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 method reduces variance in stochastic optimization with high confidence.
problem Achieving high-probability guarantees in stochastic optimization with weaker noise assumptions.
method Stochastic proximal point method combining proximal subproblem solver and probability booster.
result Demonstrates convergence with low sample complexity under bounded variance assumptions.
Recent work has shown that state-of-the-art classifiers are quite brittle, in the sense that a small adversarial change of an originally with high confidence correctly classified input leads to a wrong classification again with high confidence. This raises concerns that such classifiers are vulnerable to attacks and ca…
New method predicts sets under unknown covariate shift with high confidence.
problem Adapting to unknown covariate shift in prediction sets.
method PredSet-1Step, a flexible distribution-free method.
result Achieves asymptotic probably approximately correct coverage.
New method provides reliable high-confidence prediction intervals for high-impact events.
problem High-impact events require very high confidence prediction intervals, but classical methods provide uninformative intervals.
method Bridge extreme value statistics and conformal prediction to provide reliable and informative prediction intervals.
result Provides reliable and informative prediction intervals with high-confidence coverage.
Standard results in stochastic convex optimization bound the number of samples that an algorithm needs to generate a point with small function value in expectation. More nuanced high probability guarantees are rare, and typically either rely on "light-tail" noise assumptions or exhibit worse sample complexity. In this …
Efficient method for high confidence level inference using parallel stochastic optimization.
problem Uncertainty quantification for online estimation.
method Small number of independent multi-runs to construct t-based confidence intervals.
result Rigorous theoretical guarantee for exact coverage of confidence intervals.
New method for predicting paths of unpredictable objects with high confidence.
problem Need for dependable uncertainty estimates in motion planning with diverse unpredictable objects.
method Blend online conformal prediction, multiple time series techniques, and heteroscedasticity addressing.
result Simultaneous forecasting bands that cover entire paths with high probability.
SNPL learns safe policies for multi-objective interventions with high confidence.
problem Designing effective digital interventions balancing multiple objectives with noisy data.
method Leverages algorithmic stability to learn policies with high-confidence guarantees.
result Offers dramatic improvements in safety and policy gains with smaller sample sizes.
Develops a method to find costly high-confidence errors in black box models.
problem Finding rare high-confidence errors missed by random sampling.
method Adversarial perturbation-guided search technique to find errors at rates greater than expected given model confidence.
result Our Adversarial Distance search discovers high-confidence errors at a rate greater than expected given model confidence.
Optimal query allocation improves extractive QA efficiency with LLMs.
problem Efficiency and reliability in extractive question answering with LLMs.
method Learning-to-Defer framework that allocates queries to specialized models.
result Enhanced answer reliability with reduced computational overhead.
In the field of reinforcement learning there has been recent progress towards safety and high-confidence bounds on policy performance. However, to our knowledge, no practical methods exist for determining high-confidence policy performance bounds in the inverse reinforcement learning setting---where the true reward fun…
Estimating the value function for a fixed policy is a fundamental problem in reinforcement learning. Policy evaluation algorithms---to estimate value functions---continue to be developed, to improve convergence rates, improve stability and handle variability, particularly for off-policy learning. To understand the prop…
Optimizes policies for reinforcement learning with limited data.
problem Computing reliable policies with high confidence in reinforcement learning problems.
method Robust MDPs (RMDPs) with weighted L1 and L∞ norms to minimize ambiguity set spans.
result Optimized ambiguity sets improve policy performance significantly.
Classifiers used in the wild, in particular for safety-critical systems, should not only have good generalization properties but also should know when they don't know, in particular make low confidence predictions far away from the training data. We show that ReLU type neural networks which yield a piecewise linear cla…
Proposes a recursive MPC scheme with probabilistic safety guarantees for uncertain dynamic systems.
problem Probabilistic safety guarantees for MPC in dynamic environments with unknown stochastic agents.
method Uses conformal prediction to derive high-confidence prediction regions and gradually relax safety constraints online.
result Ensures recursive feasibility of MPC schemes by relaxing safety constraints over time.
