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.
A new method for decision-focused learning reduces computational cost.
problem Efficiently solving combinatorial problems with uncertain parameters.
method Reframed as cost-sensitive multi-output regression, with novel loss components.
result Comparable downstream task quality with reduced computational cost.
Decision-alignment evaluates uncertainty quantification for decision-relevant UQ
problem Evaluation of uncertainty quantification metrics
method Introduce decision-alignment
result Proper scoring rules align with decision utility
This paper generalizes BO uncertainty measures using decision-theoretic entropies.
problem Efficiently inferring optima of expensive black-box functions.
method Introduces a generalized entropy measure from statistical decision theory to optimize Bayesian optimization.
result Demonstrates strong empirical performance across various sequential decision-making tasks.
New algorithm REFUEL shows multitask representation learning is more sample-efficient in RL.
problem Understanding the benefit of representation learning in reinforcement learning.
method Developed REFUEL algorithm for multitask low-rank RL, analyzing both upstream and downstream tasks.
result Multitask representation learning is provably more sample-efficient than individual task learning.
Action-BED: Task-Driven Bayesian Experimental Design
problem Bayesian experimental design with doubly intractable objectives
method Formulating BED in terms of expected future loss (EFL) and optimising it with stochastic gradients
result Simplified and task-driven framework for BED
New method optimizes experimental design for specific applications.
problem Inability to adapt causal inference methods to specific downstream applications.
method Task-specific experimental design and sampling strategies.
result Significantly reduces data requirements for achieving RCT performance.
TaskMet learns a metric to improve model performance on unseen tasks.
problem Deep models trained on one task may struggle on another task due to conflicting objectives.
method TaskMet learns a metric in the prediction space to balance task and prediction losses.
result TaskMet achieves better performance on downstream tasks without altering the prediction model.
PeL separates sensory interface optimization from decision learning.
problem Optimizing sensory interfaces without task-specific information.
method Formal separation of perception and decision learning, using metrics for stability, informativeness, and geometry.
result Updates preserving invariants are orthogonal to decision gradients.
New decision-theoretic calibration error metric improves prediction reliability.
problem Improving the reliability of predictions for decision-making.
method Proposed Calibration Decision Loss (CDL) and an efficient algorithm to achieve near-optimal CDL.
result Near-optimal CDL guarantees vanishing payoff loss from miscalibration.
FWC creates fair synthetic samples for machine learning tasks.
problem Addressing biases in machine learning models for fair decision-making.
method FWC uses an efficient majority minimization algorithm to minimize Wasserstein distance while enforcing demographic parity.
result FWC achieves a competitive fairness-utility tradeoff and reduces biases in predictions from large language models.
The Neural Testbed evaluates joint predictions of neural agents, revealing their limitations.
problem Evaluating the quality of joint predictions generated by neural agents.
method Developed an open-source benchmark (The Neural Testbed) to assess agents' marginal and joint predictions.
result Popular Bayesian deep learning agents perform poorly on joint predictions, even with accurate marginal predictions.
Unified framework for hybrid learning and optimization via active inference.
problem Sequential decisions in black-box evaluations requiring both task improvement and uncertainty reduction.
method Pragmatic Curiosity (PraC) framework that evaluates queries by balancing information gain and pragmatic value.
result Unified approach reduces decision risk and improves coverage of critical regions without task-specific rules.
Linguistic calibration improves long-form text confidence.
problem LMs hallucinate, leading to suboptimal decisions.
method Defining linguistic calibration, training framework, reinforcement learning.
result Llama 2 7B is significantly more calibrated than baselines.
Paper shows similarity learning can lead to strong binary classification performance.
problem How similarity learning can lead to good classification performance.
method Product-type formulation of similarity learning is connected to binary classification through an excess risk bound.
result Similarity learning can directly elicit a decision boundary for binary classification.
Complex networks are often either too large for full exploration, partially accessible, or partially observed. Downstream learning tasks on these incomplete networks can produce low quality results. In addition, reducing the incompleteness of the network can be costly and nontrivial. As a result, network discovery algo…
GoBOED optimizes experiments for specific decision-making objectives, improving downstream outcomes.
problem Reducing parameter uncertainty does not always improve decision-making in critical settings.
method Combines variational posterior surrogate and differentiable convex decision layer for gradient-based design optimization.
result GoBOED identifies designs that better align with specific decision objectives and reveals wider optimal design windows.
