Handling Uncertainty in Answer Set Programming

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Handling Uncertainty in Answer Set Programming Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence Handling Uncertainty in Answer Set Programming Yi Wang and Joohyung Lee School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering Arizona State University, Tempe, USA fywang485, [email protected] Abstract Language LPMLN We present a probabilistic extension of logic programs un- Since a Markov Logic Network is based on the standard der the stable model semantics, inspired by the concept of first-order logic semantics, it “has the drawback that it can- Markov Logic Networks. The proposed language takes ad- not express (non-ground) inductive definitions” (Fierens et vantage of both formalisms in a single framework, allowing al. 2013). Consider the following domain description (“α” us to represent commonsense reasoning problems that require denotes “hard weight”). both logical and probabilistic reasoning in an intuitive and w : Edge(1; 2) elaboration tolerant way. 1 w2 : Edge(2; 3) ::: Introduction α : Path(x; y) Edge(x; y): Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a successful logic pro- α : Path(x; y) Path(x; z); Path(z; y): gramming paradigm that takes advantage of nonmonotonic- The above weighted rules are intended to describe proba- ity of the underlying semantics, the stable model semantics. bilistic reachability in a graph, which is induced by the prob- Many useful knowledge representation constructs and ef- abilities of the involved edges. The relation Path, describing ficient solvers allow ASP to handle various commonsense the reachability between two vertices, is supposed to be the reasoning problems elegantly and efficiently. However, dif- transitive closure of the relation Edge. However, under the ficulty still remains when it comes to domains with uncer- MLN semantics, this is not the case. tainty. Imprecise and vague information cannot be handled We propose the language LPMLN, which overcomes such well since the stable model semantics is mainly restricted MLN to Boolean values. Further, probabilistic information cannot a limitation. The syntax of an LP program is essentially be handled since the stable model semantics does not distin- the same as that of an MLN instance, except that weighted guish which stable models are more likely to be true. formulas are replaced by weighted rules. To address the first aspect of the issue, several approaches Similar to MLN, the weight of each rule can be either to incorporating fuzzy logic into ASP have been proposed, a real number, or the symbol α that marks a rule a “hard such as (Lukasiewicz 2006). However, most of the work rule.” The weight of each interpretation is obtained from the is limited to simple rules. In our previous work (Lee and weights of the rules that form the maximal subset of the pro- Wang 2014), we proposed a stable model semantics for gram for which the interpretation is a stable model. fuzzy propositional formulas, which properly generalizes More precisely, we assume a finite first-order signature σ that contains no function constants of positive arity, so that both fuzzy logic and the Boolean stable model semantics, MLN as well as many existing approaches to combining them. any non-ground LP program can be identified with The resulting language combines the many-valued nature of its ground instance. Without loss of generality, we con- fuzzy logic and the nonmonotonicity of stable model seman- sider ground (i.e., variable-free) LPMLN programs. For any MLN tics, and consequently shows competence in commonsense ground LP program P of signature σ, consisting of a set reasoning involving fuzzy values. of weighted rules w : R, and any Herbrand interpretation I In this work, we focus on the other aspect of the is- of σ, we define PI to be the set of rules in P which are sat- sue, namely handling probabilistic information in common- isfied by I. The weight of I, denoted by WP(I), is defined sense reasoning. We adapt the idea of Markov Logic Net- as ! works (MLN) (Richardson and Domingos 2006), a well- X known approach to combining first-order logic and proba- WP(I) = exp w bilistic graphical models in a single framework, to the con- w:R 2 P R2PI text of logic programming. The resulting language LPMLN if I is a stable model of ; otherwise W (I) = 0. The combines the attractive features of each of the stable model PI P probability of I under , denoted P r [I], is defined as semantics and MLN. P P W (I) Copyright c 2015, Association for the Advancement of Artificial P r [I] = lim P Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. P α!1 P J2PW WP(J) 4218 the elaboration has a new minimal plan containing 11 ac- tions only, including two steps in which the wolf does not eat the sheep when the farmer is not around. We formal- ized this domain in