Modern machine learning techniques, such as deep learning, often use discriminative models that require large amounts of labeled data. An alternative approach is to use a generative model, which leverages heuristics from domain experts to train on unlabeled data. Domain experts often prefer to use generative models because they "tell a story" about their data. Unfortunately, generative models are typically less accurate than discriminative models. Several recent approaches combine both types of model to exploit their strengths. In this setting, a misspecified generative model can hurt the performance of subsequent discriminative training. To address this issue, we propose a framework called Socratic learning that automatically uses information from the discriminative model to correct generative model misspecification. Furthermore, this process provides users with interpretable feedback about how to improve their generative model. We evaluate Socratic learning on real-world relation extraction tasks and observe an immediate improvement in classification accuracy that could otherwise require several weeks of effort by domain experts.
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