Foundation models fail to preserve continuous geometry, identified as the Geometric Alignment Tax.
problem Continuous geometry is lost in foundation models due to discrete categorical bottlenecks.
method Controlled ablations on synthetic systems and evaluation of 14 biological models using rate-distortion theory and MINE.
result Replacing cross-entropy with a continuous head reduces geometric distortion by up to 8.5x.
MFMs enable efficient reward alignment for generative models.
problem Computational bottleneck in controlling generative models.
method Meta Flow Maps (MFMs) extend consistency models and flow maps to stochastic regime for efficient value function estimation.
result MFMs enable inference-time steering and unbiased, off-policy fine-tuning to general rewards efficiently.
Modeling alignment as resource-limited cognitive processes, researchers derive performance bounds.
problem Systematic deviations in feedback-based alignment of large language models.
method Modeling alignment as a two-stage cascade UoHoY given S, with cognitive and total capacities. result Capacity-coupled Alignment Performance Interval derived from Fano and PAC-Bayes bounds.
Our goal is to design architectures that retain the groundbreaking performance of CNNs for landmark localization and at the same time are lightweight, compact and suitable for applications with limited computational resources. To this end, we make the following contributions: (a) we are the first to study the effect of…
CARDS improves decoding efficiency and alignment quality for LLMs.
problem Efficiency bottlenecks in decoding-time alignment for LLMs.
method Cascade Reward Sampling (CARDS) with segment-level rejection sampling and uncertainty-based segmentation.
result Significant improvement in decoding efficiency and alignment quality.
The backpropagation algorithm has long been the canonical training method for neural networks. Modern paradigms are implicitly optimized for it, and numerous guidelines exist to ensure its proper use. Recently, synthetic gradients methods -where the error gradient is only roughly approximated - have garnered interest. …
Phylogenetic tree reconstruction is traditionally based on multiple sequence alignments (MSAs) and heavily depends on the validity of this information bottleneck. With increasing sequence divergence, the quality of MSAs decays quickly. Alignment-free methods, on the other hand, are based on abstract string comparisons …
GLASS Flows improves flow and diffusion model performance by optimizing sampling efficiency.
problem Efficiency bottleneck in sampling Markov transitions for flow and diffusion models.
method Introduces GLASS Flows, a new sampling paradigm that simulates a 'flow matching model within a flow matching model' to sample Markov transitions efficiently.
result Eliminates the trade-off between stochastic evolution and efficiency in large-scale text-to-image models.
XLVINs improve data efficiency in implicit planning by leveraging latent space.
problem Improving data efficiency in implicit planning algorithms.
method XLVINs use a high-dimensional latent space to perform planning computations, breaking the algorithmic bottleneck.
result XLVINs significantly improve data efficiency across various settings compared to value iteration-based implicit planners and model-free baselines.
Photonic co-processor speeds up training of large neural networks.
problem Training large neural networks with backpropagation is inefficient and communication is a bottleneck.
method Direct Feedback Alignment (DFA) with a photonic accelerator.
result Photonic accelerator can compute random projections with trillions of parameters.
New learning rules from information bottleneck improve deep learning without precise labels.
problem Training deep neural networks with backpropagation is biologically implausible.
method Kernelized information bottleneck principle with 3-factor Hebbian structure.
result The new learning rules perform nearly as well as backpropagation on image classification tasks.
Discrete Flow Maps bypass sequential prediction limits for parallel text generation.
problem Sequential autoregressive prediction limits large language model speed.
method Flow Maps compress generative trajectories into single-step mappings.
result Discrete Flow Maps surpass previous state-of-the-art results in discrete flow modeling.
DET unifies geometric and functional alignment for high-dimensional scientific data.
problem Challenges in nonrigid registration for high-dimensional, irregular data.
method Domain Elastic Transform (DET) treats data as functions on irregular domains, using a Bayesian framework for elastic motion registration.
result DET achieves 92% topological preservation on MERFISH data and successfully registers whole-embryo Stereo-seq atlases.
We explore models for translating abstract musical ideas (scores, rhythms) into expressive performances using Seq2Seq and recurrent Variational Information Bottleneck (VIB) models. Though Seq2Seq models usually require painstakingly aligned corpora, we show that it is possible to adapt an approach from the Generative A…
Neural machine translation is a recently proposed approach to machine translation. Unlike the traditional statistical machine translation, the neural machine translation aims at building a single neural network that can be jointly tuned to maximize the translation performance. The models proposed recently for neural ma…
New research shows non-bottlenecked autoencoders can outperform bottlenecked ones for anomaly detection.
problem The necessity of a bottleneck in autoencoders for anomaly detection.
method Investigated two ways to remove bottlenecks: overparameterising the latent layer and introducing skip connections. Carried out extensive experiments on various AE types and datasets.
result Non-bottlenecked autoencoders can outperform bottlenecked ones, improving anomaly detection performance.
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.
Softmax is an output activation function for modeling categorical probability distributions in many applications of deep learning. However, a recent study revealed that softmax can be a bottleneck of representational capacity of neural networks in language modeling (the softmax bottleneck). In this paper, we propose an…
There has recently been much work on the "wide limit" of neural networks, where Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) are shown to converge to a Gaussian process (GP) as all hidden layers are sent to infinite width. However, these results do not apply to architectures that require one or more of the hidden layers to remain n…
Scientific discovery is limited by hypothesis redundancy, and hybrid methods can exploit non-local exploration.
problem Limitation of scientific discovery due to hypothesis redundancy.
method Hybrid discovery systems combining structured local search with LLM-generated non-local proposals.
result Hybrid methods can exploit non-local exploration when three geometric conditions co-occur.
