SCBMs model causal effects using low-dimensional bottlenecks.
problem Causal effect estimation in high-dimensional systems.
method Structural causal models with low-dimensional summary statistics.
result SCBMs provide a flexible framework for task-specific dimension reduction.
CIB compresses variables causally, preserving key causal interactions.
problem Constructing causal variable abstractions in complex systems.
method Causal Information Bottleneck (CIB) method, extending IB to include causal structures.
result CIB produces causally interpretable abstractions that accurately capture causal relations.
Estimating individual level treatment effects (ITE) from observational data is a challenging and important area in causal machine learning and is commonly considered in diverse mission-critical applications. In this paper, we propose an information theoretic approach in order to find more reliable representations for e…
New method uses sufficient statistics to infer causal relationships from observational data.
problem Inferring causal relationships from observational data with hidden variables.
method Information Bottleneck method applied to find functional sufficient statistics.
result New causal rules not obtainable from standard methods, validated on simulated and real data.
Novel algorithm detects causal macrovariables from high-dimensional data.
problem Leveraging high-dimensional observational datasets for coarse-grained causal models.
method Inspired by information bottlenecks, novel algorithm detects macrovariables and investigates causal relationships through additive noise models.
result Algorithm robustly detects and infers causal relationships in both synthetic and real climate datasets.
Estimating the causal effects of an intervention from high-dimensional observational data is difficult due to the presence of confounding. The task is often complicated by the fact that we may have a systematic missingness in our data at test time. Our approach uses the information bottleneck to perform a low-dimension…
New approach combines invariance and information bottleneck for OOD generalization.
problem OOD generalization failures in classification tasks.
method Revisit linear regression tasks, prove information bottleneck constraint necessary, propose combined approach.
result Combined invariance and information bottleneck approach improves OOD generalization.
GIB improves neural network generalization by dynamically selecting task-relevant features across different sequential environments.
problem Poor generalization of deep neural networks to unseen environments.
method Proposes a gated information bottleneck (GIB) approach that dynamically drops spurious correlations and selects task-relevant features.
result GIB outperforms other IB approaches in adversarial robustness and OOD detection.
GWIB improves counterfactual regression by balancing latent distributions and reducing selection bias.
problem Selection bias between control and treatment groups negatively impacts counterfactual regression performance.
method GWIB uses Gromov-Wasserstein information bottleneck to maximize mutual information between covariates and outcomes while penalizing kernelized mutual information between latent representations and covariates.
result GWIB consistently outperforms state-of-the-art CFR methods in ITE estimation tasks.
Novel framework improves graph learning for out-of-distribution generalization.
problem Graph out-of-distribution generalization challenges in neural networks.
method Invariant Graph Learning based on Information bottleneck theory (InfoIGL).
result Achieves state-of-the-art performance in graph classification tasks under OOD generalization.
New method reveals true causal functions in nonlinear time series, not just scores.
problem Causal discovery in nonlinear time series often uses scalar edge scores, which hide true function-valued causal influence.
method Formalized function-valued causal influence for additive, contribution-decomposable architectures. Introduced a practical framework based on ICE for estimating causal response functions directly from trained models.
result Edges with indistinguishable scalar scores can exhibit qualitatively different functional behaviors.
New method quantifies redundant information using information bottleneck.
problem Quantifying redundant information among multiple sources.
method Formulated as an information bottleneck problem, termed redundancy bottleneck.
result Extracts information that best predicts the target without revealing source identity.
Proposes IIB for domain generalization, overcoming failure modes of IRM.
problem Domain generalization with nonlinear classifiers and pseudo-invariant features.
method Invariant Information Bottleneck (IIB) using mutual information and variational formulation.
result Significantly outperforms IRM on synthetic datasets and real-world benchmarks.
Tutorial on information bottleneck problems with connections to coding and learning.
problem Information bottleneck problems and their connections to coding and learning.
method Information theoretic perspective, practical methods, connections to various problems.
result Optimal trade-offs between relevance and complexity in discrete and vector Gaussian frameworks.
