Active Learning for Image Recognition and Retrieval

Learning is one such innate general cognitive ability which has empowered the living animate entities and especially humans with intelligence. It is obtained by acquiring new knowledge and skills that enable them to adapt and survive. With the advancement of technology, a large amount of information gets amassed. Due to the sheer volume of increasing information, its analysis is humanly unfeasible and impractical. Therefore, for the analysis of massive data we need machines (such as computers) with the ability to learn and evolve in order to discover new knowledge from the analysed data. The majority of the traditional machine learning algorithms function optimally on a parametric (static) data. However, the datasets acquired in real practices are often vast, inaccurate, inconsistent, non-parametric and highly volatile. Therefore, the learning algorithms' optimized performance can only be transitory, thus requiring a learning algorithm that can constantly evolve and adapt according to the data it processes. In light of a need for such machine learning algorithm, we look for the inspiration in humans' innate cognitive learning ability. Active learning is one such approach.