Continual Learning Projects
ARNI Continual Learning Working Group: A Day in the Life
PI: Richard Zemel
Co-PI: Kathy McKeown
Abstract
Modern multimodal vision-language models (VLMs) are increasingly becoming capable of performing tasks across the spectrum of human interests, including games (e.g., card games, chess), abstract reasoning tasks (e.g., summarization, mathematical problem solving), and embodied intelligence tasks (pick-and-place). However, each of these generally requires a specialized VLM with task-specific training to perform well, and VLM post-training generally involves a single phase of fine-tuning/RL to achieve proficiency on one or a few narrow task domains. In contrast, humans simultaneously excel at many of these tasks, especially ones that are performed (and thus improved upon) frequently. As an example, the figure below (from here) shows that the average adult human spends several hours a day on household chores, work, education, and leisure, often interleaving these activities.
Publications
Continual Learning for Adaptive Human–Exosuit Control
PI: Nafiseh Ebrahami
Co-PI: Mohammadreza Davoodi and Xaq Pitkow
Abstract
Modern multimodal vision-language models (VLMs) are increasingly becoming capable of performing tasks across the spectrum of human interests, including games (e.g., card games, chess), abstract reasoning tasks (e.g., summarization, mathematical problem solving), and embodied intelligence tasks (pick-and-place). However, each of these generally requires a specialized VLM with task-specific training to perform well, and VLM post-training generally involves a single phase of fine-tuning/RL to achieve proficiency on one or a few narrow task domains. In contrast, humans simultaneously excel at many of these tasks, especially ones that are performed (and thus improved upon) frequently. As an example, the figure below (from here) shows that the average adult human spends several hours a day on household chores, work, education, and leisure, often interleaving these activities.
Publications
Curriculum Learning
PI: Richard Zemel
Co-PI: Natalie Brito
Abstract
We aim to develop a two-phase approach to model-specific curriculum learning, analogous to the process of scaffolding in child-caregiver interactions during infant development. In the discovery phase, we estimate the performance of a learning model on a task of interest based on its past performance and via targeted probing (e.g., question-answering). In the development phase, we leverage the information learned from the discovery phase on the performance of a ‘classroom’ of learning models and construct a curriculum that provides the maximum expected improvement in task performance for the learning models of interest. By iteratively applying this two-phase approach to a classroom of learning models, we aim to not only maximize performance and learning efficiency, but also to study the analogues and differences between humans and AI models during the learning process.
