ALINE: Joint Amortization for Bayesian Inference and Active Data Acquisition

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Huang, Daolang, Wen, Xinyi, Bharti, Ayush, Kaski, Samuel, Acerbi, Luigi
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Huang, Daolang
Wen, Xinyi
Bharti, Ayush
Kaski, Samuel
Acerbi, Luigi
author_facet Huang, Daolang
Wen, Xinyi
Bharti, Ayush
Kaski, Samuel
Acerbi, Luigi
contents Many critical applications, from autonomous scientific discovery to personalized medicine, demand systems that can both strategically acquire the most informative data and instantaneously perform inference based upon it. While amortized methods for Bayesian inference and experimental design offer part of the solution, neither approach is optimal in the most general and challenging task, where new data needs to be collected for instant inference. To tackle this issue, we introduce the Amortized Active Learning and Inference Engine (ALINE), a unified framework for amortized Bayesian inference and active data acquisition. ALINE leverages a transformer architecture trained via reinforcement learning with a reward based on self-estimated information gain provided by its own integrated inference component. This allows it to strategically query informative data points while simultaneously refining its predictions. Moreover, ALINE can selectively direct its querying strategy towards specific subsets of model parameters or designated predictive tasks, optimizing for posterior estimation, data prediction, or a mixture thereof. Empirical results on regression-based active learning, classical Bayesian experimental design benchmarks, and a psychometric model with selectively targeted parameters demonstrate that ALINE delivers both instant and accurate inference along with efficient selection of informative points.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_07259
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ALINE: Joint Amortization for Bayesian Inference and Active Data Acquisition
Huang, Daolang
Wen, Xinyi
Bharti, Ayush
Kaski, Samuel
Acerbi, Luigi
Machine Learning
Many critical applications, from autonomous scientific discovery to personalized medicine, demand systems that can both strategically acquire the most informative data and instantaneously perform inference based upon it. While amortized methods for Bayesian inference and experimental design offer part of the solution, neither approach is optimal in the most general and challenging task, where new data needs to be collected for instant inference. To tackle this issue, we introduce the Amortized Active Learning and Inference Engine (ALINE), a unified framework for amortized Bayesian inference and active data acquisition. ALINE leverages a transformer architecture trained via reinforcement learning with a reward based on self-estimated information gain provided by its own integrated inference component. This allows it to strategically query informative data points while simultaneously refining its predictions. Moreover, ALINE can selectively direct its querying strategy towards specific subsets of model parameters or designated predictive tasks, optimizing for posterior estimation, data prediction, or a mixture thereof. Empirical results on regression-based active learning, classical Bayesian experimental design benchmarks, and a psychometric model with selectively targeted parameters demonstrate that ALINE delivers both instant and accurate inference along with efficient selection of informative points.
title ALINE: Joint Amortization for Bayesian Inference and Active Data Acquisition
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07259