A Neural Rewriting System to Solve Algorithmic Problems

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Petruzzellis, Flavio, Testolin, Alberto, Sperduti, Alessandro
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866911953450958848
author Petruzzellis, Flavio
Testolin, Alberto
Sperduti, Alessandro
author_facet Petruzzellis, Flavio
Testolin, Alberto
Sperduti, Alessandro
contents Modern neural network architectures still struggle to learn algorithmic procedures that require to systematically apply compositional rules to solve out-of-distribution problem instances. In this work, we focus on formula simplification problems, a class of synthetic benchmarks used to study the systematic generalization capabilities of neural architectures. We propose a modular architecture designed to learn a general procedure for solving nested mathematical formulas by only relying on a minimal set of training examples. Inspired by rewriting systems, a classic framework in symbolic artificial intelligence, we include in the architecture three specialized and interacting modules: the Selector, trained to identify solvable sub-expressions; the Solver, mapping sub-expressions to their values; and the Combiner, replacing sub-expressions in the original formula with the solution provided by the Solver. We benchmark our system against the Neural Data Router, a recent model specialized for systematic generalization, and a state-of-the-art large language model (GPT-4) probed with advanced prompting strategies. We demonstrate that our approach achieves a higher degree of out-of-distribution generalization compared to these alternative approaches on three different types of formula simplification problems, and we discuss its limitations by analyzing its failures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_17407
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Neural Rewriting System to Solve Algorithmic Problems
Petruzzellis, Flavio
Testolin, Alberto
Sperduti, Alessandro
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Modern neural network architectures still struggle to learn algorithmic procedures that require to systematically apply compositional rules to solve out-of-distribution problem instances. In this work, we focus on formula simplification problems, a class of synthetic benchmarks used to study the systematic generalization capabilities of neural architectures. We propose a modular architecture designed to learn a general procedure for solving nested mathematical formulas by only relying on a minimal set of training examples. Inspired by rewriting systems, a classic framework in symbolic artificial intelligence, we include in the architecture three specialized and interacting modules: the Selector, trained to identify solvable sub-expressions; the Solver, mapping sub-expressions to their values; and the Combiner, replacing sub-expressions in the original formula with the solution provided by the Solver. We benchmark our system against the Neural Data Router, a recent model specialized for systematic generalization, and a state-of-the-art large language model (GPT-4) probed with advanced prompting strategies. We demonstrate that our approach achieves a higher degree of out-of-distribution generalization compared to these alternative approaches on three different types of formula simplification problems, and we discuss its limitations by analyzing its failures.
title A Neural Rewriting System to Solve Algorithmic Problems
topic Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.17407