Odysseus

From examples to ability

Odysseus develops a model that learns useful procedures from the information it encounters.

An example contains more than an answer. It can reveal a relationship between a starting point and a result. Recognising that relationship creates the possibility of carrying it into a different situation.

At its centre is whether what the model learns stays useful when the examples change.

Language provided a concrete place to begin. The ways words change contain recurring relationships, variations and exceptions. They offer a demanding setting in which to study whether something learnt from one set of examples can help with another.

Learning from real language

Recorded experiments on real-language word forms demonstrated successful application to examples not used in learning.

In tests involving German word forms, the research demonstrated that learned relationships could be applied to words held aside during learning.

These results established a positive foundation: the research could recover relationships from language examples and use them beyond the examples from which they were derived.

A relationship learnt in one encounter had become useful in another.

Extending the investigation

The work then examined Hungarian word forms, broadening the investigation to a language with a different pattern of word formation.

In that recorded experiment, a learner developed through the Odysseus research produced the exact expected forms for a large majority of the words held aside for testing.

The task was one grammatical form: the singular accusative of nouns. The result demonstrated that relationships learnt from the training examples could be applied accurately across a substantial set of unseen words.

The learned relationships remained useful beyond the original teaching examples.

This strengthened the research direction and gave us a further basis for studying how useful procedures can emerge from examples.

Recognising where knowledge applies

The experiments also brought attention to a broader question: how does a model recognise which of its learned abilities is relevant to the information in front of it?

Different abilities can contribute to different situations. Understanding those differences is part of developing a model that can make effective use of what it has learnt.

Odysseus continues to investigate that relationship between learning an ability and recognising where to apply it.

The research ahead

The work reaches into reasoning and conversation: learning relationships from real information and developing procedures that remain useful as situations change.

The language experiments provide concrete achievements on that path. They give the research a measured foundation for exploring more demanding tasks and a broader range of information.

Learning from examples. Recognising relationships. Carrying an ability forward.