Harmonizing Program Induction with Rate-Distortion Theory

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Zhou, Hanqi, Nagy, David G., Wu, Charley M.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866917662218518528
author Zhou, Hanqi
Nagy, David G.
Wu, Charley M.
author_facet Zhou, Hanqi
Nagy, David G.
Wu, Charley M.
contents Many aspects of human learning have been proposed as a process of constructing mental programs: from acquiring symbolic number representations to intuitive theories about the world. In parallel, there is a long-tradition of using information processing to model human cognition through Rate Distortion Theory (RDT). Yet, it is still poorly understood how to apply RDT when mental representations take the form of programs. In this work, we adapt RDT by proposing a three way trade-off among rate (description length), distortion (error), and computational costs (search budget). We use simulations on a melody task to study the implications of this trade-off, and show that constructing a shared program library across tasks provides global benefits. However, this comes at the cost of sensitivity to curricula, which is also characteristic of human learners. Finally, we use methods from partial information decomposition to generate training curricula that induce more effective libraries and better generalization.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_05294
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Harmonizing Program Induction with Rate-Distortion Theory
Zhou, Hanqi
Nagy, David G.
Wu, Charley M.
Human-Computer Interaction
Computation and Language
Information Theory
Machine Learning
Symbolic Computation
Many aspects of human learning have been proposed as a process of constructing mental programs: from acquiring symbolic number representations to intuitive theories about the world. In parallel, there is a long-tradition of using information processing to model human cognition through Rate Distortion Theory (RDT). Yet, it is still poorly understood how to apply RDT when mental representations take the form of programs. In this work, we adapt RDT by proposing a three way trade-off among rate (description length), distortion (error), and computational costs (search budget). We use simulations on a melody task to study the implications of this trade-off, and show that constructing a shared program library across tasks provides global benefits. However, this comes at the cost of sensitivity to curricula, which is also characteristic of human learners. Finally, we use methods from partial information decomposition to generate training curricula that induce more effective libraries and better generalization.
title Harmonizing Program Induction with Rate-Distortion Theory
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Computation and Language
Information Theory
Machine Learning
Symbolic Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.05294