February 11, 2000
3:30pm

B. John Oommen

Parameter Learning from Stochastic Teachers and Stochastic Compulsive Liars

All of the research that has been done in learning has involved learning from a teacher who is either deterministic or stochastic. In this talk, we shall present the first known results of how a learning mechanism can learn while interacting with either a stochastic teacher or a stochastic compulsive liar. In the first instance, the teacher intends to teach the learning mechanism. In the second, the compulsive liar intends to consciously mislead the learning mechanism. We shall present a formal strategy for the mechanism to perform e-optimal learning without it knowing whether it is interacting with a teacher or a compulsive liar. Believe It Or Not - IT WORKS!

This is joint work with Dr. Govindachari (Bangalore) and Dr. Kuipers (Texas).