Structured Kernel Regression VAE: A Computationally Efficient Surrogate for GP-VAEs in ICA

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Main Authors: Wei, Yuan-Hao, Deng, Fu-Hao, Cui, Lin-Yong, Sun, Yan-Jie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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_version_ 1866909735821770752
author Wei, Yuan-Hao
Deng, Fu-Hao
Cui, Lin-Yong
Sun, Yan-Jie
author_facet Wei, Yuan-Hao
Deng, Fu-Hao
Cui, Lin-Yong
Sun, Yan-Jie
contents The interpretability of generative models is considered a key factor in demonstrating their effectiveness and controllability. The generated data are believed to be determined by latent variables that are not directly observable. Therefore, disentangling, decoupling, decomposing, causal inference, or performing Independent Component Analysis (ICA) in the latent variable space helps uncover the independent factors that influence the attributes or features affecting the generated outputs, thereby enhancing the interpretability of generative models. As a generative model, Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) combine with variational Bayesian inference algorithms. Using VAEs, the inverse process of ICA can be equivalently framed as a variational inference process. In some studies, Gaussian processes (GPs) have been introduced as priors for each dimension of latent variables in VAEs, structuring and separating each dimension from temporal or spatial perspectives, and encouraging different dimensions to control various attributes of the generated data. However, GPs impose a significant computational burden, resulting in substantial resource consumption when handling large datasets. Essentially, GPs model different temporal or spatial structures through various kernel functions. Structuring the priors of latent variables via kernel functions-so that different kernel functions model the correlations among sequence points within different latent dimensions-is at the core of achieving disentanglement in VAEs. The proposed Structured Kernel Regression VAE (SKR-VAE) leverages this core idea in a more efficient way, avoiding the costly kernel matrix inversion required in GPs. This research demonstrates that, while maintaining ICA performance, SKR-VAE achieves greater computational efficiency and significantly reduced computational burden compared to GP-VAE.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_09721
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Structured Kernel Regression VAE: A Computationally Efficient Surrogate for GP-VAEs in ICA
Wei, Yuan-Hao
Deng, Fu-Hao
Cui, Lin-Yong
Sun, Yan-Jie
Machine Learning
The interpretability of generative models is considered a key factor in demonstrating their effectiveness and controllability. The generated data are believed to be determined by latent variables that are not directly observable. Therefore, disentangling, decoupling, decomposing, causal inference, or performing Independent Component Analysis (ICA) in the latent variable space helps uncover the independent factors that influence the attributes or features affecting the generated outputs, thereby enhancing the interpretability of generative models. As a generative model, Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) combine with variational Bayesian inference algorithms. Using VAEs, the inverse process of ICA can be equivalently framed as a variational inference process. In some studies, Gaussian processes (GPs) have been introduced as priors for each dimension of latent variables in VAEs, structuring and separating each dimension from temporal or spatial perspectives, and encouraging different dimensions to control various attributes of the generated data. However, GPs impose a significant computational burden, resulting in substantial resource consumption when handling large datasets. Essentially, GPs model different temporal or spatial structures through various kernel functions. Structuring the priors of latent variables via kernel functions-so that different kernel functions model the correlations among sequence points within different latent dimensions-is at the core of achieving disentanglement in VAEs. The proposed Structured Kernel Regression VAE (SKR-VAE) leverages this core idea in a more efficient way, avoiding the costly kernel matrix inversion required in GPs. This research demonstrates that, while maintaining ICA performance, SKR-VAE achieves greater computational efficiency and significantly reduced computational burden compared to GP-VAE.
title Structured Kernel Regression VAE: A Computationally Efficient Surrogate for GP-VAEs in ICA
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09721