The dominant framework for off-policy multi-goal reinforcement learning involves estimating goal conditioned Q-value function. When learning to achieve multiple goals, data efficiency is intimately connected with the generalization of the Q-function to new goals. The de-facto paradigm is to approximate Q(s, a, g) using monolithic neural networks. To improve the generalization of the Q-function, we propose a bilinear decomposition that represents the Q-value via a low-rank approximation in the form of a dot product between two vector fields. The first vector field, f(s, a), captures the environment's local dynamics at the state s; whereas the second component, {\phi}(s, g), captures the global relationship between the current state and the goal. We show that our bilinear decomposition scheme substantially improves data efficiency, and has superior transfer to out-of-distribution goals compared to prior methods. Empirical evidence is provided on the simulated Fetch robot task-suite and dexterous manipulation with a Shadow hand.
The main computational cost per iteration of adaptive cubic regularization methods for solving large-scale nonconvex problems is the computation of the step $s_k$, which requires an approximate minimizer of the cubic model. We propose a new approach in which this minimizer is sought in a low dimensional subspace that, in contrast to classical approaches, is reused for a number of iterations. A regularized Newton step to correct $s_k$ is also incorporated whenever needed. We show that our method increases efficiency while preserving the worst-case complexity of classical cubic regularized methods. We also explore the use of rational Krylov subspaces for the subspace minimization, to overcome some of the issues encountered when using polynomial Krylov subspaces. We provide several experimental results illustrating the gains of the new approach when compared to classic implementations.
The use of Air traffic management (ATM) simulators for planing and operations can be challenging due to their modelling complexity. This paper presents XALM (eXplainable Active Learning Metamodel), a three-step framework integrating active learning and SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) values into simulation metamodels for supporting ATM decision-making. XALM efficiently uncovers hidden relationships among input and output variables in ATM simulators, those usually of interest in policy analysis. Our experiments show XALM's predictive performance comparable to the XGBoost metamodel with fewer simulations. Additionally, XALM exhibits superior explanatory capabilities compared to non-active learning metamodels. Using the `Mercury' (flight and passenger) ATM simulator, XALM is applied to a real-world scenario in Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, extending an arrival manager's range and scope by analysing six variables. This case study illustrates XALM's effectiveness in enhancing simulation interpretability and understanding variable interactions. By addressing computational challenges and improving explainability, XALM complements traditional simulation-based analyses. Lastly, we discuss two practical approaches for reducing the computational burden of the metamodelling further: we introduce a stopping criterion for active learning based on the inherent uncertainty of the metamodel, and we show how the simulations used for the metamodel can be reused across key performance indicators, thus decreasing the overall number of simulations needed.
Semi-functional linear regression models postulate a linear relationship between a scalar response and a functional covariate, and also include a non-parametric component involving a univariate explanatory variable. It is of practical importance to obtain estimators for these models that are robust against high-leverage outliers, which are generally difficult to identify and may cause serious damage to least squares and Huber-type $M$-estimators. For that reason, robust estimators for semi-functional linear regression models are constructed combining $B$-splines to approximate both the functional regression parameter and the nonparametric component with robust regression estimators based on a bounded loss function and a preliminary residual scale estimator. Consistency and rates of convergence for the proposed estimators are derived under mild regularity conditions. The reported numerical experiments show the advantage of the proposed methodology over the classical least squares and Huber-type $M$-estimators for finite samples. The analysis of real examples illustrate that the robust estimators provide better predictions for non-outlying points than the classical ones, and that when potential outliers are removed from the training and test sets both methods behave very similarly.
We propose and analyze a nonlinear dynamic model of continuous-time multi-dimensional belief formation over signed social networks. Our model accounts for the effects of a structured belief system, self-appraisal, internal biases, and various sources of cognitive dissonance posited by recent theories in social psychology. We prove that strong beliefs emerge on the network as a consequence of a bifurcation. We analyze how the balance of social network effects in the model controls the nature of the bifurcation and, therefore, the belief-forming limit-set solutions. Our analysis provides constructive conditions on how multi-stable network belief equilibria and belief oscillations emerging at a belief-forming bifurcation depend on the communication network graph and belief system network graph. Our model and analysis provide new theoretical insights on the dynamics of social systems and a new principled framework for designing decentralized decision-making on engineered networks in the presence of structured relationships among alternatives.
Neural network pruning is a highly effective technique aimed at reducing the computational and memory demands of large neural networks. In this research paper, we present a novel approach to pruning neural networks utilizing Bayesian inference, which can seamlessly integrate into the training procedure. Our proposed method leverages the posterior probabilities of the neural network prior to and following pruning, enabling the calculation of Bayes factors. The calculated Bayes factors guide the iterative pruning. Through comprehensive evaluations conducted on multiple benchmarks, we demonstrate that our method achieves desired levels of sparsity while maintaining competitive accuracy.
