Joao Marques-Silva is a Research Professor of ICREA (Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies), being affiliated with the University of Lleida, Spain. Before joining ICREA, Joao Marques-Silva held senior academic appointments at CNRS in France, the University College Dublin in Ireland, the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, and the University of Lisbon in Portugal. Dr. Marques-Silva was elected Fellow of the EurAI in 2023 and of the IEEE in 2016, and he received the 2009 CAV Award for fundamental contributions to the development of high-performance Boolean satisfiability solvers. His research interests comprise automated reasoning and its applications, including machine learning.
Title: Trustable Explainable AI: SAT to the Rescue
Abstract: Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) aims to help human decision makers in fathoming the operation of complex AI models. However, many XAI solutions, by being based on non-symbolic methods, oFer no guarantees of rigor and can produce erroneous results. In contrast, logic-based XAI guarantees the rigor of computed explanations, and this is paramount in high-stakes uses of AI. This talk overviews several flagship applications of Boolean satisfiability solvers in computing logic-based explanations. The talk presented at the SAT'26 conference is one of two FLoC talks on logic-based XAI; the other talk will be presented at the KR'26 conference.