Interactive Learning: Combining Machine Learning Strategies with Humans in the Loop

Speaker
Burr Settles
Postdoctoral Fellow, Machine Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 3305

Description

People learn by interacting with their teachers. Why not machines? This talk presents recent machine learning approaches to natural language systems, which interact with human annotators in an attempt to learn more quickly and economically. These systems combine multiple learning strategies, for example: incorporating domain knowledge (taking advice in the form of human-provided rules), active learning (asking “questions” of human annotators in the form of unlabeled data instances or rules), and semi-supervised learning (attempting to “teach itself” by extrapolating what has been learned onto abundant, unlabeled examples). Empirical results from user experiments show that these systems are superior to their state-of-the-art “passive” learning counterparts. Interestingly, these experiments also provide some initial insights into human annotator behavior as well, suggesting ways in which human factors can and should be taken into account in interactive learning. I will point the way forward by outlining several relevant open questions for research in machine learning (both theory and practice) as well as in human-computer interaction.

Includes joint work with Andrew McCallum, Gregory Druck, and Tom Mitchell.

Speaker's Bio

Burr Settles is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He received a PhD in Computer Sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008, with additional studies in Linguistics and Biology. His current research focuses on interactive machine learning that resembles a “dialogue” between computers and humans, with applications in natural language processing, biology, and social computing. He also runs the website FAWM.ORG, prefers sandals to shoes, and plays guitar in the Pittsburgh pop band Delicious Pastries.

Speaker's Website
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bsettles/

Host
Tom Mitchell (MLD)