KI-Talk mit Prof. Beishui Liao

AI-Talk on Tuesday, 22 July 2025, 18:00-19:00 

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Beishui Liao (Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China)

Title: LLM-ASPIC+: A Neuro-Symbolic Framework for Defeasible Reasoning

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in complex reasoning, achieving human-like performance in various nature language processing tasks. However, despite their impressive performance in many domains, LLMs often struggle with reasoning under conditions of inconsistency or contradiction. This capability gap raises significant concerns for real-world applications where reliable decision-making depends on reconciling conflicting evidence, such as legal analysis, medical diagnosis, and commonsense reasoning. In this paper, we focus on defeasible reasoning in natural language, a task that require LLMs to handle contradictory information. To improve the defeasible reasoning capability of LLMs, we propose LLM-ASPIC+, a framework combining neural language understanding with formal argumentation. Our framework harnesses LLMs’ capacity for grounding and contextual reasoning while integrating formal argumentation frameworks to establish systematic conflict resolution mechanisms lacking in LLMs. The LLM-ASPIC+ achieves state-of-the-art performance on multi- step defeasible reasoning benchmarks, attaining 87.1% accuracy on BoardGameQA-2 and 82.6% accuracy on BoardGameQA-3. These results demonstrate that combining neural language processing with formal argumentation offers an effective approach to defeasible reasoning in natural language.

Join in person: WE/05.017 
or via Zoom: https://uni-bamberg.zoom-x.de/j/63070351891 (Password: AISE-2025)