Jarrid Rector-Brooks

Maksym Korablyov

Epistemic Uncertainty is a measure of the lack of knowledge of a learner which diminishes with more evidence. While existing work focuses on… (see more) using the variance of the Bayesian posterior due to parameter uncertainty as a measure of epistemic uncertainty, we argue that this does not capture the part of lack of knowledge induced by model misspecification. We discuss how the excess risk, which is the gap between the generalization error of a predictor and the Bayes predictor, is a sound measure of epistemic uncertainty which captures the effect of model misspecification. We thus propose a principled framework for directly estimating the excess risk by learning a secondary predictor for the generalization error and subtracting an estimate of aleatoric uncertainty, i.e., intrinsic unpredictability. We discuss the merits of this novel measure of epistemic uncertainty, and highlight how it differs from variance-based measures of epistemic uncertainty and addresses its major pitfall. Our framework, Direct Epistemic Uncertainty Prediction (DEUP) is particularly interesting in interactive learning environments, where the learner is allowed to acquire novel examples in each round. Through a wide set of experiments, we illustrate how existing methods in sequential model optimization can be improved with epistemic uncertainty estimates from DEUP, and how DEUP can be used to drive exploration in reinforcement learning. We also evaluate the quality of uncertainty estimates from DEUP for probabilistic image classification and predicting synergies of drug combinations.

2023-02-13

TMLR (accepted)

openreview.net

Improving and generalizing flow-based generative models with minibatch optimal transport

Alexander Tong

Yanlei Zhang

Kilian FATRAS

Continuous normalizing flows (CNFs) are an attractive generative modeling technique, but they have been held back by limitations in their si… (see more)mulation-based maximum likelihood training. We introduce the generalized conditional flow matching (CFM) technique, a family of simulation-free training objectives for CNFs. CFM features a stable regression objective like that used to train the stochastic flow in diffusion models but enjoys the efficient inference of deterministic flow models. In contrast to both diffusion models and prior CNF training algorithms, CFM does not require the source distribution to be Gaussian or require evaluation of its density. A variant of our objective is optimal transport CFM (OT-CFM), which creates simpler flows that are more stable to train and lead to faster inference, as evaluated in our experiments. Furthermore, we show that when the true OT plan is available, our OT-CFM method approximates dynamic OT. Training CNFs with CFM improves results on a variety of conditional and unconditional generation tasks, such as inferring single cell dynamics, unsupervised image translation, and Schr\"odinger bridge inference.

2023-02-01

ArXiv (preprint)

Improving and generalizing flow-based generative models with minibatch optimal transport

Alexander Tong

Yanlei Zhang

Kilian FATRAS

Continuous normalizing flows (CNFs) are an attractive generative modeling technique, but they have been held back by limitations in their si… (see more)mulation-based maximum likelihood training. We introduce the generalized conditional flow matching (CFM) technique, a family of simulation-free training objectives for CNFs. CFM features a stable regression objective like that used to train the stochastic flow in diffusion models but enjoys the efficient inference of deterministic flow models. In contrast to both diffusion models and prior CNF training algorithms, CFM does not require the source distribution to be Gaussian or require evaluation of its density. A variant of our objective is optimal transport CFM (OT-CFM), which creates simpler flows that are more stable to train and lead to faster inference, as evaluated in our experiments. Furthermore, we show that when the true OT plan is available, our OT-CFM method approximates dynamic OT. Training CNFs with CFM improves results on a variety of conditional and unconditional generation tasks, such as inferring single cell dynamics, unsupervised image translation, and Schr\"odinger bridge inference.

2023-02-01

ArXiv (preprint)

Improving and generalizing flow-based generative models with minibatch optimal transport

Alexander Tong

Yanlei Zhang

Kilian FATRAS

Continuous normalizing flows (CNFs) are an attractive generative modeling technique, but they have been held back by limitations in their si… (see more)mulation-based maximum likelihood training. We introduce the generalized conditional flow matching (CFM) technique, a family of simulation-free training objectives for CNFs. CFM features a stable regression objective like that used to train the stochastic flow in diffusion models but enjoys the efficient inference of deterministic flow models. In contrast to both diffusion models and prior CNF training algorithms, CFM does not require the source distribution to be Gaussian or require evaluation of its density. A variant of our objective is optimal transport CFM (OT-CFM), which creates simpler flows that are more stable to train and lead to faster inference, as evaluated in our experiments. Furthermore, we show that when the true OT plan is available, our OT-CFM method approximates dynamic OT. Training CNFs with CFM improves results on a variety of conditional and unconditional generation tasks, such as inferring single cell dynamics, unsupervised image translation, and Schr\"odinger bridge inference.

2023-02-01

ArXiv (preprint)

Improving and generalizing flow-based generative models with minibatch optimal transport

Alexander Tong

Yanlei Zhang

Kilian FATRAS

Continuous normalizing flows (CNFs) are an attractive generative modeling technique, but they have been held back by limitations in their si… (see more)mulation-based maximum likelihood training. We introduce the generalized conditional flow matching (CFM) technique, a family of simulation-free training objectives for CNFs. CFM features a stable regression objective like that used to train the stochastic flow in diffusion models but enjoys the efficient inference of deterministic flow models. In contrast to both diffusion models and prior CNF training algorithms, CFM does not require the source distribution to be Gaussian or require evaluation of its density. A variant of our objective is optimal transport CFM (OT-CFM), which creates simpler flows that are more stable to train and lead to faster inference, as evaluated in our experiments. Furthermore, we show that when the true OT plan is available, our OT-CFM method approximates dynamic OT. Training CNFs with CFM improves results on a variety of conditional and unconditional generation tasks, such as inferring single cell dynamics, unsupervised image translation, and Schr\"odinger bridge inference.

