348,575 research outputs found
Petuum: A New Platform for Distributed Machine Learning on Big Data
What is a systematic way to efficiently apply a wide spectrum of advanced ML
programs to industrial scale problems, using Big Models (up to 100s of billions
of parameters) on Big Data (up to terabytes or petabytes)? Modern
parallelization strategies employ fine-grained operations and scheduling beyond
the classic bulk-synchronous processing paradigm popularized by MapReduce, or
even specialized graph-based execution that relies on graph representations of
ML programs. The variety of approaches tends to pull systems and algorithms
design in different directions, and it remains difficult to find a universal
platform applicable to a wide range of ML programs at scale. We propose a
general-purpose framework that systematically addresses data- and
model-parallel challenges in large-scale ML, by observing that many ML programs
are fundamentally optimization-centric and admit error-tolerant,
iterative-convergent algorithmic solutions. This presents unique opportunities
for an integrative system design, such as bounded-error network synchronization
and dynamic scheduling based on ML program structure. We demonstrate the
efficacy of these system designs versus well-known implementations of modern ML
algorithms, allowing ML programs to run in much less time and at considerably
larger model sizes, even on modestly-sized compute clusters.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, final version in KDD 2015 under the same titl
ICE: Enabling Non-Experts to Build Models Interactively for Large-Scale Lopsided Problems
Quick interaction between a human teacher and a learning machine presents
numerous benefits and challenges when working with web-scale data. The human
teacher guides the machine towards accomplishing the task of interest. The
learning machine leverages big data to find examples that maximize the training
value of its interaction with the teacher. When the teacher is restricted to
labeling examples selected by the machine, this problem is an instance of
active learning. When the teacher can provide additional information to the
machine (e.g., suggestions on what examples or predictive features should be
used) as the learning task progresses, then the problem becomes one of
interactive learning.
To accommodate the two-way communication channel needed for efficient
interactive learning, the teacher and the machine need an environment that
supports an interaction language. The machine can access, process, and
summarize more examples than the teacher can see in a lifetime. Based on the
machine's output, the teacher can revise the definition of the task or make it
more precise. Both the teacher and the machine continuously learn and benefit
from the interaction.
We have built a platform to (1) produce valuable and deployable models and
(2) support research on both the machine learning and user interface challenges
of the interactive learning problem. The platform relies on a dedicated,
low-latency, distributed, in-memory architecture that allows us to construct
web-scale learning machines with quick interaction speed. The purpose of this
paper is to describe this architecture and demonstrate how it supports our
research efforts. Preliminary results are presented as illustrations of the
architecture but are not the primary focus of the paper
Expert-Augmented Machine Learning
Machine Learning is proving invaluable across disciplines. However, its
success is often limited by the quality and quantity of available data, while
its adoption by the level of trust that models afford users. Human vs. machine
performance is commonly compared empirically to decide whether a certain task
should be performed by a computer or an expert. In reality, the optimal
learning strategy may involve combining the complementary strengths of man and
machine. Here we present Expert-Augmented Machine Learning (EAML), an automated
method that guides the extraction of expert knowledge and its integration into
machine-learned models. We use a large dataset of intensive care patient data
to predict mortality and show that we can extract expert knowledge using an
online platform, help reveal hidden confounders, improve generalizability on a
different population and learn using less data. EAML presents a novel framework
for high performance and dependable machine learning in critical applications
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Expert-augmented machine learning.
Machine learning is proving invaluable across disciplines. However, its success is often limited by the quality and quantity of available data, while its adoption is limited by the level of trust afforded by given models. Human vs. machine performance is commonly compared empirically to decide whether a certain task should be performed by a computer or an expert. In reality, the optimal learning strategy may involve combining the complementary strengths of humans and machines. Here, we present expert-augmented machine learning (EAML), an automated method that guides the extraction of expert knowledge and its integration into machine-learned models. We used a large dataset of intensive-care patient data to derive 126 decision rules that predict hospital mortality. Using an online platform, we asked 15 clinicians to assess the relative risk of the subpopulation defined by each rule compared to the total sample. We compared the clinician-assessed risk to the empirical risk and found that, while clinicians agreed with the data in most cases, there were notable exceptions where they overestimated or underestimated the true risk. Studying the rules with greatest disagreement, we identified problems with the training data, including one miscoded variable and one hidden confounder. Filtering the rules based on the extent of disagreement between clinician-assessed risk and empirical risk, we improved performance on out-of-sample data and were able to train with less data. EAML provides a platform for automated creation of problem-specific priors, which help build robust and dependable machine-learning models in critical applications
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