The Information bottleneck method is an unsupervised non-parametric data organization technique. Given a joint distribution P(A,B), this method constructs a new variable T that extracts partitions, or clusters, over the values of A that are informative about B. The information bottleneck has already been applied to doc…
In this paper, we provide an information-theoretic interpretation of the Vector Quantized-Variational Autoencoder (VQ-VAE). We show that the loss function of the original VQ-VAE can be derived from the variational deterministic information bottleneck (VDIB) principle. On the other hand, the VQ-VAE trained by the Expect…
Proposes Decodable Information Bottleneck for optimal representation learning.
problem Finding optimal representations for supervised learning.
method Integrates information retention and compression with the desired predictive family.
result Optimal representations lead to better expected test performance and can be estimated with guarantees.
Combining the Information Bottleneck model with deep learning by replacing mutual information terms with deep neural nets has proved successful in areas ranging from generative modelling to interpreting deep neural networks. In this paper, we revisit the Deep Variational Information Bottleneck and the assumptions neede…
Proposes a new method to selectively access privileged information in reinforcement learning.
problem Selective compression of privileged information in reinforcement learning.
method Formulates a variational bandwidth bottleneck to decide stochastically whether to access privileged information.
result Improves generalization and reduces access to costly information in reinforcement learning experiments.
Graph Information Bottleneck (GIB) optimizes graph representations for robustness against adversarial attacks.
problem Challenges in learning graph representations due to structure and feature information.
method GIB is an information-theoretic principle that balances expressiveness and robustness by maximizing mutual information between representation and target, while constraining mutual information with input data.
result GIB-based models are more robust to adversarial attacks, achieving up to 31% improvement.
A new method improves model generalization by recognizing representations.
problem Generalization issues in existing Information Bottlenecks.
method Recognizable Information Bottleneck (RIB) using f-CMI and density ratio matching.
result Improves model generalization through recognizability regularization.
Unified information-theoretic objectives for training deep neural networks.
problem Difficulty in computing information-theoretic quantities for large deep neural networks.
method Review and unify competing objectives, develop surrogate objectives.
result Surrogate objectives allow applying information bottleneck to modern neural network architectures.
Express improves causal attention guarantees for language models.
problem Improving causal attention guarantees for language models.
method Introducing Express, a tool for converting non-causal attention into causal with matching guarantees.
result Express improves causal attention guarantees to log^(3/2)(n)/s with minimal memory and compression overhead.
In classic papers, Zellner demonstrated that Bayesian inference could be derived as the solution to an information theoretic functional. Below we derive a generalized form of this functional as a variational lower bound of a predictive information bottleneck objective. This generalized functional encompasses most moder…
Extends information bottleneck to multi-view unsupervised learning.
problem Identifying superfluous information in unlabeled multi-view data.
method Multi-view information bottleneck model, leveraging data augmentation.
result State-of-the-art results on Sketchy and MIR-Flickr datasets.
Estimates latent dimensionality for prediction tasks using mutual information.
problem Estimating the latent dimensionality needed for accurate prediction.
method Formulates the problem as an Information Bottleneck question and uses neural mutual information estimators with a hybrid critic to preserve latent geometry.
result The hybrid critic method provides a more accurate estimation of task-relevant dimensionality.
Deep latent variable models are powerful tools for representation learning. In this paper, we adopt the deep information bottleneck model, identify its shortcomings and propose a model that circumvents them. To this end, we apply a copula transformation which, by restoring the invariance properties of the information b…
New objective function improves model robustness.
problem Machine Learning robustness issues.
method Conditional Entropy Bottleneck (CEB) objective function.
result CEB models improve robust generalization.
Proposes a multi-task learning model using variational information bottleneck.
problem Balancing performance and robustness across different tasks in multi-task learning.
method Variational Information Bottleneck (VIB) architecture for multi-task learning.
result The proposed model achieves competitive prediction accuracy under adversarial attacks.
We present a simple case study, demonstrating that Variational Information Bottleneck (VIB) can improve a network's classification calibration as well as its ability to detect out-of-distribution data. Without explicitly being designed to do so, VIB gives two natural metrics for handling and quantifying uncertainty.
Information bottleneck (IB) is a technique for extracting information in one random variable X that is relevant for predicting another random variable Y. IB works by encoding X in a compressed "bottleneck" random variable M from which Y can be accurately decoded. However, finding the optimal bottleneck variab…
Proposes a robust VIB approach using soft labels and mutual info estimation.
problem Improving robustness of VIB to adversarial perturbations.
method Refines categorical class information with soft labels from a reference network, relaxes Gaussian posterior assumption.
result Significantly outperforms benchmarked models on MNIST and CIFAR-10.
