On educating machines

TL;DR

This paper reviews the emerging field of machine education, which focuses on teaching machines rather than training them, and organizes existing research into key directions to advance the field.

Contribution

It consolidates scattered literature on machine education and identifies core research directions to help establish it as a standalone field.

Findings

Identified key research directions in machine education.

Organized existing literature into a coherent framework.

Highlighted the nascent state of the field and need for further development.

Abstract

Machine education is an emerging research field that focuses on the problem which is inverse to machine learning. To date, the literature on educating machines is still in its infancy. A fairly low number of methodology and method papers are scattered throughout various formal and informal publication avenues, mainly because the field is not yet well coalesced (with no well established discussion forums or investigation pathways), but also due to the breadth of its potential ramifications and research directions. In this study we bring together the existing literature and organise the discussion into a small number of research directions (out of many) which are to date sufficiently explored to form a minimal critical mass that can push the machine education concept further towards a standalone research field status.