Vaishak Belle

News

Jan 17, 2022

Will be co-chairing the artificial intelligence track of the UK-Tunisia Joint Conference. Co-organised by the Royal Society and the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, and with the support of the British Council in Tunisia, the UK/Tunisia bilateral meeting for early career researchers (ECRs), the conference will take place virtually.

Dec 15, 2021

Bjorn and I are advertising a 2 year postdoc on integrating causality, reasoning and knowledge graphs for misinformation detection. See here.

Dec 1, 2021

Interested in training neural networks with logical constraints? We have a new paper that aims towards full satisfaction of Boolean and linear arithmetic constraints on training at AAAI-2022. Congrats to Nick and Rafael!

Nov 24, 2021

Gave a talk on the chapter “Logic meets Learning: From Aristotle to Neural Networks” at the doctoral training center UnRAVeL – UNcertainty and Randomness in Algorithms, VErification and Logic in Aachen (Virtual). Thanks to Joost-Pieter for the invitation! Link here

Nov 4, 2021

Sharing a preview of a book chapter, “Logic meets Learning: From Aristotle to Neural Networks”. Part of the exciting new book “Neuro-Symbolic Artificial Intelligence: The State of the Art” by Pascal Hitzler and Md Kamruzzaman Sarker.

Oct 12, 2021

We have a new artificial intelligence journal paper on multi-agent epistemic planning, with collaborators from University of Toronto, Queen’s University and University of Melbourne.

Oct 8, 2021

Interested in synthesizing the semantics of programming languages? We have a new paper on that, accepted at OOPSLA.

Sept 16, 2021

I gave an invited tutorial the Bath CDT Art-AI. I covered current trends and future trends on explainable machine learning.

Sept 9, 2021

I gave an invited talk on “Logic & Learning: From Aristotle to Neural Networks” at the AISEC annual workshop.

Sept 8, 2021

I served on an invited panel on “robotics & automation” at the Pharma Data & SmartLabs Congress, 2021.

July 6, 2021 

Talk on XAI

I’ll be giving a talk on explainable AI at Lancaster University (Leipzig) Symposium on Intelligent Systems (LEISYS) on July 22.

May 17, 2021

Talk on logic & learning

Will be giving a talk on logic & learning at LMU Munich, drawing from my SUM-2020 tutorial. Thanks to Felix for the invitation!

May 16, 2021

Talk on explainable machine learning

Gave a talk this Monday in Edinburgh on the principles & practice of machine learning, covering motivations & insights from our survey paper. Key questions raised included, how to: extract intelligible explanations + modify the model to fit changing needs.

May 31, 2021

Journal paper on explainable machine learning accepted

Our work (with Giannis) surveying and distilling approaches to explainability in machine learning has been accepted. Preprint here, but the final version will be online and open access soon.

May 24, 2021

A course on explainable machine learning

I will be teaching a course on explainability machine learning, a practical introduction, supported by Andreas Bueff and others. Link here.

May 10, 2021

Two papers on probabilistic inference at UAI-2021

Jonathan’s paper considers a lifted approached to weighted model integration, including circuit construction. Paulius’ paper develops a measure-theoretic perspective on weighted model counting and proposes a way to encode conditional weights on literals analogously to conditional probabilities, which leads to significant performance improvements.

Paper on weighted model counting at SAT-2021

Weighted model counting often assumes that weights are only specified on literals, often necessitating the need to introduce auxillary variables. We consider a new approach based on psuedo-Boolean functions, leading to a more general definition. Empirically, we also get SOTA results.

May 5, 2021

Paper on learning linear programming objectives accepted at IJCAI-2021

We have a new paper accepted on learning optimal linear programming objectives. We take an “implicit“ hypothesis construction approach that yields nice theoretical bounds. Congrats to Gini and Alex on getting this paper accepted. Preprint here.

Mar 30, 2021

Dagstuhl seminar on Trustworthiness and Responsibility in AI

Sriraam, Shannon, Kush, Joost, Hana and I are excited to be organizing a dagstuhl seminar on Trustworthiness and Responsibility in AI. Link here.

