7 research outputs found
Lazy Model Expansion: Interleaving Grounding with Search
Finding satisfying assignments for the variables involved in a set of
constraints can be cast as a (bounded) model generation problem: search for
(bounded) models of a theory in some logic. The state-of-the-art approach for
bounded model generation for rich knowledge representation languages, like ASP,
FO(.) and Zinc, is ground-and-solve: reduce the theory to a ground or
propositional one and apply a search algorithm to the resulting theory.
An important bottleneck is the blowup of the size of the theory caused by the
reduction phase. Lazily grounding the theory during search is a way to overcome
this bottleneck. We present a theoretical framework and an implementation in
the context of the FO(.) knowledge representation language. Instead of
grounding all parts of a theory, justifications are derived for some parts of
it. Given a partial assignment for the grounded part of the theory and valid
justifications for the formulas of the non-grounded part, the justifications
provide a recipe to construct a complete assignment that satisfies the
non-grounded part. When a justification for a particular formula becomes
invalid during search, a new one is derived; if that fails, the formula is
split in a part to be grounded and a part that can be justified.
The theoretical framework captures existing approaches for tackling the
grounding bottleneck such as lazy clause generation and grounding-on-the-fly,
and presents a generalization of the 2-watched literal scheme. We present an
algorithm for lazy model expansion and integrate it in a model generator for
FO(ID), a language extending first-order logic with inductive definitions. The
algorithm is implemented as part of the state-of-the-art FO(ID) Knowledge-Base
System IDP. Experimental results illustrate the power and generality of the
approach
Machine ethics via logic programming
Machine ethics is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that emerges from the need of
imbuing autonomous agents with the capacity of moral decision-making. While some
approaches provide implementations in Logic Programming (LP) systems, they have not
exploited LP-based reasoning features that appear essential for moral reasoning.
This PhD thesis aims at investigating further the appropriateness of LP, notably a
combination of LP-based reasoning features, including techniques available in LP systems,
to machine ethics. Moral facets, as studied in moral philosophy and psychology, that
are amenable to computational modeling are identified, and mapped to appropriate LP
concepts for representing and reasoning about them.
The main contributions of the thesis are twofold.
First, novel approaches are proposed for employing tabling in contextual abduction
and updating – individually and combined – plus a LP approach of counterfactual reasoning; the latter being implemented on top of the aforementioned combined abduction and updating technique with tabling. They are all important to model various issues of the aforementioned moral facets.
Second, a variety of LP-based reasoning features are applied to model the identified
moral facets, through moral examples taken off-the-shelf from the morality literature.
These applications include: (1) Modeling moral permissibility according to the Doctrines of Double Effect (DDE) and Triple Effect (DTE), demonstrating deontological and utilitarian judgments via integrity constraints (in abduction) and preferences over abductive scenarios; (2) Modeling moral reasoning under uncertainty of actions, via abduction and probabilistic LP; (3) Modeling moral updating (that allows other – possibly overriding – moral rules to be adopted by an agent, on top of those it currently follows) via the integration of tabling in contextual abduction and updating; and (4) Modeling moral permissibility and its justification via counterfactuals, where counterfactuals are used for formulating DDE.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)-grant SFRH/BD/72795/2010 ; CENTRIA
and DI/FCT/UNL for the supplementary fundin
Towards Practical Tabled Abduction in Logic Programs
Abstract. Despite its potential as a reasoning paradigm in AI applications, abduction has been on the back burner in logic programming, as abduction can be too difficult to implement, and costly to perform, in particular if abductive solutions are not tabled. If they become tabled, then abductive solutions can be reused, even from one abductive context to another. On the other hand, current Prolog systems, with their tabling mechanisms, are mature enough to facilitate the introduction of tabling abductive solutions (tabled abduction) into them. The concept of tabled abduction has been realized recently in an abductive logic programming system TABDUAL. Besides tabling abductive solutions, TABDUAL also relies on the dual transformation. In this paper, we emphasize two TABDUAL improvements: (1) the dual transformation by need, and (2) a new construct for accessing ongoing abductive solutions, that permits modular mixes between abductive and non-abductive program parts. We apply subsequently these improvements on two distinct problems, and evaluate the performance and the scalability of TABDUAL on several benchmarks on the basis of these problems, by examining four TABDUAL variants