Training Artificial Neural Network with a Cultural Algorithm

Artificial neural networks are amongst the artificial intelligence techniques with their ability to provide machines with some functionalities such as decision making, comparison, and forecasting. They are known for having the capability of forecasting issues in real-world problems. Their acquired knowledge is stored in the interconnection strengths or weights of neurons through an optimization system known as learning. Several limitations have been identified with commonly used gradient-based optimization algorithms, including the risk of premature convergence, the sensitivity of initial parameters and positions, and the potential for getting trapped in local optima. Various meta-heuristics are proposed in the literature as alternative training algorithms to mitigate these limitations. Therefore, the primary aim of this study is to combine a feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) with a cultural algorithm (CA) as a meta-heuristic, aiming to establish an efficient and dependable training system in comparison to existing methods. The proposed artificial neural network system (ANN-CA) evaluated its performance on classification tasks over nine benchmark datasets: Iris, Pima Indians Diabetes, Thyroid Disease, Breast Cancer Wisconsin, Credit Approval, Glass Identification, SPECT Heart, Wine and Balloon. The overall experimental results indicate that the proposed method outperforms other methods included in the comparative analysis by approximately 12% in terms of classification error and approximately 7% in terms of accuracy.