Improved DSSMs for easier interpretable latent variables.
problem Complex and hard-to-interpret latent variables in DSSMs.
method Simplified predictive decoder and shrinkage priors.
result Interpretable latent variables improve forecasting performance.
New model captures state-dependent variability in partially observed systems.
problem Structured stochasticity not captured by constant-variance models.
method State-coupled stochastic volatility framework with particle expectation-maximization.
result Model consistently reduces recovery bias under partial observation.
Latent variable models improve RL by facilitating efficient learning and exploration.
problem Improving sample efficiency in reinforcement learning.
method Representation view of latent variable models for state-action value functions, incorporating kernel embeddings and UCB exploration.
result Established sample complexity of the proposed approach in online and offline settings, demonstrated superior performance in benchmarks.
Bayesian non-linear latent variable modeling for complex data.
problem Inference for GPLVMs is computationally limited and often leads to overfitting or underestimates uncertainty.
method Approximate Gaussian process mappings with random Fourier features for MCMC inference.
result Generalized RFLVMs perform well on various data types and applications.
This paper benchmarks speech LVMs against deterministic models and adapts a video model to speech.
problem Speech generation models are inferior to deterministic models.
method Developed a speech benchmark of LVMs and compared them against deterministic models.
result The Clockwork VAE outperforms previous LVMs and reduces the gap to deterministic models.
Improved exploration in RL with latent state marginalization.
problem Complexity of deep probabilistic models limits their practical use in reinforcement learning.
method Adopting latent variable policies within the MaxEnt framework, with low-cost marginalization of latent states.
result Effective marginalization leads to better exploration and more robust training.
Develops a method for lossless compression using latent variable models.
problem Lossless compression of large datasets.
method Bits back with asymmetric numeral systems (BB-ANS) using latent variable models.
result Achieves state-of-the-art lossless compression of full-size colour images.
New model uncovers non-Euclidean neural representations.
problem Discovering latent neural states in complex, non-Euclidean spaces.
method Manifold GPLVM for identifying latent variables and neural contributions.
result mGPLVM correctly recovers non-Euclidean latent structures in neural data.
We propose a nonparametric procedure to achieve fast inference in generative graphical models when the number of latent states is very large. The approach is based on iterative latent variable preselection, where we alternate between learning a 'selection function' to reveal the relevant latent variables, and use this …
A new method reduces variance in training discrete latent variable models.
problem High variance in stochastic gradient estimators for discrete latent variable models.
method Double control variates for score function estimators using Taylor expansions.
result Our method can have lower variance compared to other estimators.
How to model distribution of sequential data, including but not limited to speech and human motions, is an important ongoing research problem. It has been demonstrated that model capacity can be significantly enhanced by introducing stochastic latent variables in the hidden states of recurrent neural networks. Simultan…
Bayesian active learning reduces data needed for latent variable models.
problem Active learning for latent variable models, especially mixtures of linear regressions and HMMs with GLM observations.
method Maximum-mutual-information input selection for discrete latent variable regression models.
result Active learning can achieve large gains for mixtures of linear-Gaussian models and substantially reduces data needed for GLM-HMM.
New method for efficient Bayesian inference in GPSSMs.
problem Challenges in inference for Gaussian process state-space models.
method Free-form variational inference with stochastic gradient Hamiltonian Monte Carlo.
result Our method learns transition dynamics and latent states more accurately than competing methods.
Gradient matching with Gaussian processes is a promising tool for learning parameters of ordinary differential equations (ODE's). The essence of gradient matching is to model the prior over state variables as a Gaussian process which implies that the joint distribution given the ODE's and GP kernels is also Gaussian di…
A new method for efficient inference in sequential latent-variable models.
problem Computational challenges in integrating subject-specific random effects.
method Anchored variational inference framework to approximate posterior distributions.
result The method achieves accurate estimation with significant computational gains.
spex-LVM infers interpretable latent factors from biomedical data.
problem Inability to learn sparse and interpretable hidden states.
method Factorial latent variable model with sparse priors and domain-relevant annotations.
result Robustly identifies relevant structure in RNA-seq datasets.