Mar 25, 2021

Project on trustworthy systems

A consortia project on trustworthy systems and goverance was accepted late last year. News link here.

Mar 22, 2021

Journal paper on prior constraints in tractable models

A journal paper has been accepted on prior constraints in tractable probabilistic models, available on the papers tab. Congratulations Giannis!

Mar 21, 2021

AIUK

Will be speaking at the AIUK event on principles and practice of interpretability in machine learning.

Feb 8, 2021

KRML

Will be co-chairing a special session on knowledge representation & machine learning at KR-2021.

Jan 19, 2021

Workshop on deep learning and logic

Together with Efi, Loizos & Phokion, we are co-organising a workshop on deep learning & logic.

Jan 05, 2021

3 journal papers accepted

Three journal papers have been accepted, all on tractable probabilistic models. With Andreas and Stefanie, a continuous variant is proposed. With Michael, modeling fairness is considered. And with Lewis, the learning of moral responsibility is investigated.

Oct 22, 2020

Talk at AI, ethics & society

The talk is entitled Fairness and Moral responsibility meets Computational Tractability; link to the event here.

Oct 15, 2020

Talk at U3A

I’ll be giving a talk on responsible AI at the Edinburgh chapter of U3A. Thanks to Rod & George for the invitation.

Sep 25, 2020

Talk at the SICSA conference

I’ll be giving a talk at the conference on fair and responsible AI in the cyber physical systems session. Thanks to Ram & Christian for the invitation. Link to event.

Sep 14, 2020

Scotsman reports on XAI work with NatWest Group

A recent collaboration with the NatWest Group on explainable machine learning is discussed in The Scotsman. Link to article here. A preprint on the results will be made available shortly.

Aug 31, 2020

Lecture at FU Berlin on Fair and Responsible AI

I'll be giving a lecture at FU Berlin on Interpretable, Fair and Responsible AI, all approached via probabilistic circuits. See the recent work with Varley, Hammond, Bueff, Papantonis, for example. Link to the class here.

Aug 17, 2020

Seminar at Heriott-Watt

I'll be giving a seminar at the LAIV (Lab For AI Verification) at Heriott-Watt on our ECAI-2020 paper with Anton. The paper interprets variational autoencoders using probabilistic circuits. Link to event here.

Aug 8, 2020

Journal paper on Semiring programming

A journal paper has been accepted that positions a new framework we call semiring programming, which extends probabilistic programming with connectives taken from any semiring. This then allows us to capture a wide range of search and combinatorial problems considered in AI, including inference, SAT, convex programming, weighted model integration etc, in a single unified programming model. Preprint here.

Aug 3, 2020

Tutorial on Logic meets Learning in Infinite Domains

I will be giving a tutorial on logic and learning with a focus on infinite domains at this year's SUM. Link to event here.

Aug 2, 2020

Paper at ICAPS journal track

Our paper on synthesizing plans with loops in the presence of probabilistic noise, accepted the journal of approximate reasoning, has also been accepted to the ICAPS journal track. Preprint to the full paper here.

Aug 1, 2020

Papers at KR's recently published research track

Extended abstracts of our NeurIPS paper (on PAC-learning in first-order logic) and the journal paper on abstracting probabilistic models was accepted to KR's recently published research track.

Jul 16, 2020

Accepted paper on logic, probability & action

A survey paper has been accepted at SUM, which looks at the semantics for integrating first-order logic, probability & action. In particular, the situation calculus, a dialect of first-order logic, is considered as the underlying representation language. Preprint here.

Jul 14, 2020

CP paper on generating random (logic) programs

Paulius' work on algorithmic strategies for randomly generating logic programs and probabilistic logic programs has been accepted to the principles and practise of constraint programming (CP2020). The work is motivated by the need to test and evaluate inference algorithms. A combinatorial argument for the correctness of the ideas is also considered. Preprint here.

