Strongly Accepting Subframeworks: Connecting Abstract and Structured Argumentation1

A key ingredient of computational argumentation in AI is the generation of arguments in favor of or against claims under scrutiny. In this paper we look at the complexity of argument construction and reasoning in the prominent structured formalism of assumption-based argumentation (ABA). We point out that reasoning in ABA by means of constructing an abstract argumentation framework (AF) gives rise to two main sources of complexity: (i) constructing the AF and (ii) reasoning within the constructed graph. Since both steps are intractable in general, it is no surprise that the best performing state-of-the-art ABA reasoners skip the instantiation procedure entirely and perform tasks directly on the input knowledge base. Driven by this observation, we identify and study atomic and symmetric ABA, two ABA fragments that preserve the expressive power of general ABA, and that can be utilized to have milder complexity in the first or second step. We show that using atomic ABA allows for an instantiation procedure for general ABA leading to polynomially-bounded AFs and that symmetric ABA can be used to create AFs that have mild complexity to reason on. By an experimental evaluation, we show that using the former approach with modern AF solvers can be competitive with state-of-the-art ABA solvers, improving on previous AF instantiation approaches that are hindered by intractable argument construction.

The study of computational models for argumentation is a vibrant area of artificial intelligence and, in particular, knowledge representation and reasoning research. Arguments most often have an intrinsic structure made explicit through derivations from more basic structures. Computational models for structured argumentation enable making the internal structure of arguments explicit. Assumption-based argumentation (ABA) is a central structured formalism for argumentation in AI. In this article, we make both algorithmic and complexity-theoretic advances in the study of ABA. In terms of algorithms, we propose a new approach to reasoning in a commonly studied fragment of ABA (namely the logic programming fragment) with and without preferences. While previous approaches to reasoning over ABA frameworks apply either specialized algorithms or translate ABA reasoning to reasoning over abstract argumentation frameworks, we develop a direct declarative approach to ABA reasoning by encoding ABA reasoning tasks in answer set programming. We show via an extensive empirical evaluation that our approach significantly improves on the empirical performance of current ABA reasoning systems. In terms of computational complexity, while the complexity of reasoning over ABA frameworks is well-understood, the complexity of reasoning in the ABA+ formalism integrating preferences into ABA is currently not fully established. Towards bridging this gap, our results suggest that the integration of preferential information into ABA via so-called reverse attacks results in increased problem complexity for several central argumentation semantics.

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is a research area that clarifies AI decision-making processes to build user trust and promote responsible AI. Hence, a key scientific challenge in XAI is the development of methods that generate transparent and interpretable explanations while maintaining scalability and effectiveness in complex scenarios. Rule-based methods in XAI generate rules that can potentially explain AI inferences, yet they can also become convoluted in large scenarios, hindering their readability and scalability. Moreover, they often lack contrastive explanations, leaving users uncertain why specific predictions are preferred. To address this scientific problem, we explore the integration of computational argumentation—a sub-field of AI that models reasoning processes through defeasibility—into rule-based XAI systems. Computational argumentation enables arguments modelled from rules to be retracted based on new evidence. This makes it a promising approach to enhancing rule-based methods for creating more explainable AI systems. Nonetheless, research on their integration remains limited despite the appealing properties of rule-based systems and computational argumentation. Therefore, this study also addresses the applied challenge of implementing such an integration within practical AI tools. The study employs the Logic Learning Machine (LLM), a specific rule-extraction technique, and presents a modular design that integrates input rules into a structured argumentation framework using state-of-the-art computational argumentation methods. Experiments conducted on binary classification problems using various datasets from the UCI Machine Learning Repository demonstrate the effectiveness of this integration. The LLM technique excelled in producing a manageable number of if-then rules with a small number of premises while maintaining high inferential capacity for all datasets. In turn, argument-based models achieved comparable results to those derived directly from if-then rules, leveraging a concise set of rules and excelling in explainability. In summary, this paper introduces a novel approach for efficiently and automatically generating arguments and their interactions from data, addressing both scientific and applied challenges in advancing the application and deployment of argumentation systems in XAI.

An abstract framework for structured arguments is presented, which instantiates Dung's (‘On the Acceptability of Arguments and its Fundamental Role in Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Logic Programming, and n-Person Games’, Artificial Intelligence, 77, 321–357) abstract argumentation frameworks. Arguments are defined as inference trees formed by applying two kinds of inference rules: strict and defeasible rules. This naturally leads to three ways of attacking an argument: attacking a premise, attacking a conclusion and attacking an inference. To resolve such attacks, preferences may be used, which leads to three corresponding kinds of defeat: undermining, rebutting and undercutting defeats. The nature of the inference rules, the structure of the logical language on which they operate and the origin of the preferences are, apart from some basic assumptions, left unspecified. The resulting framework integrates work of Pollock, Vreeswijk and others on the structure of arguments and the nature of defeat and extends it in several respects. Various rationality postulates are proved to be satisfied by the framework, and several existing approaches are proved to be a special case of the framework, including assumption-based argumentation and DefLog.

