Rethinking Teacher-Student Curriculum Learning through the Cooperative Mechanics of Experience

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Diaz, Manfred, Paull, Liam, Tacchetti, Andrea
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Diaz, Manfred
Paull, Liam
Tacchetti, Andrea
author_facet Diaz, Manfred
Paull, Liam
Tacchetti, Andrea
contents Teacher-Student Curriculum Learning (TSCL) is a curriculum learning framework that draws inspiration from human cultural transmission and learning. It involves a teacher algorithm shaping the learning process of a learner algorithm by exposing it to controlled experiences. Despite its success, understanding the conditions under which TSCL is effective remains challenging. In this paper, we propose a data-centric perspective to analyze the underlying mechanics of the teacher-student interactions in TSCL. We leverage cooperative game theory to describe how the composition of the set of experiences presented by the teacher to the learner, as well as their order, influences the performance of the curriculum that is found by TSCL approaches. To do so, we demonstrate that for every TSCL problem, an equivalent cooperative game exists, and several key components of the TSCL framework can be reinterpreted using game-theoretic principles. Through experiments covering supervised learning, reinforcement learning, and classical games, we estimate the cooperative values of experiences and use value-proportional curriculum mechanisms to construct curricula, even in cases where TSCL struggles. The framework and experimental setup we present in this work represents a novel foundation for a deeper exploration of TSCL, shedding light on its underlying mechanisms and providing insights into its broader applicability in machine learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_03084
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Rethinking Teacher-Student Curriculum Learning through the Cooperative Mechanics of Experience
Diaz, Manfred
Paull, Liam
Tacchetti, Andrea
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Science and Game Theory
Teacher-Student Curriculum Learning (TSCL) is a curriculum learning framework that draws inspiration from human cultural transmission and learning. It involves a teacher algorithm shaping the learning process of a learner algorithm by exposing it to controlled experiences. Despite its success, understanding the conditions under which TSCL is effective remains challenging. In this paper, we propose a data-centric perspective to analyze the underlying mechanics of the teacher-student interactions in TSCL. We leverage cooperative game theory to describe how the composition of the set of experiences presented by the teacher to the learner, as well as their order, influences the performance of the curriculum that is found by TSCL approaches. To do so, we demonstrate that for every TSCL problem, an equivalent cooperative game exists, and several key components of the TSCL framework can be reinterpreted using game-theoretic principles. Through experiments covering supervised learning, reinforcement learning, and classical games, we estimate the cooperative values of experiences and use value-proportional curriculum mechanisms to construct curricula, even in cases where TSCL struggles. The framework and experimental setup we present in this work represents a novel foundation for a deeper exploration of TSCL, shedding light on its underlying mechanisms and providing insights into its broader applicability in machine learning.
title Rethinking Teacher-Student Curriculum Learning through the Cooperative Mechanics of Experience
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Science and Game Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.03084