HybridFlow: Quantification of Aleatoric and Epistemic Uncertainty with a Single Hybrid Model

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Hauptverfasser: Van Katwyk, Peter, Bergen, Karianne J.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Van Katwyk, Peter
Bergen, Karianne J.
author_facet Van Katwyk, Peter
Bergen, Karianne J.
contents Uncertainty quantification is critical for ensuring robustness in high-stakes machine learning applications. We introduce HybridFlow, a modular hybrid architecture that unifies the modeling of aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty by combining a Conditional Masked Autoregressive normalizing flow for estimating aleatoric uncertainty with a flexible probabilistic predictor for epistemic uncertainty. The framework supports integration with any probabilistic model class, allowing users to easily adapt HybridFlow to existing architectures without sacrificing predictive performance. HybridFlow improves upon previous uncertainty quantification frameworks across a range of regression tasks, such as depth estimation, a collection of regression benchmarks, and a scientific case study of ice sheet emulation. We also provide empirical results of the quantified uncertainty, showing that the uncertainty quantified by HybridFlow is calibrated and better aligns with model error than existing methods for quantifying aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty. HybridFlow addresses a key challenge in Bayesian deep learning, unifying aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty modeling in a single robust framework.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_05054
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle HybridFlow: Quantification of Aleatoric and Epistemic Uncertainty with a Single Hybrid Model
Van Katwyk, Peter
Bergen, Karianne J.
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Uncertainty quantification is critical for ensuring robustness in high-stakes machine learning applications. We introduce HybridFlow, a modular hybrid architecture that unifies the modeling of aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty by combining a Conditional Masked Autoregressive normalizing flow for estimating aleatoric uncertainty with a flexible probabilistic predictor for epistemic uncertainty. The framework supports integration with any probabilistic model class, allowing users to easily adapt HybridFlow to existing architectures without sacrificing predictive performance. HybridFlow improves upon previous uncertainty quantification frameworks across a range of regression tasks, such as depth estimation, a collection of regression benchmarks, and a scientific case study of ice sheet emulation. We also provide empirical results of the quantified uncertainty, showing that the uncertainty quantified by HybridFlow is calibrated and better aligns with model error than existing methods for quantifying aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty. HybridFlow addresses a key challenge in Bayesian deep learning, unifying aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty modeling in a single robust framework.
title HybridFlow: Quantification of Aleatoric and Epistemic Uncertainty with a Single Hybrid Model
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05054