<div dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-6d4dab33-bd4d-9d48-5964-f02fcd2766a8"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:10pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"><b>TL;DR:</b> w</span><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">e invite you to our workshop on </span><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Continual Learning and Deep Networks</span><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">, at this year’s NIPS. Submission deadline for 4-page abstracts is October 21.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:10pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">---------------</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:10pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Description:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:10pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Humans have the extraordinary ability to learn continually from experience. Not only can we apply previously learned knowledge and skills to new situations, we can also use these as the foundation for later learning. One of the grand goals of AI is building an artificial "continual learning" agent that constructs a sophisticated understanding of the world from its own experience, through the autonomous incremental development of ever more complex skills and knowledge.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:10pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Hallmarks of continual learning include: interactive, incremental, online learning (learning occurs at every moment, with no fixed tasks or data sets); hierarchy or compositionality (previous learning can become the foundation far later learning); "isolaminar" construction (the same algorithm is used at all stages of learning); resistance to catastrophic forgetting (new learning does not destroy old learning); and unlimited temporal abstraction (both knowledge and skills may refer to or span arbitrary periods of time).</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:10pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Continual learning is an unsolved problem which presents particular difficulties for the deep-architecture approach that is currently the favoured workhorse for many applications. Some strides have been made recently, and many diverse research groups have continual learning on their road map. Hence we believe this is an opportune moment for a workshop focusing on this theme. The goals would be to define the different facets of the continual-learning problem, to tease out the relationships between different relevant fields (such as reinforcement learning, deep learning, lifelong learning, transfer learning, developmental learning, computational neuroscience, etc.) and to propose and explore promising new research directions.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:10pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Confirmed speakers:</span></p><ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Claudia Clopath (Imperial College London)</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Eric Eaton (University of Pennsylvania)</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Raia Hadsell (Google DeepMind) </span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Honglak Lee (University of Michigan)</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Joelle Pineau (McGill University) </span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Satinder Singh Baveja (Cogitai and University of Michigan)</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Alexander Stoytchev (University of Iowa)</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Richard Sutton (University of Alberta)</span></p></li></ul><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:10pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Dates:</span></p><ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Submission deadline: Friday </span><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-weight:700;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">October 21</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Workshop: Saturday December 10</span></p></li></ul><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:10pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Submission format: </span><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-weight:700;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">4 page extended abstracts</span><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">, which can include previously published work.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:10pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">More details at the website: </span><span style="text-decoration:underline;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/cldlnips2016/" style="text-decoration:none">https://sites.google.com/site/cldlnips2016/</a></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:10pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">We look forward to seeing you in December!</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:10pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:14.6667px;white-space:pre-wrap;line-height:normal;background-color:transparent">Razvan Pascanu, Mark Ring and Tom Schaul.</span></p></span>
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