The Alpha-Alternator: Dynamic Adaptation To Varying Noise Levels In Sequences Using The Vendi Score For Improved Robustness and Performance

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Auteurs principaux: Rezaei, Mohammad Reza, Dieng, Adji Bousso
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Rezaei, Mohammad Reza
Dieng, Adji Bousso
author_facet Rezaei, Mohammad Reza
Dieng, Adji Bousso
contents Current state-of-the-art dynamical models, such as Mamba, assume the same level of noisiness for all elements of a given sequence, which limits their performance on noisy temporal data. In this paper, we introduce the $α$-Alternator, a novel generative model for time-dependent data that dynamically adapts to the complexity introduced by varying noise levels in sequences. The $α$-Alternator leverages the Vendi Score (VS), a flexible similarity-based diversity metric, to adjust, at each time step $t$, the influence of the sequence element at time $t$ and the latent representation of the dynamics up to that time step on the predicted future dynamics. This influence is captured by a parameter that is learned and shared across all sequences in a given dataset. The sign of this parameter determines the direction of influence. A negative value indicates a noisy dataset, where a sequence element that increases the VS is considered noisy, and the model relies more on the latent history when processing that element. Conversely, when the parameter is positive, a sequence element that increases the VS is considered informative, and the $α$-Alternator relies more on this new input than on the latent history when updating its predicted latent dynamics. The $α$-Alternator is trained using a combination of observation masking and Alternator loss minimization. Masking simulates varying noise levels in sequences, enabling the model to be more robust to these fluctuations and improving its performance in trajectory prediction, imputation, and forecasting. Our experimental results demonstrate that the $α$-Alternator outperforms both Alternators and state-of-the-art state-space models across neural decoding and time-series forecasting benchmarks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_04593
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Alpha-Alternator: Dynamic Adaptation To Varying Noise Levels In Sequences Using The Vendi Score For Improved Robustness and Performance
Rezaei, Mohammad Reza
Dieng, Adji Bousso
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Current state-of-the-art dynamical models, such as Mamba, assume the same level of noisiness for all elements of a given sequence, which limits their performance on noisy temporal data. In this paper, we introduce the $α$-Alternator, a novel generative model for time-dependent data that dynamically adapts to the complexity introduced by varying noise levels in sequences. The $α$-Alternator leverages the Vendi Score (VS), a flexible similarity-based diversity metric, to adjust, at each time step $t$, the influence of the sequence element at time $t$ and the latent representation of the dynamics up to that time step on the predicted future dynamics. This influence is captured by a parameter that is learned and shared across all sequences in a given dataset. The sign of this parameter determines the direction of influence. A negative value indicates a noisy dataset, where a sequence element that increases the VS is considered noisy, and the model relies more on the latent history when processing that element. Conversely, when the parameter is positive, a sequence element that increases the VS is considered informative, and the $α$-Alternator relies more on this new input than on the latent history when updating its predicted latent dynamics. The $α$-Alternator is trained using a combination of observation masking and Alternator loss minimization. Masking simulates varying noise levels in sequences, enabling the model to be more robust to these fluctuations and improving its performance in trajectory prediction, imputation, and forecasting. Our experimental results demonstrate that the $α$-Alternator outperforms both Alternators and state-of-the-art state-space models across neural decoding and time-series forecasting benchmarks.
title The Alpha-Alternator: Dynamic Adaptation To Varying Noise Levels In Sequences Using The Vendi Score For Improved Robustness and Performance
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.04593