Aligning Generalisation Between Humans and Machines

Filip Ilievski; Barbara Hammer; Frank van Harmelen; Benjamin Paassen; Sascha Saralajew; Ute Schmid; Michael Biehl; Marianna Bolognesi; Xin Luna Dong; Kiril Gashteovski; Pascal Hitzler; Giuseppe Marra; Pasquale Minervini; Martin Mundt; Axel-Cyrille Ngonga Ngomo; Alessandro Oltramari; Gabriella Pasi; Zeynep G. Saribatur; Luciano Serafini; John Shawe-Taylor; Vered Shwartz; Gabriella Skitalinskaya; Clemens Stachl; Gido M. van de Ven; Thomas Villmann

arXiv · 2411.15626

Aligning Generalisation Between Humans and Machines

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Abstract

Recent advances in AI -- including generative approaches -- have resulted in technology that can support humans in scientific discovery and forming decisions, but may also disrupt democracies and target individuals. The responsible use of AI and its participation in human-AI teams increasingly shows the need for AI alignment, that is, to make AI systems act according to our preferences. A crucial yet often overlooked aspect of these interactions is the different ways in which humans and machines generalise. In cognitive science, human generalisation commonly involves abstraction and concept learning. In contrast, AI generalisation encompasses out-of-domain generalisation in machine learning, rule-based reasoning in symbolic AI, and abstraction in neurosymbolic AI. In this perspective paper, we combine insights from AI and cognitive science to identify key commonalities and differences across three dimensions: notions of, methods for, and evaluation of generalisation. We map the different conceptualisations of generalisation in AI and cognitive science along these three dimensions and consider their role for alignment in human-AI teaming. This results in interdisciplinary challenges across AI and cognitive science that must be tackled to provide a foundation for effective and cognitively supported alignment in human-AI teaming scenarios.

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Filip Ilievski, Barbara Hammer, Frank van Harmelen, Benjamin Paassen, Sascha Saralajew, Ute Schmid, Michael Biehl, Marianna Bolognesi, Xin Luna Dong, Kiril Gashteovski, Pascal Hitzler, Giuseppe Marra, Pasquale Minervini, Martin Mundt, Axel-Cyrille Ngonga Ngomo, Alessandro Oltramari, Gabriella Pasi, Zeynep G. Saribatur, Luciano Serafini, John Shawe-Taylor, Vered Shwartz, Gabriella Skitalinskaya, Clemens Stachl, Gido M. van de Ven, Thomas Villmann. 2025-05-27. Aligning Generalisation Between Humans and Machines. https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.15626

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