Junqi Wang

Junqi Wang, Pei Wang, Patrick Shafto

Cooperation is often implicitly assumed when learning from other agents. Cooperation implies that the agent selecting the data, and the agent learning from the data, have the same goal, that the learner infer the intended hypothesis. Recent models in human and machine learning have demonstrated the possibility of cooperation. We seek foundational theoretical results for cooperative inference by Bayesian agents through sequential data. We develop novel approaches analyzing consistency, rate of convergence and stability of Sequential Cooperative Bayesian Inference (SCBI). Our analysis of the effectiveness, sample efficiency and robustness show that cooperation is not only possible in specific instances but theoretically well-founded in general. We discuss implications for human-human and human-machine cooperation.

Pei Wang, Junqi Wang, Pushpi Paranamana et al.

Cooperative communication plays a central role in theories of human cognition, language, development, culture, and human-robot interaction. Prior models of cooperative communication are algorithmic in nature and do not shed light on why cooperation may yield effective belief transmission and what limitations may arise due to differences between beliefs of agents. Through a connection to the theory of optimal transport, we establishing a mathematical framework for cooperative communication. We derive prior models as special cases, statistical interpretations of belief transfer plans, and proofs of robustness and instability. Computational simulations support and elaborate our theoretical results, and demonstrate fit to human behavior. The results show that cooperative communication provably enables effective, robust belief transmission which is required to explain feats of human learning and improve human-machine interaction.