We present a new approach to understanding the relationship between loss curvature and input-output model behaviour in deep learning. Specifically, we use existing empirical analyses of the spectrum of deep network loss Hessians to ground an ansatz tying together the loss Hessian and the input-output Jacobian over training samples during the training of deep neural networks. We then prove a series of theoretical results which quantify the degree to which the input-output Jacobian of a model approximates its Lipschitz norm over a data distribution, and deduce a novel generalisation bound in terms of the empirical Jacobian. We use our ansatz, together with our theoretical results, to give a new account of the recently observed progressive sharpening phenomenon, as well as the generalisation properties of flat minima. Experimental evidence is provided to validate our claims.
We present NCCSG, a nonsmooth optimization method. In each iteration, NCCSG finds the best length-constrained descent direction by considering the worst bound over all local subgradients. NCCSG can take advantage of local smoothness or local strong convexity of the objective function. We prove a few global convergence rates of NCCSG. For well-behaved nonsmooth functions (characterized by the weak smooth property), NCCSG converges in $O(\frac{1}{\epsilon} \log \frac{1}{\epsilon})$ iterations, where $\epsilon$ is the desired optimality gap. For smooth functions and strongly-convex smooth functions, NCCSG achieves the lower bound of convergence rates of blackbox first-order methods, i.e., $O(\frac{1}{\epsilon})$ for smooth functions and $O(\log \frac{1}{\epsilon})$ for strongly-convex smooth functions. The efficiency of NCCSG depends on the efficiency of solving a minimax optimization problem involving the subdifferential of the objective function in each iteration.
This study compares the performance of (1) fine-tuned models and (2) extremely large language models on the task of check-worthy claim detection. For the purpose of the comparison we composed a multilingual and multi-topical dataset comprising texts of various sources and styles. Building on this, we performed a benchmark analysis to determine the most general multilingual and multi-topical claim detector. We chose three state-of-the-art models in the check-worthy claim detection task and fine-tuned them. Furthermore, we selected three state-of-the-art extremely large language models without any fine-tuning. We made modifications to the models to adapt them for multilingual settings and through extensive experimentation and evaluation. We assessed the performance of all the models in terms of accuracy, recall, and F1-score in in-domain and cross-domain scenarios. Our results demonstrate that despite the technological progress in the area of natural language processing, the models fine-tuned for the task of check-worthy claim detection still outperform the zero-shot approaches in a cross-domain settings.
The reduction of Hamiltonian systems aims to build smaller reduced models, valid over a certain range of time and parameters, in order to reduce computing time. By maintaining the Hamiltonian structure in the reduced model, certain long-term stability properties can be preserved. In this paper, we propose a non-linear reduction method for models coming from the spatial discretization of partial differential equations: it is based on convolutional auto-encoders and Hamiltonian neural networks. Their training is coupled in order to simultaneously learn the encoder-decoder operators and the reduced dynamics. Several test cases on non-linear wave dynamics show that the method has better reduction properties than standard linear Hamiltonian reduction methods.
We present a framework for the efficient computation of optimal Bayesian decisions under intractable likelihoods, by learning a surrogate model for the expected utility (or its distribution) as a function of the action and data spaces. We leverage recent advances in simulation-based inference and Bayesian optimization to develop active learning schemes to choose where in parameter and action spaces to simulate. This allows us to learn the optimal action in as few simulations as possible. The resulting framework is extremely simulation efficient, typically requiring fewer model calls than the associated posterior inference task alone, and a factor of $100-1000$ more efficient than Monte-Carlo based methods. Our framework opens up new capabilities for performing Bayesian decision making, particularly in the previously challenging regime where likelihoods are intractable, and simulations expensive.
Generalized linear models (GLMs) are routinely used for modeling relationships between a response variable and a set of covariates. The simple form of a GLM comes with easy interpretability, but also leads to concerns about model misspecification impacting inferential conclusions. A popular semi-parametric solution adopted in the frequentist literature is quasi-likelihood, which improves robustness by only requiring correct specification of the first two moments. We develop a robust approach to Bayesian inference in GLMs through quasi-posterior distributions. We show that quasi-posteriors provide a coherent generalized Bayes inference method, while also approximating so-called coarsened posteriors. In so doing, we obtain new insights into the choice of coarsening parameter. Asymptotically, the quasi-posterior converges in total variation to a normal distribution and has important connections with the loss-likelihood bootstrap posterior. We demonstrate that it is also well-calibrated in terms of frequentist coverage. Moreover, the loss-scale parameter has a clear interpretation as a dispersion, and this leads to a consolidated method of moments estimator.
