Rule-Based Reasoning
PLANS: Neuro-Symbolic Program Learning from Videos
Recent years have seen the rise of statistical program learning based on neural models as an alternative to traditional rule-based systems for programming by example. Rule-based approaches offer correctness guarantees in an unsupervised way as they inherently capture logical rules, while neural models are more realistically scalable to raw, high-dimensional input, and provide resistance to noisy I/O specifications. We introduce PLANS (Program LeArning from Neurally inferred Specifications), a hybrid model for program synthesis from visual observations that gets the best of both worlds, relying on (i) a neural architecture trained to extract abstract, high-level information from each raw individual input (ii) a rule-based system using the extracted information as I/O specifications to synthesize a program capturing the different observations. In order to address the key challenge of making PLANS resistant to noise in the network's output, we introduce a dynamic filtering algorithm for I/O specifications based on selective classification techniques. We obtain state-of-the-art performance at program synthesis from diverse demonstration videos in the Karel and ViZDoom environments, while requiring no ground-truth program for training.
Learning Compositional Rules via Neural Program Synthesis
Many aspects of human reasoning, including language, require learning rules from very little data. Humans can do this, often learning systematic rules from very few examples, and combining these rules to form compositional rule-based systems. Current neural architectures, on the other hand, often fail to generalize in a compositional manner, especially when evaluated in ways that vary systematically from training. In this work, we present a neuro-symbolic model which learns entire rule systems from a small set of examples. Instead of directly predicting outputs from inputs, we train our model to induce the explicit system of rules governing a set of previously seen examples, drawing upon techniques from the neural program synthesis literature. Our rule-synthesis approach outperforms neural meta-learning techniques in three domains: an artificial instruction-learning domain used to evaluate human learning, the SCAN challenge datasets, and learning rule-based translations of number words into integers for a wide range of human languages.
Executable Epistemology: The Structured Cognitive Loop as an Architecture of Intentional Understanding
Large language models exhibit intelligence without genuine epistemic understanding, exposing a key gap: the absence of epistemic architecture. This paper introduces the Structured Cognitive Loop (SCL) as an executable epistemological framework for emergent intelligence. Unlike traditional AI research asking "what is intelligence?" (ontological), SCL asks "under what conditions does cognition emerge?" (epistemological). Grounded in philosophy of mind and cognitive phenomenology, SCL bridges conceptual philosophy and implementable cognition. Drawing on process philosophy, enactive cognition, and extended mind theory, we define intelligence not as a property but as a performed process -- a continuous loop of judgment, memory, control, action, and regulation. SCL makes three contributions. First, it operationalizes philosophical insights into computationally interpretable structures, enabling "executable epistemology" -- philosophy as structural experiment. Second, it shows that functional separation within cognitive architecture yields more coherent and interpretable behavior than monolithic prompt based systems, supported by agent evaluations. Third, it redefines intelligence: not representational accuracy but the capacity to reconstruct its own epistemic state through intentional understanding. This framework impacts philosophy of mind, epistemology, and AI. For philosophy, it allows theories of cognition to be enacted and tested. For AI, it grounds behavior in epistemic structure rather than statistical regularity. For epistemology, it frames knowledge not as truth possession but as continuous reconstruction within a phenomenologically coherent loop. We situate SCL within debates on cognitive phenomenology, emergence, normativity, and intentionality, arguing that real progress requires not larger models but architectures that realize cognitive principles structurally.