Develops a new method for nonlinear dimension reduction using random features.
problem Statistical challenges in generalizing Gaussian process-based latent variable models to non-Gaussian data.
method Random feature latent variable models (RFLVMs) that approximate nonlinear relationships with linear functions of random features.
result RFLVMs produce comparable results to state-of-the-art methods on various data types.
New method infers hidden states in continuous-time phenomena better than traditional models.
problem Traditional HSMM's are limited to discrete time grids and cannot handle irregularly spaced data.
method Formulated integro-differential forward and backward equations for CTSMC's, introduced scalable Viterbi-type algorithm.
result Efficiently solved equations for posterior marginals and path estimates.
Generative models learn latent process to match target distributions.
problem Training flow-matching models with auxiliary stochastic dynamics.
method Introduces latent process generator matching, treating generative state as a deterministic image of a Markov process.
result Learn generator of a stochastic process with same marginal distributions.
Many efforts have been devoted to training generative latent variable models with autoregressive decoders, such as recurrent neural networks (RNN). Stochastic recurrent models have been successful in capturing the variability observed in natural sequential data such as speech. We unify successful ideas from recently pr…
Bayesian model for multi-environment prediction with latent variable changes.
problem Prediction in environments with changing latent variable distributions.
method Bayesian model with empirical Bayes prior and amortized variational algorithm.
result Method outperforms previous approaches in new environments.
We consider the problem of covariance matrix estimation in the presence of latent variables. Under suitable conditions, it is possible to learn the marginal covariance matrix of the observed variables via a tractable convex program, where the concentration matrix of the observed variables is decomposed into a sparse ma…
A new method learns latent variable updates directly, not approximating the posterior.
problem Intractable maximum-likelihood learning for complex latent-variable models.
method Amortised learning using wake-sleep Monte-Carlo strategy.
result Demonstrated effectiveness on various complex models.
Improved robust latent variable estimation for neural dynamics.
problem Inconsistent results due to noise and nonlinearity in existing models.
method Probabilistic approach to latent variable estimation in decomposed models.
result More accurate latent variable inference in nonlinear systems with diverse noise conditions.
Solves high-dimensional observation learning for control models.
problem Learning dynamics from high-dimensional images is challenging.
method Proposes a Beta DVBF approach to handle latent and observable space discrepancies.
result Demonstrates improved model learning from high-dimensional observations.
Bayesian network models with latent variables are widely used in statistics and machine learning. In this paper we provide a complete algebraic characterization of Bayesian network models with latent variables when the observed variables are discrete and no assumption is made about the state-space of the latent variabl…
Representation learning over graph structured data has been mostly studied in static graph settings while efforts for modeling dynamic graphs are still scant. In this paper, we develop a novel hierarchical variational model that introduces additional latent random variables to jointly model the hidden states of a graph…
Adaptive learning method identifies and corrects corrupted data.
problem Robust learning from corrupted training sets.
method Identifies corrupted and non-corrupted samples with latent Bernoulli variables, formulates as likelihood maximization with marginalized latent variables, solved via variational inference and Expectation-Maximization.
result Improves over state-of-the-art by automatically inferring corruption level with minimal overhead.
A new gradient estimator reduces variance near boundaries for binary latent variables.
problem Explosive gradient variance near boundaries in binary latent variable models.
method Introduces a new gradient estimator (bitflip-1) and an aggregated estimator (UGC) that uses either bitflip-1 or DisARM for each coordinate.
result UGC has uniformly lower variance than DisARM and achieves optimal optimization objectives.
PRGDS models count tensors with sparsity and burstiness.
problem Modeling sequential count data with sparsity and burstiness.
method Poisson-randomized gamma dynamical system with alternating Poisson and gamma latent states.
result Sparse PRGDS often outperforms other models in predicting count data.
