arXiv subjects

Emiliano Lorini

Publications and source records attributed to Emiliano Lorini.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Binary Spiking Neural Networks as Causal Models

We provide a causal analysis of Binary Spiking Neural Networks (BSNNs) to explain their behavior. We formally define a BSNN and represent its spiking activity as a binary causal model. Thanks to this causal representation, we are able to explain the output of the network by leveraging logic-based methods. In particular, we show that we can successfully use a SAT as well as a SMT solver to compute abductive explanations from this binary causal model. To illustrate our approach, we trained the BSNN on the standard MNIST dataset and applied our SAT-based and SMT-based methods to finding abductive explanations of the network's classifications based on pixel-level features. We also compared the found explanations against SHAP, a popular method used in the area of explainable AI. We show that, unlike SHAP, our approach guarantees that a found explanation does not contain completely irrelevant features.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

FrameNet Semantic Role Classification by Analogy

In this paper, we adopt a relational view of analogies applied to Semantic Role Classification in FrameNet. We define analogies as formal relations over the Cartesian product of frame evoking lexical units (LUs) and frame element (FEs) pairs, which we use to construct a new dataset. Each element of this binary relation is labelled as a valid analogical instance if the frame elements share the same semantic role, or as invalid otherwise. This formulation allows us to transform Semantic Role Classification into binary classification and train a lightweight Artificial Neural Network (ANN) that exhibits rapid convergence with minimal parameters. Unconventionally, no Semantic Role information is introduced to the neural network during training. We recover semantic roles during inference by computing probability distributions over candidates of all semantic roles within a given frame through random sampling and analogical transfer. This approach allows us to surpass previous state-of-the-art results while maintaining computational efficiency and frugality.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2026

Evaluating LLM Alignment With Human Trust Models

Trust plays a pivotal role in enabling effective cooperation, reducing uncertainty, and guiding decision-making in both human interactions and multi-agent systems. Although it is significant, there is limited understanding of how large language models (LLMs) internally conceptualize and reason about trust. This work presents a white-box analysis of trust representation in EleutherAI/gpt-j-6B, using contrastive prompting to generate embedding vectors within the activation space of the LLM for diadic trust and related interpersonal relationship attributes. We first identified trust-related concepts from five established human trust models. We then determined a threshold for significant conceptual alignment by computing pairwise cosine similarities across 60 general emotional concepts. Then we measured the cosine similarities between the LLM's internal representation of trust and the derived trust-related concepts. Our results show that the internal trust representation of EleutherAI/gpt-j-6B aligns most closely with the Castelfranchi socio-cognitive model, followed by the Marsh Model. These findings indicate that LLMs encode socio-cognitive constructs in their activation space in ways that support meaningful comparative analyses, inform theories of social cognition, and support the design of human-AI collaborative systems.

cs.MA↗

arXiv2025

Graded Distributed Belief

We introduce a new logic of graded distributed belief that allows us to express the fact that a group of agents distributively believe that a certain fact holds with at least strength k. We interpret our logic by means of computationally grounded semantics relying on the concept of belief base. The strength of the group's distributed belief is directly computed from the group's belief base after having merged its members' individual belief bases. We illustrate our logic with an intuitive example, formalizing the notion of epistemic disagreement. We also provide a sound and complete Hilbert-style axiomatization, decidability result obtained via filtration, and a tableaux-based decision procedure that allows us to state PSPACE-completeness for our logic.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2025

Can LLMs Reason About Trust?: A Pilot Study

In human society, trust is an essential component of social attitude that helps build and maintain long-term, healthy relationships which creates a strong foundation for cooperation, enabling individuals to work together effectively and achieve shared goals. As many human interactions occur through electronic means such as using mobile apps, the potential arises for AI systems to assist users in understanding the social state of their relationships. In this paper we investigate the ability of Large Language Models (LLMs) to reason about trust between two individuals in an environment which requires fostering trust relationships. We also assess whether LLMs are capable of inducing trust by role-playing one party in a trust based interaction and planning actions which can instil trust.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

A Non-Interventionist Approach to Causal Reasoning based on Lewisian Counterfactuals

