arXiv Machine Learning

Causal Variational Deep Embedding: A Family of Interventional Generators for Confounded Images

arXiv:2606. 21806v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Deep generative models reproduce the observational distribution of their training data, inheriting any spurious associations it contains.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 27

Controlling for Omitted Variable Bias in Deep Neural Networks

The paper introduces a control‑variable framework for deep neural networks to mitigate omitted variable bias, particularly shortcut learning where covariates like demographics influence predictions. It refits the final layer of a pre‑trained network using cross‑fitting with ridge penalisation, orthogonalises covariate effects, and marginalises predictions over covariate distributions to achieve unbiased, interpretable results. Experiments on simulated images and neuroimaging data show consistent estimation of true effects and performance close to models trained on unconfounded data.

By Manuel Pfeuffer, Roshan Prakash Rane, Kerstin Ritter, Sonja Greven
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 23

Intervention, Not Shared Latents: Blocking Visual Shortcuts in Audio-Video Generation

The paper investigates why joint audio–video generators often learn to predict sound from visual appearance rather than from the underlying event, a problem termed the visual shortcut. By constructing a controlled causal model where audio is independent of video appearance, the authors show that common remedies such as shared latent spaces fail to prevent this shortcut. They propose that intervening on the nuisance appearance is necessary and sufficient for counterfactual invariance, and validate this approach across synthetic and real datasets, highlighting the remaining challenge of unknown nuisances.

By Jian Xu, Delu Zeng, John Paisley
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

Causal Inference with Unobserved Confounding: A Mixture Learning Perspective

The paper introduces a mixture‑learning framework for causal inference with unobserved confounding, treating latent confounders as sources of heterogeneity that create mixture structures in observed data. By assuming suitable structural and identifiability conditions, it shows that recovering the mixing distribution and component mechanisms allows estimation of interventional distributions and causal estimands. The authors illustrate the approach with Bernoulli mixture examples, extend it to high‑dimensional exponential‑family mixtures with dependent outcomes, and relate it to panel‑data settings, latent factor models, and synthetic interventions.

By Mansi Sood, Devavrat Shah
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 3

Nonparametric Partial Disentanglement via Mechanism Sparsity: Sparse Actions, Interventions and Sparse Temporal Dependencies

arXiv:2401. 04890v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: This work introduces a novel principle for disentanglement we call mechanism sparsity regularization, which applies when the latent factors of interest depend sparsely on observed auxiliary variables and/or past latent factors.

By S\'ebastien Lachapelle, Pau Rodr\'iguez L\'opez, Yash Sharma, Katie Everett, R\'emi Le Priol, Alexandre Lacoste, Simon Lacoste-Julien