Deep neural networks are easily fooled high confidence predictions for adversarial samples
This paper proposes a distributionally robust approach to logistic regression. We use the Wasserstein distance to construct a ball in the space of probability distributions centered at the uniform distribution on the training samples. If the radius of this ball is chosen judiciously, we can guarantee that it contains t…
CADRO optimizes DRO by reducing conservatism through cost-aware ambiguity sets.
problem Optimizing solutions under uncertainty with reduced conservatism.
method CADRO uses a cost-aware ambiguity set to reduce DRO's conservatism.
result CADRO provides high-confidence upper bounds and consistent estimators of out-of-sample expected cost.
Study non-asymptotic BPI guarantees for online RL.
problem Identify optimal policy in MDP with high confidence.
method Non-asymptotic sample complexity guarantees for NaS algorithm.
result Sample complexity depends on MDP connectivity and curvature.
Mutual teaching improves graph models with less labeled data.
problem Training graph models with limited labeled data.
method Dual model training with mutual teaching strategy.
result Significant performance improvement with less labeled data.
B-REX efficiently learns Atari game policies from pixel inputs using Bayesian methods.
problem Learning reward functions from visual inputs with uncertainty and safety considerations.
method Bayesian Reward Extrapolation (B-REX) using successor features and preferences.
result B-REX generates posterior samples efficiently, enabling high-confidence performance bounds.
A key impediment to reinforcement learning (RL) in real applications with limited, batch data is defining a reward function that reflects what we implicitly know about reasonable behaviour for a task and allows for robust off-policy evaluation. In this work, we develop a method to identify an admissible set of reward f…
We introduce and analyse two algorithms for exploration-exploitation in discrete and continuous Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) based on exploration bonuses. SCAL+ is a variant of SCAL (Fruit et al., 2018) that performs efficient exploration-exploitation in any unknown weakly-communicating MDP for which an upper bo…
Efficient algorithms for k-means clustering frequently converge to suboptimal partitions, and given a partition, it is difficult to detect k-means optimality. In this paper, we develop an a posteriori certifier of approximate optimality for k-means clustering. The certifier is a sub-linear Monte Carlo algorithm b…
It has been suggested that adversarial examples cause deep learning models to make incorrect predictions with high confidence. In this work, we take the opposite stance: an overly confident model is more likely to be vulnerable to adversarial examples. This work is one of the most proactive approaches taken to date, as…
Training a neural network for a classification task typically assumes that the data to train are given from the beginning. However, in the real world, additional data accumulate gradually and the model requires additional training without accessing the old training data. This usually leads to the catastrophic forgettin…
Unified framework for best arm identification and dueling bandits regret minimization.
problem Best arm identification and dueling bandits regret minimization.
method Tree-Guided Identify-Then-Exploit (TG-ITE) framework.
result Unified approach achieving optimal sample complexity and regret guarantees.
Smoothed analysis is a powerful paradigm in overcoming worst-case intractability in unsupervised learning and high-dimensional data analysis. While polynomial time smoothed analysis guarantees have been obtained for worst-case intractable problems like tensor decompositions and learning mixtures of Gaussians, such guar…
GAAVI offers anytime-valid tests for CMF global null and contrasts.
problem Inference on the conditional mean function for high confidence decisions.
method Asymptotic anytime-valid tests for CMF global null and contrasts.
result Achieves asymptotic type-I error guarantees, power one, and optimal sample complexity.
Paper develops a BERT-based classifier to reduce pathology report annotation workload.
problem Manual annotation of pathology reports is labor-intensive and time-consuming.
method Developed an automatic text classifier using BERT and introduced a human-centric metric to identify low-confidence cases.
result The model reduces manual annotation workload by 80% to 98%.
BALLET filters a high-confidence region of interest for Bayesian optimization.
problem High-dimensional and non-stationary Bayesian optimization challenges.
method Adaptive level-set estimation using two probabilistic models.
result Ballets can efficiently shrink the search space and exhibit tighter regret bounds.
Bayes-TrEx finds in-distribution examples for model inspection.
problem Challenges in interpreting neural networks, especially high-confidence failures and ambiguous classifications.
method Bayesian sampling approach to find in-distribution examples with specified prediction confidence.
result Bayes-TrEx enables more flexible holistic model analysis than just inspecting the test set.