May 7, 2020

AKBC paper on learning credal sum-product networks

Our paper (joint with Amelie Levray) on learning credal sum-product networks has been accepted to AKBC. Such networks, along with other types of probabilistic circuits, are attractive because they guarantee that certain types of probability estimation queries can be computed in time linear in the size of the network. The problem we tackle is how the learning should be defined when there is missing or incomplete data, leading to an account based on imprecise probabilities. Preprint here.

May 5, 2020

Journal paper on abstracting probabilistic models

A journal paper on abstracting probabilistic models has been accepted. The paper studies the semantic constraints that allows one to abstract a complex, low-level model with a simpler, high-level one. The framework is applicable to a large class of formalisms, including probabilistic relational models. The paper also studies the synthesis problem in that context. Preprint here.

Mar 4, 2020

Talk at the University of Glasgow

I gave a talk on our recent NeurIPS paper in Glasgow while also covering other approaches at the intersection of logic, learning and tractability. Thanks to Oana for the invitation.

Feb 5, 2020

StarAI workshop papers

If you are attending AAAI this year, you may be interested in checking out our papers that touch on fairness, abstraction and generalized sum-product problems.

Jan 28, 2020

Journal paper on goal regression and progression with probabilities

Our work on (goal) regression and progression operators for first-order probabilistic logics will appear in Artificial Intelligence. It studies how representations in these logics behave in a dynamic setting, and introduces operators for reducing a query after actions to an initial state, or updating the representation against those actions.

Jan 15, 2020

Accepted papers at ECAI 2020

Conference link Our work on symbolically interpreting variational autoencoders, as well as a new learnability for SMT (satisfiability modulo theory) formulas got accepted at ECAI.

Dec 19, 2019

Journal paper on synthesis of recursive plans

Our work on synthesizing plans with loops in the presence of noise will appear in the international journal of approximate reasoning. It investigates how the AND-OR controller search of Hu & De Giacomo can be extended for strong goal satisfaction and termination conditions when tackling stochastic nondeterminism.

Dec 17, 2019

Talk at Simon Fraser University

Last week, I gave a talk on our NeurIPS paper on implicit learnability in FOL at SFU. Thanks to Eugenia and Jim for hosting me. Slides here.

Dec 12, 2019

NeurIPS workshop papers

If you are attending NeurIPS this year, you may be interested in checking out our papers that touch on morality, causality, and interpretability. Preprints can be found on the workshop page.

Nov 29, 2019

2019 ILP best student paper award in the long papers

We were thrilled to hear that our recent paper at ILP, entitled "Learning Probabilistic Logic Programs over Continuous Data", received the best student paper award in the long paper track.

Nov 20, 2019

Talk at AI Center Cambridge, Samsung Research

I gave a talk on our upcoming NeurIPS paper on implicit learnability in FOL at the Samsung research center in Cambridge. Thanks to Efi for the invitation. Slides here.

Nov 8, 2019

Best paper at DeLBP 2019

We were pleased to learn that our work entitled "Implicitly Learning to Reason in First-Order Logic" was chosen as a best paper at The Fourth International Workshop on Declarative Learning Based Programming, IJCAI, 2019.

Nov 8, 2019

Academics Unplugged

Link In the last week of October, I gave a talk informally discussing explainability and ethical responsibility in artificial intelligence. Thanks to the organizers for the invitation.

Nov 5, 2019

Invited talk at the Samsung AI Forum

Event link I was very excited to be giving an invited talk at the Samsung AI Forum in Seoul today. Thanks to Samsung for the invitation and the hospitality.

Oct 22, 2019

The quest for interpretable and responsible artificial intelligence

The article, to appear in The Biochemist, surveys some of the motivations and approaches for making AI interpretable and responsible.

Oct 8, 2019

Royal Society University Research Fellow

I'm thrilled to have received the Royal Society University Research Fellowship. Announcement from the Royal Society can be found here.

