Differentiable Logic Machines
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Abstract (arXiv)
The integration of reasoning, learning, and decision-making is key to build more general artificial intelligence systems. As a step in this direction, we propose a novel neural-logic architecture, called differentiable logic machine (DLM), that can solve both inductive logic programming (ILP) and reinforcement learning (RL) problems, where the solution can be interpreted as a first-order logic program. Our proposition includes several innovations. Firstly, our architecture defines a restricted but expressive continuous relaxation of the space of first-order logic programs by assigning weights to predicates instead of rules, in contrast to most previous neural-logic approaches. Secondly, with this differentiable architecture, we propose several (supervised and RL) training procedures, based on gradient descent, which can recover a fully-interpretable solution (i.e., logic formula). Thirdly, to accelerate RL training, we also design a novel critic architecture that enables actor-critic algorithms. Fourthly, to solve hard problems, we propose an incremental training procedure that can learn a logic program progressively. Compared to state-of-the-art (SOTA) differentiable ILP methods, DLM successfully solves all the considered ILP problems with a higher percentage of successful seeds (up to 3.5×). On RL problems, without requiring an interpretable solution, DLM outperforms other non-interpretable neural-logic RL approaches in terms of rewards (up to 3.9%). When enforcing interpretability, DLM can solve harder RL problems (e.g., Sorting, Path) Moreover, we show that deep logic programs can be learned via incremental supervised training. In addition to this excellent performance, DLM can scale well in terms of memory and computational time, especially during the testing phase where it can deal with much more constants (>2×) than SOTA.
Key facts. Cited by 18 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 25 of its 47 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Feb 2021.
Builds on
25 of 47 references.
References · 25
- 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 14,441
- 2014Learning Phrase Representations using RNN Encoder-Decoder for Statistical Machine Translationcited by 4,016
- 2015Continuous control with deep reinforcement learningcited by 3,279
- 2016Categorical Reparameterization with Gumbel-Softmaxcited by 2,708
- 2015Trust Region Policy Optimizationcited by 2,503
- 2016Asynchronous Methods for Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 2,218
- 2015High-Dimensional Continuous Control Using Generalized Advantage Estimationcited by 1,916
- 2019Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Concepts, Taxonomies, Opportunities and Challenges toward Responsible AIcited by 1,543
- 2017Hindsight Experience Replaycited by 1,096
- 2019Neural Probabilistic Logic Programming in DeepProbLogcited by 389
- 2018Neural-Symbolic VQA: Disentangling Reasoning from Vision and Language Understandingcited by 304
- 2018Deep Learning: A Critical Appraisalcited by 214
13 more
- 2017Learning Explanatory Rules from Noisy Datacited by 210
- 2017Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning: A Survey and Interpretationcited by 195
- 2019Neural-Symbolic Computing: An Effective Methodology for Principled Integration of Machine Learning and Reasoningcited by 149
- 2019Neural Logic Machinescited by 144
- 2018SDRL: Interpretable and Data-efficient Deep Reinforcement Learning Leveraging Symbolic Planningcited by 77
- 2020From Statistical Relational to Neuro-Symbolic Artificial Intelligencecited by 63
- 2019Neural Logic Reinforcement Learningcited by 53
- 2020Turning 30: New Ideas in Inductive Logic Programmingcited by 42
- 2019Learn to Explain Efficiently via Neural Logic Inductive Learningcited by 38
- 2019Inductive Logic Programming via Differentiable Deep Neural Logic Networkscited by 25
- 2018Inductive Learning of Answer Set Programs from Noisy Examplescited by 21
- 2019Learning Algorithms via Neural Logic Networkscited by 17
- 2020Incorporating Relational Background Knowledge into Reinforcement Learning via Differentiable Inductive Logic Programmingcited by 12
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Citing papers per year: 2021: 2; 2022: 5; 2023: 3; 2024: 4; 2025: 4.
18 papers.