We analyze connections between two low rank modeling approaches from the last decade for treating dynamical data. The first one is the coherence problem (or coherent set approach), where groups of states are sought that evolve under the action of a stochastic transition matrix in a way maximally distinguishable from other groups. The second one is a low rank factorization approach for stochastic matrices, called Direct Bayesian Model Reduction (DBMR), which estimates the low rank factors directly from observed data. We show that DBMR results in a low rank model that is a projection of the full model, and exploit this insight to infer bounds on a quantitative measure of coherence within the reduced model. Both approaches can be formulated as optimization problems, and we also prove a bound between their respective objectives. On a broader scope, this work relates the two classical loss functions of nonnegative matrix factorization, namely the Frobenius norm and the generalized Kullback--Leibler divergence, and suggests new links between likelihood-based and projection-based estimation of probabilistic models.
Causal representation learning algorithms discover lower-dimensional representations of data that admit a decipherable interpretation of cause and effect; as achieving such interpretable representations is challenging, many causal learning algorithms utilize elements indicating prior information, such as (linear) structural causal models, interventional data, or weak supervision. Unfortunately, in exploratory causal representation learning, such elements and prior information may not be available or warranted. Alternatively, scientific datasets often have multiple modalities or physics-based constraints, and the use of such scientific, multimodal data has been shown to improve disentanglement in fully unsupervised settings. Consequently, we introduce a causal representation learning algorithm (causalPIMA) that can use multimodal data and known physics to discover important features with causal relationships. Our innovative algorithm utilizes a new differentiable parametrization to learn a directed acyclic graph (DAG) together with a latent space of a variational autoencoder in an end-to-end differentiable framework via a single, tractable evidence lower bound loss function. We place a Gaussian mixture prior on the latent space and identify each of the mixtures with an outcome of the DAG nodes; this novel identification enables feature discovery with causal relationships. Tested against a synthetic and a scientific dataset, our results demonstrate the capability of learning an interpretable causal structure while simultaneously discovering key features in a fully unsupervised setting.
Pretrained transformers exhibit the remarkable ability of in-context learning (ICL): they can learn tasks from just a few examples provided in the prompt without updating any weights. This raises a foundational question: can ICL solve fundamentally $\textit{new}$ tasks that are very different from those seen during pretraining? To probe this question, we examine ICL's performance on linear regression while varying the diversity of tasks in the pretraining dataset. We empirically demonstrate a $\textit{task diversity threshold}$ for the emergence of ICL. Below this threshold, the pretrained transformer cannot solve unseen regression tasks, instead behaving like a Bayesian estimator with the $\textit{non-diverse pretraining task distribution}$ as the prior. Beyond this threshold, the transformer significantly outperforms this estimator; its behavior aligns with that of ridge regression, corresponding to a Gaussian prior over $\textit{all tasks}$, including those not seen during pretraining. Thus, when pretrained on data with task diversity greater than the threshold, transformers $\textit{can}$ optimally solve fundamentally new tasks in-context. Importantly, this capability hinges on it deviating from the Bayes optimal estimator with the pretraining distribution as the prior. This study also explores the effect of regularization, model capacity and task structure and underscores, in a concrete example, the critical role of task diversity, alongside data and model scale, in the emergence of ICL. Code is available at //github.com/mansheej/icl-task-diversity.
Language models have been shown to be very effective in predicting brain recordings of subjects experiencing complex language stimuli. For a deeper understanding of this alignment, it is important to understand the correspondence between the detailed processing of linguistic information by the human brain versus language models. We investigate this correspondence via a direct approach, in which we eliminate information related to specific linguistic properties in the language model representations and observe how this intervention affects the alignment with fMRI brain recordings obtained while participants listened to a story. We investigate a range of linguistic properties (surface, syntactic, and semantic) and find that the elimination of each one results in a significant decrease in brain alignment. Specifically, we find that syntactic properties (i.e. Top Constituents and Tree Depth) have the largest effect on the trend of brain alignment across model layers. These findings provide clear evidence for the role of specific linguistic information in the alignment between brain and language models, and open new avenues for mapping the joint information processing in both systems. We make the code publicly available [//github.com/subbareddy248/linguistic-properties-brain-alignment].
When modeling a vector of risk variables, extreme scenarios are often of special interest. The peaks-over-thresholds method hinges on the notion that, asymptotically, the excesses over a vector of high thresholds follow a multivariate generalized Pareto distribution. However, existing literature has primarily concentrated on the setting when all risk variables are always large simultaneously. In reality, this assumption is often not met, especially in high dimensions. In response to this limitation, we study scenarios where distinct groups of risk variables may exhibit joint extremes while others do not. These discernible groups are derived from the angular measure inherent in the corresponding max-stable distribution, whence the term extreme direction. We explore such extreme directions within the framework of multivariate generalized Pareto distributions, with a focus on their probability density functions in relation to an appropriate dominating measure. Furthermore, we provide a stochastic construction that allows any prespecified set of risk groups to constitute the distribution's extreme directions. This construction takes the form of a smoothed max-linear model and accommodates the full spectrum of conceivable max-stable dependence structures. Additionally, we introduce a generic simulation algorithm tailored for multivariate generalized Pareto distributions, offering specific implementations for extensions of the logistic and H\"usler-Reiss families capable of carrying arbitrary extreme directions.