Various design settings for in-context learning (ICL), such as the choice and order of the in-context examples, can bias a model toward a particular prediction without being reflective of an understanding of the task. While many studies discuss these design choices, there have been few systematic investigations into categorizing them and mitigating their impact. In this work, we define a typology for three types of label biases in ICL for text classification: vanilla-label bias, context-label bias, and domain-label bias (which we conceptualize and detect for the first time). Our analysis demonstrates that prior label bias calibration methods fall short of addressing all three types of biases. Specifically, domain-label bias restricts LLMs to random-level performance on many tasks regardless of the choice of in-context examples. To mitigate the effect of these biases, we propose a simple bias calibration method that estimates a language model's label bias using random in-domain words from the task corpus. After controlling for this estimated bias when making predictions, our novel domain-context calibration significantly improves the ICL performance of GPT-J and GPT-3 on a wide range of tasks. The gain is substantial on tasks with large domain-label bias (up to 37% in Macro-F1). Furthermore, our results generalize to models with different scales, pretraining methods, and manually-designed task instructions, showing the prevalence of label biases in ICL.
Kinetic approaches are generally accurate in dealing with microscale plasma physics problems but are computationally expensive for large-scale or multiscale systems. One of the long-standing problems in plasma physics is the integration of kinetic physics into fluid models, which is often achieved through sophisticated analytical closure terms. In this paper, we successfully construct a multi-moment fluid model with an implicit fluid closure included in the neural network using machine learning. The multi-moment fluid model is trained with a small fraction of sparsely sampled data from kinetic simulations of Landau damping, using the physics-informed neural network (PINN) and the gradient-enhanced physics-informed neural network (gPINN). The multi-moment fluid model constructed using either PINN or gPINN reproduces the time evolution of the electric field energy, including its damping rate, and the plasma dynamics from the kinetic simulations. In addition, we introduce a variant of the gPINN architecture, namely, gPINN$p$ to capture the Landau damping process. Instead of including the gradients of all the equation residuals, gPINN$p$ only adds the gradient of the pressure equation residual as one additional constraint. Among the three approaches, the gPINN$p$-constructed multi-moment fluid model offers the most accurate results. This work sheds light on the accurate and efficient modeling of large-scale systems, which can be extended to complex multiscale laboratory, space, and astrophysical plasma physics problems.
We discuss probabilistic neural networks for unsupervised learning with a fixed internal representation as models for machine understanding. Here understanding is intended as mapping data to an already existing representation which encodes an {\em a priori} organisation of the feature space. We derive the internal representation by requiring that it satisfies the principles of maximal relevance and of maximal ignorance about how different features are combined. We show that, when hidden units are binary variables, these two principles identify a unique model -- the Hierarchical Feature Model (HFM) -- which is fully solvable and provides a natural interpretation in terms of features. We argue that learning machines with this architecture enjoy a number of interesting properties, like the continuity of the representation with respect to changes in parameters and data, the possibility to control the level of compression and the ability to support functions that go beyond generalisation. We explore the behaviour of the model with extensive numerical experiments and argue that models where the internal representation is fixed reproduce a learning modality which is qualitatively different from that of more traditional models such as Restricted Boltzmann Machines.
The remarkable practical success of deep learning has revealed some major surprises from a theoretical perspective. In particular, simple gradient methods easily find near-optimal solutions to non-convex optimization problems, and despite giving a near-perfect fit to training data without any explicit effort to control model complexity, these methods exhibit excellent predictive accuracy. We conjecture that specific principles underlie these phenomena: that overparametrization allows gradient methods to find interpolating solutions, that these methods implicitly impose regularization, and that overparametrization leads to benign overfitting. We survey recent theoretical progress that provides examples illustrating these principles in simpler settings. We first review classical uniform convergence results and why they fall short of explaining aspects of the behavior of deep learning methods. We give examples of implicit regularization in simple settings, where gradient methods lead to minimal norm functions that perfectly fit the training data. Then we review prediction methods that exhibit benign overfitting, focusing on regression problems with quadratic loss. For these methods, we can decompose the prediction rule into a simple component that is useful for prediction and a spiky component that is useful for overfitting but, in a favorable setting, does not harm prediction accuracy. We focus specifically on the linear regime for neural networks, where the network can be approximated by a linear model. In this regime, we demonstrate the success of gradient flow, and we consider benign overfitting with two-layer networks, giving an exact asymptotic analysis that precisely demonstrates the impact of overparametrization. We conclude by highlighting the key challenges that arise in extending these insights to realistic deep learning settings.
Deep learning is usually described as an experiment-driven field under continuous criticizes of lacking theoretical foundations. This problem has been partially fixed by a large volume of literature which has so far not been well organized. This paper reviews and organizes the recent advances in deep learning theory. The literature is categorized in six groups: (1) complexity and capacity-based approaches for analyzing the generalizability of deep learning; (2) stochastic differential equations and their dynamic systems for modelling stochastic gradient descent and its variants, which characterize the optimization and generalization of deep learning, partially inspired by Bayesian inference; (3) the geometrical structures of the loss landscape that drives the trajectories of the dynamic systems; (4) the roles of over-parameterization of deep neural networks from both positive and negative perspectives; (5) theoretical foundations of several special structures in network architectures; and (6) the increasingly intensive concerns in ethics and security and their relationships with generalizability.