Semiring Programming: A Declarative Framework for Generalized Sum   Product Problems
  To solve hard problems, AI relies on a variety of disciplines such as logic, probabilistic reasoning, machine learning and mathematical programming. Although it is widely accepted that solving real-world problems requires an integration amongst these, contemporary representation methodologies offer little support for this.   In an attempt to alleviate this situation, we introduce a new declarative programming framework that provides abstractions of well-known problems such as SAT, Bayesian inference, generative models, and convex optimization. The semantics of programs is defined in terms of first-order structures with semiring labels, which allows us to freely combine and integrate problems from different AI disciplines. 
Vaishak Belle, Luc De Raedt
cs.AI cs.LG cs.LO