Sean Tull

Sean Tull
Quantinuum · Compositional Intelligence

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30
Publications
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158
Citations

Publications

Publications (30)
Preprint
Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently based largely on black-box machine learning models which lack interpretability. The field of eXplainable AI (XAI) strives to address this major concern, being critical in high-stakes areas such as the finance, legal and health sectors. We present an approach to defining AI models and their interpretability...
Article
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In this article we present a new modelling framework for structured concepts using a category-theoretic generalisation of conceptual spaces, and show how the conceptual representations can be learned automatically from data, using two very different instantiations: one classical and one quantum. A contribution of the work is a thorough category-the...
Technical Report
Full-text available
This document serves as a comprehensive overview of discussions held during the Causal Cognition in Humans and Machines conference, in Oxford, 2024, focusing on the critical importance of understanding causality in various contexts, both artificial and real-world. It explores the applications of causal reasoning, which extend from enhancing reasoni...
Preprint
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We present a categorical formulation of the cognitive frameworks of Predictive Processing and Active Inference, expressed in terms of string diagrams interpreted in a monoidal category with copying and discarding. This includes diagrammatic accounts of generative models, Bayesian updating, perception, planning, active inference, and free energy. In...
Preprint
The framework of causal models provides a principled approach to causal reasoning, applied today across many scientific domains. Here we present this framework in the language of string diagrams, interpreted formally using category theory. A class of string diagrams, called network diagrams, are in 1-to-1 correspondence with directed acyclic graphs...
Preprint
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In this report we present a new modelling framework for concepts based on quantum theory, and demonstrate how the conceptual representations can be learned automatically from data. A contribution of the work is a thorough category-theoretic formalisation of our framework. We claim that the use of category theory, and in particular the use of string...
Preprint
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In this report we present a new model of concepts, based on the framework of variational autoencoders, which is designed to have attractive properties such as factored conceptual domains, and at the same time be learnable from data. The model is inspired by, and closely related to, the Beta-VAE model of concepts, but is designed to be more closely...
Preprint
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We define a symmetric monoidal category modelling fuzzy concepts and fuzzy conceptual reasoning within G\"ardenfors' framework of conceptual (convex) spaces. We propose log-concave functions as models of fuzzy concepts, showing that these are the most general choice satisfying a criterion due to G\"ardenfors and which are well-behaved compositional...
Article
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Integrated Information Theory is one of the leading models of consciousness. It aims to describe both the quality and quantity of the conscious experience of a physical system, such as the brain, in a particular state. In this contribution, we propound the mathematical structure of the theory, separating the essentials from auxiliary formal tools....
Preprint
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We investigate monoidal categories of formal contexts, in which states correspond to formal concepts. In particular we examine the category of bonds or Chu correspondences between contexts, which is known to be equivalent to the *-autonomous category of complete sup-lattices. We show that a second monoidal structure exists on both categories, corre...
Article
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Article
A subunit in a monoidal category is a subobject of the monoidal unit for which a canonical morphism is invertible. They correspond to open subsets of a base topological space in categories such as those of sheaves or Hilbert modules. We show that under mild conditions subunits endow any monoidal category with a kind of topological intuition: there...
Preprint
We demonstrate how the key notions of Tononi et al.'s Integrated Information Theory (IIT) can be studied within the simple graphical language of process theories, i.e. symmetric monoidal categories. This allows IIT to be generalised to a broad range of physical theories, including as a special case the Quantum IIT of Zanardi, Tomka and Venuti.
Preprint
Integrated Information Theory is one of the leading models of consciousness. It aims to describe both the quality and quantity of the conscious experience of a physical system, such as the brain, in a particular state. In this contribution, we propound the mathematical structure of the theory, separating the essentials from auxiliary formal tools....
Article
We study internal structures in regular categories using monoidal methods. Groupoids in a regular Goursat category can equivalently be described as special dagger Frobenius monoids in its monoidal category of relations. Similarly, connectors can equivalently be described as Frobenius structures with a ternary multiplication. We study such ternary F...
Preprint
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Dagger compact structure is a common assumption in the study of physical process theories, but lacks a clear interpretation. Here we derive dagger compactness from more operational axioms on a category. We first characterise the structure in terms of a simple mapping of states to effects which we call a 'state dagger', before deriving this in any c...
Preprint
Full-text available
We study internal structures in regular categories using monoidal methods. Groupoids in a regular Goursat category can equivalently be described as special dagger Frobenius monoids in its monoidal category of relations. Similarly, connectors can equivalently be described as Frobenius structures with a ternary multiplication. We study such ternary F...
Preprint
Many insights into the quantum world can be found by studying it from amongst more general operational theories of physics. In this thesis, we develop an approach to the study of such theories purely in terms of the behaviour of their processes, as described mathematically through the language of category theory. This extends a framework for quantu...
Preprint
Full-text available
A subunit in a monoidal category is a subobject of the monoidal unit for which a canonical morphism is invertible. They correspond to open subsets of a base topological space in categories such as those of sheaves or Hilbert modules. We show that under mild conditions subunits endow any monoidal category with topological intuition: there are well-b...
Article
Full-text available
We reconstruct finite-dimensional quantum theory from categorical principles. That is, we provide properties ensuring that a given physical theory described by a dagger compact category in which one may `discard' objects is equivalent to a generalised finite-dimensional quantum theory over a suitable ring $S$. The principles used resemble those due...
Article
We study properties of a category after quotienting out a suitable chosen group of isomorphisms on each object. Coproducts in the original category are described in its quotient by our new weaker notion of a `phased coproduct'. We examine these and show that any suitable category with them arises as such a quotient of a category with coproducts. Mo...
Article
Full-text available
We provide a new way to bound the security of quantum key distribution using only two high-level, diagrammatic features of quantum processes: the compositional behavior of complementary measurements and the essential uniqueness of purification. We begin by demonstrating a proof in the simplest case, where the eavesdropper doesn't noticeably disturb...
Article
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The category of Hilbert modules may be interpreted as a naive quantum field theory over a base space. Open subsets of the base space are recovered as idempotent subunits, which form a meet-semilattice in any firm braided monoidal category. There is an operation of restriction to an idempotent subunit: it is a graded monad on the category, and has t...
Preprint
Full-text available
The category of Hilbert modules may be interpreted as a naive quantum field theory over a base space. Open subsets of the base space are recovered as idempotent subunits, which form a meet-semilattice in any firm braided monoidal category. There is an operation of restriction to an idempotent subunit: it is a graded monad on the category, and has t...
Article
Full-text available
Mixing and decoherence are both manifestations of classicality within quantum theory, each of which admit a very general category-theoretic construction. We show under which conditions these two `roads to classicality' coincide. This is indeed the case for (finite-dimensional) quantum theory, where each construction yields the category of C*-algebr...
Preprint
Full-text available
Mixing and decoherence are both manifestations of classicality within quantum theory, each of which admit a very general category-theoretic construction. We show under which conditions these two 'roads to classicality' coincide. This is indeed the case for (finite-dimensional) quantum theory, where each construction yields the category of C*-algebr...
Article
We introduce a new approach to the study of operational theories of physics using category theory. We define a generalisation of the (causal) operational-probabilistic theories of Chiribella et al. and establish their correspondence with our new notion of an operational category. Our work is based on effectus theory, a recently developed area of ca...
Article
Full-text available
Categories of relations over a regular category form a family of models of quantum theory. Using regular logic, many properties of relations over sets lift to these models, including the correspondence between Frobenius structures and internal groupoids. Over compact Hausdorff spaces, this lifting gives continuous symmetric encryption. Over a regul...

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