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Learning to Think from Multiple Thinkers

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We study learning with Chain-of-Thought (CoT) supervision from multiple thinkers, all of whom provide correct but possibly systematically different solutions, e.g., step-by-step solutions to math problems written by different thinkers, or step-by-step execution traces of different programs solving the same problem. We consider classes that are computationally easy to learn using CoT supervision from a single thinker, but hard to learn with only end-result supervision, i.e., without CoT (Joshi et al. 2025). We establish that, under cryptographic assumptions, learning can be hard from CoT supervision provided by two or a few different thinkers, in passive data-collection settings. On the other hand, we provide a generic computationally efficient active learning algorithm that learns with a small amount of CoT data per thinker that is completely independent of the target accuracy $\varepsilon$, a moderate number of thinkers that scales as $\log \frac{1}{\varepsilon}\log \log \frac{1}{\varepsilon}$, and sufficient passive end-result data that scales as $\frac{1}{\varepsilon}\cdot poly\log\frac{1}{\varepsilon}$.


Towards Better Evaluation for Dynamic Link Prediction

Neural Information Processing Systems

Despite the prevalence of recent success in learning from static graphs, learning from time-evolving graphs remains an open challenge. In this work, we design new, more stringent evaluation procedures for link prediction specific to dynamic graphs, which reflect real-world considerations, to better compare the strengths and weaknesses of methods. First, we create two visualization techniques to understand the reoccurring patterns of edges over time and show that many edges reoccur at later time steps. Based on this observation, we propose a pure memorization-based baseline called EdgeBank. EdgeBank achieves surprisingly strong performance across multiple settings which highlights that the negative edges used in the current evaluation are easy. To sample more challenging negative edges, we introduce two novel negative sampling strategies that improve robustness and better match real-world applications. Lastly, we introduce six new dynamic graph datasets from a diverse set of domains missing from current benchmarks, providing new challenges and opportunities for future research. Our code repository is accessible at https://github.com/fpour/DGB.git.


Two-layer neural network on infinite-dimensional data: global optimization guarantee in the mean-field regime

Neural Information Processing Systems

Analysis of neural network optimization in the mean-field regime is important as the setting allows for feature learning. Existing theory has been developed mainly for neural networks in finite dimensions, i.e., each neuron has a finite-dimensional parameter. However, the setting of infinite-dimensional input naturally arises in machine learning problems such as nonparametric functional data analysis and graph classification. In this paper, we develop a new mean-field analysis of two-layer neural network in an infinite-dimensional parameter space. We first give a generalization error bound, which shows that the regularized empirical risk minimizer properly generalizes when the data size is sufficiently large, despite the neurons being infinite-dimensional. Next, we present two gradient-based optimization algorithms for infinite-dimensional mean-field networks, by extending the recently developed particle optimization framework to the infinite-dimensional setting. We show that the proposed algorithms converge to the (regularized) global optimal solution, and moreover, their rates of convergence are of polynomial order in the online setting and exponential order in the finite sample setting, respectively. To our knowledge this is the first quantitative global optimization guarantee of neural network on infinite-dimensional input and in the presence of feature learning.


Supplementary Materials

Neural Information Processing Systems

We provide the supplements of "Contextual Gaussian Process Bandits with Neural Networks" here. Specifically, we discuss alternative acquisition functions that can be incorporated with the neural network-accompanied Gaussian process (NN-AGP) model in Section 6. In Section 7, we discuss the bandit algorithm with NN-AGP, where the neural network approximation error is considered. In Section 8, we provide the detailed proof of theorems. We provide the experimental details and include additional numerical experiments in Section 9. Last we discuss the limitations of NN-AGP and propose the potential approaches to addressing the limitations for future work, including sparse NN-AGP for alleviating computational burdens and transfer learning with NN-AGP to address cold-start issue; see Section 10. In the main text, we employ the upper confidence bound function as the acquisition function in the contextual Bayesian optimization approach. Here, we provide two alternative choices: Thompson sampling (TS) and knowledge gradient (KG). We describe the two procedures of the contextual GP bandit problems with NN-AGP, where the acquisition function is replaced by TS or KG. It chooses the action that maximizes the expected reward with respect to a random belief that is drawn for a posterior distribution. Besides the multi-armed bandit problems, TS has also achieved both theoretical and practical success in BO and Gaussian process regression. For more detailed discussions on TS, we refer to [87, 88]. Specifically, we propose a neural network-accompanied Gaussian process Thompson sampling (NNAGP-TS) approach to address contextual GP bandits. The approach works as follows. In each iteration, NN-AGP-TS first fits an NN-AGP model with the historic data. Then, given the current contextual variable, a realization of the Gaussian process with respect to x X is sampled from the posterior distribution conditional on the historic data1.


