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Gaussian Process Prior Variational Autoencoders

Neural Information Processing Systems

Variational autoencoders (VAE) are a powerful and widely-used class of models to learn complex data distributions in an unsupervised fashion. One important limitation of VAEs is the prior assumption that latent sample representations are independent and identically distributed. However, for many important datasets, such as time-series of images, this assumption is too strong: accounting for covariances between samples, such as those in time, can yield to a more appropriate model specification and improve performance in downstream tasks. In this work, we introduce a new model, the Gaussian Process (GP) Prior Variational Autoencoder (GPPVAE), to specifically address this issue. The GPPVAE aims to combine the power of VAEs with the ability to model correlations afforded by GP priors. To achieve efficient inference in this new class of models, we leverage structure in the covariance matrix, and introduce a new stochastic backpropagation strategy that allows for computing stochastic gradients in a distributed and low-memory fashion. We show that our method outperforms conditional VAEs (CVAEs) and an adaptation of standard VAEs in two image data applications.


Burnt Hair and Soft Power: A Night Out With Evie Magazine

WIRED

Evie is a longtime favorite of far-right. At its very first live event, the strength of the publication's politics was in the pretense that it doesn't have any. Just after 8:00 pm on Sunday night, Evie Magazine's first live event was finally getting started. The women's magazine, which was founded in 2019 and once described itself as a " conservative Cosmo," welcomed eager fans to celebrate the publication, generally, and its new issue, specifically, during New York Fashion Week at the Standard Hotel's Boom in Chelsea. Guests lined up outside, hugging fur coats around formal dresses, as hosts scanned a list for their names. One blonde woman begged for access to the VIP section; an event planner ran downstairs to tell her coworkers that someone's hair had caught on fire.