用户选择导致模型过度专业化,新算法通过探测同行模型来突破困局。
Dynamics of Learning under User Choice: Overspecialization and Peer-Model Probing
- 引入同行探测机制,让模型学习未选择自己的用户偏好。
- 现有方法可能陷入低全局性能的过拟合陷阱,而新算法可收敛至低风险解。
- 适合关注平台竞争与数据偏差问题的研究者或工业界从业者。
在多个平台共享同一用户池的场景中,用户选择倾向会引发学习动态失衡。现有方法仅优化局部损失,可能导致模型几乎必然收敛到全局性能极差的解,即使存在低全人群损失的优秀模型。这种现象源于反馈循环驱动的‘过度专业化陷阱’:模型为迎合已有用户而忽略其他用户,导致数据分布进一步收缩。受知识蒸馏启发,本文提出一种‘同行探测’算法,允许模型获取非本平台用户的预测信息,从而拓展数据覆盖范围。理论分析表明,当探测源足够可信(如市场领先者或多数表现良好的同行)时,该算法几乎必然收敛至全人群风险有界的稳定点。在MovieLens、Census和Amazon Sentiment三个半合成数据集上的实验验证了上述结论。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
In many economically relevant contexts where machine learning is deployed, multiple platforms obtain data from the same pool of users, each of whom selects the platform that best serves them. Prior work in this setting focuses exclusively on the "local" losses of learners on the distribution of data that they observe. We find that there exist instances where learners who use existing algorithms almost surely converge to models with arbitrarily poor global performance, even when models with low full-population loss exist. This happens through a feedback-induced mechanism, which we call the overspecialization trap: as learners optimize for users who already prefer them, they become less attractive to users outside this base, which further restricts the data they observe. Inspired by the recent use of knowledge distillation in modern ML, we propose an algorithm that allows learners to "probe" the predictions of peer models, enabling them to learn about users who do not select them. Our analysis characterizes when probing succeeds: this procedure converges almost surely to a stationary point with bounded full-population risk when probing sources are sufficiently informative, e.g., a known market leader or a majority of peers with good global performance. We verify our findings with semi-synthetic experiments on the MovieLens, Census, and Amazon Sentiment datasets.
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