Neurosymbolic Programming for Science

Jennifer J. Sun, Megan Tjandrasuwita, Atharva Sehgal, Armando Solar-Lezama, Swarat Chaudhuri, Yisong Yue, Omar Costilla Reyes

Keywords: machine learning, programming languages, scientists, domain knowledge

TL;DR: We present opportunities and challenges for using Neurosymbolic Programming to accelerate scientific discovery.

Abstract: Neurosymbolic Programming (NP) techniques have the potential to accelerate scientific discovery. These models combine neural and symbolic components to learn complex patterns and representations from data, using high-level concepts or known constraints. NP techniques can interface with symbolic domain knowledge from scientists, such as prior knowledge and experimental context, to produce interpretable outputs. We identify opportunities and challenges between current NP models and scientific workflows, with real-world examples from behavior analysis in science: to enable the use of NP broadly for workflows across the natural and social sciences.