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 Bayesian Learning


FedBEns: One-Shot Federated Learning based on Bayesian Ensemble

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Several One-Shot FL algorithms have been proposed in the literature. Existing relevant work leverages knowledge distillation One-Shot Federated Learning (FL) is a recent at the server (Lin et al., 2020), neuron matching paradigm that enables multiple clients to cooperatively strategies (Singh & Jaggi, 2020) or adopts an optimization learn a global model in a single round of approach, trying to directly approximate the global loss at communication with a central server. In this paper, the server starting from the local losses of each client (Jhunjhunwala we analyze the One-Shot FL problem through the et al., 2024; Liu et al., 2024; Matena & Raffel, lens of Bayesian inference and propose FedBEns, 2022). Our contribution is in line with the last group of work, an algorithm that leverages the inherent multimodality which generally employs a unimodal approximation of each of local loss functions to find better local loss. As an example, Jhunjhunwala et al. (2024) make global models.


Learning to quantify graph nodes

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Quantification (Esuli et al. 2023; Gonzรกlez et al. 2017) is the machine learning task of estimating the prevalence (or proportions) of each class in a dataset. Unlike standard classification, which focuses on predicting a label for each individual example, quantification works at the aggregate level by estimating the overall fraction of unlabeled instances belonging to each class. Real-world applications of quantification include but are not limited to ecological modeling (Gonzรกlez et al. 2017) (i.e., to characterize entire populations of living species) and market research (Sebastiani 2018) (i.e., for estimating market shares of different products or services). Quantification methods are explicitly designed to account for dataset shift, which occurs when the statistical properties of the training data differ from those of the test data, due to changes in input features, labels, or their relationships. Most quantification methods are tailored to one specific type of dataset shift, namely, prior probability shift (PPS), also referred to as "label shift" (Storkey 2009).


Disentangling Uncertainties by Learning Compressed Data Representation

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

We study aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty estimation in a learned regressive system dynamics model. Disentangling aleatoric uncertainty (the inherent randomness of the system) from epistemic uncertainty (the lack of data) is crucial for downstream tasks such as risk-aware control and reinforcement learning, efficient exploration, and robust policy transfer. While existing approaches like Gaussian Processes, Bayesian networks, and model ensembles are widely adopted, they suffer from either high computational complexity or inaccurate uncertainty estimation. To address these limitations, we propose the Compressed Data Representation Model (CDRM), a framework that learns a neural network encoding of the data distribution and enables direct sampling from the output distribution. Our approach incorporates a novel inference procedure based on Langevin dynamics sampling, allowing CDRM to predict arbitrary output distributions rather than being constrained to a Gaussian prior. Theoretical analysis provides the conditions where CDRM achieves better memory and computational complexity compared to bin-based compression methods. Empirical evaluations show that CDRM demonstrates a superior capability to identify aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties separately, achieving AUROCs of 0.8876 and 0.9981 on a single test set containing a mixture of both uncertainties. Qualitative results further show that CDRM's capability extends to datasets with multimodal output distributions, a challenging scenario where existing methods consistently fail. Code and supplementary materials are available at https://github.com/ryeii/CDRM.


Survey on Generalization Theory for Graph Neural Networks

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Message-passing graph neural networks (MPNNs) have emerged as the leading approach for machine learning on graphs, attracting significant attention in recent years. While a large set of works explored the expressivity of MPNNs, i.e., their ability to separate graphs and approximate functions over them, comparatively less attention has been directed toward investigating their generalization abilities, i.e., making meaningful predictions beyond the training data. Here, we systematically review the existing literature on the generalization abilities of MPNNs. We analyze the strengths and limitations of various studies in these domains, providing insights into their methodologies and findings. Furthermore, we identify potential avenues for future research, aiming to deepen our understanding of the generalization abilities of MPNNs.


Nonlinear Bayesian Update via Ensemble Kernel Regression with Clustering and Subsampling

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Nonlinear Bayesian update for a prior ensemble is proposed to extend traditional ensemble Kalman filtering to settings characterized by non-Gaussian priors and nonlinear measurement operators. In this framework, the observed component is first denoised via a standard Kalman update, while the unobserved component is estimated using a nonlinear regression approach based on kernel density estimation. The method incorporates a subsampling strategy to ensure stability and, when necessary, employs unsupervised clustering to refine the conditional estimate. Numerical experiments on Lorenz systems and a PDE-constrained inverse problem illustrate that the proposed nonlinear update can reduce estimation errors compared to standard linear updates, especially in highly nonlinear scenarios.


BI-RADS prediction of mammographic masses using uncertainty information extracted from a Bayesian Deep Learning model

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The BI_RADS score is a probabilistic reporting tool used by radiologists to express the level of uncertainty in predicting breast cancer based on some morphological features in mammography images. There is a significant variability in describing masses which sometimes leads to BI_RADS misclassification. Using a BI_RADS prediction system is required to support the final radiologist decisions. In this study, the uncertainty information extracted by a Bayesian deep learning model is utilized to predict the BI_RADS score. The investigation results based on the pathology information demonstrate that the f1-scores of the predictions of the radiologist are 42.86%, 48.33% and 48.28%, meanwhile, the f1-scores of the model performance are 73.33%, 59.60% and 59.26% in the BI_RADS 2, 3 and 5 dataset samples, respectively. Also, the model can distinguish malignant from benign samples in the BI_RADS 0 category of the used dataset with an accuracy of 75.86% and correctly identify all malignant samples as BI_RADS 5. The Grad-CAM visualization shows the model pays attention to the morphological features of the lesions. Therefore, this study shows the uncertainty-aware Bayesian Deep Learning model can report his uncertainty about the malignancy of a lesion based on morphological features, like a radiologist.


