7 research outputs found
Constructive Preference Elicitation over Hybrid Combinatorial Spaces
Preference elicitation is the task of suggesting a highly preferred
configuration to a decision maker. The preferences are typically learned by
querying the user for choice feedback over pairs or sets of objects. In its
constructive variant, new objects are synthesized "from scratch" by maximizing
an estimate of the user utility over a combinatorial (possibly infinite) space
of candidates. In the constructive setting, most existing elicitation
techniques fail because they rely on exhaustive enumeration of the candidates.
A previous solution explicitly designed for constructive tasks comes with no
formal performance guarantees, and can be very expensive in (or unapplicable
to) problems with non-Boolean attributes. We propose the Choice Perceptron, a
Perceptron-like algorithm for learning user preferences from set-wise choice
feedback over constructive domains and hybrid Boolean-numeric feature spaces.
We provide a theoretical analysis on the attained regret that holds for a large
class of query selection strategies, and devise a heuristic strategy that aims
at optimizing the regret in practice. Finally, we demonstrate its effectiveness
by empirical evaluation against existing competitors on constructive scenarios
of increasing complexity.Comment: AAAI 2018, computing methodologies, machine learning, learning
paradigms, supervised learning, structured output
Decomposition Strategies for Constructive Preference Elicitation
We tackle the problem of constructive preference elicitation, that is the
problem of learning user preferences over very large decision problems,
involving a combinatorial space of possible outcomes. In this setting, the
suggested configuration is synthesized on-the-fly by solving a constrained
optimization problem, while the preferences are learned itera tively by
interacting with the user. Previous work has shown that Coactive Learning is a
suitable method for learning user preferences in constructive scenarios. In
Coactive Learning the user provides feedback to the algorithm in the form of an
improvement to a suggested configuration. When the problem involves many
decision variables and constraints, this type of interaction poses a
significant cognitive burden on the user. We propose a decomposition technique
for large preference-based decision problems relying exclusively on inference
and feedback over partial configurations. This has the clear advantage of
drastically reducing the user cognitive load. Additionally, part-wise inference
can be (up to exponentially) less computationally demanding than inference over
full configurations. We discuss the theoretical implications of working with
parts and present promising empirical results on one synthetic and two
realistic constructive problems.Comment: Accepted at the Thirty-Second AAAI Conference on Artificial
Intelligence (AAAI-18
Efficient exact computation of setwise minimax regret for interactive preference elicitation
A key issue in artificial intelligence methods for interactive preference elicitation is choosing at each stage an appropriate query to the user, in order to find a near-optimal solution as quickly as possible. A theoretically attractive method is to choose a query that minimises max setwise regret (which corresponds to the worst case loss response in terms of value of information). We focus here on the situation in which the choices are represented explicitly in a database, and with a model of user utility as a weighted sum of the criteria; in this case when the user makes a choice, an agent learns a linear constraint on the unknown vector of weights. We develop an algorithmic method for computing minimax setwise regret for this form of preference model, by making use of a SAT solver with cardinality constraints to prune the search space, and computing max setwise regret using an extreme points method. Our experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the approach and the very substantial speed up over the state of the art
Constructive preference elicitation for multiple users with setwise max-margin
In this paper we consider the problem of simultaneously eliciting the preferences of a group of users in an interactive way. We focus on constructive recommendation tasks, where the instance to be recommended should be synthesized by searching in a constrained configuration space rather than choosing among a set of pre-determined options. We adopt a setwise max-margin optimization method, that can be viewed as a generalization of max-margin learning to sets, supporting the identification of informative questions and encouraging sparsity in the parameter space. We extend setwise max-margin to multiple users and we provide strategies for choosing the user to be queried next and identifying an informative query to ask. At each stage of the interaction, each user is associated with a set of parameter weights (a sort of alternative options for the unknown user utility) that can be used to identify “similar” users and to propagate preference information between them. We present simulation results evaluating the effectiveness of our procedure, showing that our approach compares favorably with respect to straightforward adaptations in a multi-user setting of elicitation methods conceived for single users.status: publishe
1995-1999 Brock News
A compilation of the administration newspaper, Brock News, for the years 1995 through 1999. It had previously been titled Brock Campus News and preceding that, The Blue Badger
1990-1995 Brock Campus News
A compilation of the administration newspaper, Brock Campus News, for the years 1990 through 1995. It had previously been titled The Blue Badger