Summary
Transfer learning (TL) is a technique in machine learning (ML) in which knowledge learned from a task is re-used in order to boost performance on a related task. For example, for , knowledge gained while learning to recognize cars could be applied when trying to recognize trucks. This topic is related to the psychological literature on transfer of learning, although practical ties between the two fields are limited. Reusing/transferring information from previously learned tasks to new tasks has the potential to significantly improve learning efficiency. In 1976, Bozinovski and Fulgosi published a paper addressing transfer learning in neural network training. The paper gives a mathematical and geometrical model of the topic. In 1981, a report considered the application of transfer learning to a dataset of images representing letters of computer terminals, experimentally demonstrating positive and negative transfer learning. In 1993, Pratt formulated the discriminability-based transfer (DBT) algorithm. In 1997, Pratt and Thrun guest-edited a special issue of Machine Learning devoted to transfer learning, and by 1998, the field had advanced to include multi-task learning, along with more formal theoretical foundations. Learning to Learn, edited by Thrun and Pratt, is a 1998 review of the subject. Transfer learning has been applied in cognitive science. Pratt guest-edited an issue of Connection Science on reuse of neural networks through transfer in 1996. Ng said in his NIPS 2016 tutorial that TL would become the next driver of machine learning commercial success after supervised learning. In the 2020 paper "Rethinking Pre-Training and self-training", Zoph et al. reported that pre-training can hurt accuracy, and advocate self-training instead. Algorithms are available for transfer learning in Markov logic networks and Bayesian networks. Transfer learning has been applied to cancer subtype discovery, building utilization, general game playing, text classification, digit recognition, medical imaging and spam filtering.
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