Oct 2, 2019

Talk at Beyond-Symposium 2019

I gave a talk at the beyond symposium 2019, which aims to put together artists, scientists, economists, among others. The talk was on experiential AI and the challenges.

Sep 10, 2019

NeurIPS paper on PAC learnability for FOL

Brendan and I have our paper on (implicit) PAC learnability for first-order logic accepted at NeurIPS.

Sep 10, 2019

Experiential AI at Ars Electronica

Drew, Dave, Larissa and I had the opportunity to discuss the motivatons and foundations for instigating the new research theme of Experiential AI in a 90 minute talk.

Sep 6, 2019

Logic & Learning Dagstuhl Seminar

Thanks to Kristian, Michael, Phokion and Daniel for organizing a great seminar at the Dagstuhl. Along with the discussions, I had an opportunity to reflect on the ways logic ehances learning. Slides on a short presentation I gave, entitled six perspectives on logic & learning (in infinite domains) can be found here.

Aug 12, 2019

Experiential AI editorial at Leonardo

Paper link Drew, Ruth, Larissa, Dave, Frank and I have an editorial accepted on experiential AI at the Leonardo journal

Aug 6, 2019

Talk at the Skeptics on the Fringe

Link I gave a talk at the Skeptics on the Fringe on ethical AI. Thanks to the Edinburgh Skeptics for the invitation.

Jul 30, 2019

Paper accepted on program induction

The paper tackles unsupervised program induction over mixed discrete-continuous data, and is accepted at ILP.

Jul 19, 2019

Seminar at NII

Last week, I gave a seminar at NII in Tokyoon our recent work on interpretable and responsible AI. Thanks to Katsumi Inoue for organising the talk.

Jul 4, 2019

Seminar at IISC

I gave a seminar at the Indian Institute of Science on our recent work on interpretable and ethical AI. Thanks to Partha Talukdar for organising the talk.

Jun 21, 2019

CogRobo Seminar

Seminar link I gave a seminar at the Sabancı University in Turkey on our recent work on interpretable and ethical AI. Thanks to Esra Erdem for organising the talk.

May 30, 2019

EPSRC IAA grant for Credit Risk

Link Raffaella and I are thrilled to receive an EPSRC IAA grant on "AI for credit risk."

May 29, 2019

Adventures with a Robot

Last week, I gave a talk at the pint of science on automated systems and their impact, touching on the topics of fairness and blameworthiness.

May 18, 2019

ZKM Center for Art and Media

Larissa, Drew, Dave and I are excited to be giving a talk on experiential AI at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.

May 14, 2019

Experiential AI: a new research agenda in which artists and scientists come together

Together with colleagues from Edinburgh and Herriot Watt, we have put out the call for a new research agenda.

Oct 30, 2018

Tutorial on unifying logic, probability and dynamics

I gave the tutorial at the 16th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning / KR 2018.

Oct 28, 2018

Probabilistic Planning by Probabilistic Programming Talk

I gave a talk at the Cognitive Robotics Workshop at KR-18, entitled Probabilistic Planning by Probabilistic Programming: Semantics, Inference and Learning.

Oct 24, 2018

Towards Intepretable & Responsible AI

I gave a talk at the London Machine Learning Meetup. Thanks to the organizers for the invitation.

Aug 28, 2018

ACAI 2018: Summer school on statistical relational AI

I gave at a tutorial on effective inference and learning with probabilistic logical models in continuous domains, at ACAI 2018.

Jul 13, 2018

IJCAI-ECAI 2018 Workshop on Learning & Reasoning

We are organising a workshop on integrating learning and reasoning at IJCAI-ECAI in Sweden.

Jul 11, 2018

RSE YAS member

I'm thrilled to become a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Young Academy of Scotland.

Jun 27, 2018

New AIJ article accepted

The article introduces a general logical framework for reasoning about discrete and continuous probabilistic models in dynamical domains.

