ICYM2I: The illusion of multimodal informativeness under missingness

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Choi, Young Sang, Jeanselme, Vincent, Elias, Pierre, Joshi, Shalmali
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Choi, Young Sang
Jeanselme, Vincent
Elias, Pierre
Joshi, Shalmali
author_facet Choi, Young Sang
Jeanselme, Vincent
Elias, Pierre
Joshi, Shalmali
contents Multimodal learning is of continued interest in artificial intelligence-based applications, motivated by the potential information gain from combining different data modalities. However, modalities observed in the source environment may differ from the modalities observed in the target environment due to multiple factors, including cost, hardware failure, or the perceived \textit{informativeness} of a given modality. This change in missingness patterns between the source and target environment has not been carefully studied. Na{ï}ve estimation of the information gain associated with including an additional modality without accounting for missingness may result in improper estimates of that modality's value in the target environment. We formalize the problem of missingness, demonstrate its ubiquity, and show that the subsequent distribution shift induces bias when the missingness process is not explicitly accounted for. To address this issue, we introduce ICYM2I (In Case You Multimodal Missed It), a framework for the evaluation of predictive performance and information gain under missingness through inverse probability weighting-based correction. We demonstrate the importance of the proposed adjustment to estimate information gain under missingness on synthetic, semi-synthetic, and real-world datasets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_16953
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ICYM2I: The illusion of multimodal informativeness under missingness
Choi, Young Sang
Jeanselme, Vincent
Elias, Pierre
Joshi, Shalmali
Machine Learning
Multimodal learning is of continued interest in artificial intelligence-based applications, motivated by the potential information gain from combining different data modalities. However, modalities observed in the source environment may differ from the modalities observed in the target environment due to multiple factors, including cost, hardware failure, or the perceived \textit{informativeness} of a given modality. This change in missingness patterns between the source and target environment has not been carefully studied. Na{ï}ve estimation of the information gain associated with including an additional modality without accounting for missingness may result in improper estimates of that modality's value in the target environment. We formalize the problem of missingness, demonstrate its ubiquity, and show that the subsequent distribution shift induces bias when the missingness process is not explicitly accounted for. To address this issue, we introduce ICYM2I (In Case You Multimodal Missed It), a framework for the evaluation of predictive performance and information gain under missingness through inverse probability weighting-based correction. We demonstrate the importance of the proposed adjustment to estimate information gain under missingness on synthetic, semi-synthetic, and real-world datasets.
title ICYM2I: The illusion of multimodal informativeness under missingness
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.16953