Beyond Labels: Information-Efficient Human-in-the-Loop Learning using Ranking and Selection Queries

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Martín-Urcelay, Belén, Lee, Yoonsang, Bloch, Matthieu R., Rozell, Christopher J.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912910436990976
author Martín-Urcelay, Belén
Lee, Yoonsang
Bloch, Matthieu R.
Rozell, Christopher J.
author_facet Martín-Urcelay, Belén
Lee, Yoonsang
Bloch, Matthieu R.
Rozell, Christopher J.
contents Integrating human expertise into machine learning systems often reduces the role of experts to labeling oracles, a paradigm that limits the amount of information exchanged and fails to capture the nuances of human judgment. We address this challenge by developing a human-in-the-loop framework to learn binary classifiers with rich query types, consisting of item ranking and exemplar selection. We first introduce probabilistic human response models for these rich queries motivated by the relationship experimentally observed between the perceived implicit score of an item and its distance to the unknown classifier. Using these models, we then design active learning algorithms that leverage the rich queries to increase the information gained per interaction. We provide theoretical bounds on sample complexity and develop a tractable and computationally efficient variational approximation. Through experiments with simulated annotators derived from crowdsourced word-sentiment and image-aesthetic datasets, we demonstrate significant reductions on sample complexity. We further extend active learning strategies to select queries that maximize information rate, explicitly balancing informational value against annotation cost. This algorithm in the word sentiment classification task reduces learning time by more than 57\% compared to traditional label-only active learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_15738
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond Labels: Information-Efficient Human-in-the-Loop Learning using Ranking and Selection Queries
Martín-Urcelay, Belén
Lee, Yoonsang
Bloch, Matthieu R.
Rozell, Christopher J.
Human-Computer Interaction
Machine Learning
Integrating human expertise into machine learning systems often reduces the role of experts to labeling oracles, a paradigm that limits the amount of information exchanged and fails to capture the nuances of human judgment. We address this challenge by developing a human-in-the-loop framework to learn binary classifiers with rich query types, consisting of item ranking and exemplar selection. We first introduce probabilistic human response models for these rich queries motivated by the relationship experimentally observed between the perceived implicit score of an item and its distance to the unknown classifier. Using these models, we then design active learning algorithms that leverage the rich queries to increase the information gained per interaction. We provide theoretical bounds on sample complexity and develop a tractable and computationally efficient variational approximation. Through experiments with simulated annotators derived from crowdsourced word-sentiment and image-aesthetic datasets, we demonstrate significant reductions on sample complexity. We further extend active learning strategies to select queries that maximize information rate, explicitly balancing informational value against annotation cost. This algorithm in the word sentiment classification task reduces learning time by more than 57\% compared to traditional label-only active learning.
title Beyond Labels: Information-Efficient Human-in-the-Loop Learning using Ranking and Selection Queries
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.15738