Evidential Uncertainty Probes for Graph Neural Networks

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Yu, Linlin, Li, Kangshuo, Saha, Pritom Kumar, Lou, Yifei, Chen, Feng
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866909533807312896
author Yu, Linlin
Li, Kangshuo
Saha, Pritom Kumar
Lou, Yifei
Chen, Feng
author_facet Yu, Linlin
Li, Kangshuo
Saha, Pritom Kumar
Lou, Yifei
Chen, Feng
contents Accurate quantification of both aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties is essential when deploying Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) in high-stakes applications such as drug discovery and financial fraud detection, where reliable predictions are critical. Although Evidential Deep Learning (EDL) efficiently quantifies uncertainty using a Dirichlet distribution over predictive probabilities, existing EDL-based GNN (EGNN) models require modifications to the network architecture and retraining, failing to take advantage of pre-trained models. We propose a plug-and-play framework for uncertainty quantification in GNNs that works with pre-trained models without the need for retraining. Our Evidential Probing Network (EPN) uses a lightweight Multi-Layer-Perceptron (MLP) head to extract evidence from learned representations, allowing efficient integration with various GNN architectures. We further introduce evidence-based regularization techniques, referred to as EPN-reg, to enhance the estimation of epistemic uncertainty with theoretical justifications. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed EPN-reg achieves state-of-the-art performance in accurate and efficient uncertainty quantification, making it suitable for real-world deployment.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_08097
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evidential Uncertainty Probes for Graph Neural Networks
Yu, Linlin
Li, Kangshuo
Saha, Pritom Kumar
Lou, Yifei
Chen, Feng
Machine Learning
Accurate quantification of both aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties is essential when deploying Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) in high-stakes applications such as drug discovery and financial fraud detection, where reliable predictions are critical. Although Evidential Deep Learning (EDL) efficiently quantifies uncertainty using a Dirichlet distribution over predictive probabilities, existing EDL-based GNN (EGNN) models require modifications to the network architecture and retraining, failing to take advantage of pre-trained models. We propose a plug-and-play framework for uncertainty quantification in GNNs that works with pre-trained models without the need for retraining. Our Evidential Probing Network (EPN) uses a lightweight Multi-Layer-Perceptron (MLP) head to extract evidence from learned representations, allowing efficient integration with various GNN architectures. We further introduce evidence-based regularization techniques, referred to as EPN-reg, to enhance the estimation of epistemic uncertainty with theoretical justifications. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed EPN-reg achieves state-of-the-art performance in accurate and efficient uncertainty quantification, making it suitable for real-world deployment.
title Evidential Uncertainty Probes for Graph Neural Networks
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.08097