Unifying logic and probability: the BLOG language

Tuesday 10 July, 5pm, Sheldonian Theatre

Logic and probability are ancient subjects whose unification holds significant potential for the field of artificial intelligence. The BLOG (Bayesian LOGic) language provides a way to write probability models using syntactic and semantic devices from first-order logic. In modern parlance, it is a relational, open-universe probabilistic programming language that allows one to define probability distributions over the entire space of first-order model structures that can be constructed given the constant, function, and predicate symbols of the program. In this public lecture, Stuart Russell will describe the language mainly through examples and cover its application to monitoring the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

This lecture was recorded: available in our gallery.

    • Stuart Russell (University of California at Berkeley, USA)
    • Attendance is free of charge and all are welcome.
    • Details

      Stuart Russell is Professor of Computer Science and Smith-Zadeh Professor in Engineering, University of California, Berkeley
      Adjunct Professor of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco.  Stuart Russell is interested in building systems that can act intelligently in the real world. To this end, he works (with various students, postdocs, and collaborators) on a broad spectrum of topics in AI.

Organisers:
Marta Kwiatkowska
Moshe Vardi
Jayne Bullock

 Sheldonian Theatre image credit: Skoll Scholarships, CC 3.0