LPMLN, and, based on the reduction of LPMLN to MLN, used Alchemy to check that the probability of the success of this plan is p × p and that of the original 17 Figure 1: The transition system with probabilistic effects, step plan is 1. defined by LPMLN semantics (a) and MLN semantics (b) Discussion MLN where PW is the set of all Herbrand interpretations of σ. LP is related to many earlier work. Only a few of them MLN are mentioned here due to lack of space. It is not difficult Inductive definitions are correctly handled in LP to embed ProbLog (Raedt, Kimmig, and Toivonen 2007) in since it adopts the stable model semantics in place of the LPMLN. The language is also closely related to P-log (Baral, standard first-order logic semantics in MLN. For instance, MLN the weighted rules given at the beginning of this section Gelfond, and Rushton 2009). The LP formalization of yields the expected result under the LPMLN semantics. probabilistic transition systems is related to PC+ (Eiter and Lukasiewicz 2003), which extends action language C+ for Any logic program under the stable model semantics can probabilistic reasoning about actions. be embedded in LPMLN by assigning the hard weight to each MLN The work presented here calls for more future work. rule. MLN can also be embedded in LP via choice for- MLN MLN One may design a native computation algorithm for LP mulas which exempt atoms from minimization. LP pro- which would be feasible to handle certain “non-tight” pro- grams can be turned into MLN instances via the concept of grams. We expect many results established in ASP may loop formulas (Ferraris, Lee, and Lifschitz 2006). This result carry over to MLN, and vice versa, which may provide a allows us to use an existing implementation of MLN, such as new opportunity for probabilistic answer set programming. Alchemy, to effectively compute “tight” LPMLN programs. Acknowledgements We are grateful to Chitta Baral, MLN Michael Bartholomew, Amelia Harrison, Vladimir Lifs- Probabilistic Transitions by LP chitz, Yunsong Meng, and the anonymous referees for their useful comments. This work was partially supported by the LPMLN can be used to model transition systems where ac- National Science Foundation under Grant IIS-1319794 and tions may have probabilistic effects. For example, the tran- by the South Korea IT R&D program MKE/KIAT 2010-TD- sition system shown in Figure 1(a) can be encoded as the 300404-001, and the Brain Pool Korea program. following LPMLN program. References ln(λ): Auxi α : fPi+1g Pi ln(1 − λ): Auxi α : fNPi+1g NPi Baral, C.; Gelfond, M.; and Rushton, J. N. 2009. Probabilistic α : Pi; NPi α : fAig reasoning with answer sets. TPLP 9(1):57–144. α : not Pi; not NPαi : fP0g Eiter, T., and Lukasiewicz, T. 2003. Probabilistic reasoning α : Pi+1 Ai; Auxiα : fNP0g about actions in nonmonotonic causal theories. In Proceedings Here i is a schematic variable ranging over Nineteenth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI-2003), 192–199. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. f0; : : : ; maxstep − 1g. The atom Auxi represents the Ferraris, P.; Lee, J.; and Lifschitz, V. 2006. A generalization probabilistic choice for the success of action Ai. The 3rd and 4th rules say that P and NP are complementary. of the Lin-Zhao theorem. Annals of Mathematics and Artificial i i Intelligence 47:79–101. The 5th rule defines the probabilistic effect of Ai. The 6th and 7th rules represent the commonsense law of Fierens, D.; Van den Broeck, G.; Renkens, J.; Shterionov, D.; inertia, where we use fHg Body to denote the rule Gutmann, B.; Thon, I.; Janssens, G.; and De Raedt, L. 2014. H Body; not not H. The last three rules specify that the Inference and learning in probabilistic logic programs using execution of A at each step and the initial value of P are weighted boolean formulas. TPLP, 44 pages. arbitrary. Lee, J., and Wang, Y. 2014. Stable models of fuzzy propo- Under the MLN semantics, the same program specifies a sitional formulas. In Proceedings of European Conference on different probabilistic transition system (Figure 1(b)), which Logics in Artificial Intelligence (JELIA), 326–339. is not aligned with the commonsense understanding of the Lukasiewicz, T. 2006. Fuzzy description logic programs under description. In this transition system, fluents can change ar- the answer set semantics for the semantic web. In Eiter, T.; bitrarily even when no relevant actions are executed. Franconi, E.; Hodgson, R.; and Stephens, S., eds., RuleML, 89– As an application of the idea of using LPMLN to define 96. IEEE Computer Society. probabilistic transition systems, a probabilistic variant of the Raedt, L. D.; Kimmig, A.; and Toivonen, H. 2007. ProbLog: Wolf, Sheep and Cabbage puzzle can be encoded in LPMLN. A probabilistic Prolog and its application in link discovery. In We consider an elaboration in which with some probabil- IJCAI, 2462–2467.
