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Neuro-symbolic AI + agent systems: a first reflection on trends, opportunities and challenges

Neuro-symbolic AI + agent systems: a first reflection on trends, opportunities and challenges
Neuro-symbolic AI + agent systems: a first reflection on trends, opportunities and challenges

To get one step closer to “human-like” intelligence, we need systems capable of seamlessly combining the neural learning power of symbolic feature extraction from raw data with sophisticated symbolic inference mechanisms for reasoning about “high-level” concepts. It is important to also incorporate existing prior knowledge about a given problem domain, especially since modern machine learning frameworks are typically data-hungry. Recently the field of neuro-symbolic AI has emerged as a promising paradigm for precisely such an integration. However, coming up with a single, clear, concise definition of this area is not an easy task. There are plenty of variations on this topic, and there is no “one true way” that the community can coalesce around. Recently, a workshop was organized at AAMAS-2023 (London, UK) to discuss how this definition should be broadened to also consider reasoning about agents. This article is a collection of ideas, opinions, and positions from computer scientists who were invited for a panel discussion at the workshop. This collection is not meant to be comprehensive but is rather intended to stimulate further conversation on the field of “Neuro-Symbolic Multi-Agent Systems.”

0302-9743
180-200
Springer Cham
Belle, Vaishak
6ed1f63b-487f-4eba-97f3-8958e6fb14af
Fisher, Michael
ba6b9d91-819e-442a-8126-aba1eae43242
Russo, Alessandra
75d5518b-08b6-4b67-a760-8ad18526456d
Komendantskaya, Ekaterina
f12d9c23-5589-40b8-bcf9-a04fe9dedf61
Nottle, Alistair
80c10af2-ab63-4117-8371-0cebeeaf2f64
Amigoni, Francesco
Sinha, Arunesh
Belle, Vaishak
6ed1f63b-487f-4eba-97f3-8958e6fb14af
Fisher, Michael
ba6b9d91-819e-442a-8126-aba1eae43242
Russo, Alessandra
75d5518b-08b6-4b67-a760-8ad18526456d
Komendantskaya, Ekaterina
f12d9c23-5589-40b8-bcf9-a04fe9dedf61
Nottle, Alistair
80c10af2-ab63-4117-8371-0cebeeaf2f64
Amigoni, Francesco
Sinha, Arunesh

Belle, Vaishak, Fisher, Michael, Russo, Alessandra, Komendantskaya, Ekaterina and Nottle, Alistair (2024) Neuro-symbolic AI + agent systems: a first reflection on trends, opportunities and challenges. Amigoni, Francesco and Sinha, Arunesh (eds.) In Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. Best and Visionary Papers - AAMAS 2023 Workshops, Revised Selected Papers. vol. 14456 LNAI, Springer Cham. pp. 180-200 . (doi:10.1007/978-3-031-56255-6_10).

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

To get one step closer to “human-like” intelligence, we need systems capable of seamlessly combining the neural learning power of symbolic feature extraction from raw data with sophisticated symbolic inference mechanisms for reasoning about “high-level” concepts. It is important to also incorporate existing prior knowledge about a given problem domain, especially since modern machine learning frameworks are typically data-hungry. Recently the field of neuro-symbolic AI has emerged as a promising paradigm for precisely such an integration. However, coming up with a single, clear, concise definition of this area is not an easy task. There are plenty of variations on this topic, and there is no “one true way” that the community can coalesce around. Recently, a workshop was organized at AAMAS-2023 (London, UK) to discuss how this definition should be broadened to also consider reasoning about agents. This article is a collection of ideas, opinions, and positions from computer scientists who were invited for a panel discussion at the workshop. This collection is not meant to be comprehensive but is rather intended to stimulate further conversation on the field of “Neuro-Symbolic Multi-Agent Systems.”

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More information

Published date: 30 March 2024
Venue - Dates: 22nd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2023, , London, United Kingdom, 2023-05-29 - 2023-06-02

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 501610
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/501610
ISSN: 0302-9743
PURE UUID: 654e6274-fdb3-4a35-9de2-e884be1b4704
ORCID for Ekaterina Komendantskaya: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-3240-0987

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Date deposited: 04 Jun 2025 16:50
Last modified: 05 Jun 2025 02:10

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Contributors

Author: Vaishak Belle
Author: Michael Fisher
Author: Alessandra Russo
Author: Ekaterina Komendantskaya ORCID iD
Author: Alistair Nottle
Editor: Francesco Amigoni
Editor: Arunesh Sinha

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