Portrait de Doina Precup

Doina Precup

Membre académique principal
Chaire en IA Canada-CIFAR
Professeure agrégée, McGill University, École d'informatique
Chef d'équipe de recherche, Google DeepMind

Biographie

Doina Precup enseigne à l'Université McGill tout en menant des recherches fondamentales sur l'apprentissage par renforcement, notamment les applications de l'IA dans des domaines ayant des répercussions sociales, tels que les soins de santé. Elle s'intéresse à la prise de décision automatique dans des situations d'incertitude élevée.

Elle est membre de l'Institut canadien de recherches avancées (CIFAR) et de l'Association pour l'avancement de l'intelligence artificielle (AAAI), et dirige le bureau montréalais de DeepMind.

Ses spécialités sont les suivantes : intelligence artificielle, apprentissage machine, apprentissage par renforcement, raisonnement et planification sous incertitude, applications.

Étudiants actuels

Maîtrise recherche - McGill University
Co-superviseur⋅e :
Doctorat - McGill University
Maîtrise recherche - McGill University
Postdoctorat - McGill University
Maîtrise recherche - McGill University
Doctorat - McGill University
Stagiaire de recherche - McGill University
Doctorat - McGill University
Postdoctorat - Université de Montréal
Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :
Doctorat - McGill University
Doctorat - McGill University
Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :
Maîtrise recherche - McGill University
Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :
Stagiaire de recherche - McGill University
Doctorat - McGill University
Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :
Maîtrise recherche - McGill University
Co-superviseur⋅e :
Doctorat - McGill University
Co-superviseur⋅e :
Doctorat - McGill University
Doctorat - McGill University
Co-superviseur⋅e :
Stagiaire de recherche - McGill University
Doctorat - McGill University
Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :
Collaborateur·rice de recherche - McGill University
Maîtrise recherche - McGill University
Maîtrise recherche - Université de Montréal
Doctorat - McGill University
Co-superviseur⋅e :
Doctorat - McGill University
Doctorat - McGill University
Co-superviseur⋅e :
Collaborateur·rice de recherche - McGill University
Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :
Doctorat - McGill University
Baccalauréat - McGill University
Doctorat - McGill University
Co-superviseur⋅e :
Maîtrise recherche - Université de Montréal
Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :
Doctorat - McGill University
Doctorat - McGill University
Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :
Doctorat - McGill University
Superviseur⋅e principal⋅e :

