Application of AI to formal methods -- an analysis of current trends

Abstract: With AI being well established within the daily lives of research communities, we turn our gaze toward an application area that appears intuitively unsuited for probabilistic decision-making: the area of formal methods (FM). FM aim to provide sound and understandable reasoning about problems in computer science, which seemingly collides with the black-box nature that inhibits many AI approaches. However, many researchers have crossed this gap and applied AI techniques to enhance FM approaches. As this dichotomy of FM and AI sparked our interest, we conducted a systematic mapping study to map the current landscape of research publications. In this study, we investigate the previous five years of applied AI to FM (2019-2023), as these correspond to periods of high activity. This investigation results in 189 entries, which we explore in more detail to find current trends, highlight research gaps, and give suggestions for future research.