Logic-Based Learning in Software Engineering

In recent years, research efforts have been directed towards the use of Machine Learning (ML) techniques to support and automate activities such as program repair, specification mining and risk assessment. The focus has largely been on techniques for classification, clustering and regression. Although beneficial, these do not produce a declarative, interpretable representation of the learned information. Hence, they cannot readily be used to inform, revise and elaborate software models. On the other hand, recent advances in ML have witnessed the emergence of new logic-based learning approaches that differ from traditional ML in that their output is represented in a declarative, rule-based manner, making them well-suited for many software engineering tasks. In this technical briefing, we will introduce the audience to the latest advances in logic-based learning, give an overview of how logic-based learning systems can successfully provide automated support to a variety of software engineering tasks, demonstrate the application to two real case studies from the domain of requirements engineering and software design and highlight future challenges and directions.