From Notices of the AMS
The Structure of Meaning in Language: Parallel Narratives in Linear Algebra and Category Theory
by Tai-Danae Bradley
Juan Luis Gastaldi
John Terilla
Introduction
Categories for AI, an online program about category theory in machine learning, unfolded over several months beginning in the fall of 2022. As described on their website, the "Cats for AI" organizing committee, which included several researchers from industry including two from DeepMind, felt that the machine learning community ought to be using more rigorous compositional tools and that category theory has "great potential to be a cohesive force" in science in general and in artificial intelligence in particular. While this article is by no means a comprehensive report on that event, the popularity of "Cats for AI" --- the five introductory lectures have been viewed thousands of times --- signals the growing prevalence of category theoretic tools in AI.
One way that category theory is gaining traction in machine learning is by providing a formal way to discuss how learning systems can be put together. This article has a different and somewhat narrow focus.
