AutoML in The Wild: Obstacles, Workarounds, and Expectations

Automated machine learning (AutoML) is envisioned to make ML While machine learning (ML) has been successfully applied to solve techniques accessible to ordinary users. Recent work has investigated many challenging tasks across various domains, building performant the role of humans in enhancing AutoML functionality ML solutions still requires substantial resources and extensive throughout a standard ML workflow. However, it is also critical to human expertise [34]. Automated machine learning (AutoML), a understand how users adopt existing AutoML solutions in complex, novel concept for automating the whole ML pipeline without (or real-world settings from a holistic perspective. To fill this gap, this as little as possible) human intervention [39], has emerged as a study conducted semi-structured interviews of AutoML users ( way to significantly reduce expensive development costs [75]. As = 19) focusing on understanding (1) the limitations of AutoML encountered illustrated in Figure 1, envisioned to enable domain experts without by users in their real-world practices, (2) the strategies considerable ML backgrounds (e.g., marketing and business analysts) users adopt to cope with such limitations, and (3) how the limitations to build ML solutions more easily, AutoML holds the promise and workarounds impact their use of AutoML.