Hybrid Bayesian-conformal framework improves uncertainty quantification in healthcare predictions.
problem Jointly satisfying distribution-free coverage guarantees and risk-adaptive precision in clinical decision-making.
method Integrates Bayesian hierarchical random forests with group-aware conformal calibration, using posterior uncertainties to weight conformity scores.
result Achieves target coverage (94.3% vs 95% target) with adaptive precision, 21% narrower intervals for low-uncertainty cases.
One of the main drawbacks of deep neural networks, like many other classifiers, is their vulnerability to adversarial attacks. An important reason for their vulnerability is assigning high confidence to regions with few or even no feature points. By feature points, we mean a nonlinear transformation of the input space …
New algorithms detect and react to multiple change points in online learning.
problem Learning under multiple change points in environments with unknown and frequent shifts.
method Proposed Anytime Tracking CUSUM (ATC) algorithms that balance detection of significant shifts.
result Properly tuned ATC algorithms achieve nearly minimax-optimal performance.
Measuring mutual information from finite data is difficult. Recent work has considered variational methods maximizing a lower bound. In this paper, we prove that serious statistical limitations are inherent to any method of measuring mutual information. More specifically, we show that any distribution-free high-confide…
The study analyzes group testing algorithms for identifying defective items with high confidence.
problem Identifying defective items from a population using group testing with high confidence.
method Formulated as a function learning problem using the PAC framework, analyzed three algorithms: column matching, combinatorial basis pursuit, and definite defectives.
result Derived bounds on the number of tests needed for approximate set identification, comparing with existing bounds and simulating performance.
New sampling bounds improve uniform coverage verification in machine learning.
problem Conservative bounds in classical coverage analyses at small failure probabilities.
method Variance-based analysis of uniform random sampling on a d-dimensional unit hypercube. result Sample complexity bound with logarithmic dependence on failure probability.
Tree-Query uses LLMs to discover causal relationships in a transparent, interpretable manner.
problem Error propagation in classical causal discovery methods and opaque, confidence-free behavior of recent LLM-based causal oracles.
method Tree-Query is a tree-structured, multi-expert LLM framework that reduces causal discovery to queries about backdoor paths and dependencies.
result Tree-Query provides interpretable judgments with robustness-aware confidence scores and improves structural metrics over LLM baselines.
Sampling random points can reveal submanifold topology.
problem Estimating the topology of submanifolds in Riemannian manifolds.
method Sampling random points in a neighborhood of the submanifold.
result Topology of the submanifold can be recovered with high confidence.
Researchers show how to secretly train models with hidden data, detect usage with high confidence.
problem Protecting training data from traceability in large language models.
method Gradient-based optimization to learn secret sequences absent from training data.
result Secret sequences can be learned by models without performance degradation, detectable with high confidence.
For an autonomous agent, executing a poor policy may be costly or even dangerous. For such agents, it is desirable to determine confidence interval lower bounds on the performance of any given policy without executing said policy. Current methods for exact high confidence off-policy evaluation that use importance sampl…
Bayesian REX learns Atari games from demonstrations efficiently.
problem Bayesian reward learning for complex control problems is computationally intractable.
method Bayesian Reward Extrapolation (Bayesian REX) pre-trains a low-dimensional feature encoding and uses preferences to perform fast Bayesian inference.
result Bayesian REX learns Atari games from demonstrations in 5 minutes, competitive with state-of-the-art methods.
ICP provides interval predictions with high confidence coverage.
problem High-risk settings where true output must be highly probable.
method ICP is a distribution-free, model-agnostic algorithm.
result ICP outputs prediction intervals with high coverage probability.
New method defends against patch attacks with high-certainty guarantees.
problem Patch attacks on images, especially physical adversarial attacks.
method Randomized smoothing, exploiting patch constraints.
result Meaningfully large robustness certificates against patch attacks.
Dash selects dynamic pseudo labels from unlabeled data for semi-supervised learning.
problem Efficiently using unlabeled data in semi-supervised learning while avoiding incorrect pseudo labels.
method Dynamic thresholding to select a subset of unlabeled examples for training.
result Dash achieves theoretical convergence and outperforms state-of-the-art methods empirically.
Framework ensures alignment between humans and machines in LLMs.
problem Human-machine misalignment in LLMs scoring mechanisms.
method Lightweight calibration framework for blackbox models.
result Provably guarantees alignment between humans and machines.