2023-02-01

ArXiv (preprint)

Conditional Flow Matching: Simulation-Free Dynamic Optimal Transport

Alexander Tong

Yanlei Zhang

Kilian FATRAS

Continuous normalizing ﬂows (CNFs) are an attractive generative modeling technique, but they have thus far been held back by limitations i… (see more)n their simulation-based maximum likelihood training. In this paper, we introduce a new technique called conditional ﬂow matching (CFM), a simulation-free training objective for CNFs. CFM features a stable regression objective like that used to train the stochastic ﬂow in diffusion models but enjoys the efﬁcient inference of deterministic ﬂow models. In contrast to both diffusion models and prior CNF training algorithms, our CFM objec-tive does not require the source distribution to be Gaussian or require evaluation of its density. Based on this new objective, we also introduce optimal transport CFM (OT-CFM), which creates simpler ﬂows that are more stable to train and lead to faster inference, as evaluated in our experiments. Training CNFs with CFM improves results on a variety of conditional and unconditional generation tasks such as inferring single cell dynamics, unsupervised image translation, and Schr ¨ odinger bridge inference. Code is available at https://github.com/atong01/ conditional-flow-matching .

2023-01-01

arXiv.org (preprint)

Conditional Flow Matching: Simulation-Free Dynamic Optimal Transport

Alexander Tong

Yanlei Zhang

Kilian FATRAS

2023-01-01

arXiv.org (preprint)

Learning GFlowNets from partial episodes for improved convergence and stability

Kanika Madan

Maksym Korablyov

Moksh J. Jain

Andrei Cristian Nica

Tom Bosc

Nikolay Malkin

Generative flow networks (GFlowNets) are a family of algorithms for training a sequential sampler of discrete objects under an unnormalized … (see more)target density and have been successfully used for various probabilistic modeling tasks. Existing training objectives for GFlowNets are either local to states or transitions, or propagate a reward signal over an entire sampling trajectory. We argue that these alternatives represent opposite ends of a gradient bias-variance tradeoff and propose a way to exploit this tradeoff to mitigate its harmful effects. Inspired by the TD(

2023-01-01

ICML (published)

openreview.net

Multi-Objective GFlowNets

Moksh J. Jain

Sharath Chandra Raparthy

Alex Hernandez-Garcia

Santiago Miret

We study the problem of generating diverse candidates in the context of Multi-Objective Optimization. In many applications of machine learni… (see more)ng such as drug discovery and material design, the goal is to generate candidates which simultaneously optimize a set of potentially conflicting objectives. Moreover, these objectives are often imperfect evaluations of some underlying property of interest, making it important to generate diverse candidates to have multiple options for expensive downstream evaluations. We propose Multi-Objective GFlowNets (MOGFNs), a novel method for generating diverse Pareto optimal solutions, based on GFlowNets. We introduce two variants of MOGFNs: MOGFN-PC, which models a family of independent sub-problems defined by a scalarization function, with reward-conditional GFlowNets, and MOGFN-AL, which solves a sequence of sub-problems defined by an acquisition function in an active learning loop. Our experiments on wide variety of synthetic and benchmark tasks demonstrate advantages of the proposed methods in terms of the Pareto performance and importantly, improved candidate diversity, which is the main contribution of this work.

2022-10-23

ArXiv (preprint)

Multi-Objective GFlowNets

Moksh J. Jain

Sharath Chandra Raparthy

Alex Hernandez-Garcia

Santiago Miret

We study the problem of generating diverse candidates in the context of Multi-Objective Optimization. In many applications of machine learni… (see more)ng such as drug discovery and material design, the goal is to generate candidates which simultaneously optimize a set of potentially conflicting objectives. Moreover, these objectives are often imperfect evaluations of some underlying property of interest, making it important to generate diverse candidates to have multiple options for expensive downstream evaluations. We propose Multi-Objective GFlowNets (MOGFNs), a novel method for generating diverse Pareto optimal solutions, based on GFlowNets. We introduce two variants of MOGFNs: MOGFN-PC, which models a family of independent sub-problems defined by a scalarization function, with reward-conditional GFlowNets, and MOGFN-AL, which solves a sequence of sub-problems defined by an acquisition function in an active learning loop. Our experiments on wide variety of synthetic and benchmark tasks demonstrate advantages of the proposed methods in terms of the Pareto performance and importantly, improved candidate diversity, which is the main contribution of this work.

2022-10-23

ArXiv (preprint)

Multi-Objective GFlowNets

Moksh J. Jain

Sharath Chandra Raparthy

Alex Hernandez-Garcia

Santiago Miret

We study the problem of generating diverse candidates in the context of Multi-Objective Optimization. In many applications of machine learni… (see more)ng such as drug discovery and material design, the goal is to generate candidates which simultaneously optimize a set of potentially conflicting objectives. Moreover, these objectives are often imperfect evaluations of some underlying property of interest, making it important to generate diverse candidates to have multiple options for expensive downstream evaluations. We propose Multi-Objective GFlowNets (MOGFNs), a novel method for generating diverse Pareto optimal solutions, based on GFlowNets. We introduce two variants of MOGFNs: MOGFN-PC, which models a family of independent sub-problems defined by a scalarization function, with reward-conditional GFlowNets, and MOGFN-AL, which solves a sequence of sub-problems defined by an acquisition function in an active learning loop. Our experiments on wide variety of synthetic and benchmark tasks demonstrate advantages of the proposed methods in terms of the Pareto performance and importantly, improved candidate diversity, which is the main contribution of this work.

2022-10-23

ArXiv (preprint)

Biological Sequence Design with GFlowNets

Moksh J. Jain

Alex Hernandez-Garcia