How much do LLMs learn from negative examples?

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Large language models (LLMs) undergo a three-phase training process: unsupervised pre-training, supervised fine-tuning (SFT), and learning from human feedback (RLHF/DPO). Notably, it is during the final phase that these models are exposed to negative examples -- incorrect, rejected, or suboptimal responses to queries. This paper delves into the role of negative examples in the training of LLMs, using a likelihood-ratio (Likra) model on multiple-choice question answering benchmarks to precisely manage the influence and the volume of negative examples. Our findings reveal three key insights: (1) During a critical phase in training, Likra with negative examples demonstrates a significantly larger improvement per training example compared to SFT using only positive examples. This leads to a sharp jump in the learning curve for Likra unlike the smooth and gradual improvement of SFT; (2) negative examples that are plausible but incorrect (near-misses) exert a greater influence; and (3) while training with positive examples fails to significantly decrease the likelihood of plausible but incorrect answers, training with negative examples more accurately identifies them. These results indicate a potentially significant role for negative examples in improving accuracy and reducing hallucinations for LLMs.


Sepsyn-OLCP: An Online Learning-based Framework for Early Sepsis Prediction with Uncertainty Quantification using Conformal Prediction

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Sepsis is a life-threatening syndrome with high morbidity and mortality in hospitals. Early prediction of sepsis plays a crucial role in facilitating early interventions for septic patients. However, early sepsis prediction systems with uncertainty quantification and adaptive learning are scarce. This paper proposes Sepsyn-OLCP, a novel online learning algorithm for early sepsis prediction by integrating conformal prediction for uncertainty quantification and Bayesian bandits for adaptive decision-making. By combining the robustness of Bayesian models with the statistical uncertainty guarantees of conformal prediction methodologies, this algorithm delivers accurate and trustworthy predictions, addressing the critical need for reliable and adaptive systems in high-stakes healthcare applications such as early sepsis prediction. We evaluate the performance of Sepsyn-OLCP in terms of regret in stochastic bandit setting, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), and F-measure. Our results show that Sepsyn-OLCP outperforms existing individual models, increasing AUROC of a neural network from 0.64 to 0.73 without retraining and high computational costs. And the model selection policy converges to the optimal strategy in the long run. We propose a novel reinforcement learning-based framework integrated with conformal prediction techniques to provide uncertainty quantification for early sepsis prediction. The proposed methodology delivers accurate and trustworthy predictions, addressing a critical need in high-stakes healthcare applications like early sepsis prediction.


Bayesian Modeling of Zero-Shot Classifications for Urban Flood Detection

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Street scene datasets, collected from Street View or dashboard cameras, offer a promising means of detecting urban objects and incidents like street flooding. However, a major challenge in using these datasets is their lack of reliable labels: there are myriad types of incidents, many types occur rarely, and ground-truth measures of where incidents occur are lacking. Here, we propose BayFlood, a two-stage approach which circumvents this difficulty. First, we perform zero-shot classification of where incidents occur using a pretrained vision-language model (VLM). Second, we fit a spatial Bayesian model on the VLM classifications. The zero-shot approach avoids the need to annotate large training sets, and the Bayesian model provides frequent desiderata in urban settings - principled measures of uncertainty, smoothing across locations, and incorporation of external data like stormwater accumulation zones. We comprehensively validate this two-stage approach, showing that VLMs provide strong zero-shot signal for floods across multiple cities and time periods, the Bayesian model improves out-of-sample prediction relative to baseline methods, and our inferred flood risk correlates with known external predictors of risk. Having validated our approach, we show it can be used to improve urban flood detection: our analysis reveals 113,738 people who are at high risk of flooding overlooked by current methods, identifies demographic biases in existing methods, and suggests locations for new flood sensors. More broadly, our results showcase how Bayesian modeling of zero-shot LM annotations represents a promising paradigm because it avoids the need to collect large labeled datasets and leverages the power of foundation models while providing the expressiveness and uncertainty quantification of Bayesian models.


Quantification of Uncertainties in Probabilistic Deep Neural Network by Implementing Boosting of Variational Inference

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Modern neural network architectures have achieved remarkable accuracies but remain highly dependent on their training data, often lacking interpretability in their learned mappings. While effective on large datasets, they tend to overfit on smaller ones. Probabilistic neural networks, such as those utilizing variational inference, address this limitation by incorporating uncertainty estimation through weight distributions rather than point estimates. However, standard variational inference often relies on a single-density approximation, which can lead to poor posterior estimates and hinder model performance. We propose Boosted Bayesian Neural Networks (BBNN), a novel approach that enhances neural network weight distribution approximations using Boosting Variational Inference (BVI). By iteratively constructing a mixture of densities, BVI expands the approximating family, enabling a more expressive posterior that leads to improved generalization and uncertainty estimation. While this approach increases computational complexity, it significantly enhances accuracy an essential tradeoff, particularly in high-stakes applications such as medical diagnostics, where false negatives can have severe consequences. Our experimental results demonstrate that BBNN achieves ~5% higher accuracy compared to conventional neural networks while providing superior uncertainty quantification. This improvement highlights the effectiveness of leveraging a mixture-based variational family to better approximate the posterior distribution, ultimately advancing probabilistic deep learning.