On the Capacity Limits of Privileged ERM

We study the supervised learning paradigm called Learning Using Privileged Information, first suggested by Vapnik and Vashist (2009). In this paradigm, in addition to the examples and labels, additional (privileged) information is provided only for training examples. The goal is to use this information to improve the classification accuracy of the resulting classifier, where this classifier can only use the non-privileged information of new example instances to predict their label. We study the theory of privileged learning with the zero-one loss under the natural Privileged ERM algorithm proposed in Pechyony and Vapnik (2010a). We provide a counter example to a claim made in that work regarding the VC dimension of the loss class induced by this problem; We conclude that the claim is incorrect. We then provide a correct VC dimension analysis which gives both lower and upper bounds on the capacity of the Privileged ERM loss class. We further show, via a generalization analysis, that worst-case guarantees for Privileged ERM cannot improve over standard non-privileged ERM, unless the capacity of the privileged information is similar or smaller to that of the non-privileged information. This result points to an important limitation of the Privileged ERM approach. In our closing discussion, we suggest another way in which Privileged ERM might still be helpful, even when the capacity of the privileged information is large.