通过类比机制实现概念组合泛化,提升模型对新组合的理解能力。
Learning by Analogy: A Causal Framework for Composition Generalization
- 基于因果模块化与最小改变原则,构建分层概念生成框架。
- 理论证明该结构可从图文对等观测数据中唯一识别,支持学习。
- 在基准数据集上显著提升组合泛化性能,适用于复杂关系建模场景。
组合泛化——理解并生成已学概念的新组合——使模型能超越有限经验扩展能力。尽管有效,支撑这一关键能力的数据结构与原理仍不清晰。我们提出,组合泛化本质上需要将高层概念分解为可跨情境重组的低层基本概念,类似于人类在概念间建立类比。例如,从未见过孔雀吃米的人,可通过类比鸡吃米的情景想象出该画面。本文利用因果模块化与最小改变原则,形式化这一直觉过程,引入一种自然编码不同层次概念及其交互机制的分层生成过程。理论上,我们证明该方法能支持复杂概念间的关系组合泛化,超越以往假设简单叠加效应的工作。关键的是,我们还证明该潜在分层结构可从文本-图像对等可观测数据中被唯一恢复(可识别),这是学习此类生成过程的必要步骤。为验证理论,我们应用框架洞察,在基准数据集上取得显著性能提升。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Compositional generalization -- the ability to understand and generate novel combinations of learned concepts -- enables models to extend their capabilities beyond limited experiences. While effective, the data structures and principles that enable this crucial capability remain poorly understood. We propose that compositional generalization fundamentally requires decomposing high-level concepts into basic, low-level concepts that can be recombined across similar contexts, similar to how humans draw analogies between concepts. For example, someone who has never seen a peacock eating rice can envision this scene by relating it to their previous observations of a chicken eating rice. In this work, we formalize these intuitive processes using principles of causal modularity and minimal changes. We introduce a hierarchical data-generating process that naturally encodes different levels of concepts and their interaction mechanisms. Theoretically, we demonstrate that this approach enables compositional generalization supporting complex relations between composed concepts, advancing beyond prior work that assumes simpler interactions like additive effects. Critically, we also prove that this latent hierarchical structure is provably recoverable (identifiable) from observable data like text-image pairs, a necessary step for learning such a generative process. To validate our theory, we apply insights from our theoretical framework and achieve significant improvements on benchmark datasets.
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