Jun 2, 2018

The End of Privacy 1.0: Data Portability and Information Rights

I gave a talk, entitled "Explainability as a service", at the above event that discussed expectations regarding explainable AI and how could be enabled in applications.

May 1, 2018

Paper accepted at IJCAI-18

In the paper, we exploit the XADD data structure to perform probabilistic inference in mixed discrete-continuous spaces efficiently.

Apr 21, 2018

Presentation at ICAPS-18 Journal Track

Our MLJ (2017) article on planning with hybrid MDPs was accepted for presentation at the journal track.

Apr 13, 2018

Seminar at Ben-Gurion University

I gave a seminar on decision-theoretic planning via probabilistic programming, based on our recent MLJ (2017) article.

Mar 23, 2018

EPSRC: Towards Explainable and Robust Statistical AI

I'm thrilled to soon get started on a EPSRC first grant on XAI.

Mar 21, 2018

Deloitte Datathon

Through the Alan Turing Institute, we (Stefanie, Andreas and I) mentored at the Deloitte Datathon, on the theme of financial services for social good.

Mar 18, 2018

IPAB Seminar

Last week, I gave an IPAB (Edinburgh) seminar on decision-theoretic planning via probabilistic programming, based on our recent MLJ (2017) article.

Mar 15, 2018

SMiLe 2018

I attended the SML workshop in the Black Forest, and talked about the connections between explainable AI and statistical relational learning.

Feb 23, 2018

Building Trust in AI Workshop

I gave a talk entitled "Perspectives on Explainable AI," at an interdisciplinary workshop focusing on building trust in AI.

Feb 8, 2018

Probabilistic Planning by Probabilistic Programming

An article at the planning and inference workshop at AAAI-18 compares two distinct approaches for probabilistic planning by means of probabilistic programming.

Jan 25, 2018

Paper accepted at AAMAS-18

The paper discusses the epistemic formalisation of generalised planning in the presence of noisy acting and sensing.

Nov 16, 2017

Interpretability of Algorithmic Systems Workshop

I gave a talk at the workshop on how the synthesis of logic and machine learning, especially areas such as statistical relational learning, can enable interpretability.

Nov 13, 2017

Talk at the University of Oxford

I gave a talk on decision-theoretic planning via probabilistic programming at Oxford.

Nov 7, 2017

Hybrid Reasoning for Intelligent Systems, 2017

I gave a talk and a tutorial at the Hybrid reasoning workshop at Aachen, Germany.

Nov 2, 2017

PhD position on Explainable AI, KR and ML

Applications are invited for a PhD position in Artificial Intelligence, to be based in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.

Nov 1, 2017

Turing Faculty Fellow

I'm thrilled to be a faculty fellow at the Alan Turing Institute.

Oct 31, 2017

Seminar on First-order probabilistic relational models

I gave a seminar on extending the expressiveness of probabilistic relational models with first-order features, such as universal quantification over infinite domains.

Oct 6, 2017

Machine learning Journal article

We study planning in relational Markov decision processes involving discrete and continuous states and actions, and an unknown number of objects (via probabilistic programming).

Aug 15, 2017

Tutorial on First-Order Multi-agent Logics in Action

I'm giving a tutorial on First-Order Multi-agent Logics in Action at IJCAI in Melbourne, Australia.

Aug 12, 2017

Tutorial on Unifying Logic, Dynamics and Probability

I'm giving a tutorial on Unifying Logic, Dynamics and Probability - Foundations, Algorithms and Challenges at IJCAI in Melbourne, Australia.

Jul 3, 2017

Paper accepted at UAI 2017

The paper discusses how to handle nested functions and quantification in relational probabilistic graphical models.

Jun 13, 2017

Talk at the Amsterdam Machine Learning Lab

I discussed advances in open-universe probabilistic models.

Jun 12, 2017

Dagstuhl seminar on epistemic planning

I attended a workshop on epistemic planning, where I presented a poster on some results pertaining to programs in unbounded stochastic domains.

