In this paper, we introduce a novel Mamdani-type fuzzy model, referred to as the all-permutations fuzzy rule base (APFRB), and show that it is mathematically equivalent to a standard feedforward neural network. We describe several applications of this equivalence between a neural network and our fuzzy rule base (FRB), including knowledge extraction from and knowledge insertion into neural networks.

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Considerable research has been devoted to the integration of fuzzy logic (FL) tools with classic artificial intelligence (AI) paradigms. One reason for this is that FL provides powerful mechanisms for handling and processing symbolic information stated using natural language. In this respect, fuzzy rule-based systems are white-boxes, as they process information in a form that is easy to understand, verify and, if necessary, refine.The synergy between artificial neural networks (ANNs), which are notorious for their black-box character, and FL proved to be particularly successful. Such a synergy allows combining the powerful learning-from-examples capability of ANNs with the high-level symbolic information processing of FL systems.In this paper, we present a new approach for extracting symbolic information from recurrent neural networks (RNNs). The approach is based on the mathematical equivalence between a specific fuzzy rulebase and functions composed of sums of sigmoids. We show that this equivalence can be used to provide a comprehensible explanation of the RNN functioning. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach by using it to extract the knowledge embedded within an RNN trained to recognize a formal language.

Abstract-A major drawback of artificial neural networks (ANNs) is their black-box character. This is especially true for recurrent neural networks (RNNs) because of their intricate feedback connections. In particular, given a problem and some initial information concerning its solution, it is not at all clear how to design an RNN that is suitable for solving this problem.In this paper, we consider a fuzzy rule-base with a special structure, referred to as the fuzzy all-permutations rulebase (FARB). Inferring the FARB yields an input-output mapping that is mathematically equivalent to that of an RNN.We use this equivalence to develop two new knowledge-based design methods for RNNs. The first method, referred to as the direct approach, is based on stating the desired functioning of the RNN in terms of several sets of symbolic rules, each one corresponding to a sub-network. Each set is then transformed into a suitable FARB.The second method is based on first using the direct approach to design a library of simple modules, such as counters or comparators, and realize them using RNNs. Once designed, the correctness of each RNN can be verified. Then, the initial design problem is solved by using these basic modules as building blocks. This yields a modular and systematic approach for knowledge-based design of RNNs. We demonstrate the efficiency of these approaches by designing RNNs that recognize both regular and non-regular formal languages.

The automated transcription of spoken language, and meetings, in particular, is becoming more widespread as automatic speech recognition systems are becoming more accurate. This trend has significantly accelerated since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a major increase in the number of online meetings. However, the transcription of spoken language has not received much attention from the NLP community compared to documents and other forms of written language. In this paper, we study a variation of the summarization problem over the transcription of spoken language: given a transcribed meeting, and an action item (i.e., a commitment or request to perform a task), our goal is to generate a coherent and self-contained rephrasing of the action item. To this end, we compiled a novel dataset of annotated meeting transcripts, including human rephrasing of action items. We use state-of-the-art supervised text generation techniques and establish a strong baseline based on BART and UniLM (two pretrained transformer models). Due to the nature of natural speech, language is often broken and incomplete and the task is shown to be harder than an analogous task over email data. Particularly, we show that the baseline models can be greatly improved once models are provided with additional information. We compare two approaches: one incorporating features extracted by coreferenceresolution. Additional annotations are used to train an auxiliary model to detect the relevant context in the text. Based on the systematic human evaluation, our best models exhibit nearhuman-level rephrasing capability on a constrained subset of the problem.