DoCoGen: Domain Counterfactual Generation for Low Resource Domain Adaptation
Nitay Calderon, Eyal Ben‐David, Amir Feder, Roi Reichart · Proceedings of the 60th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · 2022
Natural language processing (NLP) algorithms have become very successful, but they still struggle when applied to out-of-distribution examples.In this paper we propose a controllable generation approach in order to deal with this domain adaptation (DA) challenge.Given an input text example, our DoCoGen algorithm generates a domain-counterfactual textual example (D-CON) -that is similar to the original in all aspects, including the task label, but its domain is changed to a desired one.Importantly, DoCoGen is trained using only unlabeled examples from multiple domainsno NLP task labels or parallel pairs of textual examples and their domain-counterfactuals are required.We show that DoCoGen can generate coherent counterfactuals consisting of multiple sentences.We use the D-CONs generated by DoCoGen to augment a sentiment classifier and a multi-label intent classifier in 20 and 78 DA setups, respectively, where source-domain labeled data is scarce.Our model outperforms strong baselines and improves the accuracy of a state-of-the-art unsupervised DA algorithm.1 * Both authors equally contributed to this work.Original, Kitchen: A good knife but Quality Control was poor.The knife is solid and very comfortable in hand, however, when I got it new, the blade is slightly bent.I expect it to be in almost perfect condition, but it's not.DoCoGen, Kitchen → Electronics: A good product but Quality Control was poor.The ipod is very easy to use and very comfortable in hand, however, when I got it new, the ipod is slightly flimsy.I expect it to be in almost perfect shape, but it's not.Original, DVD: The direction of this film is excellent.I love all the characters and the way they interact.The storyline is very important also.It's about religious beliefs and neighbors that interact with each other.It's a well-paced and interesting story that's not like anything else I've ever seen.DoCoGen, DVD → Airline: The service on this flight is excellent.I love the staff and the way they interact.The safety is very important also.It's nice to have staff and neighbors that can help each other.It's a well-groomed and professional crew that's not like anything else I've ever experienced.Original, Electronics: That relay board is only good for switching AC loads of 100V or more.If you have a lower voltage load, it's not going to work.For low voltage loads use transistors, MOSFETs or a ULN2803 driver board.DoCoGen, Electronics → Statistics: That model is only good for data of $n$ or more.If you have a lower $n$, it's not going to work.For lower $n$ regression use a linear, logistic or a t-test.