Inconsistency and its handling are very important in the real world and in the fields of computer science and artificial intelligence. When dealing with inconsistency in a knowledge base (KB), there is a whole host of deeper issues we need to contend with in order to develop rational and robust intelligent systems. In this paper, we focus our attention on one of the issues in handling KB inconsistency: how to measure the information content and the significance of inconsistency in a KB. Our approach is based on a fixpoint semantics for KB. The approach reflects each inconsistent set of rules in the least fixpoint of a KB and then measures the inconsistency in the context of the least fixpoint for the KB. Compared with the existing results, our approach has some unique benefits.

Activity recognition is a key problem in multi-sensor systems. In this work, we introduce Computational Assumption-based Argumentation, an argumentation approach that seamlessly combines sensor data processing with high-level inference. Our method gives classification results comparable to machine learning based approaches with reduced training time while also giving explanations.

Context recognition is an important component of the common sense knowledge problem, which is one of the key research areas in the field of Artificial Intelligence. The paper develops a model of context recognition using the Internet as a knowledge base. The use of the Internet as a database for context recognition gives a context recognition model immediate access to a nearly infinite amount of data in a multiplicity of fields. Context is represented here as any textual description that is most commonly selected by a set of subjects to describe a given situation. The model input is based on any aspect of the situation that can be translated into text (such as: voice recognition, image recognition, facial expression interpretation, and smell identification). The research model is based on the streaming in text format of information that represents situations--Internet chats, e-mails, Shakespeare plays, or article abstracts. The comparison of the results of the algorithm with the results of human subjects yielded a very high agreement and correlation. The results showed there was no significant difference in the determination of context between the algorithm and the human subjects.

The presented article discusses the social impact of ‎innovations in the field of ICT and artificial ‎intelligence on society. The article examines the ‎possibilities of artificial intelligence's impact on the ‎social character of society, analyzes artificial ‎intelligence from its positive and negative aspects, and ‎notes the possibilities of pragmatic use of artificial ‎intelligence against the background of new changes, as ‎well as its real and probable consequences. At the same ‎time, it discusses global and regional challenges related ‎to artificial intelligence and analyzes the main goals of ‎national strategies related to artificial intelligence. ‎Preventive security measures and ethical aspects during ‎the use of artificial intelligence against the background ‎of changes in the field of artificial intelligence in ‎Azerbaijan are also among the main research topics.

Aim. The work aimed to identify the specific features of cross-border business development in the field of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and develop recommendations for the formation of promising strategies for Russian companies and the Government of the Russian Federation (RF). Objectives. The work seeks to identify the characteristic features of cross-border business and conduct a foresight session on its development prospects in the field of generative AI; to assess the main development trends of international business in the field of generative AI; to determine the specific features of Russian business development in the field of generative AI; to propose conceptual directions for a strategy to support cross-border business in the field of generative AI in Russia. Methods. The research methods include socioeconomic foresight using the “Four Worlds” technique, an expert survey, a literature review, conceptual and statistical analysis, and data extrapolation. Results. The work presents a scientific definition of cross-border business in the field of generative AI and characterizes organizational models for businesses using generative AI, commonly used in the modern context. The reasons for the steady transnationalization of generative AI business are substantiated, and its characteristics are highlighted. Approaches to and challenges in assessing the economic prospects for the development of international generative AI business are examined in detail, and the results of a foresight session on cross-border business development in generative AI are presented. The work revealed the potential of cross-border generative AI business originating in Russia, and identified the barriers to its development and opportunities for overcoming them, which are traced in the intensification of strategic interaction between the state and business. Conclusions. The most probable scenario for the development of cross-border online business in the field of generative AI is a combination of technological integration and competition among major players. For Russian companies and the Russian government, the key challenge in this regard is overcoming external obstacles and creating conditions for integrating own technologies into global value chains.

Conflicts exist in multi-agent systems for a number of reasons: agents have different interests and desires; agents hold different beliefs; agents make different assumptions. To resolve conflicts, agents need to better convey information to each other and facilitate fair negotiations yielding jointly agreeable outcomes. We present a two-agent, dialogical conflict resolution scheme developed with the Assumption-Based Argumentation (ABA) framework.

We introduce a novel method to aggregate Bipolar Argumentation (BA) Frameworks expressing opinions by different parties in debates. We use Bipolar Assumption-based Argumentation (ABA) as an all-encompassing formalism for BA under different semantics. By leveraging on recent results on judgement aggregation in Social Choice Theory, we prove several preservation results, both positive and negative, for relevant properties of Bipolar ABA.