Recommended publications
  • Answer Set Programming: a Tour from the Basics to Advanced Development Tools and Industrial Applications
    Answer Set Programming: A tour from the basics to advanced development tools and industrial applications Nicola Leone and Francesco Ricca Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Calabria, Italy leone,ricca @mat.unical.it { } Abstract. Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a powerful rule-based language for knowledge representation and reasoning that has been developed in the field of logic programming and nonmonotonic reasoning. After more than twenty years from the introduction of ASP, the theoretical properties of the language are well understood and the solving technology has become mature for practical appli- cations. In this paper, we first present the basics of the ASP language, and we then concentrate on its usage for knowledge representation and reasoning in real- world contexts. In particular, we report on the development of some industry-level applications with the ASP system DLV, and we illustrate two advanced develop- ment tools for ASP, namely ASPIDE and JDLV, which speed-up and simplify the implementation of applications. 1 Introduction Answer Set Programming (ASP) [11, 19, 30] is a powerful rule-based language for knowledge representation and reasoning that has been developed in the field of logic programming and nonmonotonic reasoning. ASP features disjunction in rule heads, non monotonic negation in rule bodies [30], aggregate atoms [16] for concise mod- eling of complex combinatorial problems, and weak constraints [12] for the declarative encoding of optimization problems. Computational problems, even of high complexity [19], can be solved in ASP by specifying a logic program, i.e., a set of logic rules, such that its answer sets correspond to solutions, and then, using an answer set solver to find such solutions [38, 34].
    [Show full text]
  • Complexity Results for Probabilistic Answer Set Programming
    International Journal of Approximate Reasoning 118 (2020) 133–154 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Approximate Reasoning www.elsevier.com/locate/ijar Complexity results for probabilistic answer set programming ∗ Denis Deratani Mauá a, , Fabio Gagliardi Cozman b a Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil b Escola Politécnica, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: We analyze the computational complexity of probabilistic logic programming with Received 16 May 2019 constraints, disjunctive heads, and aggregates such as sum and max. We consider Received in revised form 25 October 2019 propositional programs and relational programs with bounded-arity predicates, and look Accepted 9 December 2019 at cautious reasoning (i.e., computing the smallest probability of an atom over all Available online 16 December 2019 probability models), cautious explanation (i.e., finding an interpretation that maximizes the Keywords: lower probability of evidence) and cautious maximum-a-posteriori (i.e., finding a partial Probabilistic logic programming interpretation for a set of atoms that maximizes their lower probability conditional on Answer set programming evidence) under Lukasiewicz’s credal semantics. Computational complexity © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Probabilities and logic programming have been combined in a variety of ways [1–8]. A particularly interesting and power- ful combination is offered by probabilistic answer set programming, which exploits the powerful knowledge representation and problem solving toolset of answer set programming [9]. Available surveys describe probabilistic logic programming in detail and go over many promising applications [10–13].
    [Show full text]
  • Answer Set Programming: a Primer?