We propose a novel strategy for extracting features in supervised learning that can be used to construct a classifier which is more robust to small perturbations in the input space. Our method builds upon the idea of the information bottleneck by introducing an additional penalty term that encourages the Fisher informa…
Graph neural networks struggle to propagate long-range information, causing over-squashing.
problem Graph neural networks struggle to propagate long-range information.
method Identified over-squashing as the bottleneck in GNNs, demonstrated on various models.
result Breaking the bottleneck improves GNNs' performance on long-range problems.
Neural causal discovery methods fail to accurately uncover causal structures due to the faithfulness property.
problem Accuracy in neural causal discovery is limited, especially when distinguishing between existing and non-existing causal relationships.
method Systematic evaluation of neural causal discovery methods, focusing on their performance in finite sample regimes and their ability to recover ground-truth graphs.
result Neural networks lack the precision to reliably recover ground-truth causal graphs, even for small graphs and large sample sizes.
Improves robustness of information bottleneck framework with sparsity-inducing prior.
problem Fixed-dimensional priors restrict flexibility and restrict robustness.
method Sparsity-inducing spike-slab categorical prior that learns dimension distribution per data point.
result Improves accuracy and robustness compared to traditional priors and other methods.
Zellner (1988) modeled statistical inference in terms of information processing and postulated the Information Conservation Principle (ICP) between the input and output of the information processing block, showing that this yielded Bayesian inference as the optimum information processing rule. Recently, Alemi (2019) re…
ResNet learns to compress information during training.
problem Applying information bottleneck principle to deep learning models.
method Trained PixelCNN++ models to measure mutual information between ResNet hidden layers and input data.
result Compression occurs in both classification and autoencoding training regimes.
This paper analyzes the training dynamics of binary neural networks using information bottleneck.
problem Training binary neural networks is challenging due to discontinuity in activation functions.
method The approach uses the Information Bottleneck principle to analyze BNN training dynamics.
result Training dynamics of BNNs are different from DNNs, with both phases occurring simultaneously.
Learning with hidden variables is a central challenge in probabilistic graphical models that has important implications for many real-life problems. The classical approach is using the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. This algorithm, however, can get trapped in local maxima. In this paper we explore a new appro…
Interpretable machine learning has gained much attention recently. Briefness and comprehensiveness are necessary in order to provide a large amount of information concisely when explaining a black-box decision system. However, existing interpretable machine learning methods fail to consider briefness and comprehensiven…
In this paper, we develop an unsupervised generative clustering framework that combines the Variational Information Bottleneck and the Gaussian Mixture Model. Specifically, in our approach, we use the Variational Information Bottleneck method and model the latent space as a mixture of Gaussians. We derive a bound on th…
Review of information plane analyses in neural networks, highlighting mixed results and methodological challenges.
problem Understanding the relationship between information-theoretic compression and neural network performance.
method Literature review and detailed analysis of information quantity estimation methods.
result Information plane compression is not necessarily information-theoretic but compatible with geometric compression.
New measures for causal entropy and information gain studied.
problem Quantifying causal relationships in machine learning.
method Formal study of causal entropy and information gain.
result Established fundamental properties and relationships.
Proposes GIB for recognizing informative subgraphs in graphs.
problem Recognizing a subgraph that is maximally informative yet compressive.
method Graph Information Bottleneck (GIB) framework, mutual information estimator, bi-level optimization, connectivity loss.
result IB-subgraph improves graph classification, interpretation, and denoising.
AIB method improves robustness against adversarial perturbations.
problem Optimizing the IB principle for better robustness and understanding compression effects.
method Proposes adversarial information bottleneck (AIB) method to optimize IB principle without explicit distribution assumptions.
result Demonstrates effectiveness in learning more invariant representations and mitigating adversarial perturbations.
CVIB uses information theory to learn counterfactuals from MNAR data without RCTs.
problem Debiasing learning from missing-not-at-random (MNAR) data in recommendation systems.
method CVIB, a variational information bottleneck, separates task-aware mutual information into factual and counterfactual parts.
result CVIB significantly enhances both shallow and deep models in recommendation systems.
In this draft, which reports on work in progress, we 1) adapt the information bottleneck functional by replacing the compression term by class-conditional compression, 2) relax this functional using a variational bound related to class-conditional disentanglement, 3) consider this functional as a training objective for…