Logic and probability are ancient subjects whose unification holds significant potential for the field of artificial intelligence.
Unifying Logic and Probability: the BLOG Language
The BLOG (Bayesian LOGic) language provides a way to write probability models using syntactic and semantic devices from first-order logic. In modern parlance, it is a relational, open-universe probabilistic programming language that allows one to define probability distributions over the entire space of first-order model structures that can be constructed given the constant, function, and predicate symbols of the program. In this public lecture, Stuart Russell (University of California Berkeley, USA) will describe the language mainly through examples and cover its application to monitoring the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
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During the past 50 years there has been extensive, continuous, and increasing interaction between logic and computer science.
In many respects, logic provides computer science with both a unifying foundational framework and a modelling tool. Indeed, logic has rightly been called 'the calculus of computer science," playing a crucial role in such diverse areas as artificial intelligence, computational complexity, distributed computing, database systems, hardware design,...