Autonomous Machine Learning and AI

Autonomous AI, Continual Learning after Model Deployment

Autonomous Learning: Self-initiated Open-world Continual Learning and Adaptation

Second Edition: "Lifelong Machine Learning." by Z. Chen and B. Liu, Morgan & Claypool, August 2018 (1st edition, 2016)
Motivation for Autonomous Learning: It is known that about 70% of our human knowledge comes from “on-the-job” learning. Only about 10% is learned through formal education and the rest 20% is learned through observation of others (imitation). An autonomous AI system must have this capability - its machine learning algorithm must be able to learn autonomously on the job or while working after model deployment. As the real world is too complex and constantly changing, it is impossible to learn everything through offline training using manually labeled data. An autonomous learning agent has to explore and learn by itself in the real world, which is open and constantly change - full of unknowns. AI agents must be able to detect the unknowns and learn them in a self-supervised manner through its interaction with humans, other agents, and the real-world environment. It should not make the closed-world assumption any more.

Autonomous Learning: Like human on-the-job learning, it studies learning after model deployment or during model application (or testing) - after a good model has been built and deployed in an application. In classic machine learning, once a model is built, it is deployed in an application. During application, the model remains fixed or unchanged. Autonomous learning (or on-the-job learning) investigates continuous learning after model deployment, which involves the following steps

  1. continuously discover new tasks to learn by the agent itself. This is called Open World Learning or Out-of-Distribtuion Detection.
  2. gather "free" training data through the agent’s own active effort via interaction with humans, other agents and the environment.
  3. incrementally learn the new tasks without interrupting the application to become more and more knowledgeable. This is continual learning.

Publications

         TextBook: Zhiyuan Chen and Bing Liu. Lifelong Machine Learning. Morgan & Claypool, 2018 (2nd edition), 2016 (1st edition).

Created on July 15, 2020 by Bing Liu.