Identifiability of Product of Experts Models

Manav Kant, Eric Y Ma, Andrei Staicu, Leonard J Schulman, Spencer Gordon
Proceedings of The 27th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, PMLR 238:4492-4500, 2024.

Abstract

Product of experts (PoE) are layered networks in which the value at each node is an AND (or product) of the values (possibly negated) at its inputs. These were introduced as a neural network architecture that can efficiently learn to generate high-dimensional data which satisfy many low-dimensional constraints-thereby allowing each individual expert to perform a simple task. PoEs have found a variety of applications in learning. We study the problem of identifiability of a product of experts model having a layer of binary latent variables, and a layer of binary observables that are iid conditional on the latents. The previous best upper bound on the number of observables needed to identify the model was exponential in the number of parameters. We show: (a) When the latents are uniformly distributed, the model is identifiable with a number of observables equal to the number of parameters (and hence best possible). (b) In the more general case of arbitrarily distributed latents, the model is identifiable for a number of observables that is still linear in the number of parameters (and within a factor of two of best-possible). The proofs rely on root interlacing phenomena for some special three-term recurrences.

Cite this Paper

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v238-kant24a, title = { Identifiability of Product of Experts Models }, author = {Kant, Manav and Y Ma, Eric and Staicu, Andrei and J Schulman, Leonard and Gordon, Spencer}, booktitle = {Proceedings of The 27th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics}, pages = {4492--4500}, year = {2024}, editor = {Dasgupta, Sanjoy and Mandt, Stephan and Li, Yingzhen}, volume = {238}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {02--04 May}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v238/kant24a/kant24a.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v238/kant24a.html}, abstract = { Product of experts (PoE) are layered networks in which the value at each node is an AND (or product) of the values (possibly negated) at its inputs. These were introduced as a neural network architecture that can efficiently learn to generate high-dimensional data which satisfy many low-dimensional constraints-thereby allowing each individual expert to perform a simple task. PoEs have found a variety of applications in learning. We study the problem of identifiability of a product of experts model having a layer of binary latent variables, and a layer of binary observables that are iid conditional on the latents. The previous best upper bound on the number of observables needed to identify the model was exponential in the number of parameters. We show: (a) When the latents are uniformly distributed, the model is identifiable with a number of observables equal to the number of parameters (and hence best possible). (b) In the more general case of arbitrarily distributed latents, the model is identifiable for a number of observables that is still linear in the number of parameters (and within a factor of two of best-possible). The proofs rely on root interlacing phenomena for some special three-term recurrences. } }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T Identifiability of Product of Experts Models %A Manav Kant %A Eric Y Ma %A Andrei Staicu %A Leonard J Schulman %A Spencer Gordon %B Proceedings of The 27th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2024 %E Sanjoy Dasgupta %E Stephan Mandt %E Yingzhen Li %F pmlr-v238-kant24a %I PMLR %P 4492--4500 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v238/kant24a.html %V 238 %X Product of experts (PoE) are layered networks in which the value at each node is an AND (or product) of the values (possibly negated) at its inputs. These were introduced as a neural network architecture that can efficiently learn to generate high-dimensional data which satisfy many low-dimensional constraints-thereby allowing each individual expert to perform a simple task. PoEs have found a variety of applications in learning. We study the problem of identifiability of a product of experts model having a layer of binary latent variables, and a layer of binary observables that are iid conditional on the latents. The previous best upper bound on the number of observables needed to identify the model was exponential in the number of parameters. We show: (a) When the latents are uniformly distributed, the model is identifiable with a number of observables equal to the number of parameters (and hence best possible). (b) In the more general case of arbitrarily distributed latents, the model is identifiable for a number of observables that is still linear in the number of parameters (and within a factor of two of best-possible). The proofs rely on root interlacing phenomena for some special three-term recurrences.
APA
Kant, M., Y Ma, E., Staicu, A., J Schulman, L. & Gordon, S.. (2024). Identifiability of Product of Experts Models . Proceedings of The 27th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 238:4492-4500 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v238/kant24a.html.

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