Teaching a Minimalist Machine to Discover Recursive Programs for Arithmetic
Humans can often acquire and synthesize complex, recursive concepts from minimal experience. Leveraging cognitive insights, we propose the Minimalist Machine, a framework for inductive program synthesis designed to model such conceptual learning. The system uses a compact relational subset of Prolog: Programs are searched within a fixed schema of body-free facts and two-body conjunctive Horn clauses. Recursion is not defined by a dedicated metarule. Instead, it emerges when a target predicate is reused inside the body of a learned clause. Inspired by a primary school curriculum, the model is taught through a human-curated, sequential introduction of new concepts in arithmetic. Starting fr...
| Authors | Dominik Magiera, Christiane Wiebel-Herboth, Frank Jäkel |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 5 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 5 October 2026 |
Popularity, last 2 days
0 now. Counts as reported by the source, snapshotted daily by Silytics.
Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 17 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.