Automatic Machine Learning: Hierachical Planning Versus Evolutionary Optimization

These days, there is a strong rise in the needs for machine learning applications, requiring an automation of machine learning engineering which is referred to as AutoML. In AutoML the selection, composition and parametrization of machine learning algorithms is automated and tailored to a specific problem, resulting in a machine learning pipeline. Current approaches reduce the AutoML problem to optimization of hyperparameters. Based on recursive task networks, in this paper we present one approach from the field of automated planning and one evolutionary optimization approach. Instead of simply parametrizing a given pipeline, this allows for structure optimization of machine learning pipelines, as well. We evaluate the two approaches in an extensive evaluation, finding both approaches to have their strengths in different areas. Moreover, the two approaches outperform the state-of-the-art tool Auto-WEKA in many settings.