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K-State Today

Division of Communications and Marketing
Kansas State University
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February 16, 2022

Hitzler publishes of book on neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence

Submitted by Wynne A. Reichart

Pascal Hitzler, Lloyd T. Smith creativity in engineering chair and professor of computer science at Kansas State University, and Md Kamruzzaman Sarker, an alumnus and current assistant professor in the computing sciences department at the University of Hartford, have announced publication of their edited book, "Neuro-Symbolic Artificial Intelligence: The State of the Art."

The book provides an overview of the development of artificial intelligence in the subfield of neuro-symbolic AI that brings together two hitherto distinct approaches; "neuro" referring to the artificial neural networks prominent in machine learning, and "symbolic" referring to algorithmic processing on the level of meaningful symbols which are prominent in knowledge representation. The two approaches differ significantly in terms of their strengths and weaknesses and, from a cognitive-science perspective, there is a question as to how a neural system can perform symbol manipulation and how the representational differences between these two approaches can be bridged.

"The book provides a timely overview of the state of the art in the emerging and increasingly important field of neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence," said Frank van Harmelen, professor in the computer science department at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and principal investigator of the Hybrid Intelligence Centre.

Hitzler has been working on neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence since the beginning of his career. He initiated the annual international workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning, or NeSy, the 16th installation of which will be held in Windsor, England, in September 2022. Besides the above-mentioned book, Hitzler has also co-authored recent overview articles on the topic, including "Neuro-Symbolic Artificial Intelligence: Current Trends" in AI Communications and "Neuro-Symbolic Approaches in Artificial Intelligence" in National Science Review.

The book is available as an eBook or print version from the publisher, IOS Press.