    Answer Set Programming: A Primer? Thomas Eiter1, Giovambattista Ianni2, and Thomas Krennwallner1 1 Institut fur¨ Informationssysteme, Technische Universitat¨ Wien Favoritenstraße 9-11, A-1040 Vienna, Austria feiter,[email protected] 2 Dipartimento di Matematica, Universita´ della Calabria, I-87036 Rende (CS), Italy [email protected] Abstract. Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a declarative problem solving para- digm, rooted in Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning, which has been gaining increasing attention during the last years. This article is a gentle introduction to the subject; it starts with motivation and follows the historical development of the challenge of defining a semantics for logic programs with negation. It looks into positive programs over stratified programs to arbitrary programs, and then proceeds to extensions with two kinds of negation (named weak and strong negation), and disjunction in rule heads. The second part then considers the ASP paradigm itself, and describes the basic idea. It shows some programming techniques and briefly overviews Answer Set solvers. The third part is devoted to ASP in the context of the Semantic Web, presenting some formalisms and mentioning some applications in this area. The article concludes with issues of current and future ASP research. 1 Introduction Over the the last years, Answer Set Programming (ASP) [1–5] has emerged as a declar- ative problem solving paradigm that has its roots in Logic Programming and Non- monotonic Reasoning. This particular way of programming, in a language which is sometimes called AnsProlog (or simply A-Prolog) [6, 7], is well-suited for modeling and (automatically) solving problems which involve common sense reasoning: it has been fruitfully applied to a range of applications (for more details, see Section 6).
    [Show full text]
  • Answer Set Programming
    ANSWER SET PROGRAMMING Tran Cao Son Department of Computer Science New Mexico State University Las Cruces, NM 88011, USA [email protected] http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~tson October 2005 Answer Set Programming. Acknowledgement This tutorial contains some materials from tutorials on answer set programming and on knowledge representation and logic programming from those provided by • Chitta Baral, available at www.public.asu.edu/~cbaral. • Michael Gelfond, available at www.cs.ttu.ued/~mgelfond. Tran Cao Son 1 Answer Set Programming. Introduction — Answer Set Programming Answer set programming is a new programming paradigm. It is introduced in the late 90’s and manages to attracts the intention of different groups of researchers thanks to its: • declarativeness: programs do not specify how answers are computed; • modularity: programs can be developed incrementally; • expressiveness: answer set programming can be used to solve problems in high 2 complexity classes (e.g. ΣP , Π2P , etc.) Answer set programming has been applied in several areas: reasoning about actions and changes, planning, configuration, wire routing, phylogenetic inference, semantic web, information integration, etc. Tran Cao Son 2 Answer Set Programming. Purpose • Introduce answer set programming • Provide you with some initial references, just in case • ...you get excited about answer set programming Tran Cao Son 3 Answer Set Programming. Outline • Foundation of answer set programming: logic programming with answer set semantics (syntax, semantics, early application). • Answer set programming: general ideas and examples • Application of answer set programming in – Knowledge representation – Constraint satisfaction problem – Combinatoric problems – Reasoning about action and change – Planning and diagnostic reasoning • Current issues Tran Cao Son 4 LOGIC PROGRAMMING AND ANSWER SET SEMANTICS Answer Set Programming.
    [Show full text]
  • A Meta-Programming Technique for Debugging Answer-Set Programs∗
    A Meta-Programming Technique for Debugging Answer-Set Programs∗ Martin Gebser1, Jorg¨ Puhrer¨ 2, Torsten Schaub1, and Hans Tompits2 1 Institut fur¨ Informatik, Universitat¨ Potsdam, Germany, {gebser,torsten}@cs.uni-potsdam.de 2 Institut fur¨ Informationssysteme 184/3, Technische Universitat¨ Wien, Austria, {puehrer,tompits}@kr.tuwien.ac.at Abstract applying such an approach to ASP results in some deci- sive drawbacks, undermining the declarativity of answer- Answer-set programming (ASP) is widely recognised as a vi- able tool for declarative problem solving. However, there is set semantics. In particular, establishing canonical tracing- currently a lack of tools for developing answer-set programs. based techniques for debugging answer-set programs re- In particular, providing tools for debugging answer-set pro- quires also a canonical procedure for answer-set computa- grams has recently been identified as a crucial prerequisite tion, and programmers would have to be familiar with the al- for a wider acceptance of ASP. In this paper, we introduce a gorithm. This would lead to a shift of perspectives in which meta-programming technique for debugging in ASP. The ba- an answer-set program is degraded from a declarative prob- sic question we address is why interpretations expected to be lem description to a set of parameters for a static solving answer sets are not answer sets of the program to debug. We algorithm. Therefore, we argue for declarative debugging thus deal with finding semantical errors of programs. The ex- strategies that are independent of answer-set computation. planations provided by our method are based on an intuitive Indeed, among the few approaches dealing with debug- scheme of errors that relies on a recent characterisation of the answer-set semantics.
