NeSy 2023

The NeSy workshop series celebrates neurosymbolic AI since 2005 when the first NeSy workshop took place in Edinburgh, Scotland, as part of IJCAI2005. NeSy is about the integration of neural and symbolic AI, combining statistical machine learning based on neural networks with knowledge representation and reasoning from symbolic AI. 

Neural networks and statistical Machine Learning have achieved industrial relevance in a number of areas from healthcare to finance and business, obtaining state-of-the-art performance at language modelling, speech and image recognition, sensor data and graph analytics. Symbolic AI is challenged by such unstructured large data, but offers sound and well-understood formal reasoning and explanation via knowledge representation that can be inspected to interpret how decisions follow from data. Neural and symbolic AI approaches also contrast in the problems that they excel at: deep learning excels at scene recognition, but fails at planning and rich deductive reasoning.

Neurosymbolic AI aims to build rich computational AI models, systems and applications by combining neural and symbolic learning and reasoning. It hopes to create synergies among the strengths of neural and symbolic AI while overcoming their complementary weaknesses. The NeSy workshop series is the premier venue for the presentation and discussion of the theory and practice of neural-symbolic computing. Since NeSy 2005 the workshop provided an atmosphere for the free exchange of ideas bringing together the community of scientists and practitioners that straddle the line between connectionism and symbolic AI.

Keynote talk (in person)

• Leslie Valiant, University of Harvard, USA

University of Siena Laurea ad Honorem Lecture (in person)

• Yann LeCun, Meta AI and New York University, USA

Invited talks (in person)

• Fosca Giannotti, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy

• Alvaro Velasquez, DARPA Programme Manager, Assured Neuro-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning, USA

Invited talks (virtual)

• Murray Campbell, IBM Research, USA

Call for NeSy 2023 Workshop Paper Submissions

NeSy invites submissions of the latest and ongoing research work on neurosymbolic AI for presentation at the workshop. Research papers in any of the areas of neural-symbolic computing listed below are welcome.

Publication

All accepted papers will be published by CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org) and are expected to be presented at the workshop. Accepted papers will be chosen for spotlight oral and poster presentations at the workshop. Revised and extended versions of the best papers will be invited for submission to a special issue of the Neurosymbolic AI journal.

Topics of Interest

NeSy invites theoretical and applied paper submissions combining neural networks and symbolic AI. We further invite paper submissions containing experimental and in-the-wild systems having neurosymbolic computing as a strong use case. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: 

• Knowledge representation and reasoning using deep neural networks;

• Symbolic knowledge extraction from neural and statistical learning systems;

• Explainable AI methods, systems and techniques integrating connectionist and symbolic AI;

• Enhancing deep learning systems through structured background knowledge.

• Neurosymbolic cognitive agents;

• Biologically-inspired neurosymbolic integration;

• Integration of logics and probabilities in neural networks;

• Neurosymbolic methods for structure learning, transfer learning, meta, multi-task and continual learning, relational learning;

• Novel connectionist systems able to perform traditionally symbolic AI tasks (e.g. abduction, deduction, out-of-distribution learning);

• Novel symbolic systems able to perform traditionally connectionist tasks (e.g. learning from unstructured data, distributed learning);

• Embedding methods for structured information, such as knowledge graphs, mathematical expressions, grammars, knowledge bases, logical theories, etc.

• Applications of neurosymbolic and hybrid systems, including in simulation, finance, healthcare, robotics, semantic web, software engineering, systems engineering, bioinformatics and visual intelligence.

Submission

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit original papers that are not being reviewed or published elsewhere. Submitted papers need not be anonymous, must be written in English, should be formatted using single column and 11pt font, and should not exceed 8 pages in the case of research and experience papers, or 4 pages in the case of position papers, including all figures, but excluding references and appendices. You should use the CEUR Latex template or the CEUR Word template.

All submitted papers will be judged based on their relevance, originality, significance, technical quality and organisation. 

Please submit your papers via EasyChair. All questions about submissions should be addressed to Ernesto Jimenez Ruiz at ernesto.jimenez-ruiz@city.ac.uk.

Important Dates (Anywhere on Earth)

• Abstract submission: 6 March 2023

• Paper submission deadline: 20 March 2023 

• Author Notification: 22 April 2023 

• Camera-ready paper due: 12 May 2023

• NeSy Workshop dates: 3-5 July 2023

Recently-published paper presentations 

Authors of recently published papers in neurosymbolic AI are invited to submit proposals to present their papers at NeSy2023. This includes papers published recently at top conferences and journals such as JAIR, MLJ, AIJ, IEEE TNNLS, AAAI, IJCAI, NeurIPS and ICML. 

You are asked to submit a 1-page extended abstract including a reference to the published paper using the CEUR Latex template or the CEUR Word template. Please submit your extended abstract in PDF format via EasyChair. At least one author is expected to register and attend NeSy to present the paper. Extended abstracts will be included in the NeSy proceedings.  

Important Dates (Anywhere on Earth):

• Extended abstract submission deadline: 26 April 2023

• Author Notification: 3 May 2023 

Questions about recently-published paper submissions should be addressed to Tarek Besold at tarek.besold@googlemail.com. 

Journal Special Issue

Journal Special Issue: authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers to a special issue of the Neurosymbolic AI journal, IOS Press. For any questions, please contact Pascal Hitzler at hitzler@ksu.edu. 

Call for Special Session Proposals

NeSy2023 invites your contribution and participation in the workshop by organizing a special session! We welcome a variety of session proposals such as proposals for thematic sessions, hackathons, early career and graduate students sessions, tutorials, paper discussions, debates and discussion panels, industrial applications, challenges and technology tracks. If you would like to propose a special session, please contact Tarek Besold at tarek.besold@googlemail.com. 

Format and Presentation

The workshop will include keynote talks, special sessions with invited talks and poster presentations, recently-published conference and journal paper presentations, specialised NeSy paper discussions and presentations, tutorials, industry session and the NeSy challenge competition, PhD mentoring program with extra time for Q&A and audience discussion and social events to allow the group to meet, discuss and obtain a better understanding of the issues, challenges and ideas being presented. Authors of accepted papers may be assigned either an oral or poster presentation slot in the final workshop programme. Accepted papers will be published by CEUR. Accepted journal track papers will be published by IOS Press. Registration will be open to anybody willing to participate and is mandatory for one author of each accepted paper.

Venue

The workshop is being planned to take place in person at La Certosa di Pontignano, Siena, Italy (46 miles from Florence airport, 75 miles from Pisa airport, 116 miles fro  Rome). If COVID19 makes the meeting impossible, plans for a virtual event will be announced here.

Community Slack and Mailing List

The NeSy association is creating a community slack for Neurosymbolic Artificial Intelligence with coverage beyond the NeSy workshop. Please contact Pascal Hitzler at hitzler@ksu.edu to receive an invitation. 

Please also consider joining the (low traffic) mailing list of the NeSy association here.