Modeling of Multilayer Multicontent Latent Tree and Its Applications

Latent tree model (LTM) is a probabilistic tree-structured graphical model, which can reveal the hidden hierarchical causal relations among data contents and play a key role in explainable artificial intelligence. However, because current LTM modeling techniques are only suitable for single-content variable, the applications of LTMs are somewhat limited. Toward this end, a multilayer LTM (ML-LTM) is first presented to deal with the hierarchical clustering issues of multicontent variables. Second, we further develop an ML-LTM-based multicontent recommendation system. Our experiment results show that the proposed ML-LTM can achieve 90% recommendation accuracy, but the current LTM can only has 20%. Third, we propose an incremental update approach for ML-LTM that can save five-sixth updating time comparing with the whole-model retraining approach for achieving the same recommendation accuracy.