VMCAI 2026
Mon 12 - Tue 13 January 2026 Rennes, France
co-located with POPL 2026
Mon 12 Jan 2026 14:00 - 15:00 at Horizons - Artificial Inteligence Chair(s): Yu-Fang Chen

Transformers are revolutionary neural networks architecture, which has been the backbone of our modern Large Language Models (LLMs). Despite the success of transformers in practice, we often do not know why they work (or occasionally also, why they do not work). Recent years have witnessed rapid progress in understanding transformers through the lens of logic and automata (in the community called FLaNN = Formal Languages and Neural Networks). In particular, the toolbox from logic and automata (i.e. connections to linear temporal logic) has helped us understand why PARITY (and in general “state-tracking”) is difficult for transformers. I will recount some of the fundamental results in the field and open problems at the intersection of logic, automata, verification and transformers.

Mon 12 Jan

Displayed time zone: Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris change

14:00 - 15:30
Artificial InteligenceVMCAI 2026 at Horizons
Chair(s): Yu-Fang Chen Academia Sinica
14:00
60m
Keynote
Understanding Transformers through the Lens of Logic and Automata
VMCAI 2026
Anthony Widjaja Lin TU Kaiserslautern; MPI-SWS
15:00
30m
Talk
Proof Minimization in Neural Network Verification
VMCAI 2026
Omri Isac The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Idan Refaeli Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Haoze Wu Stanford University, Clark Barrett Stanford University, Guy Katz The Hebrew University of Jerusalem