Argumentation has gained traction as a formalism to make more transparent decisions and provide formal explanations recently. In this paper, we present an argumentation-based approach to decision making that can support modelling and automated reasoning about complex qualitative preferences and offer dialogical explanations for the decisions made. We first propose Qualitative Preference Decision Frameworks (QPDFs). In a QPDF, we use contextual priority to represent the relative importance of combinations of goals in different contexts and define associated strategies for deriving decision preferences based on prioritized goal combinations. To automate the decision computation, we map QPDFs to Assumption-based Argumentation (ABA) frameworks so that we can utilize existing ABA argumentative engines for our implementation. We implemented our approach for two tasks, diagnostics and prognostics of Alzheimer's Disease (AD), and evaluated it with real-world datasets. For each task, one of our models achieves the highest accuracy and good precision and recall for all classes compared to common machine learning models. Moreover, we study how to formalize argumentation dialogues that give contrastive, focused and selected explanations for the most preferred decisions selected in given contexts.

This paper draws objective conclusions from field research, establishes a talent cultivation and technological innovation system in the field of artificial intelligence, analyzes the phenomena and problems that arise in school enterprise cooperation, explores their underlying reasons, and explores how to establish a talent cultivation mechanism for school enterprise cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence, establishes a basic model for artificial intelligence talent cultivation, establishes standards, human resources support, improves guarantee systems, reforms in teaching and learning, and integrates disciplines.

In this era of rapid development of global science and technology, artificial intelligence and industrial technology are converging at an unprecedented speed, driving social progress and industrial upgrading. In order to deeply discuss the latest development in these two and relevant fields, share research results, and promote academic exchanges and cooperation, we are honored to have organized the 2024 4th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Industrial Technology Applications (AIITA 2024). This proceedings is the crystallization of this event, which brings together the wisdom and insights of experts, scholars, engineers and technicians from all over the world. AIITA 2024 was grandly held in Guangzhou, China from April 12th to 14th, 2024 via hybrid form, attracting over 200 participants from all over the world. The conference aimed to provide a platform for experts and scholars, engineers and technicians, researchers and developers in the fields of artificial intelligence and industrial engineering to share scientific research results and cutting-edge technologies, understand academic development trends, broaden research ideas, and strengthen academic research and discussion. During the conference, the participants had an in-depth discussion on a number of topics related to the application of artificial intelligence and industrial technology, and jointly explored the new direction of future development. In the keynote speech part, latest research results and cutting-edge technologies in related fields including Graph Neural Networks: Models and Applications in Pattern Recognition (by Prof. Bo Jiang, Anhui University, China), Distributed GPU-accelerated Evolutionary Computation (by Dr. Ran Cheng, Southern University of Science and Technology, China), Quantum Model Learning (by Prof. Daowen Qiu, Sun Yat-sen University, China), Face Image Editing from the Perspective of Conditional Generative (by Prof. Si Wu, South China University of Technology, China), Cooperative Global Robust Output Regulation for Nonlinear Multi-Agent Systems with Switching Networks (by Prof. Wei Liu, South China University of Technology, China) were discussed. At the same time, we have set up a number of presentations and panel discussion sessions, in which participants gained more opportunities to have in-depth discussions and exchanges on specific issues. This conference calls for papers on a wide range of topics, covering all aspects of artificial intelligence and industrial technology applications. We received hundreds of submissions from all over the world, and after strict evaluation and screening, we finally included some excellent papers in this proceedings. These papers not only have high academic value and practical significance, but also represent the latest research dynamics and trends in the fields of artificial intelligence and industrial technology applications. Finally, we would like to thank all the experts, scholars, engineers and staff who participated in the AIITA 2024 for their support and contribution. We believe that with the joint efforts of all of us, the research and application in the fields of artificial intelligence and industrial technology applications will achieve more brilliant achievements. The Committee of AIITA 2024 List of Committee Member is available in this Pdf.

In modern society, artificial intelligence (AI) is developing more rapidly. And the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) has always been the focus of research as a driving platform. This paper studies in detail the theoretical basis, applications, defects, and future development directions of FPGAs. It is concluded that FPGA has three characteristics: gate array, programmable, and scene, and the detailed positioning of FPGA, the structure, principle, tools, process, and description language of FPGA design. And the unique advantages of FPGA in the field of artificial intelligence: flexible and configurable, special optimizations for convolutional neural networks, and deterministic low latency. Several typical applications of FPGA in the field of artificial intelligence, deficiencies and solutions, and two future development directions. This article will make a great contribution to the development of FPGA in the field of artificial intelligence in the future.