Complex Query Answering with Neural Link Predictors

Erik Arakelyan, Daniel Daza, Pasquale Minervini, Michael Cochez

Keywords: neural link prediction, complex query answering

Abstract: Neural link predictors are immensely useful for identifying missing edges in large scale Knowledge Graphs. However, it is still not clear how to use these models for answering more complex queries that arise in a number of domains, such as queries using logical conjunctions ($\land$), disjunctions ($\lor$) and existential quantifiers ($\exists$), while accounting for missing edges. In this work, we propose a framework for efficiently answering complex queries on incomplete Knowledge Graphs. We translate each query into an end-to-end differentiable objective, where the truth value of each atom is computed by a pre-trained neural link predictor. We then analyse two solutions to the optimisation problem, including gradient-based and combinatorial search. In our experiments, the proposed approach produces more accurate results than state-of-the-art methods --- black-box neural models trained on millions of generated queries --- without the need of training on a large and diverse set of complex queries. Using orders of magnitude less training data, we obtain relative improvements ranging from 8% up to 40% in Hits@3 across different knowledge graphs containing factual information. Finally, we demonstrate that it is possible to explain the outcome of our model in terms of the intermediate solutions identified for each of the complex query atoms. All our source code and datasets are available online, at https://github.com/uclnlp/cqd.

One-sentence Summary: We show how to answer complex queries by answering their sub-queries via neural link predictors, aggregating results via t-norms and t-conorms, and identifying the optimal variable substitutions by solving an optimisation problem.

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Code: [ uclnlp/cqd](https://github.com/uclnlp/cqd) + [ 2 community implementations](https://paperswithcode.com/paper/?openreview=Mos9F9kDwkz)

Data: [FB15k](https://paperswithcode.com/dataset/fb15k), [FB15k-237](https://paperswithcode.com/dataset/fb15k-237), [NELL](https://paperswithcode.com/dataset/nell), [NELL-995](https://paperswithcode.com/dataset/nell-995)

Community Implementations: [ 1 code implementation](https://www.catalyzex.com/paper/arxiv:2011.03459/code)