Democratizing ML for Enterprise Security: A Self-Sustained Attack Detection Framework
Momeni, Sadegh, Zhang, Ge, Huber, Birkett, Harkous, Hamza, Lipton, Sam, Seguin, Benoit, Pavlidis, Yanis
Abstract--Despite advancements in machine learning for security, rule-based detection remains prevalent in Security Operations Centers due to the resource intensiveness and skill gap associated with ML solutions. While traditional rule-based methods offer efficiency, their rigidity leads to high false positives or negatives and requires continuous manual maintenance. This paper proposes a novel, two-stage hybrid framework to democratize ML-based threat detection. The first stage employs intentionally loose Y ARA rules for coarse-grained filtering, optimized for high recall. T o overcome data scarcity, the system leverages Simula, a seedless synthetic data generation framework, enabling security analysts to create high-quality training datasets without extensive data science expertise or pre-labeled examples. A continuous feedback loop incorporates real-time investigation results to adaptively tune the ML model, preventing rule degradation. This proposed model with active learning has been rigorously tested for a prolonged time in a production environment spanning tens of thousands of systems. The system handles initial raw log volumes often reaching 250 billion events per day, significantly reducing them through filtering and ML inference to a handful of daily tickets for human investigation. Live experiments over an extended timeline demonstrate a general improvement in the model's precision over time due to the active learning feature. This approach offers a self-sustained, low-overhead, and low-maintenance solution, allowing security professionals to guide model learning as expert "teachers". Despite significant advancements in machine learning (ML) for security, traditional rule-based detection remains the predominant approach in enterprise security operations. This is evidenced by the low adoption rate of ML-based technologies in Security Operations Centers (SOC), with one study [1] finding that only 10% of participating SOCs utilized AI/ML security monitoring tools.
Major talks on changes to ECHR migration rules set to start
International talks to revolutionise how the European Court of Human Rights handles migration cases will begin on Wednesday. The British government is urging partners to modernise the way states tackle the continent-wide illegal migration crisis. The talks are the most significant sign yet that international human rights law could be reinterpreted to make it easier for states to target people smuggling and set up'returns hubs' to hold people with no right to be in Europe. Writing ahead of the major meeting in Strasbourg, Sir Keir Starmer and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said other nations should rethink human rights laws to make protecting borders easier. Critics say the ECHR is getting in the way of removing more illegal migrants, while supporters say claims about the ECHR's role in migration are exaggerated.
Solving LLM Repetition Problem in Production: A Comprehensive Study of Multiple Solutions
Wang, Weiwei, Zou, Weijie, Min, Jiyong
The repetition problem, where Large Language Models (LLMs) continuously generate repetitive content without proper termination, poses a critical challenge in production deployments, causing severe performance degradation and system stalling. This paper presents a comprehensive investigation and multiple practical solutions for the repetition problem encountered in real-world batch code interpretation tasks. We identify three distinct repetition patterns: (1) business rule generation repetition, (2) method call relationship analysis repetition, and (3) PlantUML diagram syntax generation repetition. Through rigorous theoretical analysis based on Markov models, we establish that the root cause lies in greedy decoding's inability to escape repetitive loops, exacerbated by self-reinforcement effects. Our comprehensive experimental evaluation demonstrates three viable solutions: (1) Beam Search decoding with early_stopping=True serves as a universal post-hoc mechanism that effectively resolves all three repetition patterns; (2) presence_penalty hyperparameter provides an effective solution specifically for BadCase 1; and (3) Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) fine-tuning offers a universal model-level solution for all three BadCases. The primary value of this work lies in combining first-hand production experience with extensive experimental validation. Our main contributions include systematic theoretical analysis of repetition mechanisms, comprehensive evaluation of multiple solutions with task-specific applicability mapping, identification of early_stopping as the critical parameter for Beam Search effectiveness, and practical production-ready solutions validated in real deployment environments.