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- 2021A Survey on Interpretable Reinforcement Learningcited by 70
- 2022Deep Differentiable Logic Gate Networkscited by 67
- 2021Neuro-Symbolic Hierarchical Rule Inductioncited by 23
- 2023Learning Interpretable Rules for Scalable Data Representation and Classificationcited by 14
- 2024DeiSAM: Segment Anything with Deictic Promptingcited by 9
- 2022R5: Rule Discovery with Reinforced and Recurrent Relational Reasoningcited by 7
- 2023Neuro-symbolic Rule Learning in Real-world Classification Taskscited by 7
- 2024From Data to Commonsense Reasoning: The Use of Large Language Models for Explainable AIcited by 7
- 2025Comprehension Without Competence: Architectural Limits of LLMs in Symbolic Computation and Reasoningcited by 7
- 2025LogicCBMs: Logic-Enhanced Concept-Based Learningcited by 5
- 2025Neural DNF-MT: A Neuro-symbolic Approach for Learning Interpretable and Editable Policiescited by 4
- 2022A Survey on Explainable Reinforcement Learning: Concepts, Algorithms, Challengescited by 3
6 more
- 2024ShortCircuit: AlphaZero-Driven Circuit Designcited by 2
- 2025Are Large Language Models Capable of Deep Relational Reasoning? Insights from DeepSeek-R1 and Benchmark Comparisonscited by 2
- 2022PRIMA: Planner-Reasoner Inside a Multi-task Reasoning Agentcited by 1
- 2022ESC-Rules: Explainable, Semantically Constrained Rule Setscited by 1
- 2023Symbolic Imitation Learning: From Black-Box to Explainable Driving Policiescited by 1
- 2024From Chain to Tree: Refining Chain-like Rules into Tree-like Rules on Knowledge Graphscited by 1
- 2025LogicCBMs: Logic-Enhanced Concept-Based Learning8 Dec 2025
- 2025Comprehension Without Competence: Architectural Limits of LLMs in Symbolic Computation and Reasoning14 Jul 2025
- 2025Are Large Language Models Capable of Deep Relational Reasoning? Insights from DeepSeek-R1 and Benchmark Comparisons29 Jun 2025
- 2025Neural DNF-MT: A Neuro-symbolic Approach for Learning Interpretable and Editable Policies7 Jan 2025
- 2024ShortCircuit: AlphaZero-Driven Circuit Design19 Aug 2024
- 2024From Data to Commonsense Reasoning: The Use of Large Language Models for Explainable AI4 Jul 2024
- 2024From Chain to Tree: Refining Chain-like Rules into Tree-like Rules on Knowledge Graphs8 Mar 2024
- 2024DeiSAM: Segment Anything with Deictic Prompting21 Feb 2024
- 2023Learning Interpretable Rules for Scalable Data Representation and Classification22 Oct 2023
- 2023Symbolic Imitation Learning: From Black-Box to Explainable Driving Policies27 Sep 2023
- 2023Neuro-symbolic Rule Learning in Real-world Classification Tasks29 Mar 2023
- 2022A Survey on Explainable Reinforcement Learning: Concepts, Algorithms, Challenges12 Nov 2022
6 more
- 2022Deep Differentiable Logic Gate Networks15 Oct 2022
- 2022ESC-Rules: Explainable, Semantically Constrained Rule Sets26 Aug 2022
- 2022R5: Rule Discovery with Reinforced and Recurrent Relational Reasoning13 May 2022
- 2022PRIMA: Planner-Reasoner Inside a Multi-task Reasoning Agent1 Feb 2022
- 2021Neuro-Symbolic Hierarchical Rule Induction26 Dec 2021
- 2021A Survey on Interpretable Reinforcement Learning24 Dec 2021
- 2024From Data to Commonsense Reasoning: The Use of Large Language Models for Explainable AIcited by 7
- 2025Comprehension Without Competence: Architectural Limits of LLMs in Symbolic Computation and Reasoningcited by 7
- 2025Are Large Language Models Capable of Deep Relational Reasoning? Insights from DeepSeek-R1 and Benchmark Comparisonscited by 2
- 2025Comprehension Without Competence: Architectural Limits of LLMs in Symbolic Computation and Reasoning14 Jul 2025
- 2025Are Large Language Models Capable of Deep Relational Reasoning? Insights from DeepSeek-R1 and Benchmark Comparisons29 Jun 2025
- 2024From Data to Commonsense Reasoning: The Use of Large Language Models for Explainable AI4 Jul 2024
- 2021A Survey on Interpretable Reinforcement Learningcited by 70
- 2022Deep Differentiable Logic Gate Networkscited by 67
- 2021Neuro-Symbolic Hierarchical Rule Inductioncited by 23
- 2023Learning Interpretable Rules for Scalable Data Representation and Classificationcited by 14
- 2024DeiSAM: Segment Anything with Deictic Promptingcited by 9
- 2022R5: Rule Discovery with Reinforced and Recurrent Relational Reasoningcited by 7
- 2023Neuro-symbolic Rule Learning in Real-world Classification Taskscited by 7
- 2025LogicCBMs: Logic-Enhanced Concept-Based Learningcited by 5
- 2025Neural DNF-MT: A Neuro-symbolic Approach for Learning Interpretable and Editable Policiescited by 4
- 2022A Survey on Explainable Reinforcement Learning: Concepts, Algorithms, Challengescited by 3
- 2024ShortCircuit: AlphaZero-Driven Circuit Designcited by 2
- 2022PRIMA: Planner-Reasoner Inside a Multi-task Reasoning Agentcited by 1
12 most cited of 14 All 14 (JSON)
- 2025LogicCBMs: Logic-Enhanced Concept-Based Learning8 Dec 2025
- 2025Neural DNF-MT: A Neuro-symbolic Approach for Learning Interpretable and Editable Policies7 Jan 2025
- 2024ShortCircuit: AlphaZero-Driven Circuit Design19 Aug 2024
- 2024From Chain to Tree: Refining Chain-like Rules into Tree-like Rules on Knowledge Graphs8 Mar 2024
- 2024DeiSAM: Segment Anything with Deictic Prompting21 Feb 2024
- 2023Learning Interpretable Rules for Scalable Data Representation and Classification22 Oct 2023
- 2023Neuro-symbolic Rule Learning in Real-world Classification Tasks29 Mar 2023
- 2022A Survey on Explainable Reinforcement Learning: Concepts, Algorithms, Challenges12 Nov 2022
- 2022Deep Differentiable Logic Gate Networks15 Oct 2022
- 2022ESC-Rules: Explainable, Semantically Constrained Rule Sets26 Aug 2022
- 2022R5: Rule Discovery with Reinforced and Recurrent Relational Reasoning13 May 2022
- 2022PRIMA: Planner-Reasoner Inside a Multi-task Reasoning Agent1 Feb 2022
12 newest of 14 All 14 (JSON)