Current approaches to amortizing Bayesian inference focus solely on approximating the posterior distribution. Typically, this approximation is, in turn, used to calculate expectations for one or more target functions - a computational pipeline which is inefficient when the target function(s) are known upfront. In this …
This paper reviews recent advancements in amortized Variational Inference.
problem Scalability and efficiency issues in traditional Variational Inference.
method Systematic review of various Variational Inference techniques, focusing on amortized approaches.
result Amortized Variational Inference improves scalability and efficiency for generative modeling tasks.
Improves point-cloud reconstruction by optimizing projections with self-attention.
problem Inefficient and non-metric projection methods for sliced Wasserstein distances.
method Proposes distributional sliced Wasserstein distance with self-attention for permutation-invariant and metric optimization.
result Self-attention amortized distributional projection optimization achieves better performance in point-cloud reconstruction.
New option type preserves fungibility by amortizing payments over time.
problem Traditional installment options destroy fungibility and lapse when payments stop.
method Introduces amortizing perpetual options (AmPOs) with an implicit payment scheme.
result Valuation of AmPOs reduces to vanilla perpetual American options.
A new method optimizes projection directions for sliced Wasserstein distances.
problem Finding informative projecting directions for sliced Wasserstein distances is computationally expensive.
method Amortized projection optimization to predict directions efficiently.
result Proposed amortized models improve generative modeling performance.
Adaptive workflow combines fast amortized inference with MCMC for many datasets.
problem Trade-off between computational speed and sampling accuracy in Bayesian inference.
method Adaptive workflow integrating amortized inference and MCMC with principled diagnostics.
result Efficiency gains with high posterior quality on tens of thousands of datasets.
The variational autoencoder (VAE) is a popular model for density estimation and representation learning. Canonically, the variational principle suggests to prefer an expressive inference model so that the variational approximation is accurate. However, it is often overlooked that an overly-expressive inference model ca…
ASPIRE improves amortized posterior inference for Bayesian inverse problems.
problem Bayesian inverse problems are computationally challenging due to uncertainty quantification.
method Iterative refinement of amortized posteriors using physics-based and summary statistics.
result ASPIRE achieves better posterior approximations with minimal extra computations.
This paper examines how neural architectures support amortized Bayesian inference and its performance under varying conditions.
problem Understanding and evaluating amortized inference under signal-to-noise variation and distribution shift.
method Statistical analysis of neural architectures including feedforward networks, Deep Sets, and Transformers.
result Neural architectures support amortized Bayesian inference, offering controlled generalization error and robustness under varying conditions.
JANA trains networks to approximate Bayesian models efficiently.
problem Intractable likelihood functions and posterior densities in Bayesian models.
method End-to-end training of three networks: summary, posterior, and likelihood networks.
result JANA provides accurate amortized marginal likelihood and posterior predictive estimation.
Improved diffusion sampling for inverse problems with faster and more robust inference.
problem High computational cost and lack of robustness in diffusion posterior sampling.
method Amortized variational inference with explicit likelihood guidance.
result Improved trade-off between inference speed and robustness to unseen degradations.
Efficiently predicts optimal transport plans using sliced potentials.
problem Predicting optimal transport plans across multiple measure pairs efficiently.
method Regression-based and objective-based amortization strategies using sliced optimal transport potentials.
result Efficient and accurate prediction of optimal transport plans for various tasks.
BayesFlow trains neural networks for fast Bayesian inference.
problem Fast Bayesian inference for complex models.
method Amortized neural networks for intractable posterior distributions.
result Fast inference through pre-trained neural networks.
Simformer uses transformer models to perform flexible Bayesian inference.
problem Current simulation-based inference methods are inflexible and require fixed priors.
method Trains a probabilistic diffusion model with transformer architectures.
result Outperforms state-of-the-art methods on various benchmarks.
New method improves generalization of VAEs by reducing overfitting.
problem Generalization issues in VAEs overfitting to training data.
method Proposed a new training objective to improve amortized inference.
result Improved performance in image modeling and lossless compression.
Adversarial robustness of amortized Bayesian inference is studied, showing it can be improved.
problem Adversarial robustness of amortized Bayesian inference.
method Simulation-based estimation, regularization scheme based on Fisher information.
result Adversarial robustness can be improved with a regularization scheme.
