arXiv Machine Learning

Generalizing Metropolis-Hastings for DAG Sampling

The paper introduces duet sampling, a generalization of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm that selects two proposal distributions from a pool at each iteration to resample parents for multiple nodes in a directed acyclic graph (DAG). This approach enables Markov chain moves that mix more efficiently without extra computational cost, outperforming existing state‑of‑the‑art methods in experiments. The authors demonstrate that their novel moves, both alone and combined, achieve superior performance even when previous methods also adopt duet sampling.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 31

Joint Bayesian Inference of Graphical Structure and Parameters with a Single Generative Flow Network

The paper introduces JSP-GFN, a Generative Flow Network that jointly infers the structure and parameters of a Bayesian Network. It sequentially generates a directed acyclic graph edge by edge and then samples the corresponding conditional probability parameters once the full structure is known. Experiments on simulated and real data show that JSP‑GFN accurately approximates the joint posterior and outperforms existing methods.

By Tristan Deleu, Mizu Nishikawa-Toomey, Jithendaraa Subramanian, Esmeralda S. Whitammer, Laurent Charlin, Yoshua Bengio
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

Particle GFlowNets: Rethinking Generative Marginalization Models

The paper introduces Particle GFlowNets, showing that Generative Marginalization Models (MaMs) are equivalent to Generative Flow Networks. It extends MaMs to non‑autoregressive sampling and proposes an automatic full‑state rejuvenation criterion based on the Gelman‑Rubin statistic to accelerate learning. Experiments demonstrate significant training speedups in large combinatorial spaces.

By Tiago da Silva, Diego Mesquita, Salem Lahlou
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 12

Amortised Inference through One-Step Implicit Sampling

The paper introduces OSIS, a one‑step implicit sampler that uses short‑time MCMC dynamics to define a local target for an implicitly modelled distribution. In the asymptotic limit, the model converges to a fixed point of the MCMC kernel, enabling unbiased sampling from the Bayesian posterior. Experiments show OSIS outperforms multi‑step amortised samplers and non‑amortised MCMC baselines while being far more efficient at sampling time.

By Vincent Pauline, Kirill Tamogashev, Arran Carter, Sanghyeok Choi, Stefan Bauer, Esmeralda S. Whitammer
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 18

Structured Inference with Large Language Gibbs

arXiv:2606. 19264v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The knowledge encoded in large language models (LLMs) can serve as a substrate for structured reasoning over variables describing a complex world, but accessing this knowledge in a probabilistically coherent manner poses a difficult inference problem.

By Sanghyeok Choi, Henry Gouk, Esmeralda S. Whitammer