Efficiently infers switching nonlinear systems with collapsed amortized variational inference.
problem Inference in switching nonlinear dynamical systems with discrete latent variables.
method Learn an inference network as a proposal for continuous latent variables, performing exact marginalization of discrete variables.
result Successfully segments time series data into meaningful regimes using piece-wise nonlinear dynamics.
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.
A new meta-learning method using shared variational inference.
problem Meta-learning with uncertainty over model parameters.
method Shared amortized variational inference network for conditional prior and posterior.
result Prevents collapse of conditional prior to Dirac delta function.
Amortized variational inference (AVI) replaces instance-specific local inference with a global inference network. While AVI has enabled efficient training of deep generative models such as variational autoencoders (VAE), recent empirical work suggests that inference networks can produce suboptimal variational parameter…
Training deep generative models with maximum likelihood remains a challenge. The typical workaround is to use variational inference (VI) and maximize a lower bound to the log marginal likelihood of the data. Variational auto-encoders (VAEs) adopt this approach. They further amortize the cost of inference by using a rec…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
We study a formalization of the grammar induction problem that models sentences as being generated by a compound probabilistic context-free grammar. In contrast to traditional formulations which learn a single stochastic grammar, our grammar's rule probabilities are modulated by a per-sentence continuous latent variabl…
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…
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.
This paper speeds up inference in large hierarchical models.
problem Inference in large hierarchical models is slow and difficult.
method Amortized variational inference with shared parameters.
result Amortized inference is as accurate as a full-rank Gaussian but much faster.
PAVI speeds up Bayesian inference for large datasets.
problem Challenges in Bayesian inference for large population studies.
method Plate-amortized Variational Inference (PAVI) that shares parameterization across i.i.d. variables.
result Significant speedup in training variational distributions, orders of magnitude faster.
New method improves variational inference for better posterior approximation.
problem Challenges in minimizing inclusive KL divergence for amortized variational inference.
method Likelihood-tempered sequential Monte Carlo samplers to estimate inclusive KL gradient.
result SMC-Wake method fits variational distributions more accurately than existing methods.
Improved variational inference for geophysical inverse problems with data correction.
problem High computational cost and accuracy issues in Bayesian inference for geophysical inverse problems.
method Amortized variational inference with latent distribution correction using physics-based priors.
result Improved robustness of amortized variational inference under data distribution shifts.
Inference models are a key component in scaling variational inference to deep latent variable models, most notably as encoder networks in variational auto-encoders (VAEs). By replacing conventional optimization-based inference with a learned model, inference is amortized over data examples and therefore more computatio…
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.
A new method learns posterior and predictive distributions together, reducing computational cost.
problem Sequential two-stage Bayesian inference is computationally expensive.
method Amortized variational inference targeting posterior-predictive distribution.
result Efficient online inference with more accurate predictive distributions.
Improved VAE models avoid posterior collapse in text modeling.
problem Posterior collapse in VAEs leads to poor data manifold parameterization.
method Coupled-VAE couples a VAE with a deterministic autoencoder to improve encoder and decoder parameterizations.
result Coupled-VAE consistently improves results in probability estimation and latent space richness.
Efficiently learns from partial labels using variational inference.
problem Learning from noisy and ambiguous partial labels in crowdsourcing.
method Amortized variational inference for probabilistic posterior approximation.
result Achieves state-of-the-art performance in accuracy and efficiency.
ADAVI tackles variational inference for large HBM models in neuroimaging.
problem Large, pyramidally-organized HBM models in neuroimaging studies.
method Automatic dual amortized variational inference using neural networks and attention-based hierarchical encoding.
result Significantly reduced parameterization of the variational family, maintaining expressivity.
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.
Develops inference combinators for probabilistic programs using neural networks.
problem Creating efficient proposals for probabilistic program inference.
method Inference combinators using neural network parameterization of proposals.
result Correct by construction variational methods tailored to specific models.
