RECOMMENDER CONTROL SYSTEM, APPARATUS, METHOD AND RELATED ASPECTS

摘要

A recommender system (18) is described which is capable of being controlled using training data provided by an external controller (16). The controller (16) is arranged to control the input of training data from client devices (22) to a recommender system (18) to drive the recommender system's performance towards a set level.

主权项

1. A recommender controller arranged to control the operation of a recommender system, the recommender controller comprising:
a reference receiver for receiving a predetermined reference performance metric for said recommender system; a measurement receiver for receiving a measured performance metric for said recommender system derived from a combination of one or more recommendations previously provided by said recommender system to a user and usage data from a client device associated with a user to which the recommendations were provided; and a processor for iteratively comparing the received measured performance metric with the received predetermined reference performance metric to determine a difference value and being further operable to generate a value or values of a control parameter or parameters-for controlling the operation of the recommender system in such a way as to seek to cause the difference value in a subsequent iteration to tend towards zero such that the measured performance metric of the recommendation system tends towards the reference performance metric; and wherein the control parameter or parameters specify an amount of training data to be provided to the recommender system, in a given iteration, and wherein the training data is derived from the usage data from a client device associated with a user to which the recommendations are provided.