We present a computationally grounded semantics for counterfactual conditionals in which i) the state in a model is decomposed into two elements: a propositional valuation and a causal base in propositional form that represents the causal information available at the state; and ii) the comparative similarity relation between states is computed from the states' two components. We show that, by means of our semantics, we can elegantly formalize the notion of actual cause without recurring to the primitive notion of intervention. Furthermore, we provide a succinct formulation of the model checking problem for a language of counterfactual conditionals in our semantics. We show that this problem is PSPACE-complete and provide a reduction of it into QBF that can be used for automatic verification of causal properties.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2025

Rational Capability in Concurrent Games

We extend concurrent game structures (CGSs) with a simple notion of preference over computations and define a minimal notion of rationality for agents based on the concept of dominance. We use this notion to interpret a CL and an ATL languages that extend the basic CL and ATL languages with modalities for rational capability, namely, a coalition's capability to rationally enforce a given property. For each of these languages, we provide results about the complexity of satisfiability checking and model checking as well as about axiomatization.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2024

A Computationally Grounded Framework for Cognitive Attitudes (extended version)

We introduce a novel language for reasoning about agents' cognitive attitudes of both epistemic and motivational type. We interpret it by means of a computationally grounded semantics using belief bases. Our language includes five types of modal operators for implicit belief, complete attraction, complete repulsion, realistic attraction and realistic repulsion. We give an axiomatization and show that our operators are not mutually expressible and that they can be combined to represent a large variety of psychological concepts including ambivalence, indifference, being motivated, being demotivated and preference. We present a dynamic extension of the language that supports reasoning about the effects of belief change operations. Finally, we provide a succinct formulation of model checking for our languages and a PSPACE model checking algorithm relying on a reduction into TQBF. We present some experimental results for the implemented algorithm on computation time in a concrete example.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2024

Responsibility in a Multi-Value Strategic Setting

Responsibility is a key notion in multi-agent systems and in creating safe, reliable and ethical AI. However, most previous work on responsibility has only considered responsibility for single outcomes. In this paper we present a model for responsibility attribution in a multi-agent, multi-value setting. We also expand our model to cover responsibility anticipation, demonstrating how considerations of responsibility can help an agent to select strategies that are in line with its values. In particular we show that non-dominated regret-minimising strategies reliably minimise an agent's expected degree of responsibility.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2024

Computational Grounding of Responsibility Attribution and Anticipation in LTLf

Responsibility is one of the key notions in machine ethics and in the area of autonomous systems. It is a multi-faceted notion involving counterfactual reasoning about actions and strategies. In this paper, we study different variants of responsibility in a strategic setting based on LTLf. We show a connection with notions in reactive synthesis, including synthesis of winning, dominant, and best-effort strategies. This connection provides the building blocks for a computational grounding of responsibility including complexity characterizations and sound, complete, and optimal algorithms for attributing and anticipating responsibility.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2024

A Logic of "Black Box" Classifier Systems

Binary classifiers are traditionally studied by propositional logic (PL). PL can only represent them as white boxes, under the assumption that the underlying Boolean function is fully known. Binary classifiers used in practical applications and trained by machine learning are however opaque. They are usually described as black boxes. In this paper, we provide a product modal logic called PLC (Product modal Logic for binary input Classifier) in which the notion of "black box" is interpreted as the uncertainty over a set of classifiers. We give results about axiomatics and complexity of satisfiability checking for our logic. Moreover, we present a dynamic extension in which the process of acquiring new information about the actual classifier can be represented.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2023

Anticipating Responsibility in Multiagent Planning

Responsibility anticipation is the process of determining if the actions of an individual agent may cause it to be responsible for a particular outcome. This can be used in a multi-agent planning setting to allow agents to anticipate responsibility in the plans they consider. The planning setting in this paper includes partial information regarding the initial state and considers formulas in linear temporal logic as positive or negative outcomes to be attained or avoided. We firstly define attribution for notions of active, passive and contributive responsibility, and consider their agentive variants. We then use these to define the notion of responsibility anticipation. We prove that our notions of anticipated responsibility can be used to coordinate agents in a planning setting and give complexity results for our model, discussing equivalence with classical planning. We also present an outline for solving some of our attribution and anticipation problems using PDDL solvers.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2023

