Recent years have witnessed a proliferation of large-scale knowledge bases, including Wikipedia, Freebase, YAGO, Microsoft's Satori, and Google's Knowledge Graph. To increase the scale even further, we need to explore automatic methods for constructing knowledge bases. Previous approaches have primarily focused on text-based extraction, which can be very noisy. Here we introduce Knowledge Vault, a Web-scale probabilistic knowledge base that combines extractions from Web content (obtained via analysis of text, tabular data, page structure, and human annotations) with prior knowledge derived from existing knowledge repositories. We employ supervised machine learning methods for fusing these distinct information sources. The Knowledge Vault is substantially bigger than any previously published structured knowledge repository, and features a probabilistic inference system that computes calibrated probabilities of fact correctness. We report the results of multiple studies that explore the relative utility of the different information sources and extraction methods.

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Knowledge vault: a web-scale approach to probabilistic knowledge fusion

Relational machine learning studies methods for the statistical analysis of relational, or graph-structured, data. In this paper, we provide a review of how such statistical models can be “trained” on large knowledge graphs, and then used to predict new facts about the world (which is equivalent to predicting new edges in the graph). In particular, we discuss two fundamentally different kinds of statistical relational models, both of which can scale to massive data sets. The first is based on latent feature models such as tensor factorization and multiway neural networks. The second is based on mining observable patterns in the graph. We also show how to combine these latent and observable models to get improved modeling power at decreased computational cost. Finally, we discuss how such statistical models of graphs can be combined with text-based information extraction methods for automatically constructing knowledge graphs from the Web. To this end, we also discuss Google's knowledge vault project as an example of such combination.

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A Review of Relational Machine Learning for Knowledge Graphs

The major change in the second edition of this book is the addition of a new chapter on probabilistic retrieval. This chapter has been included because I think this is one of the most interesting and active areas of research in information retrieval. There are still many problems to be solved so I hope that this particular chapter will be of some help to those who want to advance the state of knowledge in this area. All the other chapters have been updated by including some of the more recent work on the topics covered. In preparing this new edition I have benefited from discussions with Bruce Croft, The material of this book is aimed at advanced undergraduate information (or computer) science students, postgraduate library science students, and research workers in the field of IR. Some of the chapters, particularly Chapter 6 * , make simple use of a little advanced mathematics. However, the necessary mathematical tools can be easily mastered from numerous mathematical texts that now exist and, in any case, references have been given where the mathematics occur. I had to face the problem of balancing clarity of exposition with density of references. I was tempted to give large numbers of references but was afraid they would have destroyed the continuity of the text. I have tried to steer a middle course and not compete with the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. Normally one is encouraged to cite only works that have been published in some readily accessible form, such as a book or periodical. Unfortunately, much of the interesting work in IR is contained in technical reports and Ph.D. theses. For example, most the work done on the SMART system at Cornell is available only in reports. Luckily many of these are now available through the National Technical Information Service (U.S.) and University Microfilms (U.K.). I have not avoided using these sources although if the same material is accessible more readily in some other form I have given it preference. I should like to acknowledge my considerable debt to many people and institutions that have helped me. Let me say first that they are responsible for many of the ideas in this book but that only I wish to be held responsible. My greatest debt is to Karen Sparck Jones who taught me to research information retrieval as an experimental science. Nick Jardine and Robin …

Information retrieval

Deep learning (DL) techniques have obtained remarkable achievements on various tasks, such as image recognition, object detection, and language modeling. However, building a high-quality DL system for a specific task highly relies on human expertise, hindering its wide application. Meanwhile, automated machine learning (AutoML) is a promising solution for building a DL system without human assistance and is being extensively studied. This paper presents a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the state-of-the-art (SOTA) in AutoML. According to the DL pipeline, we introduce AutoML methods – covering data preparation, feature engineering, hyperparameter optimization, and neural architecture search (NAS) – with a particular focus on NAS, as it is currently a hot sub-topic of AutoML. We summarize the representative NAS algorithms’ performance on the CIFAR-10 and ImageNet datasets and further discuss the following subjects of NAS methods: one/two-stage NAS, one-shot NAS, joint hyperparameter and architecture optimization, and resource-aware NAS. Finally, we discuss some open problems related to the existing AutoML methods for future research.

AutoML: A survey of the state-of-the-art

Data matching (also known as record or data linkage, entity resolution, object identification, or field matching) is the task of identifying, matching and merging records that correspond to the same entities from several databases or even within one database. Based on research in various domains including applied statistics, health informatics, data mining, machine learning, artificial intelligence, database management, and digital libraries, significant advances have been achieved over the last decade in all aspects of the data matching process, especially on how to improve the accuracy of data matching, and its scalability to large databases. Peter Christens book is divided into three parts: Part I, Overview, introduces the subject by presenting several sample applications and their special challenges, as well as a general overview of a generic data matching process. Part II, Steps of the Data Matching Process, then details its main steps like pre-processing, indexing, field and record comparison, classification, and quality evaluation. Lastly, part III, Further Topics, deals with specific aspects like privacy, real-time matching, or matching unstructured data. Finally, it briefly describes the main features of many research and open source systems available today. By providing the reader with a broad range of data matching concepts and techniques and touching on all aspects of the data matching process, this book helps researchers as well as students specializing in data quality or data matching aspects to familiarize themselves with recent research advances and to identify open research challenges in the area of data matching. To this end, each chapter of the book includes a final section that provides pointers to further background and research material. Practitioners will better understand the current state of the art in data matching as well as the internal workings and limitations of current systems. Especially, they will learn that it is often not feasible to simply implement an existing off-the-shelf data matching system without substantial adaption and customization. Such practical considerations are discussed for each of the major steps in the data matching process.

