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 distributional shift


Generative models for decision-making under distributional shift

Cheng, Xiuyuan, Zhu, Yunqin, Xie, Yao

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Many data-driven decision problems are formulated using a nominal distribution estimated from historical data, while performance is ultimately determined by a deployment distribution that may be shifted, context-dependent, partially observed, or stress-induced. This tutorial presents modern generative models, particularly flow- and score-based methods, as mathematical tools for constructing decision-relevant distributions. From an operations research perspective, their primary value lies not in unconstrained sample synthesis but in representing and transforming distributions through transport maps, velocity fields, score fields, and guided stochastic dynamics. We present a unified framework based on pushforward maps, continuity, Fokker-Planck equations, Wasserstein geometry, and optimization in probability space. Within this framework, generative models can be used to learn nominal uncertainty, construct stressed or least-favorable distributions for robustness, and produce conditional or posterior distributions under side information and partial observation. We also highlight representative theoretical guarantees, including forward-reverse convergence for iterative flow models, first-order minimax analysis in transport-map space, and error-transfer bounds for posterior sampling with generative priors. The tutorial provides a principled introduction to using generative models for scenario generation, robust decision-making, uncertainty quantification, and related problems under distributional shift.


Probabilistic Geometric Alignment via Bayesian Latent Transport for Domain-Adaptive Foundation Models

Aueawatthanaphisut, Aueaphum, Auewattanapisut, Kuepon

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Adapting large-scale foundation models to new domains with limited supervision remains a fundamental challenge due to latent distribution mismatch, unstable optimization dynamics, and miscalibrated uncertainty propagation. This paper introduces an uncertainty-aware probabilistic latent transport framework that formulates domain adaptation as a stochastic geometric alignment problem in representation space. A Bayesian transport operator is proposed to redistribute latent probability mass along Wasserstein-type geodesic trajectories, while a PAC-Bayesian regularization mechanism constrains posterior model complexity to mitigate catastrophic overfitting. The proposed formulation yields theoretical guarantees on convergence stability, loss landscape smoothness, and sample efficiency under distributional shift. Empirical analyses demonstrate substantial reduction in latent manifold discrepancy, accelerated transport energy decay, and improved covariance calibration compared with deterministic fine-tuning and adversarial domain adaptation baselines. Furthermore, bounded posterior uncertainty evolution indicates enhanced probabilistic reliability during cross-domain transfer. By establishing a principled connection between stochastic optimal transport geometry and statistical generalization theory, the proposed framework provides new insights into robust adaptation of modern foundation architectures operating in heterogeneous environments. These findings suggest that uncertainty-aware probabilistic alignment constitutes a promising paradigm for reliable transfer learning in next-generation deep representation systems.









DeepCombinatorialAggregation

Neural Information Processing Systems

Neural networks are known toproduce poor uncertainty estimations, and avariety of approaches have been proposed to remedy this issue.