Learning Kernels by Alignment for Multiclass Bayes Classification

The paper introduces a framework that learns the kernel used in kernel methods through alignment, leveraging the Collaborative Learning and Inference (CLaI) approach. It demonstrates that CLaI can be interpreted as a kernel alignment process and that its inference stage is equivalent to kernel Bayes classification with Parzen-window density estimation. By replacing cosine similarity with a learned Mahalanobis distance, the authors extend CLaI to multiclass classification, achieving higher accuracy, faster convergence, and lower calibration error on datasets such as CIFAR-10, PathMNIST, and SleepEDF, while also showing connections to Gaussian processes and competitive calibration in sepsis prediction.