What is DeepCTRL?

Google AI Researchers Propose a novel training method.

This article will try to summarize Google AI’s contribution of DeepCTRL to the field as of late January, 2022.

It is thought to have important applications in artificial intelligence and deep learning at the intersection of future applications in healthcare, physics, retail and likely finance.

• Healthcare

• Physics

• Retal

• Possibly Finance

• Possibly Climate Change Modeling

Google AI has a new breakthrough. DeepCTRL is now being evaluated on machine learning use cases in physics and healthcare, both of which rely heavily on rules.

Google Cloud AI researchers have offered a unique deep learning training approach that incorporates rules so that the strength of the rules may be controlled at inference.

Google AI Researchers Propose A Novel Training Method Called ‘DEEPCTRL’ That Integrates Rules Into Deep Learning

Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.07804.pdf

Google Blog: https://ai.googleblog.com/2022/01/controlling-neural-networks-with-rule.html

• DeepCTRL (Deep Neural Networks with Controllable Rule Representations) combines a rule encoder and a rule-based objective into the model, allowing for a shared representation for decision-making. Data type and model architecture are unimportant to DeepCTRL. 

• As the number and range of their training data grow, deep neural networks (DNNs) provide increasingly accurate outputs. While investing in high-quality, large-scale labeled datasets are one way to enhance models, another is to use previous information, referred to as “rules” – reasoning heuristics, equations, associative logic, or restrictions.

• Consider a classic physics problem in which a model is tasked with predicting the future state of a double pendulum system. While the model may learn to expect the system’s total energy at a particular moment in time only from empirical data, unless it is additionally given an equation that incorporates known physical restrictions, such as energy conservation, it will typically overestimate the energy.

  On its own, the model cannot represent such well-established physical principles. How could such rules be taught, so DNNs acquire the appropriate information rather than merely learning from the data?

Controllable Rule Representations in Deep Neural Networks

Researchers present Deep Neural Networks with Controllable Rule Representations (DeepCTRL), an approach for providing rules for a model that is agnostic to data type and model architecture and can be applied to any kind of rule defined for inputs and outputs, in “Controlling Neural Networks with Rule Representations,” published at NeurIPS 2021.

• It can be used with any input/output rule. The key feature of DeepCTRL is that it does not require retraining to alter rule strength – the user may adjust it at inference based on the desired accuracy vs rule verification ratio. 

• The advantages of learning through rules are numerous. For starters, rules can provide additional information in circumstances where data oversight is limited, boosting test accuracy.

• Second, the rules can help DNNs gain more trust and reliability. The fact that DNNs are ‘black-box’ is a key roadblock to their widespread adoption. Users’ trust is often eroded due to a lack of comprehension of the reasons behind their reasoning and discrepancies of their outputs with human judgement.

• Inconsistencies can be minimised, and users’ confidence can be improved by implementing rules. For example, if a DNN for loan delinquency prediction can absorb all of a bank’s decision heuristics, the bank’s loan officers can have more confidence in the forecasts. 

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Google AI’s Summary on DeepCTRL

Deep Neural Networks with Controllable Rule Representations (DEEPCTRL) incorporates a rule encoder into the model coupled with a rule-based objective, enabling a shared representation for decision making. DEEPCTRL is agnostic to data type and model architecture. It can be applied to any kind of rule defined for inputs and outputs.

Deep Learning Application for Healthcare, Physics and Retail

The key aspect of DEEPCTRL is that it does not require retraining to adapt the rule strength – at inference, the user can adjust it based on the desired operation point on accuracy vs. rule verification ratio. In real-world domains where incorporating rules is critical – such as Physics, Retail and Healthcare – we show the effectiveness of DEEPCTRL in teaching rules for deep learning.

DEEPCTRL improves the trust and reliability of the trained models by significantly increasing their rule verification ratio, while also providing accuracy gains at downstream tasks. Additionally, DEEPCTRL enables novel use cases such as hypothesis testing of the rules on data samples, and unsupervised adaptation based on shared rules between datasets.

DeepCTRL differs from the others in that it injects the rules so that it provides controllability of rule strength at inference without retraining, which is possible by correct learning of rule representations in the data manifold. Beyond simply increasing rule verification for target precision, this opens up new possibilities.

DeepCTRL offers a number of possible uses in real-world deep learning deployments, including improving accuracy, increasing reliability, and improving human-AI interaction.

On the other hand, the researchers have thought it pertinent to highlight that DeepCTRL’s capacity to effectively encode rules can have unintended consequences if it is used with wrong intentions to teach immoral prejudices.

If you enjoy my articles here you might enjoy a new Newsletter I’m starting around Quantum computing, innovation and genomics called Quantum Foundry.

Learning from rules can be crucial for constructing interpretable, robust, and reliable DNNs. In this paper, Google AI proposed DEEPCTRL, a new methodology to incorporate rules into data-learned DNNs. Unlike existing methods, DEEPCTRL enables controllability of rule strength at inference without retraining.

The paper has 33 references you can follow.

The benefits of learning from rules are multifaceted:

• Rules can provide extra information for cases with minimal data, improving the test accuracy.

• A major bottleneck for widespread use of DNNs is the lack of understanding the rationale behind their reasoning and inconsistencies. By minimizing inconsistencies, rules can improve the reliability of and user trust in DNNs.

• DNNs are sensitive to slight input changes that are human-imperceptible. With rules, the impact of these changes can be minimized as the model search space is further constrained to reduce underspecification.

DeepCTRL guarantees that models adhere to rules more closely while simultaneously boosting accuracy on downstream activities, improving model dependability and user confidence.

This topic was found in Reddit’s Deep Learning subreddit here. I will have to make a list of the top Subreddits as relating to A.I. as there are dozens of good sources for discussion and news.

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