    [Show full text]
  • Integrating Answer Set Programming and Constraint Logic Programming
    Integrating Answer Set Programming and Constraint Logic Programming Veena S. Mellarkod and Michael Gelfond and Yuanlin Zhang {veena.s.mellarkod,mgelfond,yzhang}@cs.ttu.edu Texas Tech University Dedicated to Victor Marek on his 65th birthday as a specification for the sets of beliefs to be held by a ra- tional reasoner associated with Π. Such sets, called an- Abstract swer sets of Π, are represented by collections of ground literals. A rule (1) is viewed as a constraint which says We introduce a knowledge representation language that if literals lk+1, . , ln belong to an answer set A of AC(C) extending the syntax and semantics of ASP Π and none of the literals ln+1, . , lm belong to A then and CR-Prolog, give some examples of its use, and A must contain at least one of the literals l , . , l . To present an algorithm, ACsolver, for computing answer 1 k sets of AC(C) programs. The algorithm does not re- form answer sets of Π, the reasoner must satisfy Π’s quire full grounding of a program and combines “clas- rules together with the rationality principle which says: sical” ASP solving methods with constraint logic pro- “Believe nothing you are not forced to believe”. gramming techniques and CR-Prolog based abduction. The AC(C) based approach often allows to solve prob- Given a computational problem P , an ASP programmer lems which are impossible to solve by more traditional • Expresses information relevant to the problem in the ASP solving techniques. We belief that further inves- language of ASP; tigation of the language and development of more effi- cient and reliable solvers for its programs can help to • Reduces P to a query Q requesting computation of substantially expand the domain of applicability of the (parts of) answer sets of Π.
    [Show full text]
  • Towards Flexible Goal-Oriented Logic Programming
    FACULTY OF SCIENCES Towards Flexible Goal-Oriented Logic Programming ir. Benoit Desouter Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Computer Science Supervisors: prof. dr. ir. Tom Schrijvers prof. dr. ir. Marko van Dooren Department of Applied Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics Faculty of Sciences, Ghent University ii Acknowledgments As it feels more natural to thank people in the language that we have used on a daily basis during the journey towards completing this PhD thesis, I'll use Dutch for most of the next few pages. In de eerste plaats wil ik mijn promotoren Tom en Marko bedanken. Tom, bedankt voor het geduld als ik occasioneel iets maar half begreep, en om er altijd vertrouwen in te blijven hebben. Je hebt me heel wat kansen aangereikt, waardoor ik van heel wat onderwerpen iets heb opgestoken. Marko, hoewel je er pas halverwege bijkwam, toonde je al snel interesse voor het onderwerp en heb je er vanuit je eigen expertise heel wat aan toegevoegd. Je deur stond altijd voor me open als ik even een tussentijdse statusupdate wou geven. Bedankt voor de babbels over vanalles en nog wat, en om me grondig te betrekken bij het geven van Programmeren 1. Ik heb nog heel wat bijgeleerd over objec- tori¨entatie door jouw visie, slides en codevoorbeelden. Daarnaast ook bedankt om mijn lokale LATEX-goeroe te zijn: niettegenstaande ik LATEX al tien jaar lang gebruik, heb ik voor het precies goed krijgen van deze thesis heel wat nieuwe pakketten en trucjes moeten gebruiken, met regelmatig vreemde out- put of cryptische foutmeldingen tot gevolg die ik niet altijd alleen kon oplossen | of het zou me op zijn minst veel meer tijd gekost hebben.
