Interview with Alexander Steen
Can you briefly introduce yourself?
I am a Post-Doc at the University of Luxembourg, more specifically in the Individual and Collective Reasoning (ICR) group of Leon van der Torre at the Faculty of Science, Technology and Communication. I am interested in the foundations and applications of automated reasoning technology, in particular in expressive logical formalisms, and one of the main authors of the Leo-III theorem prover for higher-order logic. I joined the ICR group last year in summer after finishing my PhD in computational logic at Freie Universität Berlin. At Freie Universität, I studied Computer Science and Mathematics after moving to Berlin in 2009 from the most beautiful city at the North Sea and my birthplace, Cuxhaven, in Lower Saxtony, Germany.
What are the main research challenges you are working on now?
Currently, I am working on the automation of non-classical logics for deontic and normative reasoning via higher-order theorem provers and proof assistants. For this I extend previous work on semantical embeddings of various logical formalisms and their inclusion into Leo-III. In addition, I am working on general purpose improvements to both the theory and practice of higher-order automation, e.g. the development of suitable data structures and calculi optimizations. Also, I am interesting in including machine learning technology to reasoning systems.
What are in your opinion the main research challenges in AIs, robotics and reasoning?
To my mind, one of the main challenges in the next decades will be the combination of the classical symbolic reasoning approaches with the more recent developments in learning-based AI technology; not only on the level of joint technological projects, but also on the leval of creating a cohesive AI community that learns from each other’s strengths and capabilities. I feel that currently these communities are too far apart; this needs to be addressed in the future.
What is are favorite online resources?
In addition to the usual mailing lists and search/recommendation engines for papers (ResearchGate, Google Scholar, etc.), I am a frequent reader of the Y combinator hacker news; they are a great resource for a large variety of interesting topics.
What are your aims outside of academia?
There are a lot of things I like to do; this includes hiking, singing, listening to good music, attending concerts, spending time with my family and friends, etc. I guess the aim would be to do all that more consistently.