Jun 1, 2017

IJCAI 2017 Workshop on Logical Foundations for Uncertainty and Learning

Henri, Lluis, Guilin, James, Marcelo and I are organising a workshop on the logical foundations of uncertainty and learning.

May 5, 2017

IJCAI-17 Early Career Spotlight Track

Honored to be giving a talk at the IJCAI-17 Early Career Spotlight track.

Apr 24, 2017

2 papers accepted at IJCAI 2017

The first introduces a first-order language for reasoning about probabilities in dynamical domains, and the second considers the automated solving of probability problems specified in natural language.

Apr 7, 2017

Seminar at MIT

I went over symbolic approaches to probabilistic inference and optimisation.

Mar 9, 2017

ICAPS 2017 Workshop on Generalized Planning

Siddharth, Sheila, Ron and I are organizing a workshop on generalized planning to be held at ICAPS.

Mar 5, 2017

Edinburgh University International Development Society (EUID)

I gave a talk on the risks of artificial intelligence and research priorities at the International Development Society.

Feb 22, 2017

Talk at the University of York

I discussed model counting approaches for mixed discrete-continuous probability spaces.

Nov 13, 2016

2 papers accepted at AAAI-17

These introduce (1) the use of symbolic representations in solving logical linear programs, and (2) an extension of weighted model counting for open universes.

Nov 1, 2016

AAAI-17 Workshop on Symbolic Inference and Optimization

Optimization Scott, Rodrigo, Kristian, Martin and me are organizing a workshop to explore and promote symbolic approaches to probabilistic inference, numerical optimization and machine learning.

Sep 30, 2016

Moved to the University of Edinburgh

Since October, I am at the University of Edinburgh.

Apr 20, 2016

Invited paper at IJCAI-16

An abridged version of our UAI-15 paper on approximate inference will be presented in the sister conferences track at IJCAI-16.

Jan 29, 2016

Paper accepted at KR-16

We consider the question of how generalized plans (plans with loops) can be deemed correct in unbounded and continuous domains.

Dec 1, 2015

2 papers accepted at AAAI-16

These introduce (1) component caching in hybrid domains, and (2) a first-order logic of probability with only knowing.

Sep 3, 2015

Machine Learning Journal Award at ECML-PKDD

Our Paper Planning in Discrete and Continuous Markov Decision Processes by Probabilistic Programming received the best student paper award at ECML-PKDD.

Jul 31, 2015

4 papers accepted at IJCAI-15

We have 4 papers accepted at IJCAI-15. These cover (1) weighted model counting for hybrid domains, (2) the GOLOG language in hybrid domains, (3) interactions between only knowing and common knowledge, and (4) only knowing defined in classical modal logic.

Jul 16, 2015

Microsoft Best Paper Award at UAI

Our Paper Hashing-Based Approximate Probabilistic Inference in Hybrid Domains received the best paper award at 31st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), 2015.

Nov 1, 2014

Moved to KU Leuven

Since November, I am a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven.

Jul 28, 2014

2 papers accepted at AAAI-14

We introduce (a) PREGO, an action language for cognitive robotics in continuous domains, and (b) computing compact conditional plans in partially observable domains.

Jul 21, 2014

2 papers accepted at KR-14

We address the progression of basic action theories in (a) multiagent systems and (b) stochastic domains.

Jun 19, 2014

Silver medal by the Kurt Gödel Society

My project on cognitive robotics was selected as a finalist for the Kurt Gödel Research Prize Fellowship, receiving a silver medal by the Kurt Gödel Society.

May 29, 2014

Heidelberg Laureate Forum

I have been selected to participate in the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, where I will meet with Abel, Fields and Turing Laureates.

May 13, 2014

Paper accepted at AAMAS-14

We introduce a rich account of robot localization.

Feb 17, 2014

Summer Research Project in Knowledge Representation

We are offering a summer research project in knowledge representation.

Jan 1, 2014

CSC 2502/486: Knowledge Representation

This Winter, I will be teaching CSC 2502/486 Knowledge Representation and Reasoning.