    [Show full text]
  • CS 252R: Advanced Topics in Programming Languages
    CS 252r: Advanced Topics in Programming Languages Eric K. Zhang [email protected] Fall 2020 Abstract These are notes for Harvard's CS 252r, a graduate seminar class on topics at the intersection of programming languages and artificial intelligence, as taught by Nada Amin1 in Fall 2020. Possible topics include: differentiable programming, interpretable AI, neuro-symbolic systems, reinforcement learning, probabilistic programming, and synthesis. Course description: We will explore programming languages for artificial intelligence. Programming languages drive the way we communicate with computers, including how we make them intelligent and reasonable. In this advanced topic course, we will look at artificial intelligence broadly construed from the point of view of programming languages. We gain clarity of semantics, algorithms and purpose. Contents 1 September 3rd, 20204 1.1 Breakout Discussion: Learning DSLs...........................4 1.2 Program Synthesis.....................................4 1.2.1 Type-Driven Specification [OZ15].........................4 1.2.2 Logic-Based Approaches..............................6 1.2.3 Neural-Guided Search [KMP+18].........................6 1.2.4 Differentiable Programming [BRNR17]......................7 1.3 Breakout Prompts: Applying PL to Improve ML....................7 2 September 8th, 20209 2.1 Probabilistic Programming [vdMPYW18]........................9 2.2 Bayesian Inference Algorithms.............................. 11 3 September 10th, 2020 13 3.1 Breakout Discussion: Perceptual Versus Symbolic...................
    [Show full text]
  • Lifted Unit Propagation
    LIFTED UNIT PROPAGATION by Pashootan Vaezipoor B.Sc., Amirkabir University of Technology, 2008 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE in the School of Computing Science Faculty of Applied Sciences c Pashootan Vaezipoor 2012 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Spring 2012 All rights reserved. However, in accordance with the Copyright Act of Canada, this work may be reproduced without authorization under the conditions for “Fair Dealing.” Therefore, limited reproduction of this work for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, review and news reporting is likely to be in accordance with the law, particularly if cited appropriately. APPROVAL Name: Pashootan Vaezipoor Degree: Master of Science Title of Thesis: Lifted Unit Propagation Examining Committee: Dr. Oliver Schulte Chair Dr. David G. Mitchell, Senior Supervisor Dr. Evgenia Ternovska, Supervisor Dr. James Delgrande, SFU Examiner Date Approved: March 13, 2012 ii Partial Copyright Licence Abstract Recent emergence of effective solvers for propositional satisfiability (SAT) and related problems has led to new methods for solving computationally challenging industrial problems, such as NP- hard search problems in planning, software design, and hardware verification. This has produced a demand for tools which allow users to write high level problem specifications which are automat- ically reduced to SAT. We consider the case of specifications in first order logic with reduction to SAT by grounding. For realistic problems, the resulting SAT instances can be prohibitively large. A key technique in SAT solvers is unit propagation, which often significantly reduces instance size before search for a solution begins. We define ”lifted unit propagation”, which is executed before grounding.
