Cognizant Technology Solutions U.S. Corporation

Sentient Technologies (barbados) Limited

Genetic Finance (barbados) Limited

Cognizant Technology Solutions

Hormoz Shahrzad

Babak Hodjat

Risto Miikkulainen

Daniel Edward Fink

Kaivan Kamali

Greg S Hornby

Adam John Cheyer

Antoine Blondeau

Peter Harrigan

Nigel Duffy

Philip Michael Long

Jason Zhi Liang

Gilles Stéphane Demaneuf

A surrogate-assisted evolutionary optimization method, ESP, discovers decision strategies in real-world applications. Based on historical data, a surrogate is learned and used to evaluate candidate policies with minimal exploration cost. Extended into sequential decision making, ESP is highly sample efficient, has low variance, and low regret, making the policies reliable and safe. As an unexpected result, the surrogate also regularizes decision making, making it sometimes possible to discover good policies even when direct evolution fails.

Process and system including an optimization engine with evolutionary surrogate-assisted prescriptions

An explainable surrogate-assisted evolutionary optimization method, E-ESP, discovers rule-based decision strategies for which actions to take to achieve certain outcomes when historical training data is limited or unavailable. The resulting rules are human readable and thus facilitate explainability and trustworthiness unlike the black box solutions resulting from neural network solutions.

Process and system including explainable prescriptions through surrogate-assisted evolution

Roughly described, a problem solving platform distributes the solving of the problem over a evolvable individuals, each of which also evolves its own pool of actors. The actors have the ability to contribute collaboratively to a solution at the level of the individual, instead of each actor being a candidate for the full solution. Populations evolve both at the level of the individual and at the level of actors within an individual. In an embodiment, an individual defines parameters according to which its population of actors can evolve. The individual is fixed prior to deployment to a production environment, but its actors can continue to evolve and adapt while operating in the production environment. Thus a goal of the evolutionary process at the level of individuals is to find populations of actors that can sustain themselves and survive, solving a dynamic problem for a given domain as a consequence.

Alife machine learning system and method

Roughly described, an evolutionary data mining system includes at least two processing units, each having a pool of candidate individuals in which each candidate individual has a fitness estimate and experience level. A first processing unit tests candidate individuals against training data, updates an individual's experience level, and assigns each candidate to one of multiple layers of the candidate pool based on the individual's experience level. Individuals within the same layer of the same pool compete with each other to remain candidates. The first processing unit selects a set of candidates to retain based on the relative novelty of their responses to the training data. The first processing unit reports successful individuals to the second processing unit, and receives individuals for further testing from the second processing unit. The second processing unit selects individuals to retain based on their fitness estimate.

Data mining technique with distributed novelty search

A composite novelty method approach to deceptive problems where a secondary objective is available to diversify the search is described. In such cases, composite objectives focus the search on the most useful tradeoffs and allow escaping deceptive areas. Novelty-based selection increases exploration in the focus area, leading to better solutions, faster and more consistently and it can be combined with other fitness-based methods.

Enhanced optimization with composite objectives and novelty-diversity selection

The technology disclosed proposes a novel asynchronous evaluation strategy (AES) that increases throughput of evolutionary algorithms by continuously maintaining a queue of K individuals ready to be sent to the worker nodes for evaluation and evolving the next generation once a fraction Mi of the K individuals have been evaluated by the worker nodes, where Mi&#x3c;&#x3c;K. A suitable value for Mi is determined experimentally, balancing diversity and efficiency. The technology disclosed is extended to coevolution of deep neural network supermodules and blueprints in the form of AES for cooperative evolution of deep neural networks (CoDeepNEAT-AES). Applied to image captioning domain, a threefold speedup is observed on 200 graphics processing unit (GPU) worker nodes, demonstrating that the disclosed AES and CoDeepNEAT-AES are promising techniques for evolving complex systems with long and variable evaluation times.

Asynchronous evaluation strategy for evolution of deep neural networks

The computer system and method herein uses a multi-objective driven evolutionary algorithm that is better able to find optimum solutions to a problem because it balances the use of objectives as composite functions, and relative novelty and diversity in evolutionary optimization. In particular, the system and method herein described herein presents an improved process which introduces novelty pulsation, i.e., a systematic method to alternate between novelty selection and local optimization.

Enhanced optimization with composite objectives and novelty pulsation

A method for finding a solution to a problem is provided. The method includes storing candidate individuals in a candidate pool and evolving the candidate individuals by performing steps including (i) testing each of the candidate individuals to obtain test results, (ii) assigning a performance measure to the tested candidate individuals, (iii) discarding candidate individuals from the candidate pool in dependence upon their assigned performance measure, and (iv) adding, to the candidate pool, a new candidate individual procreated from candidate individuals remaining in the candidate pool. The method further includes selecting, as the winning candidate individual, a candidate individual having a best neighborhood performance measure, where the neighborhood performance measure of a particular candidate individual is given by the performance measures of (i) the particular candidate individual and (ii) K neighborhood candidate individuals which are nearest in the candidate pool to the particular candidate individual, and where K&#x3e;0.

