arXiv Machine Learning

CASP: Learning-Augmented Offline Approximation with Verifiable Certificates and Bounded-Loss PAC Guarantees

arXiv:2607. 14545v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Machine-learned predictions can speed up offline NP-hard optimization, but asking a predictor what to do amounts to asking it to solve the problem, and committing an unchecked prediction forfeits every worst-case guarantee.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

When May a Model Replace the Experiment? Audits, Licenses, and the Price of Trust in Surrogate-Driven Design

arXiv:2608. 01378v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Design campaigns in chemistry, materials science, and machine learning share a bottleneck: determining how good a candidate truly is requires an expensive evaluation - an experiment, a first-principles simulation, or a full training run.

By Shuangxiu (Max), Ma (Zachary), Wenhe (Zachary), Zhao
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 20

Contrasting Cost-Agnostic and Cost-Sensitive Losses under Limited Model Capacity via $\mathcal H$-consistency

The paper investigates the difference between cost‑agnostic and cost‑sensitive loss functions when model capacity is limited. It shows that, unlike in ideal infinite‑capacity settings, optimizing a cost‑sensitive objective can yield a strictly better downstream decision than post‑processing a cost‑agnostic model. The authors prove this gap under a hypothesis class that can recover the optimal decision boundary but not the optimal cost‑agnostic hypothesis, and provide a simple example and empirical evidence on UCI datasets with simple models.

By Jessica Finocchiaro, Sanket Shah, Milind Tambe
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 12

Optimistic Rates for Multiclass PAC Learning

arXiv:2608. 10869v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Worst-case multiclass bounds do not become smaller when the best classifier is already nearly correct: what is missing is an optimistic rate, a guarantee whose fluctuation scales with the oracle risk itself.

By Xiaoyu Li, Andi Han, Jiaojiao Jiang, Junbin Gao
arXiv AI
Sep 10

How to Verify Probabilistic Consistency of Predictive Models

The paper presents an interactive probabilistically checkable proof (PCP) protocol that allows a polynomial‑time verifier to check the approximate consistency of a probabilistic predictor defined by two circuits, P and Q. By evaluating these circuits at a few points and querying a proof oracle that encodes a witnessing probability distribution, the verifier can confirm that the predictor’s many conditional‑probability claims are self‑consistent. The authors also establish that the problem of verifying l₂‑approximate consistency for explicit probabilistic claims lies in NP, with certificates of size O(mn + log B), and show how to eliminate dependence on the input bit‑precision B through a small additive gap.

By Orr Paradise, Oliver Richardson, Yoshua Bengio, Shafi Goldwasser