Tutorial; Evolutionary Machine Learning

A fusion of Evolutionary Computation and Machine Learning, namely Evolutionary Machine Learning (EML), has been recognized as a rapidly growing research area as these powerful search and learning mechanisms are combined. Many specific branches of EML with different learning schemes and different ML problem domains have been proposed. These branches seek to address common challenges � � How evolutionary search can discover optimal ML configurations and parameter settings, � How the deterministic models of ML can influence evolutionary mechanisms, � How EC and ML can be integrated into one learning model. Consequently, various insights address principle issues of the EML paradigm that are worthwhile to �transfer� to these different specific challenges. The goal of our tutorial is to provide ideas of advanced techniques of specific EML branches, and then to share them as a common insight into the EML paradigm. Firstly, we introduce the common challenges in the EML paradigm and then discuss how various EML branches address these challenges. Then, as detailed examples, we provide two major approaches to EML: Evolutionary rule-based learning (i.e. Learning Classifier Systems) as a symbolic approach; Evolutionary Neural Networks as a connectionist approach. Our tutorial will be organized for not only beginners but also experts in the EML field. For the beginners, our tutorial will be a gentle introduction regarding EML from basics to recent challenges. For the experts, our two specific talks provide the most recent advances of evolutionary rule-based learning and of evolutionary neural networks. Additionally, we will provide a discussion on how these techniques' insights can be reused to other EML branches, which shapes the new directions of EML techniques.