「Dynamic Hyperbolic Embeddings with Graph-Centralized Regularization for Recommender Systems」
Dynamic Hyperbolic Embeddings with Graph-Centralized Regularization for Recommender Systems
[Journal of Information Processing Vol.29, pp.725-734]
[情報処理学会論文誌データベース Vol.14 No.4, Preprint掲載]
[Abstract]
In this work, we propose two techniques for accurate and efficient hyperbolic embeddings for real-world recommender systems. The first technique is regularization. We found that the graphs of various recommendation datasets exhibit hierarchical or tree-like structures suitable for hyperbolic embeddings, while these structures are not well modeled by the original hyperbolic embeddings. Hence, we introduce a regularization term in the objective function of the hyperbolic embeddings for forcibly reflecting hierarchical or tree-like structures. The second technique is an efficient embedding method, which only updates the embedding of items that are recently added in a recommender system. In an offline evaluation with various recommendation datasets, we found that the regularization enforcing hierarchical or tree-like structures improved HR@10 up to +9% compared to hyperbolic embeddings without the regularization. Moreover, the evaluation result showed that our model update technique could achieve not only greater efficiency but also more robustness. Finally, we applied our proposed techniques to a million-scale news recommendation service and conducted an A/B test, which demonstrated that even *10-dimension* hyperbolic embeddings successfully increased the number of clicks by +3.7% and dwell time by +10%.
[Reasons for the award]
In this paper, the authors introduce a regularization technique based on graph centrality for recommendation datasets with hierarchical or tree-like structures, thereby improving the accuracy of hyperbolic embeddings. The practicality of the proposed method is demonstrated by applying the hyperbolic embedding approach to a real-time streaming recommendation system and validating its effectiveness through A/B testing in an actual news recommendation service. The paper is an excellent paper worthy of the Outstanding Paper Award because the proposed dynamic model updating strategy enhanced both efficiency and robustness.

Kojiro Iizuka
Kojiro Iizuka earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, in 2014, 2016, and 2022. He worked as a machine learning researcher and engineer at Gunosy Inc., developing recommendation systems. Currently, he is a senior consultant at Slalom Inc., specializing in developing data science and data engineering solutions for clients. His research interests focus on search and recommender systems, particularly emphasizing algorithms and evaluation methodologies.

Makoto P. Kato
Makoto P. Kato received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Informatics from Kyoto University, Japan, in 2008, 2009, and 2012, respectively. Since 2019, he has been an associate professor of Faculty of Library, Information and Media Science, University of Tsukuba. His main research interest is Information Retrieval, especially retrieval algorithms, evaluation methodology, and search behavior analysis.

Yoshifumi Seki
Yoshifumi Seki serves as Chief Product Officer at Fairy Devices Inc. He received his PhD from The University of Tokyo in 2017. His main interest lies in industrial applications of machine learning technologies. Previously, he contributed on research and development for a news recommendation system. Currently, he focuses on action recognition and worker support technology using wearable devices.