Executable Governance for AI: Translating Policies into Rules Using LLMs
Datla, Gautam Varma, Vurity, Anudeep, Dash, Tejaswani, Ahmad, Tazeem, Adnan, Mohd, Rafi, Saima
AI policy guidance is predominantly written as prose, which practitioners must first convert into executable rules before frameworks can evaluate or enforce them. This manual step is slow, error-prone, difficult to scale, and often delays the use of safeguards in real-world deployments. To address this gap, we present Policy-to-Tests (P2T), a framework that converts natural-language policy documents into normalized, machine-readable rules. The framework comprises a pipeline and a compact domain-specific language (DSL) that encodes hazards, scope, conditions, exceptions, and required evidence, yielding a canonical representation of extracted rules. To test the framework beyond a single policy, we apply it across general frameworks, sector guidance, and enterprise standards, extracting obligation-bearing clauses and converting them into executable rules. These AI-generated rules closely match strong human baselines on span-level and rule-level metrics, with robust inter-annotator agreement on the gold set. To evaluate downstream behavioral and safety impact, we add HIPAA-derived safeguards to a generative agent and compare it with an otherwise identical agent without guardrails. An LLM-based judge, aligned with gold-standard criteria, measures violation rates and robustness to obfuscated and compositional prompts. Detailed results are provided in the appendix. We release the codebase, DSL, prompts, and rule sets as open-source resources to enable reproducible evaluation.
The age of unipolar diplomacy is coming to an end
What is a Palestinian without olives? In Gaza, the world has seen the cost of a diplomacy that claims to uphold a rules-based order but applies it selectively. The United States intervened late, and only to defend an occupation the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled illegal. Alongside other Western nations that built multilateral institutions, the US increasingly pursues nationalist agendas that undermine them. The hypocrisy is stark: one set of rules for Ukraine, another for Gaza.
DeepRule: An Integrated Framework for Automated Business Rule Generation via Deep Predictive Modeling and Hybrid Search Optimization
This paper proposes DeepRule, an integrated framework for automated business rule generation in retail assortment and pricing optimization. Addressing the systematic misalignment between existing theoretical models and real-world economic complexities, we identify three critical gaps: (1) data modality mismatch where unstructured textual sources (e.g. negotiation records, approval documents) impede accurate customer profiling; (2) dynamic feature entanglement challenges in modeling nonlinear price elasticity and time-varying attributes; (3) operational infeasibility caused by multi-tier business constraints. Our framework introduces a tri-level architecture for above challenges. We design a hybrid knowledge fusion engine employing large language models (LLMs) for deep semantic parsing of unstructured text, transforming distributor agreements and sales assessments into structured features while integrating managerial expertise. Then a game-theoretic constrained optimization mechanism is employed to dynamically reconcile supply chain interests through bilateral utility functions, encoding manufacturer-distributor profit redistribution as endogenous objectives under hierarchical constraints. Finally an interpretable decision distillation interface leveraging LLM-guided symbolic regression to find and optimize pricing strategies and auditable business rules embeds economic priors (e.g. non-negative elasticity) as hard constraints during mathematical expression search. We validate the framework in real retail environments achieving higher profits versus systematic B2C baselines while ensuring operational feasibility. This establishes a close-loop pipeline unifying unstructured knowledge injection, multi-agent optimization, and interpretable strategy synthesis for real economic intelligence.
Can Artificial Intelligence solve the blockchain oracle problem? Unpacking the Challenges and Possibilities
The blockchain oracle problem, which refers to the challenge of injecting reliable external data into decentralized systems, remains a fundamental limitation to the development of trustless applications. While recent years have seen a proliferation of architectural, cryptographic, and economic strategies to mitigate this issue, no one has yet fully resolved the fundamental question of how a blockchain can gain knowledge about the off-chain world. In this position paper, we critically assess the role artificial intelligence (AI) can play in tackling the oracle problem. Drawing from both academic literature and practitioner implementations, we examine how AI techniques such as anomaly detection, language-based fact extraction, dynamic reputation modeling, and adversarial resistance can enhance oracle systems. We observe that while AI introduces powerful tools for improving data quality, source selection, and system resilience, it cannot eliminate the reliance on unverifiable off-chain inputs. Therefore, this study supports the idea that AI should be understood as a complementary layer of inference and filtering within a broader oracle design, not a substitute for trust assumptions.