The AI4FM approach for proof automation within formal methods — A Grand Challenge 6 "Dependable Systems Evolution" project

Achieving verified software has been a dream since the birth of computer science and the importance of this objective has become ever greater with the increasing size and complexity of software. Grand Challenge 6 (GC6), “Dependable Systems Evolution”, addresses this by advocating the use of formal methods for software development. The use of formal methods has been successful in safety-critical domains, like railway and aviation and is becoming increasingly popular in other sectors (e.g. Microsoft use formal methods to verify device drivers). A recent paper by Woodcock et al. [7] analyses a large number of recent industrial applications of formal methods.