Data Matching: Concepts and Techniques for Record Linkage, Entity Resolution, and Duplicate Detection

We consider the entity resolution (ER) problem (also known as deduplication, or merge---purge), in which records determined to represent the same real-world entity are successively located and merged. We formalize the generic ER problem, treating the functions for comparing and merging records as black-boxes, which permits expressive and extensible ER solutions. We identify four important properties that, if satisfied by the match and merge functions, enable much more efficient ER algorithms. We develop three efficient ER algorithms: G-Swoosh for the case where the four properties do not hold, and R-Swoosh and F-Swoosh that exploit the four properties. F-Swoosh in addition assumes knowledge of the "features" (e.g., attributes) used by the match function. We experimentally evaluate the algorithms using comparison shopping data from Yahoo! Shopping and hotel information data from Yahoo! Travel. We also show that R-Swoosh (and F-Swoosh) can be used even when the four match and merge properties do not hold, if an "approximate" result is acceptable.

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Swoosh: a generic approach to entity resolution

Data collection is a major bottleneck in machine learning and an active research topic in multiple communities. There are largely two reasons data collection has recently become a critical issue. First, as machine learning is becoming more widely-used, we are seeing new applications that do not necessarily have enough labeled data. Second, unlike traditional machine learning, deep learning techniques automatically generate features, which saves feature engineering costs, but in return may require larger amounts of labeled data. Interestingly, recent research in data collection comes not only from the machine learning, natural language, and computer vision communities, but also from the data management community due to the importance of handling large amounts of data. In this survey, we perform a comprehensive study of data collection from a data management point of view. Data collection largely consists of data acquisition, data labeling, and improvement of existing data or models. We provide a research landscape of these operations, provide guidelines on which technique to use when, and identify interesting research challenges. The integration of machine learning and data management for data collection is part of a larger trend of Big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) integration and opens many opportunities for new research.

A Survey on Data Collection for Machine Learning: A Big Data - AI Integration Perspective

Creating and maintaining a platform for reliably producing and deploying machine learning models requires careful orchestration of many components---a learner for generating models based on training data, modules for analyzing and validating both data as well as models, and finally infrastructure for serving models in production. This becomes particularly challenging when data changes over time and fresh models need to be produced continuously. Unfortunately, such orchestration is often done ad hoc using glue code and custom scripts developed by individual teams for specific use cases, leading to duplicated effort and fragile systems with high technical debt. We present TensorFlow Extended (TFX), a TensorFlow-based general-purpose machine learning platform implemented at Google. By integrating the aforementioned components into one platform, we were able to standardize the components, simplify the platform configuration, and reduce the time to production from the order of months to weeks, while providing platform stability that minimizes disruptions. We present the case study of one deployment of TFX in the Google Play app store, where the machine learning models are refreshed continuously as new data arrive. Deploying TFX led to reduced custom code, faster experiment cycles, and a 2% increase in app installs resulting from improved data and model analysis.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3097983.3098021

TFX: A TensorFlow-Based Production-Scale Machine Learning Platform

Entity Resolution (ER) is the problem of identifying which records in a database refer to the same real-world entity. An exhaustive ER process involves computing the similarities between pairs of records, which can be very expensive for large datasets. Various blocking techniques can be used to enhance the performance of ER by dividing the records into blocks in multiple ways and only comparing records within the same block. However, most blocking techniques process blocks separately and do not exploit the results of other blocks. In this paper, we propose an iterative blocking framework where the ER results of blocks are reflected to subsequently processed blocks. Blocks are now iteratively processed until no block contains any more matching records. Compared to simple blocking, iterative blocking may achieve higher accuracy because reflecting the ER results of blocks to other blocks may generate additional record matches. Iterative blocking may also be more efficient because processing a block now saves the processing time for other blocks. We implement a scalable iterative blocking system and demonstrate that iterative blocking can be more accurate and efficient than blocking for large datasets.

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Entity resolution with iterative blocking

Enterprises increasingly rely on structured datasets to run their businesses. These datasets take a variety of forms, such as structured files, databases, spreadsheets, or even services that provide access to the data. The datasets often reside in different storage systems, may vary in their formats, may change every day. In this paper, we present GOODS, a project to rethink how we organize structured datasets at scale, in a setting where teams use diverse and often idiosyncratic ways to produce the datasets and where there is no centralized system for storing and querying them. GOODS extracts metadata ranging from salient information about each dataset (owners, timestamps, schema) to relationships among datasets, such as similarity and provenance. It then exposes this metadata through services that allow engineers to find datasets within the company, to monitor datasets, to annotate them in order to enable others to use their datasets, and to analyze relationships between them. We discuss the technical challenges that we had to overcome in order to crawl and infer the metadata for billions of datasets, to maintain the consistency of our metadata catalog at scale, and to expose the metadata to users. We believe that many of the lessons that we learned are applicable to building large-scale enterprise-level data-management systems in general.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2882903.2903730

Steven Euijong Whang

Papers

Swoosh: a generic approach to entity resolution

A Survey on Data Collection for Machine Learning: A Big Data - AI Integration Perspective

TFX: A TensorFlow-Based Production-Scale Machine Learning Platform

Entity resolution with iterative blocking

Goods: Organizing Google's Datasets