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arXiv · 2007.05060

Program Synthesis with Pragmatic Communication

Yewen Pu·Kevin Ellis·Marta Kryven·Josh Tenenbaum·Armando Solar-Lezama
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Abstract

Program synthesis techniques construct or infer programs from user-provided specifications, such as input-output examples. Yet most specifications, especially those given by end-users, leave the synthesis problem radically ill-posed, because many programs may simultaneously satisfy the specification. Prior work resolves this ambiguity by using various inductive biases, such as a preference for simpler programs. This work introduces a new inductive bias derived by modeling the program synthesis task as rational communication, drawing insights from recursive reasoning models of pragmatics. Given a specification, we score a candidate program both on its consistency with the specification, and also whether a rational speaker would chose this particular specification to communicate that program. We develop efficient algorithms for such an approach when learning from input-output examples, and build a pragmatic program synthesizer over a simple grid-like layout domain. A user study finds that end-user participants communicate more effectively with the pragmatic program synthesizer over a non-pragmatic one.

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Yewen Pu, Kevin Ellis, Marta Kryven, Josh Tenenbaum, Armando Solar-Lezama. 2020-07-09. Program Synthesis with Pragmatic Communication. https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.05060

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