Promises and Pitfalls of Threshold-based Auto-labeling

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Vishwakarma, Harit, Lin, Heguang, Sala, Frederic, Vinayak, Ramya Korlakai
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
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author Vishwakarma, Harit
Lin, Heguang
Sala, Frederic
Vinayak, Ramya Korlakai
author_facet Vishwakarma, Harit
Lin, Heguang
Sala, Frederic
Vinayak, Ramya Korlakai
contents Creating large-scale high-quality labeled datasets is a major bottleneck in supervised machine learning workflows. Threshold-based auto-labeling (TBAL), where validation data obtained from humans is used to find a confidence threshold above which the data is machine-labeled, reduces reliance on manual annotation. TBAL is emerging as a widely-used solution in practice. Given the long shelf-life and diverse usage of the resulting datasets, understanding when the data obtained by such auto-labeling systems can be relied on is crucial. This is the first work to analyze TBAL systems and derive sample complexity bounds on the amount of human-labeled validation data required for guaranteeing the quality of machine-labeled data. Our results provide two crucial insights. First, reasonable chunks of unlabeled data can be automatically and accurately labeled by seemingly bad models. Second, a hidden downside of TBAL systems is potentially prohibitive validation data usage. Together, these insights describe the promise and pitfalls of using such systems. We validate our theoretical guarantees with extensive experiments on synthetic and real datasets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2211_12620
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Promises and Pitfalls of Threshold-based Auto-labeling
Vishwakarma, Harit
Lin, Heguang
Sala, Frederic
Vinayak, Ramya Korlakai
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Creating large-scale high-quality labeled datasets is a major bottleneck in supervised machine learning workflows. Threshold-based auto-labeling (TBAL), where validation data obtained from humans is used to find a confidence threshold above which the data is machine-labeled, reduces reliance on manual annotation. TBAL is emerging as a widely-used solution in practice. Given the long shelf-life and diverse usage of the resulting datasets, understanding when the data obtained by such auto-labeling systems can be relied on is crucial. This is the first work to analyze TBAL systems and derive sample complexity bounds on the amount of human-labeled validation data required for guaranteeing the quality of machine-labeled data. Our results provide two crucial insights. First, reasonable chunks of unlabeled data can be automatically and accurately labeled by seemingly bad models. Second, a hidden downside of TBAL systems is potentially prohibitive validation data usage. Together, these insights describe the promise and pitfalls of using such systems. We validate our theoretical guarantees with extensive experiments on synthetic and real datasets.
title Promises and Pitfalls of Threshold-based Auto-labeling
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.12620