Mathematical analysis shows annealing prevents mode collapse in Gaussian mixtures.
problem Mode collapse in variational inference for multimodal distributions.
method Analyzed annealing strategies for Gaussian mixtures, derived formulas, and tested on neural networks.
result Appropriately chosen annealing schemes can robustly prevent mode collapse.
Stochastic variational inference for collapsed models has recently been successfully applied to large scale topic modelling. In this paper, we propose a stochastic collapsed variational inference algorithm in the sequential data setting. Our algorithm is applicable to both finite hidden Markov models and hierarchical D…
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.
A new method learns causal structure from data using amortized inference.
problem Causal structure learning is a combinatorial search problem that is costly and difficult to design suitable scores or tests.
method Train a variational inference model to predict causal structure from data.
result Our inference model generalizes well to larger problem instances and outperforms existing algorithms, especially in genomics.
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.
Efficiently infers latent SDEs with scalable memory and time costs.
problem Inference of latent SDEs with high time and memory complexity.
method Amortized reparametrization of expectations under linear SDEs, coupled with efficient gradient approximation.
result Achieves similar performance to adjoint sensitivities with fewer model evaluations.
Variational Bayesian inference and (collapsed) Gibbs sampling are the two important classes of inference algorithms for Bayesian networks. Both have their advantages and disadvantages: collapsed Gibbs sampling is unbiased but is also inefficient for large count values and requires averaging over many samples to reduce …
Stochastic variational inference for collapsed models has recently been successfully applied to large scale topic modelling. In this paper, we propose a stochastic collapsed variational inference algorithm for hidden Markov models, in a sequential data setting. Given a collapsed hidden Markov Model, we break its long M…
Inspired by the seminal work on Stein Variational Inference and Stein Variational Policy Gradient, we derived a method to generate samples from the posterior variational parameter distribution by \textit{explicitly} minimizing the KL divergence to match the target distribution in an amortize fashion. Consequently, we a…
APG samplers use neural suff stats to improve deep model inference.
problem Efficient inference in deep generative models.
method Amortized population Gibbs, neural suff stats, KL divergence minimization.
result Significant improvement in inference accuracy.
We present a general method for deriving collapsed variational inference algo- rithms for probabilistic models in the conjugate exponential family. Our method unifies many existing approaches to collapsed variational inference. Our collapsed variational inference leads to a new lower bound on the marginal likelihood. W…
Develops a method for learning proposals in nested importance samplers.
problem Improving sampling quality in complex distributions.
method Nested Variational Inference (NVI) using forward or reverse KL divergence.
result Optimizing nested objectives leads to improved sample quality.
MFVI mode collapse explained; RoVI proposed to mitigate.
problem Mode collapse in MFVI for mixture distributions.
method Introducing ε-separateness, deriving bounds, proposing RoVI.
result MFVI optimizers collapse to a single component when components are ε-separated.
Improved phylogenetic inference with normalizing flows.
problem Limitations of current diagonal Lognormal branch length approximation in VBPI.
method Proposes VBPI-NF using normalizing flows to handle non-Euclidean branch length space.
result Significantly improves phylogenetic posterior estimation on real data.
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.
Variational autoencoders often collapse, showing latent variables are non-identifiable.
problem Posterior collapse in variational autoencoders due to non-identifiable latent variables.
method Proves latent variable non-identifiability causes posterior collapse. Proposes latent-identifiable models using Brenier maps and input convex neural networks.
result Latent-identifiable models resolve posterior collapse and provide meaningful representations.
Theoretical work on mode collapse in variational inference models.
problem Mode collapse in variational inference models, where models focus on a few modes instead of all possible ones.
method Theoretical investigation of mode collapse in Gaussian mixture models, identifying key low-dimensional statistics and equations governing their evolution.
result Mode collapse is present even in favorable scenarios, driven by mean alignment and vanishing weight mechanisms.
Cascading flows improve variational inference in structured programs.
problem Challenges in variational inference for complex probabilistic programs.
method Integrates normalizing flows and ASVI to create cascading flows, which embed the forward-pass of probabilistic programs.
result Cascading flows outperform normalizing flows and ASVI in structured inference problems.