The paper tackles efficient computation of optimal transport by approximating conjugates with amortized optimization.
problem Efficient computation of convex conjugates in optimal transport is challenging and limits the quality of transport maps.
method The approach combines amortized approximations of conjugates with a fine-tuning solver to improve transport map quality.
result The method significantly improves the quality of transport maps for the Wasserstein-2 benchmark and models many 2D couplings and flows.
Neural processes approximate Gaussian process inference, revealing three key costs.
problem Approximating Gaussian process inference with neural processes.
method Bounding KL divergence into three components: label contamination, information bottleneck, and amortization error.
result Characterization of three costs of amortizing Gaussian process inference with neural processes.
Self-consistency improves the accuracy of model comparison methods.
problem Improving the accuracy of model comparison methods when simulation models are misspecified.
method Supplement traditional simulation-based training with a self-consistency loss on unlabeled real data.
result Self-consistency training improves model comparison accuracy, especially in open-world scenarios.
Improved community detection in graphs with probabilistic models.
problem Lack of probabilistic formulation and fixed number of communities in GNN-based methods.
method Combines GNNs with amortized clustering for variable numbers of clusters.
result Improved performance on synthetic and real datasets compared to previous methods.
Classical approaches for approximate inference depend on cleverly designed variational distributions and bounds. Modern approaches employ amortized variational inference, which uses a neural network to approximate any posterior without leveraging the structures of the generative models. In this paper, we propose Amorti…
Proposes an amortized variational framework for Deep Q Networks.
problem Efficient exploration in deep reinforcement learning.
method Amortized variational inference for action value function approximation.
result Significantly less learning parameters and better performance.
This paper compares amortized methods for Bayesian posterior estimation.
problem Bayesian inference difficulties with iterative routines.
method Amortized in-context Bayesian posterior estimation using transformers and normalizing flows.
result Reverse KL estimator superior for predictive problems.
Amortized VI for DGPs learns efficient inference.
problem Expressive limitations in GP approximations.
method Amortized variational inference for DGPs.
result Improved expressive prior and posterior for DGPs.
In this paper, we introduce a new form of amortized variational inference by using the forward KL divergence in a joint-contrastive variational loss. The resulting forward amortized variational inference is a likelihood-free method as its gradient can be sampled without bias and without requiring any evaluation of eith…
New method learns causal models from data efficiently.
problem Learning Structural Causal Models from data is challenging.
method Amortized inference via Conditional Fixed-Point Iterations with transformer embeddings.
result Single model predicts causal mechanisms conditioned on data and graph.
A new recursive mixture estimation algorithm improves VAE inference efficiency and accuracy.
problem Inaccurate posterior approximation in traditional VAEs.
method Recursive mixture estimation algorithm using functional gradient approach for iterative component selection.
result Significantly higher test data likelihood compared to state-of-the-art methods on benchmark datasets.
DAD learns to design experiments quickly, outperforming traditional methods.
problem Real-time decision-making in sequential Bayesian experimental design.
method Amortized design network trained with contrastive information bounds.
result DAD outperforms alternative strategies on various problems.
This paper tackles sampling issues in latent space EBMs by introducing diffusion-based amortization.
problem Degenerate MCMC sampling quality hinders latent space EBM learning and generation quality.
method Introduces diffusion-based amortization for long-run MCMC sampling.
result The learned amortization of MCMC is a valid long-run MCMC sampler.
LazyDINO efficiently solves high-dimensional Bayesian inverse problems with fast and scalable solutions.
problem High-dimensional nonlinear Bayesian inverse problems with expensive parameter-to-observable maps.
method LazyDINO combines derivative-informed neural surrogates and lazy map variational inference for efficient posterior approximation.
result Significant cost reduction in amortized Bayesian inversion, achieving one to two orders of magnitude improvement.
SurvivalPFN simplifies survival analysis through amortized Bayesian inference.
problem Selecting appropriate survival analysis methods requires expertise and can be time-consuming.
method SurvivalPFN uses a prior-data fitted network for in-context Bayesian inference.
result SurvivalPFN achieves strong predictive performance across diverse datasets.