Constructing powerful generative models for natural images is a challenging task. PixelCNN models capture details and local information in images very well but have limited receptive field. Variational autoencoders with a factorial decoder can capture global information easily, but they often fail to reconstruct detail…
This paper presents a novel latent variable recurrent neural network architecture for jointly modeling sequences of words and (possibly latent) discourse relations between adjacent sentences. A recurrent neural network generates individual words, thus reaping the benefits of discriminatively-trained vector representati…
With the introduction of the variational autoencoder (VAE), probabilistic latent variable models have received renewed attention as powerful generative models. However, their performance in terms of test likelihood and quality of generated samples has been surpassed by autoregressive models without stochastic units. Fu…
Paper proposes a fast algorithm to recover causal DAGs with latent variables.
problem Discovering causal relationships in the presence of latent variables.
method Cholesky factorization of covariance matrix with optimization for latent variables.
result The algorithm significantly outperforms previous methods in synthetic and real-world datasets.
Improved hierarchical discrete VAEs for better stability and performance.
problem Training stable and efficient hierarchical discrete VAEs with numerous latent variables.
method Introducing Relaxed-Responsibility Vector-Quantisation to parameterise discrete latent variables in a hierarchical structure.
result Achieved state-of-the-art bits-per-dim results for various standard datasets.
This work proposes a new method to train models with deep latent hierarchies using Optimal Transport.
problem Training models with deep latent hierarchies using VAEs often leads to the 'latent variable collapse' issue.
method Proposes a novel approach based on Optimal Transport to train models with deep latent hierarchies.
result The method avoids the 'latent variable collapse' issue and provides better sample generations and latent representation.
This paper reviews deep learning methods for state space models.
problem Analyzing temporal dynamics in dynamical systems.
method Selective review of deep neural network approaches for state space models.
result Unified perspective on discrete and continuous time SSMs.
Standard models assign disease progression to discrete categories or stages based on well-characterized clinical markers. However, such a system is potentially at odds with our understanding of the underlying biology, which in highly complex systems may support a (near-)continuous evolution of disease from inception to…
The Gaussian process latent variable model (GP-LVM) is a popular approach to non-linear probabilistic dimensionality reduction. One design choice for the model is the number of latent variables. We present a spike and slab prior for the GP-LVM and propose an efficient variational inference procedure that gives a lower …
A new VIS approach improves log-likelihood estimation in latent variable models.
problem Challenges in achieving high log-likelihood with VI for complex posterior distributions.
method Uses forward χ2 divergence to optimize proposal distribution for better log-likelihood estimation. result Consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in log-likelihood and parameter estimation.
A method uses RL to learn abstractions for planning, improving robot navigation and manipulation tasks.
problem Planning requires suitable abstractions for states and transitions, which RL struggles with for temporally extended tasks.
method Goal-conditioned policies learned with RL are incorporated into planning, with a latent variable model representing valid states.
result Our method significantly outperforms prior work on image-based robot navigation and manipulation tasks.
Developing a dialogue agent that is capable of making autonomous decisions and communicating by natural language is one of the long-term goals of machine learning research. Traditional approaches either rely on hand-crafting a small state-action set for applying reinforcement learning that is not scalable or constructi…
Probabilistic models with discrete latent variables naturally capture datasets composed of discrete classes. However, they are difficult to train efficiently, since backpropagation through discrete variables is generally not possible. We present a novel method to train a class of probabilistic models with discrete late…
Predicts multiple vehicle trajectories efficiently.
problem Predicting uncertain future motions of agents in dynamic scenes.
method Probabilistic framework learning latent variables for multi-step future modeling.
result State-of-the-art predictions on vehicle trajectory datasets.
Generative model disentangles dark matter halo properties.
problem Entangling physical factors in generative model latent spaces.
method Auxiliary-variable-guided framework with halo mass and concentration.
result Reveals mass-concentration scaling relation and identifies unusual halo formation.
In our previous study, we introduced stable specification search for cross-sectional data (S3C). It is an exploratory causal method that combines stability selection concept and multi-objective optimization to search for stable and parsimonious causal structures across the entire range of model complexities. In this st…
Improved training for VQ-VAE models with robust codebook learning.
problem Challenges in training discrete latent variable models, especially VQ-VAEs.
method Increased learning rate and periodic re-initialization of codebook for robust training.
result More robust training and increased usage of latent codewords, even for large codebooks.
DisARM improves gradient estimation for binary latent variables.
problem Challenges in training models with discrete latent variables.
method Uses antithetic sampling over continuous augmentation.
result DisARM consistently outperforms ARM and baseline methods in log-likelihood and variance.