Abstract:
Lifelong Machine Learning (or Continual Learning) considers intelligent
systems that learn many tasks over a lifetime, consolidating the knowledge
they have learned and transferring that knowledge to more accurately learn
new tasks. This talk will review the basic concepts of Transfer Learning,
Consolidation and Lifelong Machine Learning. We will show how deep
learning has proven the value of developing internal representations and
rich feature sets from unsupervised learning as well as supervised
multiple task learning (MTL). We will review context-sensitive MTL and
show how it can be used to develop deep Lifelong Machine Learning systems
that can learn diverse families of functions and train architectures with
multiple input/output modalities. Finally, we will discuss how Lifelong
Machine Learning is providing insights into how to develop common
knowledge representation for Learning to Reason.
Bio:
Danny is a Professor in and former Director of the Jodrey School of
Computer Science, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia. He is the
founder and Director of the Acadia Institute for Data Analytics and leads
the Lifelong Machine Learning and Reasoning research group at Acadia. He
completed a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Western
Ontario, London, Ontario, in June, 2000. Danny's research focuses on
advanced methods of machine learning and their application in data
analytics, intelligent agents and adaptive systems. He has authored over
70 refereed journal or conference papers, 38 industry project reports and
delivered associated talks in Canada, USA, Mexico, Europe and China. He
has received a number of awards; including the FLAIRS-2016 and CASCON-2017
best paper awards. From 2007-09, he was the President of the Canadian
Society of Computational Studies of Intelligence (now the Canadian AI
Association, or CAIAC), and was Past-President until 2013. In June, 2016,
he received the CAIAC Distinguished Service Award and was made a CAIAC
Fellow. In 2011 he received the Science Champion Award from the Nova
Scotia Discovery Center for his work on youth robotics and the advancement
of STEM education. And from 2014 to 2018 he was an Honorary Colonel in
the RCAF attached to 415 Squadron of 14 Wing Greenwood, in Nova Scotia.