Active Learning for Gaussian Process Regression Under Self-Induced Boltzmann Weights

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Qing, Jixiang, Moss, Henry, Sachs, Matthias
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Qing, Jixiang
Moss, Henry
Sachs, Matthias
author_facet Qing, Jixiang
Moss, Henry
Sachs, Matthias
contents We consider the active learning problem where the goal is to learn an unknown function with low prediction error under an unknown Boltzmann distribution induced by the function itself. This self-induced weighting arises naturally in problems such as potential energy surface (PES) modeling in computational chemistry, yet poses unique challenges as the target distribution is unknown and its partition function is intractable. We propose \texttt{AB-SID-iVAR}, a Gaussian Process-based acquisition function that approximates the intractable Bayesian target distribution in closed form while avoiding partition function estimation, and is applicable to both discrete and continuous input domains. We also analyze a Thompson sampling alternative (\texttt{TS-SID-iVAR}) as a higher variance Monte Carlo variant. Despite the unknown target, under mild conditions, we establish that the terminal prediction error vanishes with high probability, and provide a tighter average-case guarantee. We demonstrate consistent improvements over existing approaches in this setting on synthetic benchmarks and real-world PES modeling and drug discovery tasks.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_10654
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Active Learning for Gaussian Process Regression Under Self-Induced Boltzmann Weights
Qing, Jixiang
Moss, Henry
Sachs, Matthias
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
We consider the active learning problem where the goal is to learn an unknown function with low prediction error under an unknown Boltzmann distribution induced by the function itself. This self-induced weighting arises naturally in problems such as potential energy surface (PES) modeling in computational chemistry, yet poses unique challenges as the target distribution is unknown and its partition function is intractable. We propose \texttt{AB-SID-iVAR}, a Gaussian Process-based acquisition function that approximates the intractable Bayesian target distribution in closed form while avoiding partition function estimation, and is applicable to both discrete and continuous input domains. We also analyze a Thompson sampling alternative (\texttt{TS-SID-iVAR}) as a higher variance Monte Carlo variant. Despite the unknown target, under mild conditions, we establish that the terminal prediction error vanishes with high probability, and provide a tighter average-case guarantee. We demonstrate consistent improvements over existing approaches in this setting on synthetic benchmarks and real-world PES modeling and drug discovery tasks.
title Active Learning for Gaussian Process Regression Under Self-Induced Boltzmann Weights
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.10654