Alan Brown, writing for Nautilus:
Vapnik describes privileged information as a second kind of language with which to instruct computers. Where the language of brute force learning consists of technical measurements, such as shapes, colors, forces, and the amount you spent on groceries, privileged information relies on metaphor. And metaphor can make the difference between smart science and brute force science.
To see privileged information at work, we need look no further than the human (or robot) body. The body is special because it has particular ways of interacting with its environment. A room with chairs in it is understood differently by a human with legs than by a robot without them. The thousands of points of raw data describing the room collapse into a few simple ideas when subject to the constraints and demands of a physical body. If a teacher knows what it’s like to have a body, he, she, or it can pass these simple ideas to a student as privileged information, creating an efficient description of a complex environment.