arXiv:2509.22553stat.MLcs.LG2025-09

提出弱假设下线性因果表示学习新方法,可解耦潜在因果特征。

Linear Causal Representation Learning by Topological Ordering, Pruning, and Disentanglement

  • 基于拓扑排序、剪枝与解耦,弱化对干预数据和分布的依赖。
  • 在有限样本下优于现有方法,且能解释大语言模型行为。
  • 适合研究因果推断与AI可解释性的研究人员使用。

因果表示学习(CRL)因有望将复杂数据生成机制解耦为可解释的潜变量特征而受到因果推断与人工智能领域的关注。本文聚焦于潜变量上的线性结构因果模型,并假设从潜变量到观测数据的混合函数为线性。现有线性CRL方法通常依赖严格假设,如需单节点干预数据或对潜变量及外生测量噪声施加分布限制,但这些条件在实践中易被违反。为此,本文提出一种新型线性CRL算法,在更弱的环境异质性与数据生成分布假设下,仍能恢复潜变量因果特征至等价类。通过合成实验与大语言模型可解释性分析验证了该方法的优势,其在有限样本下表现更优,且具备融入因果推理理解人工智能的潜力。源代码已开源:https://github.com/utulie/code_for_linear_crl_paper_creator。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Causal representation learning (CRL) has garnered increasing interest from the causal inference and artificial intelligence communities due to its potential to disentangle complex data-generating mechanism into causally interpretable latent features by leveraging the heterogeneity of modern datasets. In this paper, we further contribute to the CRL literature, by focusing on the stylized linear structural causal model over latent features and assuming a linear mixing function that maps latent features to the observed data or measurements. Existing linear CRL methods often rely on stringent assumptions, such as access to single-node interventional data or restrictive distributional constraints on latent features and/or exogenous measurement noise. However, these prerequisites can be easy to violate in practice. In this work, we propose a novel linear CRL algorithm that, unlike existing methods, operates under weaker assumptions on environment heterogeneity and data-generating distributions while still recovering latent causal features up to an equivalence class. We further validate our new algorithm via synthetic experiments and an interpretability analysis of large language models, demonstrating both its superiority over competing methods in finite samples and its potential in integrating causality into understanding artificial intelligence. The source code is available at https://github.com/utulie/code_for_linear_crl_paper_creator.

因果表示线性模型可解释性潜变量

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