In plain words: A transformer trained to read a table of input-output examples and write out a short logic formula that reproduces them, even when some entries are missing or wrong. On gene-network benchmarks it matched the best genetic search methods while running orders of magnitude faster.
Abstract
We introduce Boolformer, a Transformer-based model trained to perform end-to-end symbolic regression of Boolean functions. First, we show that it can predict compact formulas for complex functions not seen during training, given their full truth table. Then, we demonstrate that even with incomplete or noisy observations, Boolformer is still able to find good approximate expressions. We evaluate Boolformer on a broad set of real-world binary classification datasets, demonstrating its potential as an interpretable alternative to classic machine learning methods. Finally, we apply it to the widespread task of modeling the dynamics of gene regulatory networks and show through a benchmark that Boolformer is competitive with state-of-the-art genetic algorithms, with a speedup of several orders of magnitude. Our code and models are available publicly.
Stéphane d'Ascoli, Arthur Renard, Vassilis Papadopoulos, Samy Bengio, Josh Susskind, Emmanuel Abbé
arXiv:2309.12207 · cs.LG, cs.LO · submitted Sep 21, 2023 · updated Jul 16, 2025
abstract · pdf · html · Updated with new ESPRESSO experiments, reworked manuscript. Added 2 authors that participated in last submission