Method and system for finding a solution to a provided problem by selecting a winner in evolutionary optimization of a genetic algorithm

Roughly described, in an evolutionary technique for finding optimal solutions to a provided problem, a computer system uses a grouping algorithm that is better able to find diverse and optimum solutions in data mining environment with multiple solution landscapes and a plurality of candidate individuals. Each candidate individual identifies with a potential solution, and is associated with a testing experience level and one or more partition tags. Each candidate individual is assigned into one of a plurality of competition groups in dependence upon the individual's testing experience level and partition tag. During competition among candidate individuals, a candidate individual can only replace another candidate individual if both the candidate individuals have a common partition tag and are in the same competition group. A candidate individual cannot replace another candidate individual if they have different partition tags or are in different competition groups.

Training and control system for evolving solutions to data-intensive problems using nested experience-layered individual pool

In many environments, rules are trained on historical data to predict an outcome likely to be associated with new data. Described is a ruleset which predicts the probability of a particular outcome. Roughly described, an individual identifies a ruleset, where each of the rules has a plurality of conditions and also indicates a rule-level probability of a predetermined classification. The conditions indicate a relationship (e.g., '&#x3c;' or '!&#x3c;') between an input feature and a corresponding value. The rules are evaluated against input data to derive a certainty for each condition, and aggregated to a rule-level certainty. The rule probabilities are combined using the rule-level certainty values to derive a probability output for the ruleset, which can be used to provide a basis for decisions. In an embodiment, the per-condition certainty values are fuzzy values aggregated by fuzzy logic. A novel genetic algorithm can be used to derive the ruleset.

Distributed rule-based probabilistic time-series classifier

Roughly described, a computer-implemented evolutionary system evolves candidate solutions to provided problems. It includes a memory storing a candidate gene database containing active and epigenetic individuals; a gene pool processor which tests only active individuals on training data and updates their fitness estimates; a competition module which selects active individuals for discarding in dependence upon both their updated fitness estimate and their testing experience level; and a gene harvesting module providing for deployment selected ones of the individuals from the gene pool. The gene database has an experience layered elitist pool, and individuals compete only with other individuals in their same layer. Certain individuals are made epigenetic in the procreation module, after which they are not subjected to testing and competition. Epigenetic individuals are retained in the candidate gene pool regardless of their fitness. An epigenetic individual can become an active individual by random chance in procreation.

Training and control system for evolving solutions to data-intensive problems using epigenetic enabled individuals

In many environments, rules are trained on historical data to predict an outcome likely to be associated with new data. Described is a ruleset which predicts the probability of a particular outcome. Roughly described, an individual identifies a ruleset, where each of the rules has a plurality of conditions and also indicates a rule-level probability of a predetermined classification. The conditions indicate a relationship (e.g. '&#x3c;' or '!&#x3c;') between an input feature and a corresponding value. The rules are evaluated against input data to derive a certainty for each condition, and aggregated to a rule-level certainty. The rule probabilities are combined using the rule-level certainty values to derive a probability output for the ruleset, which can be used to provide a basis for decisions. In an embodiment, the per-condition certainty values are fuzzy values aggregated by fuzzy logic. A novel genetic algorithm can be used to derive the ruleset.

Roughly described, a computer-implemented evolutionary data mining system implements a genetic algorithm. The Genetic algorithm includes a requirements checkpoint, which selects individuals for discarding from the pool of candidate genomes which do not meet a predetermined minimum behavioral requirement for operating in production. The requirements checkpoint enforces an absolute minimum threshold for a behavioral characteristic of the individual, and is different from a competition step in which individuals are selected for removal on the basis of comparisons with each other. A requirements checkpoint may be inserted at various points within the genetic algorithm flow or at reasonable intervals during the training cycle. If at any of these checkpoints the minimum requirement is not met, the candidate individual may be removed from the candidate pool.

Filtering of genetic material in incremental fitness evolutionary algorithms based on thresholds

Roughly described, a computer-implemented evolutionary data mining system includes a memory storing a candidate gene database in which each candidate individual has a respective fitness estimate; a gene pool processor which tests individuals from the candidate gene pool on training data and updates the fitness estimate associated with the individuals in dependence upon the tests; and a gene harvesting module for deploying selected individuals from the gene pool, wherein the gene pool processor includes a competition module which selects individuals for discarding in dependence upon their updated fitness estimate. The system maintains the ancestry count for each of the candidate individuals, and may use this information to adjust the competition among the individuals, to adjust the selection of individuals for further procreation, and/or for other purposes.

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Dublin, CA, United States of America

Hormoz Shahrzad