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Meta-learning autoencoders for few-shot prediction

Machine Learning 2018-07-27 v1 Machine Learning

Abstract

Compared to humans, machine learning models generally require significantly more training examples and fail to extrapolate from experience to solve previously unseen challenges. To help close this performance gap, we augment single-task neural networks with a meta-recognition model which learns a succinct model code via its autoencoder structure, using just a few informative examples. The model code is then employed by a meta-generative model to construct parameters for the task-specific model. We demonstrate that for previously unseen tasks, without additional training, this Meta-Learning Autoencoder (MeLA) framework can build models that closely match the true underlying models, with loss significantly lower than given by fine-tuned baseline networks, and performance that compares favorably with state-of-the-art meta-learning algorithms. MeLA also adds the ability to identify influential training examples and predict which additional data will be most valuable to acquire to improve model prediction.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1807.09912,
  title  = {Meta-learning autoencoders for few-shot prediction},
  author = {Tailin Wu and John Peurifoy and Isaac L. Chuang and Max Tegmark},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.09912},
  year   = {2018}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:14:47.130Z