Naive approaches to amortized inference in probabilistic programs with unbounded loops can produce estimators with infinite variance. This is particularly true of importance sampling inference in programs that explicitly include rejection sampling as part of the user-programmed generative procedure. In this paper we de…
A new framework designs experiments for better decision-making.
problem Suboptimal experimental designs for downstream decision-making.
method Amortized decision-aware Bayesian Experimental Design (BED) with Transformer Neural Decision Process (TNDP).
result TNDP effectively designs experiments and facilitates accurate decision-making.
Probabilistic programming languages (PPLs) are a powerful modeling tool, able to represent any computable probability distribution. Unfortunately, probabilistic program inference is often intractable, and existing PPLs mostly rely on expensive, approximate sampling-based methods. To alleviate this problem, one could tr…
We introduce the variational filtering EM algorithm, a simple, general-purpose method for performing variational inference in dynamical latent variable models using information from only past and present variables, i.e. filtering. The algorithm is derived from the variational objective in the filtering setting and cons…
The recognition network in deep latent variable models such as variational autoencoders (VAEs) relies on amortized inference for efficient posterior approximation that can scale up to large datasets. However, this technique has also been demonstrated to select suboptimal variational parameters, often resulting in consi…
New method uses neural networks to efficiently approximate Bayesian inference for complex models.
problem Efficiently approximating Bayesian inference for complex models with varying temperatures.
method Fully amortized neural posterior estimator trained on a single forward pass.
result Achieves competitive posterior approximations across various temperatures and benchmarks.
A-VI can approximate F-VI under certain conditions, improving inference in some models.
problem Approximate Bayesian inference using factorized distributions.
method Amortized variational inference (A-VI) learns a common inference function for latent variables.
result A-VI can close the amortization gap in simple hierarchical models.
FoundCause: Causal Discovery with Latent Confounders from Observational Data
problem Causal discovery from observational data
method FoundCause, an amortized causal discovery model trained on synthetic data
result FoundCause outperforms classical and amortized methods on real-world datasets
VAEs help in learning latent variables for cryo-EM applications.
problem Learning latent variables for cryo-EM data.
method Used VAEs for latent variable learning, focusing on the encoder's role.
result The encoder of the VAE in cryo-EM applications resembles traditional latent variable representations.
Neural networks speed up statistical inference.
problem Efficient statistical inference for complex models.
method Neural networks for learning complex mappings.
result Amortized inference speeds up inference processes.
Amortized Causal Discovery learns to infer causal graphs from time-series data, improving performance.
problem Inference of causal graphs from time-series data is inefficient due to fitting new models for each sample.
method Proposes Amortized Causal Discovery, a variational model that leverages shared dynamics across samples with different causal graphs.
result Significant improvements in causal discovery performance demonstrated experimentally.
New methods make Bayesian inference feasible for complex cognitive models.
problem Bayesian inference is hard for complex, unknown models.
method Amortized neural network estimators for simulation-based inference.
result Effort in training networks amortizes over multiple uses.
UA-SABI uses surrogates to speed up Bayesian inference for expensive models.
problem Inference for computationally expensive models is slow and uncertain.
method Combines surrogate modeling with Amortized Bayesian Inference (ABI) to propagate uncertainties.
result Reliable, fast, and repeated Bayesian inference for expensive models is achieved.
SC improves robustness in model comparison for misspecified models.
problem Model misspecification challenges in amortized Bayesian inference.
method Parameter posterior-based methods augmented with SC training.
result SC improves robustness under model misspecification.
Amortizes MIPS by training neural networks to predict optimal keys.
problem Efficiently solving Maximum Inner Product Search for repeated queries.
method Regression-based SupportNet and KeyNet models trained on support functions.
result Significant improvement in IVF match rates for document embeddings.
Improved state estimation in nonlinear models using amortized backward variational inference.
problem State estimation in general state-space models.
method Amortized backward variational inference with neural network parameters.
result Linear growth of variational approximation error in number of observations.
Recent efforts on combining deep models with probabilistic graphical models are promising in providing flexible models that are also easy to interpret. We propose a variational message-passing algorithm for variational inference in such models. We make three contributions. First, we propose structured inference network…