AISEM in collaboration with AIRG welcomes returning alumnus Burr Settles.

TITLE

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

ABSTRACT

People learn by interacting with their teachers.  Why not machines?  What would it take to develop software that can learn how to solve problems by interacting and collaborating with humans?  This talk will describe my efforts to develop such systems, with the goal of training effective machine learners more quickly and economically.  In particular, I focus on two projects in natural language processing that combine multiple learning strategies: incorporating domain knowledge (taking advice in the form of human-provided rules), active learning (asking "questions" of human annotators), and semi-supervised learning (attempting to "teach itself" by extrapolating what has been learned onto abundant, unlabeled data).  Empirical results from user experiments show that these approaches are superior to their state-of-the-art "passive" learning counterparts.  Interestingly, these experiments provide initial insights into human "teaching" behavior as well, suggesting ways in which human factors can and should be taken into account.  I will also briefly discuss opportunities for interactive learning in other areas, such as supporting online communities, creative work, and biological discovery.

SHORT 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" of decision-making and knowledge acquisition between computers and humans, with applications in natural language processing, biology, and social computing. He recently organized workshops at the ICML and NAACL conferences on these topics, and is the author of a popular literature survey on active learning (active-learning.net). He also runs the website FAWM.ORG, prefers sandals to shoes, and plays guitar in the Pittsburgh pop band Delicious Pastries.