Base-based Model Checking for Multi-Agent Only Believing (long version)

We present a novel semantics for the language of multi-agent only believing exploiting belief bases, and show how to use it for automatically checking formulas of this language and of its dynamic extension with private belief expansion operators. We provide a PSPACE algorithm for model checking relying on a reduction to QBF and alternative dedicated algorithm relying on the exploration of the state space. We present an implementation of the QBF-based algorithm and some experimental results on computation time in a concrete example.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2023

A unified logical framework for explanations in classifier systems

Recent years have witnessed a renewed interest in Boolean function in explaining binary classifiers in the field of explainable AI (XAI). The standard approach of Boolean function is propositional logic. We present a modal language of a ceteris paribus nature which supports reasoning about binary input classifiers and their properties. We study a family of classifier models, axiomatize it as two proof systems regarding the cardinality of the language and show completeness of our axiomatics. Moreover, we prove that satisfiability checking problem for our modal language is NEXPTIME-complete in the infinite-variable case, while it becomes polynomial in the finite-variable case. We furthermore identify an interesting NP fragment of our language in the infinite-variable case. We leverage the language to formalize counterfactual conditional as well as a variety of notions of explanation including abductive, contrastive and counterfactual explanations, and biases. Finally, we present two extensions of our language: a dynamic extension by the notion of assignment enabling classifier change and an epistemic extension in which the classifier's uncertainty about the actual input can be represented.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2022

Modelling and Explaining Legal Case-based Reasoners through Classifiers

This paper brings together two lines of research: factor-based models of case-based reasoning (CBR) and the logical specification of classifiers. Logical approaches to classifiers capture the connection between features and outcomes in classifier systems. Factor-based reasoning is a popular approach to reasoning by precedent in AI & Law. Horty (2011) has developed the factor-based models of precedent into a theory of precedential constraint. In this paper we combine the modal logic approach (binary-input classifier, BLC) to classifiers and their explanations given by Liu & Lorini (2021) with Horty's account of factor-based CBR, since both a classifier and CBR map sets of features to decisions or classifications. We reformulate case bases of Horty in the language of BCL, and give several representation results. Furthermore, we show how notions of CBR, e.g. reason, preference between reasons, can be analyzed by notions of classifier system.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2022

Logic-Based Ethical Planning

In this paper we propose a framework for ethical decision making in the context of planning, with intended application to robotics. We put forward a compact but highly expressive language for ethical planning that combines linear temporal logic with lexicographic preference modelling. This original combination allows us to assess plans both with respect to an agent's values and their desires, introducing the novel concept of the morality level of an agent and moving towards multigoal, multivalue planning. We initiate the study of computational complexity of planning tasks in our setting, and we discuss potential applications to robotics.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2021

A Qualitative Theory of Cognitive Attitudes and their Change

We present a general logical framework for reasoning about agents' cognitive attitudes of both epistemic type and motivational type. We show that it allows us to express a variety of relevant concepts for qualitative decision theory including the concepts of knowledge, belief, strong belief, conditional belief, desire, conditional desire, strong desire and preference. We also present two extensions of the logic, one by the notion of choice and the other by dynamic operators for belief change and desire change, and we apply the former to the analysis of single-stage games under incomplete information. We provide sound and complete axiomatizations for the basic logic and for its two extensions. The paper is under consideration in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).

cs.AI↗

arXiv2020

Modeling Contrary-to-Duty with CP-nets

In a ceteris-paribus semantics for deontic logic, a state of affairs where a larger set of prescriptions is respected is preferable to a state of affairs where some of them are violated. Conditional preference nets (CP-nets) are a compact formalism to express and analyse ceteris paribus preferences, which nice computational properties. This paper shows how deontic concepts can be captured through conditional preference models. A restricted deontic logic will be defined, and mapped into conditional preference nets. We shall also show how to model contrary to duties obligations in CP-nets and how to capture in this formalism the distinction between strong and weak permission.

cs.AI↗