arXiv AI

Learning Shortest Paths with Generative Flow Networks

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 31

Trajectory balance: Improved credit assignment in GFlowNets

The paper introduces a new learning objective called trajectory balance for Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets), aiming to improve credit assignment across long action sequences. It demonstrates that minimizing this objective yields a policy that samples exactly from the target distribution. Experiments on four domains show that trajectory balance enhances convergence, sample diversity, and robustness to long sequences and large action spaces.

By Esmeralda S. Whitammer, Moksh Jain, Emmanuel Bengio, Chen Sun, Yoshua Bengio
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

Partial GFlowNet: Accelerating Convergence in Large State Spaces via Strategic Partitioning

The paper introduces Partial GFlowNet, a method that partitions a large state space into overlapping partial state spaces to accelerate convergence of Generative Flow Networks. By restricting the actor’s exploration to these smaller regions and using a heuristic to switch between them, the approach enables efficient identification of high‑reward subregions. Experiments on popular datasets show that Partial GFlowNet converges faster, produces higher‑reward candidates, and improves diversity compared to existing methods.

By Xuan Yu, Xu Wang, Rui Zhu, Yudong Zhang, Yang Wang
arXiv AI
Jul 7

Graph Neural Networks are Heuristics

arXiv:2601. 13465v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Graph neural networks are usually treated as auxiliaries for combinatorial optimization: they imitate algorithms, guide search, or supply scores to classical procedures.

By Yimeng Min, Carla P. Gomes
arXiv AI
Aug 25

Which Algorithms Can Graph Neural Networks Learn?

arXiv:2602.13106v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In recent years, there has been growing interest in understanding neural architectures' ability to learn to execute discrete algorithms, a li...

By Solveig Wittig, Antonis Vasileiou, Robert R. Nerem, Timo Stoll, Floris Geerts, Yusu Wang, Christopher Morris
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 9

MPFlow: Learning Budgeted Max-Flow Optimization on the Lightning Network with Deep Graph Reinforcement Learning

We address liquidity placement in the Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN): given a fixed budget, which channels should a node open to maximize its routing capacity? We cast this as a budget-constrained combinatorial optimization problem on graphs, selecting $k$ edge additions that maximize $s$--$t$ max-flow, a theory-grounded measure of routing capacity, and solve it with graph reinforcement learning.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 31

Let the Flows Tell: Solving Graph Combinatorial Optimization Problems with GFlowNets

The paper introduces a method for tackling combinatorial optimization (CO) problems—often NP‑hard—by leveraging GFlowNets to sample solutions from the solution space. It designs Markov decision processes tailored to various CO tasks and trains conditional GFlowNets, incorporating efficient training techniques for long‑range credit assignment. Experiments on synthetic and realistic datasets show that these GFlowNet policies can efficiently locate high‑quality solutions, and the implementation is publicly available.

By Dinghuai Zhang, Hanjun Dai, Esmeralda S. Whitammer, Aaron Courville, Yoshua Bengio, Ling Pan
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 21

Routing by Reaching: Composition of Pre-trained GFlowNets for Multi-Objective Generation

arXiv:2602. 21565v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets) learn to sample diverse candidates in proportion to a reward function, making them well-suited for scientific discovery, where exploring multiple promising solutions is crucial.

By Seokwon Yoon, Youngbin Choi, Seunghyuk Cho, Seungbeom Lee, MoonJeong Park, Dongwoo Kim