Learning Structured Predictors from Bandit Feedback for Interactive NLP

Structured prediction from bandit feedback describes a learning scenario where instead of having access to a gold standard structure, a learner only receives partial feedback in form of the loss value of a predicted structure. We present new learning objectives and algorithms for this interactive scenario, focusing on convergence speed and ease of elicitability of feedback. We present supervised-to-bandit simulation experiments for several NLP tasks (machine translation, sequence labeling, text classification), showing that bandit learning from relative preferences eases feedback strength and yields improved empirical convergence.