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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.08682 |
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| _version_ | 1866912968187314176 |
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| author | Bing, Simon Wahl, Jonas Runge, Jakob |
| author_facet | Bing, Simon Wahl, Jonas Runge, Jakob |
| contents | We introduce structural causal bottleneck models (SCBMs), a novel class of structural causal models. At the core of SCBMs lies the assumption that causal effects between high-dimensional variables only depend on low-dimensional summary statistics, or bottlenecks, of the causes. SCBMs provide a flexible framework for task-specific dimension reduction while being estimable via standard, simple learning algorithms in practice. We analyse identifiability in SCBMs, connect them to information bottlenecks in the sense of Tishby & Zaslavsky (2015), and illustrate how to estimate them experimentally. We also demonstrate the benefit of bottlenecks for effect estimation in low-sample transfer learning settings. We argue that SCBMs provide an alternative to existing causal dimension reduction frameworks like causal representation learning or causal abstraction learning. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_08682 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Structural Causal Bottleneck Models Bing, Simon Wahl, Jonas Runge, Jakob Machine Learning We introduce structural causal bottleneck models (SCBMs), a novel class of structural causal models. At the core of SCBMs lies the assumption that causal effects between high-dimensional variables only depend on low-dimensional summary statistics, or bottlenecks, of the causes. SCBMs provide a flexible framework for task-specific dimension reduction while being estimable via standard, simple learning algorithms in practice. We analyse identifiability in SCBMs, connect them to information bottlenecks in the sense of Tishby & Zaslavsky (2015), and illustrate how to estimate them experimentally. We also demonstrate the benefit of bottlenecks for effect estimation in low-sample transfer learning settings. We argue that SCBMs provide an alternative to existing causal dimension reduction frameworks like causal representation learning or causal abstraction learning. |
| title | Structural Causal Bottleneck Models |
| topic | Machine Learning |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.08682 |