterization of Logic Program Revision as an Extension of Propositional Revision

We address the problem of belief revision of logic programs, i.e., how to incorporate to a logic program P a new logic program Q. Based on the structure of SE interpretations, Delgrande et al. adapted the well-known AGM framework to logic program (LP) revision. They identified the rational behavior of LP revision and introduced some specific operators. In this paper, a constructive characterization of all rational LP revision operators is given in terms of orderings over propositional interpretations with some further conditions specific to SE interpretations. It provides an intuitive, complete procedure for the construction of all rational LP revision operators and makes easier the comprehension of their semantic and computational properties. We give a particular consideration to logic programs of very general form, i.e., the generalized logic programs (GLPs). We show that every rational GLP revision operator is derived from a propositional revision operator satisfying the original AGM postulates. Interestingly, the further conditions specific to GLP revision are independent from the propositional revision operator on which a GLP revision operator is based. Taking advantage of our characterization result, we embed the GLP revision operators into structures of Boolean lattices, that allow us to bring to light some potential weaknesses in the adapted AGM postulates. To illustrate our claim, we introduce and characterize axiomatically two specific classes of (rational) GLP revision operators which arguably have a drastic behavior. We additionally consider two more restricted forms of logic programs, i.e., the disjunctive logic programs (DLPs) and the normal logic programs (NLPs) and adapt our characterization result to DLP and NLP revision operators.

Aspartame: Solving Constraint Satisfaction Problems with Answer Set Programming

Encoding finite linear CSPs as Boolean formulas and solving them by using modern SAT solvers has proven to be highly effective, as exemplified by the award-winning sugar system. We here develop an alternative approach based on ASP. This allows us to use first-order encodings providing us with a high degree of flexibility for easy experimentation with different implementations. The resulting system aspartame re-uses parts of sugar for parsing and normalizing CSPs. The obtained set of facts is then combined with an ASP encoding that can be grounded and solved by off-the-shelf ASP systems. We establish the competitiveness of our approach by empirically contrasting aspartame and sugar.