Self-supervised metric learning boosts downstream tasks in multi-view data.
problem Improving distance-based downstream tasks without labeled data.
method Developed a statistical framework to study self-supervised metric learning in multi-view data.
result Self-supervised metric learning improves target distances for various downstream tasks.
Paper defines and solves a problem in representation learning to ensure fairness with high confidence.
problem Learning fair representations with high confidence guarantees for all downstream tasks.
method Formally defines the problem, introduces FRG framework, proves high probability fairness, and demonstrates effectiveness empirically.
result FRG framework provides high-confidence guarantees for limiting unfairness across all downstream models and tasks.
New scaling laws optimize model size, training, and inference for better performance.
problem Trade-off between model size and inference cost in modern LLMs.
method Train-to-Test (T2) scaling laws that jointly optimize model size, training tokens, and inference samples. result Optimal pretraining decisions shift into overtraining regime, leading to stronger performance.
Study shows how pretraining robustness transfers to downstream tasks.
problem Understanding how robustness is transferred from pretraining to downstream tasks.
method Theoretical analysis and practical validation of robustness constraints.
result Robustness of a linear predictor on downstream tasks can be constrained by the robustness of its underlying representation.
Analysis of pretrained models' effectiveness in downstream tasks.
problem Understanding why pretrained models perform well in NLP tasks.
method Analyzed head and prompt tuning approaches using latent variable models.
result Prompt tuning provides stronger guarantees than head tuning.
This paper characterizes VAE training pathologies and their effects on tasks.
problem Characterizing VAE training pathologies and their impact on downstream tasks.
method Concretely characterizing conditions for VAE training pathologies and their connection to specific downstream tasks.
result Connects VAE training pathologies to specific downstream tasks like learning compressed and disentangled representations, adversarial robustness, and semi-supervised learning.
Paper proposes consistent estimators for learning to defer decisions to experts.
problem Learning algorithms often ignore expert decision-making in practical scenarios.
method Reduction to cost sensitive learning, novel surrogate loss for consistent estimation.
result Effective approach demonstrated on various tasks, showing consistency.
Improves generative models for cost-sensitive decisions.
problem Generative models lack awareness of decision costs.
method Integrates a decision loss into the training objective.
result Improves cost-sensitive forecast accuracy.
Study shows scaling up models doesn't always improve downstream tasks.
problem Understanding why scaling up models doesn't always improve downstream performance.
method Systematic study of 4800 experiments on various models, analyzing performance on 20 downstream tasks.
result Performance on downstream tasks saturates as model size increases, revealing a nonlinear relationship.
UBM transfers bias mitigation from upstream to downstream tasks efficiently.
problem Bias in fine-tuned language models across various tasks.
method Apply bias mitigation to an upstream model, then fine-tune a downstream model on this mitigated model.
result UBM effects transfer to new downstream tasks, creating less biased models.
This study examines how the size and alignment of pretraining data affect the performance of large language models on downstream tasks.
problem Understanding how the size and alignment of pretraining data impact the performance of large language models on downstream tasks.
method Investigated the scaling behavior of large language models in a transfer learning setting, focusing on machine translation tasks.
result The size of the finetuning dataset and the distribution alignment between pretraining and downstream data significantly influence the scaling behavior of downstream performance.
Training a source model optimally for its own task is suboptimal for downstream transfer.
problem The optimality of a source model for its own task hinders downstream transfer performance.
method Analyzes L2-SP ridge regression, characterizes transfer-optimal source penalty, and identifies alignment-dependent effects.
result Transfer benefits from stronger source regularization when aligned imperfectly, and from weaker regularization when aligned perfectly.
Theoretical analysis shows pretext-based self-supervised learning can be boosted by downstream data under certain conditions.
problem Theoretical analysis of pretext-based self-supervised learning and downstream data refinement.
method Theoretical analysis and experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets.
result Theoretical lower bounds and experiments show that downstream data refinement can boost or hurt performance depending on conditions.
Enhances performance on downstream tasks using multi-domain data.
problem Improving performance on tasks with limited downstream data.
method Deep transfer learning framework leveraging shared and domain-specific features.
result Significantly improves convergence rate for learning Lipschitz functions.
New method optimizes treatment policies to avoid winner's curse.
problem Winner's curse in treatment policy optimization.
method Inference-aware policy optimization.
result Optimizes for both estimated performance and downstream evaluation.
Mask-reconstruction pretraining helps in downstream tasks by capturing more semantic features.
problem How mask-reconstruction pretraining helps in downstream tasks and why it surpasses supervised learning.
method Theoretical analysis and experimental validation of mask-reconstruction pretraining (MRP) on auto-encoders.
result MRP provably captures more semantic features than supervised learning, leading to better performance in downstream tasks.