Strategic Classification under Unknown Personalized Manipulation Anonymous Author(s) Affiliation Address email

Neural Information Processing Systems

We study the fundamental mistake bound and sample complexity in the strategic1 classification, where agents can strategically manipulate their feature vector up2 to an extent in order to be predicted as positive. For example, given a classifier3 determining college admission, student candidates may try to take easier classes to4 improve their GPA, retake SAT and change schools in an effort to fool the classifier.5 Ball manipulations are a widely studied class of manipulations in the literature,6 where agents can modify their feature vector within a bounded radius ball. Unlike7 most prior work, our work consider manipulations to be personalized, meaning8 that agents can have different levels of manipulation abilities (e.g., varying radii9 for ball manipulations), and unknown to the learner.10 We formalize the learning problem in an interaction model where the learner11 first deploys a classifier and the agent manipulates the feature vector within their12 manipulation set to game the deployed classifier. We investigate various scenarios13 in terms of the information available to the learner during the interaction, such14 as observing the original feature vector before or after deployment, observing the15 manipulated feature vector, or not seeing either the original or the manipulated16 feature vector. We begin by providing online mistake bounds and PAC sample17 complexity in these scenarios for ball manipulations. We also explore non-ball18 manipulations and show that, even in the simplest scenario where both the original19 and the manipulated feature vectors are revealed, the mistake bounds and sample20 complexity are lower bounded by โ„ฆ(|H|) when the target function belongs to a21 known class H.22



Curriculum Disentangled Recommendation with Noisy Multi-feedback

Neural Information Processing Systems

Learning disentangled representations for user intentions from multi-feedback (i.e., positive and negative feedback) can enhance the accuracy and explainability of recommendation algorithms. However, learning such disentangled representations from multi-feedback data is challenging because i) multi-feedback is complex: there exist complex relations among different types of feedback (e.g., click, unclick, and dislike, etc) as well as various user intentions, and ii) multi-feedback is noisy: there exists noisy (useless) information both in features and labels, which may deteriorate the recommendation performance. Existing disentangled recommendation works only focus on positive feedback, failing to handle the complex relations and noise hidden in multi-feedback data. To solve this problem, in this work we propose a Curriculum Disentangled Recommendation (CDR) model that is capable of efficiently learning disentangled representations from complex and noisy multi-feedback for better recommendation.



Power and limitations of single-qubit native quantum neural networks

Neural Information Processing Systems

Quantum neural networks (QNNs) have emerged as a leading strategy to establish applications in machine learning, chemistry, and optimization. While the applications of QNN have been widely investigated, its theoretical foundation remains less understood. In this paper, we formulate a theoretical framework for the expressive ability of data re-uploading quantum neural networks that consist of interleaved encoding circuit blocks and trainable circuit blocks. First, we prove that single-qubit quantum neural networks can approximate any univariate function by mapping the model to a partial Fourier series. We in particular establish the exact correlations between the parameters of the trainable gates and the Fourier coefficients, resolving an open problem on the universal approximation property of QNN. Second, we discuss the limitations of single-qubit native QNNs on approximating multivariate functions by analyzing the frequency spectrum and the flexibility of Fourier coefficients. We further demonstrate the expressivity and limitations of single-qubit native QNNs via numerical experiments. We believe these results would improve our understanding of QNNs and provide a helpful guideline for designing powerful QNNs for machine learning tasks.


Improved Bayesian Regret Bounds for Thompson Sampling in Reinforcement Learning

Neural Information Processing Systems

In this paper, we prove the first Bayesian regret bounds for Thompson Sampling in reinforcement learning in a multitude of settings. We simplify the learning problem using a discrete set of surrogate environments, and present a refined analysis of the information ratio using posterior consistency. This leads to an upper bound of order eO(H p dl1T) in the time inhomogeneous reinforcement learning problem where H is the episode length and dl1 is the Kolmogorov l1 dimension of the space of environments. We then find concrete bounds of dl1 in a variety of settings, such as tabular, linear and finite mixtures, and discuss how how our results are either the first of their kind or improve the state-of-the-art.