Publications

Improving Pathological Structure Segmentation via Transfer Learning Across Diseases
Barleen Kaur
Paul Lemaitre
Raghav Mehta
Nazanin Mohammadi Sepahvand
Douglas Arnold
Learning Options with Interest Functions
Learning temporal abstractions which are partial solutions to a task and could be reused for solving other tasks is an ingredient that can h… (voir plus)elp agents to plan and learn efficiently. In this work, we tackle this problem in the options framework. We aim to autonomously learn options which are specialized in different state space regions by proposing a notion of interest functions, which generalizes initiation sets from the options framework for function approximation. We build on the option-critic framework to derive policy gradient theorems for interest functions, leading to a new interest-option-critic architecture.
Leveraging Observations in Bandits: Between Risks and Benefits
Andrei-stefan Lupu
Imitation learning has been widely used to speed up learning in novice agents, by allowing them to leverage existing data from experts. Allo… (voir plus)wing an agent to be influenced by external observations can benefit to the learning process, but it also puts the agent at risk of following sub-optimal behaviours. In this paper, we study this problem in the context of bandits. More specifically, we consider that an agent (learner) is interacting with a bandit-style decision task, but can also observe a target policy interacting with the same environment. The learner observes only the target’s actions, not the rewards obtained. We introduce a new bandit optimism modifier that uses conditional optimism contingent on the actions of the target in order to guide the agent’s exploration. We analyze the effect of this modification on the well-known Upper Confidence Bound algorithm by proving that it preserves a regret upper-bound of order O(lnT), even in the presence of a very poor target, and we derive the dependency of the expected regret on the general target policy. We provide empirical results showing both great benefits as well as certain limitations inherent to observational learning in the multi-armed bandit setting. Experiments are conducted using targets satisfying theoretical assumptions with high probability, thus narrowing the gap between theory and application.
Prediction of Disease Progression in Multiple Sclerosis Patients using Deep Learning Analysis of MRI Data
Adrian Tousignant
Paul Lemaitre
Douglas Arnold
We present the first automatic end-to-end deep learning framework for the prediction of future patient disability progression (one year from… (voir plus) baseline) based on multi-modal brain Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) of patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). The model uses parallel convolutional pathways, an idea introduced by the popular Inception net (Szegedy et al., 2015) and is trained and tested on two large proprietary, multi-scanner, multi-center, clinical trial datasets of patients with Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS). Experiments on 465 patients on the placebo arms of the trials indicate that the model can accurately predict future disease progression, measured by a sustained increase in the extended disability status scale (EDSS) score over time. Using only the multi-modal MRI provided at baseline, the model achieves an AUC of 0.66±0.055. However, when supplemental lesion label masks are provided as inputs as well, the AUC increases to 0.701± 0.027. Furthermore, we demonstrate that uncertainty estimates based on Monte Carlo dropout sample variance correlate with errors made by the model. Clinicians provided with the predictions computed by the model can therefore use the associated uncertainty estimates to assess which scans require further examination.
Connecting Weighted Automata and Recurrent Neural Networks through Spectral Learning
In this paper, we unravel a fundamental connection between weighted finite automata~(WFAs) and second-order recurrent neural networks~(2-RNN… (voir plus)s): in the case of sequences of discrete symbols, WFAs and 2-RNNs with linear activation functions are expressively equivalent. Motivated by this result, we build upon a recent extension of the spectral learning algorithm to vector-valued WFAs and propose the first provable learning algorithm for linear 2-RNNs defined over sequences of continuous input vectors. This algorithm relies on estimating low rank sub-blocks of the so-called Hankel tensor, from which the parameters of a linear 2-RNN can be provably recovered. The performances of the proposed method are assessed in a simulation study.
Prediction of Progression in Multiple Sclerosis Patients
Adrian Tousignant
Paul Lemaitre
Douglas Arnold
We present the first automatic end-to-end deep learning framework for the prediction of future patient disability progression (one year from… (voir plus) baseline) based on multi-modal brain Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) of patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). The model uses parallel convolutional pathways, an idea introduced by the popular Inception net and is trained and tested on two large proprietary, multi-scanner, multi-center, clinical trial datasets of patients with Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS). Experiments on 465 patients on the placebo arms of the trials indicate that the model can accurately predict future disease progression, measured by a sustained increase in the extended disability status scale (EDSS) score over time. Using only the multi-modal MRI provided at baseline, the model achieves an AUC of 0.66 +- 0.055. However, when supplemental lesion label masks are provided as inputs as well, the AUC increases to 0.701 +- 0.027. Furthermore, we demonstrate that uncertainty estimates based on Monte Carlo dropout sample variance correlate with errors made by the model. Clinicians provided with the predictions computed by the model can therefore use the associated uncertainty estimates to assess which scans require further examination.
The Termination Critic
Anna Harutyunyan
Will Dabney
Diana L. Borsa
Nicolas Heess
Remi Munos
In this work, we consider the problem of autonomously discovering behavioral abstractions, or options, for reinforcement learning agents. We… (voir plus) propose an algorithm that focuses on the termination function, as opposed to - as is common - the policy. The termination function is usually trained to optimize a control objective: an option ought to terminate if another has better value. We offer a different, information-theoretic perspective, and propose that terminations should focus instead on the compressibility of the option’s encoding - arguably a key reason for using abstractions.To achieve this algorithmically, we leverage the classical options framework, and learn the option transition model as a “critic” for the termination function. Using this model, we derive gradients that optimize the desired criteria. We show that the resulting options are non-trivial, intuitively meaningful, and useful for learning.
The Termination Critic
Anna Harutyunyan
Will Dabney
Diana Borsa
Nicolas Heess
Remi Munos
In this work, we consider the problem of autonomously discovering behavioral abstractions, or options, for reinforcement learning agents. We… (voir plus) propose an algorithm that focuses on the termination function, as opposed to - as is common - the policy. The termination function is usually trained to optimize a control objective: an option ought to terminate if another has better value. We offer a different, information-theoretic perspective, and propose that terminations should focus instead on the compressibility of the option’s encoding - arguably a key reason for using abstractions.To achieve this algorithmically, we leverage the classical options framework, and learn the option transition model as a “critic” for the termination function. Using this model, we derive gradients that optimize the desired criteria. We show that the resulting options are non-trivial, intuitively meaningful, and useful for learning.
Clustering-Oriented Representation Learning with Attractive-Repulsive Loss
Kian Kenyon-Dean
Andre Cianflone
Lucas Caccia
The standard loss function used to train neural network classifiers, categorical cross-entropy (CCE), seeks to maximize accuracy on the trai… (voir plus)ning data; building useful representations is not a necessary byproduct of this objective. In this work, we propose clustering-oriented representation learning (COREL) as an alternative to CCE in the context of a generalized attractive-repulsive loss framework. COREL has the consequence of building latent representations that collectively exhibit the quality of natural clustering within the latent space of the final hidden layer, according to a predefined similarity function. Despite being simple to implement, COREL variants outperform or perform equivalently to CCE in a variety of scenarios, including image and news article classification using both feed-forward and convolutional neural networks. Analysis of the latent spaces created with different similarity functions facilitates insights on the different use cases COREL variants can satisfy, where the Cosine-COREL variant makes a consistently clusterable latent space, while Gaussian-COREL consistently obtains better classification accuracy than CCE.
Environments for Lifelong Reinforcement Learning
To achieve general artificial intelligence, reinforcement learning (RL) agents should learn not only to optimize returns for one specific ta… (voir plus)sk but also to constantly build more complex skills and scaffold their knowledge about the world, without forgetting what has already been learned. In this paper, we discuss the desired characteristics of environments that can support the training and evaluation of lifelong reinforcement learning agents, review existing environments from this perspective, and propose recommendations for devising suitable environments in the future.
Exploring Uncertainty Measures in Deep Networks for Multiple Sclerosis Lesion Detection and Segmentation
Tanya Nair
Douglas Arnold
Attend Before you Act: Leveraging human visual attention for continual learning
When humans perform a task, such as playing a game, they selectively pay attention to certain parts of the visual input, gathering relevant … (voir plus)information and sequentially combining it to build a representation from the sensory data. In this work, we explore leveraging where humans look in an image as an implicit indication of what is salient for decision making. We build on top of the UNREAL architecture in DeepMind Lab's 3D navigation maze environment. We train the agent both with original images and foveated images, which were generated by overlaying the original images with saliency maps generated using a real-time spectral residual technique. We investigate the effectiveness of this approach in transfer learning by measuring performance in the context of noise in the environment.