Machine learning as ecology
Owen Howell, Cui Wenping, Robert Marsland, Pankaj Mehta · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical · 2020
Machine learning methods have had spectacular success on numerous problems. Here we show that a prominent class of learning algorithms - including Support Vector Machines (SVMs) - have a natural interpretation in terms of ecological dynamics. We use these ideas to design new online SVM algorithms that exploit ecological invasions, and benchmark performance using the MNIST dataset. Our work provides a new ecological lens through which we can view statistical learning and opens the possibility of designing ecosystems for machine learning.