Towards a Unifying Framework for Formal Theories of Novelty

T. E. Boult, P. A. Grabowicz, D. S. Prijatelj, R. Stern, L. Holder, J. Alspector, M. Jafarzadeh, T. Ahmad, A. R. Dhamija, C. Li, S. Cruz, A. Shrivastava, C. Vondrick, W. J. Scheirer

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

21 Scopus citations

Abstract

Managing inputs that are novel, unknown, or out-of distribution is critical as an agent moves from the lab to the open world. Novelty-related problems include being tolerant to novel perturbations of the normal input, detecting when the input includes novel items, and adapting to novel inputs. While significant research has been undertaken in these areas, a noticeable gap exists in the lack of a formalized definition of novelty that transcends problem domains. As a team of researches panning multiple research groups and different domains, we have seen, first hand, the difficulties that arise from ill-specified novelty problems, as well as inconsistent definitions and terminology. Therefore, we present the first unified framework for formal theories of novelty and use the framework to formally define a family of novelty types. Our framework can be applied across a wide range of domains, from symbolic AI to reinforcement learning, and beyond to open world image recognition. Thus, it can be used to help kick-start new research efforts and accelerate ongoing work
on these important novelty-related problems.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication35th Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2021
PublisherAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
Pages15047-15052
Number of pages6
Volume35
Edition17
ISBN (Electronic)9781713835974
DOIs
StatePublished - 18 May 2021
Event35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: 2 Feb 20219 Feb 2021

Publication series

Name35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2021
Volume17A

Conference

Conference35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period2/02/219/02/21

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Artificial Intelligence

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