Building machines that learn and think with people

KM Collins, I Sucholutsky, U Bhatt, K Chandra… - Nature Human …, 2024 - nature.com
What do we want from machine intelligence? We envision machines that are not just tools
for thought but partners in thought: reasonable, insightful, knowledgeable, reliable and …

From word models to world models: Translating from natural language to the probabilistic language of thought

L Wong, G Grand, AK Lew, ND Goodman… - arXiv preprint arXiv …, 2023 - arxiv.org
How does language inform our downstream thinking? In particular, how do humans make
meaning from language--and how can we leverage a theory of linguistic meaning to build …

This is the moment for probabilistic loops

M Moosbrugger, M Stankovič, E Bartocci… - Proceedings of the ACM …, 2022 - dl.acm.org
We present a novel static analysis technique to derive higher moments for program
variables for a large class of probabilistic loops with potentially uncountable state spaces …

Exact Bayesian inference on discrete models via probability generating functions: a probabilistic programming approach

F Zaiser, A Murawski, CHL Ong - Advances in Neural …, 2024 - proceedings.neurips.cc
We present an exact Bayesian inference method for discrete statistical models, which can
find exact solutions to a large class of discrete inference problems, even with infinite support …

Scaling integer arithmetic in probabilistic programs

WX Cao, P Garg, R Tjoa, S Holtzen… - Uncertainty in …, 2023 - proceedings.mlr.press
Distributions on integers are ubiquitous in probabilistic modeling but remain challenging for
many of today's probabilistic programming languages (PPLs). The core challenge comes …

Exact recursive probabilistic programming

D Chiang, C McDonald, C Shan - Proceedings of the ACM on …, 2023 - dl.acm.org
Recursive calls over recursive data are useful for generating probability distributions, and
probabilistic programming allows computations over these distributions to be expressed in a …

Semi-symbolic inference for efficient streaming probabilistic programming

E Atkinson, C Yuan, G Baudart, L Mandel… - Proceedings of the ACM …, 2022 - dl.acm.org
A streaming probabilistic program receives a stream of observations and produces a stream
of distributions that are conditioned on these observations. Efficient inference is often …

Guaranteed bounds for posterior inference in universal probabilistic programming

R Beutner, CHL Ong, F Zaiser - Proceedings of the 43rd ACM SIGPLAN …, 2022 - dl.acm.org
We propose a new method to approximate the posterior distribution of probabilistic
programs by means of computing guaranteed bounds. The starting point of our work is an …

Probabilistic programming with stochastic probabilities

AK Lew, M Ghavamizadeh, MC Rinard… - Proceedings of the …, 2023 - dl.acm.org
We present a new approach to the design and implementation of probabilistic programming
languages (PPLs), based on the idea of stochastically estimating the probability density …

Guaranteed Bounds on Posterior Distributions of Discrete Probabilistic Programs with Loops

F Zaiser, AS Murawski, CHL Ong - Proceedings of the ACM on …, 2025 - dl.acm.org
We study the problem of bounding the posterior distribution of discrete probabilistic
programs with unbounded support, loops, and conditioning. Loops pose the main difficulty in …