(Apologies for cross-postings) CFP: Reinforcement Learning and Search in Very Large Spaces Workshop at ICML 2010
June 25th, 2010, Haifa, Israel http://institute.unileoben.ac.at/infotech/research/workshops/icml2010-RLsearch/ SCOPE: This workshop is about reinforcement learning in large state/action spaces, learning to optimize search, and the relation of these two. Content-based information retrieval with relevance feedback is a multi-stage process, where at each stage a user selects the item which is closest to the requested information from a set of presented items, until the requested information is found. The task of the search engine is to present items such that the search terminates in few iterations. More generally, interactive search concerns multi-stage processes where a search engine presents some information and as response gets some feedback, which may be partial and noisy. Since the reward for finding the requested information is delayed, learning a good search engine from data can be modeled as a reinforcement problem, but the special structure of the problem needs to be exploited. Since for realistic search applications the state space is enormous, this learning problem is a difficult one. Although the literature of reinforcement learning offers many powerful algorithms that have been successful in various difficult applications, we find that there is still relatively little understanding about when reinforcement learning might be successful in a realistic application, or what might make reinforcement learning successful in such an application. Furthermore, little work has been done on applying reinforcement learning to optimize interactive search. Thus this workshop addresses in particular but not exclusively the following two questions: * Identify cases when realistically large problems with delayed feedback can be solved successfully, possibly but not necessarily by reinforcement learning algorithms. Such algorithm may need to exploit the special structure of the learning problem. As an example we see content-based information retrieval. * Application of learning techniques to develop powerful interactive search algorithms: optimizing a single search or learning across searches, with or without probabilistic assumptions. A partial list of topics relevant to the workshop contains: * reinforcement learning in large state/action spaces * automatic state/action aggregation and hierarchical reinforcement learning * special cases or assumptions which facilitate fast reinforcement learning * reinforcement learning, relevance feedback, and information retrieval * search strategies based on relevance feedback * learning efficient search strategies from multiple search sessions * applications. SUBMISSIONS: We are seeking quality contributions describing recent or ongoing work in the scope of the workshop. Both theoretical and applied work is solicited. Submissions on applying learning techniques in a principled manner - either by providing theoretical guarantees or conclusive empirical studies - are especially encouraged. We additionally welcome position papers, in particular papers presenting an important and promising problem field for discussion, and demonstrations. Submissions should be either 4-page research papers or 2-page position papers. Papers must be in English and formatted according to the ICML 2010 stylefiles. Submission should be sent in PDF to icml2010learninginsea...@gmail.com. The submissions will be reviewed by two reviewers on the basis of relevance, significance, technical quality, and clarity, with the goal of assembling a diverse and stimulating workshop agenda. At least one of the authors of every accepted contribution is expected to present the contribution. As this workshop has no formal proceedings, it is fine for the submissions to be under consideration elsewhere, as long as they will not be published at any venue before this workshop takes place. People interested in submitting or participating in the workshop are welcome to contact any of the organizers with questions. IMPORTANT DATES: * Submission deadline: 8 May 2010 * Notification of acceptance: 23 May 2010 * Workshop date: 25 June 2010 Organizers: Peter Auer (http://personal.unileoben.ac.at/auer/) - University of Leoben Samuel Kaski (http://www.cis.hut.fi/sami/ - Aalto University, Helsinki Csaba Szepesvari (http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~szepesva/) - University of Alberta _______________________________________________ uai mailing list uai@ENGR.ORST.EDU https://secure.engr.oregonstate.edu/mailman/listinfo/uai
