The Power of Pluralism for Automatic Program Synthesis

Abstract

Inductive reference machmes (IIMs) synthesize programs, given examples of their intended input-output behavior. Several different criteria for successful synthesis by llMs are defined. A given criterion is said to be more general than some other criterion if the class of sets which can be inferred by some IIM with respect to the given criterion is larger than the class of sets which can be referred by some IIM with respect to the other criterion A team of IIMs synthesizes programs for a set of functions if and only ff for each function m the set, at least one of the IIMs m the team successfully synthesizes the proper program. The trade-offs between the number of IIMs involved in the learnmg process and the generality of the criteria of success are examined