Study shows bottlenecks improve image segmentation quality.
problem Robust object discovery in real-world images remains challenging.
method Empirical investigation of reconstruction bottlenecks in GENESIS model.
result Reconstruction bottlenecks determine reconstruction and segmentation quality.
Deep ResNets favor low bottleneck rank with proper hyperparameters.
problem Understanding the inductive bias of deep neural networks.
method Computed minimum-norm weights of a deep linear ResNet.
result Deep nonlinear ResNets have an inductive bias towards minimizing bottleneck rank.
NS-RGS improves orthogonal group synchronization with faster convergence.
problem Orthogonal group synchronization from pairwise measurements.
method Newton-Schulz iteration for Riemannian gradient optimization.
result NS-RGS achieves linear convergence and near-optimal accuracy.
CB-APM uses analyst consensus as a bottleneck to interpret stock returns.
problem Tackles the challenge of understanding and predicting stock returns using professional beliefs.
method Embeds analyst consensus as a structural bottleneck, treating it as a sufficient statistic for market information.
result CB-APM portfolios exhibit strong monotonic return gradients and robust across different economic conditions.
Wide neural networks become linear, but adding bottlenecks makes them bilinear or multilinear.
problem Understanding the transition of neural networks from linearity to higher-order functions.
method Analyzing the behavior of randomly initialized wide neural networks with and without bottleneck layers.
result Bottleneck layers transform the network's function from linear to bilinear or multilinear.
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.
The Mahler volume of a centrally symmetric convex body K is defined as M(K)= (Vol K)(Vol K^dual). Mahler conjectured that this volume is minimized when K is a cube. We introduce the bottleneck conjecture, which stipulates that a certain convex body K^diamond subset K X K^dual has least volume when K is an ellipsoid. If…
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…
MO2 learns useful behaviours from past experience for new tasks.
problem Discovering useful behaviours from past experience and transferring them to new tasks.
method Model-Based Offline Options (MO2) framework supporting sample-efficient bottleneck option discovery over continuous state-action spaces.
result MO2 outperforms recent option learning methods on complex long-horizon continuous control tasks.
Framework learns interpretable concepts from data without interventions.
problem Learning spurious correlations between concepts in CBMs.
method Causal representation learning (CRL) to align latent variables with interpretable concepts using few labels.
result Framework provides theoretical guarantees on correctness and number of required labels without interventions.
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.
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…
MPNNs struggle with class-bottlenecks and heterophily, leading to performance limitations.
problem Performance limitations of MPNNs under heterophily and structural bottlenecks.
method A statistical framework decomposing model performance into SNR components and proving bounds on sensitivity.
result Optimal graph structures for maximizing higher-order homophily are disjoint unions of single-class and two-class-bipartite clusters.
Deep reinforcement learning has recently shown many impressive successes. However, one major obstacle towards applying such methods to real-world problems is their lack of data-efficiency. To this end, we propose the Bottleneck Simulator: a model-based reinforcement learning method which combines a learned, factorized …
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 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.
We introduce the HSIC (Hilbert-Schmidt independence criterion) bottleneck for training deep neural networks. The HSIC bottleneck is an alternative to the conventional cross-entropy loss and backpropagation that has a number of distinct advantages. It mitigates exploding and vanishing gradients, resulting in the ability…
SAGE enhances reinforcement learning by injecting hints to prevent model stagnation.
problem Sparse rewards cause large language models to stall under relative policy optimization.
method SAGE injects privileged hints during training to increase within-group outcome diversity.
result SAGE consistently outperforms GRPO on 6 benchmarks with LLMs, achieving significant improvements.
PCBMs turn any neural network into interpretable models without dense annotations.
problem Restrictive nature of CBMs and lack of dense concept annotations in training data.
method Introduce PCBMs that can turn any neural network into interpretable models without dense annotations.
result PCBMs can turn any neural network into interpretable models without dense annotations, improving interpretability and performance.
The paper identifies network bottlenecks using minimax paths in stochastic networks.
problem Identifying bottlenecks in networks with stochastic weights.
method Modeling as combinatorial semi-bandit problem, applying combinatorial Thompson Sampling, and approximating the original objective due to computational intractability.
result Established an upper bound on Bayesian regret and evaluated Thompson Sampling performance on real-world networks.
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.
This work analyzes how bottleneck layers and skip connections affect linear denoising autoencoders' generalization.
problem Understanding the generalization of linear denoising autoencoders in overparameterized regimes.
method Analyzes two-layer linear denoising autoencoders with a bottleneck layer and skip connection, deriving test risk formulas.
result Bottleneck layers introduce an additional complexity measure, while skip connections can mitigate variance.
eva method improves RL models by adaptively creating prompts, boosting performance.
problem Fixed prompt distribution limits scalability of RL models post-training.
method Evolving Alignment via Asymmetric Self-Play (eva) approach.
result Significant performance boost on benchmarks, e.g. 51.6% to 60.1% win-rate.
NM-VQTSG improves synthetic time series fidelity by aligning distributions.
problem Fidelity challenges in VQ-based time series generation.
method Neural mapping model using U-Net to refine synthetic data.
result Significant improvements in FID, IS, and conditional FID metrics.
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…
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.
HCBM improves deep learning explainability by non-linear concept aggregation.
problem Lack of explainable and accurate predictions in deep learning for high-stake decisions.
method Introduce Hoeffding Concept Bottleneck Models (HCBM) using Hoeffding functional decomposition of gradient-boosted trees for non-linear and sparse concept aggregation.
result HCBM outperforms standard linear CBM and is robust to interconcept leakage.
Concept bottleneck models enable concept manipulation for model interpretation.
problem Training models to directly predict labels without intermediate concepts.
method Train models to predict intermediate concepts at training time, then use these concepts to predict labels.
result Concept bottleneck models achieve competitive accuracy with standard models while enabling concept manipulation.