LieAugmenter: Equivariant Learning by Discovering Symmetries with Learnable Augmentations

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Main Authors: Santos-Escriche, Eduardo, Lin, Ya-Wei Eileen, Jegelka, Stefanie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Santos-Escriche, Eduardo
Lin, Ya-Wei Eileen
Jegelka, Stefanie
author_facet Santos-Escriche, Eduardo
Lin, Ya-Wei Eileen
Jegelka, Stefanie
contents Data augmentation is a powerful mechanism in equivariant machine learning, encouraging symmetry by training networks to produce consistent outputs under transformed inputs. Yet, effective augmentation typically requires the underlying symmetry to be specified a priori, which can limit generalization when symmetries are unknown or only approximately valid. To address this, we introduce LieAugmenter, an end-to-end framework that discovers task-relevant continuous symmetries through learnable augmentations. Specifically, the augmentation generator is parameterized using the theory of Lie groups and trained jointly with the prediction network using the augmented views. The learned augmentations are task-adaptive, enabling effective and interpretable symmetry discovery. We provide a theoretical analysis of identifiability and show that our method yields symmetry-respecting models for the identified groups. Empirically, LieAugmenter outperforms baselines on image classification, as well as on the prediction of N-body dynamics and molecular properties. In addition, it can also provide an interpretable signature for detecting the absence of symmetries.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_03914
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LieAugmenter: Equivariant Learning by Discovering Symmetries with Learnable Augmentations
Santos-Escriche, Eduardo
Lin, Ya-Wei Eileen
Jegelka, Stefanie
Machine Learning
Data augmentation is a powerful mechanism in equivariant machine learning, encouraging symmetry by training networks to produce consistent outputs under transformed inputs. Yet, effective augmentation typically requires the underlying symmetry to be specified a priori, which can limit generalization when symmetries are unknown or only approximately valid. To address this, we introduce LieAugmenter, an end-to-end framework that discovers task-relevant continuous symmetries through learnable augmentations. Specifically, the augmentation generator is parameterized using the theory of Lie groups and trained jointly with the prediction network using the augmented views. The learned augmentations are task-adaptive, enabling effective and interpretable symmetry discovery. We provide a theoretical analysis of identifiability and show that our method yields symmetry-respecting models for the identified groups. Empirically, LieAugmenter outperforms baselines on image classification, as well as on the prediction of N-body dynamics and molecular properties. In addition, it can also provide an interpretable signature for detecting the absence of symmetries.
title LieAugmenter: Equivariant Learning by Discovering Symmetries with Learnable Augmentations
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03914