This paper investigates multi-task reinforcement learning in non-Markovian decision making, showing benefits in sample efficiency.
problem Investigating multi-task reinforcement learning in non-Markovian decision making processes.
method Developed a joint model class for tasks and used the η-bracketing number to quantify complexity and similarity. result Multi-task reinforcement learning can improve sample efficiency in non-Markovian decision making processes.
Language models help text classification tasks by predicting next words.
problem Lack of theoretical understanding of why language models perform well on downstream tasks.
method Mathematical study of the connection between next word prediction and text classification, formalizing it and quantifying the benefit.
result Language models that are ε-optimal in cross-entropy learn features that can solve classification tasks with linear approximation.
New framework identifies worst-case shifts for predictive resource allocation models.
problem Identifying harmful shifts in predictive models for resource allocation.
method Hierarchical model structure and submodular optimization for worst-case loss.
result Empirical evidence shows divergent worst-case shifts identified by different metrics.
This work optimizes alignment and uniformity of features on a hypersphere for better downstream performance.
problem Improving the performance of contrastive representation learning.
method Identifying and optimizing alignment and uniformity of features on a hypersphere.
result Directly optimizing alignment and uniformity leads to comparable or better performance than contrastive learning.
New framework explains how larger pre-trained models reduce downstream learning sample complexity.
problem Understanding why larger pre-trained models reduce sample complexity in downstream tasks.
method Introducing a novel framework called Caulking inspired by PEFT methods.
result Improved pre-trained models provably decrease downstream task sample complexity.
Develops optimal uncertainty quantification for risk-averse decision makers.
problem Quantifying prediction uncertainty for risk-sensitive domains.
method Decision-theoretic foundations connecting uncertainty quantification with risk-averse decision-making.
result Risk-Averse Calibration (RAC) algorithm provides optimal prediction sets for risk-averse decision makers.
People are rated and ranked, towards algorithmic decision making in an increasing number of applications, typically based on machine learning. Research on how to incorporate fairness into such tasks has prevalently pursued the paradigm of group fairness: giving adequate success rates to specifically protected groups. I…
Proposes a new machine learning problem for automated temporal decision-making.
problem Automating human involvement in temporal decision-making processes.
method Develops a deep Bayesian neural network, ForeClassNet, with Boltzmann convolutions.
result Achieves superior performance in real-world Foreclassing datasets.
Study shows uncertainty of deep learning models can be measured from their embeddings.
problem Uncertainty in contrastive learning models for critical applications.
method Estimating the distribution of training data in embedding space and accounting for local consistency.
result Uncertainty of an embedding vector correlates strongly with downstream accuracy.
This work proposes a new pre-processing method for supervised learning to improve fairness without sacrificing utility.
problem Improving fairness in supervised learning without compromising model performance.
method Task-tailored pre-processing approach that balances fairness and utility.
result The proposed method preserves consistent trade-offs among multiple downstream models and improves fairness in computer vision tasks.
Cost-effective method detects language model hallucinations.
problem Detecting unreliable outputs from LLMs.
method Pipeline including confidence score, input attributes calibration, and thresholding.
result Multi-scoring framework outperforms individual methods and reduces computational cost.
A new method for fair classification using characteristic function distance.
problem Fairness in high-stakes decision-making with sensitive groups.
method Proposes a novel approach based on characteristic function distance to ensure minimal sensitive information in learned representations.
result Consistently matches or achieves better fairness and predictive accuracy than existing methods.
Framework fine-tunes foundation models with semi-supervised learning for downstream tasks and latent spaces.
problem Training foundation models with limited labelled data.
method Mutual information decomposition for downstream and latent spaces, semi-supervised fine-tuning.
result Significant improvements in classification tasks under low-labelled conditions.
Proposes a new metric to quantify the difference between neural network representations based on downstream task performance.
problem The lack of a consistent metric to measure the difference between neural network representations.
method Introduced the Transferred Discrepancy (TD) metric, which evaluates the difference between representations based on their performance on downstream tasks.
result TD provides fine-grained information for various downstream tasks and can evaluate the effectiveness of different training strategies.
Optimal decision-making using prediction sets to minimize risk.
problem Using prediction sets optimally for decision-making in uncertain scenarios.
method Decision-theoretic framework that seeks to minimize expected loss against a worst-case distribution.
result ROCP algorithm reduces critical mistakes compared to baselines, especially in costly out-of-set errors.