    [Show full text]
  • Complex Optimization in Answer Set Programming
    Complex optimization in answer set programming Author Gebser, Martin, Kaminski, Roland, Schaub, Torsten Published 2011 Journal Title Theory and Practice of Logic Programming DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/S1471068411000329 Copyright Statement © 2011 Association for Logic Programming. The attached file is reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal's website for access to the definitive, published version. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/42896 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au TLP 11 (4–5): 821–839, 2011. C Cambridge University Press 2011 821 doi:10.1017/S1471068411000329 Complex optimization in answer set programming MARTIN GEBSER, ROLAND KAMINSKI and TORSTEN SCHAUB Institut fur¨ Informatik, Universitat¨ Potsdam, Germany Abstract Preference handling and optimization are indispensable means for addressing nontrivial applications in Answer Set Programming (ASP). However, their implementation becomes difficult whenever they bring about a significant increase in computational complexity. As a consequence, existing ASP systems do not offer complex optimization capacities, supporting, for instance, inclusion-based minimization or Pareto efficiency. Rather, such complex criteria are typically addressed by resorting to dedicated modeling techniques, like saturation. Unlike the ease of common ASP modeling, however, these techniques are rather involved and hardly usable by ASP laymen. We address this problem by developing a general implementation technique by means of meta-prpogramming, thus reusing existing ASP systems to capture various forms of qualitative preferences among answer sets. In this way, complex preferences and optimization capacities become readily available for ASP applications. KEYWORDS: Answer Set Programming, Preference Handling, Complex optimization, Meta- Programming 1 Introduction Preferences are often an indispensable means in modeling because they allow for identifying preferred solutions among all feasible ones.
    [Show full text]
  • Answer Set Programming – a Domain in Need of Explanation a Position Paper
    Answer Set Programming – a Domain in Need of Explanation A Position Paper Martin Brain and Marina De Vos Department of Computer Science, University of Bath, United Kingdom {mjb,mdv}@cs.bath.ac.uk Abstract. This paper describes the problems with debugging tools for answer set programming, a declarative programming paradigm. Current approaches are difficult to use on most applications due to the consider- able bottlenecks in communicating the reasons to the user. In this paper we examine the reasons for this and suggest some possible future direc- tions. 1 Introduction One of the long term goals of computer science is creating efficient declarative programming systems. In an ideal world, the user would create a description of what the problem is and the programming system would work out how to solve it, and return the answer. However, as any student of software engineering will note, what the user wants and what the user asks for are often different. In the context of declarative programming languages and other ‘intelligent’ systems, this results in the user trying to understand why the system gave the answer it did. Thus, most practical declarative programming systems rapidly develop tools for explaining why they gave a particular answer. These are normally referred to as ‘debugging’ tools; although they are only superficially related to most procedural debugging tools. Given the strong formal semantics underpinning most declarative programming systems, building a tool to compute (online or offline) the formal argument behind an answer is relatively straight-forward. Although the names vary with the problem domain; proof trees, refutations, traces, arguments and so on, all follow a similar methodology of building a formal structure to explain their answers based on the rules that give the semantics of the language.
    [Show full text]
  • What Is Answer Set Programming?
    What Is Answer Set Programming? Vladimir Lifschitz Department of Computer Sciences University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station C0500 Austin, TX 78712 [email protected] Abstract Their approach is based on the relationship between plans and stable models described in (Subrahmanian & Zaniolo Answer set programming (ASP) is a form of declarative pro- 1995). Soininen & Niemel¨a(1998) applied what is now gramming oriented towards difficult search problems. As an outgrowth of research on the use of nonmonotonic reason- known as answer set programming to the problem of prod- ing in knowledge representation, it is particularly useful in uct configuration. The use of answer set solvers for search knowledge-intensive applications. ASP programs consist of was identified as a new programming paradigm in (Marek rules that look like Prolog rules, but the computational mech- & Truszczy´nski 1999) (the term “answer set programming” anisms used in ASP are different: they are based on the ideas was used for the first time as the title of a part of the collec- that have led to the creation of fast satisfiability solvers for tion where that paper appeared) and in (Niemel¨a1999). propositional logic. An answer set programming language Introduction System LPARSE was originally created as a front-end for the 3 Answer set programming (ASP) is a form of declarative answer set solver SMODELS, and it is now used in the same 4 programming oriented towards difficult, primarily NP-hard, way in most other answer set solvers. search problems. As an outgrowth of research on the use Some rules found in LPARSE programs are traditional of nonmonotonic reasoning in knowledge representation, it “Prolog-style” rules, such as is particularly useful in knowledge-intensive applications.
    [Show full text]