提出新模型从无监督数据中发现因果表示,解决传统方法无法捕捉因果关系的问题。
Towards Unsupervised Causal Representation Learning via Latent Additive Noise Model Causal Autoencoders
- 基于加性噪声模型设计确定性自编码器,将因果结构显式建模为优化目标。
- 在摆动和流体等合成物理场景上优于现有方法,对复杂背景中的伪相关更鲁棒。
- 适合关注因果发现、表示学习的科研人员,尤其在缺乏标注数据时有效。
无监督表示学习旨在恢复潜在生成因素,但依赖统计独立性的标准方法往往无法捕捉因果依赖。核心挑战是可识别性:如解耦表示学习与非线性ICA文献所指出,在无监督、无辅助信号或强归纳偏置条件下,从观测数据中解耦因果变量是不可能的。本文提出潜加性噪声模型因果自编码器(LANCA),将加性噪声模型(ANM)作为强归纳偏置用于无监督发现。理论上证明,尽管ANM约束在一般混合情况下不保证唯一可识别性,但能通过将允许变换限制为仿射类,消除逐分量不确定性。方法上,针对变分自编码器(VAE)中随机编码会掩盖结构残差的问题,LANCA采用确定性Wasserstein自编码器并引入可微分的ANM层。该架构将残差独立性从被动假设转为显式优化目标。实验表明,LANCA在合成物理基准(摆动、流体)及真实感环境(CANDLE)上均优于现有最优基线,对复杂背景引发的伪相关表现出更强鲁棒性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Unsupervised representation learning seeks to recover latent generative factors, yet standard methods relying on statistical independence often fail to capture causal dependencies. A central challenge is identifiability: as established in disentangled representation learning and nonlinear ICA literature, disentangling causal variables from observational data is impossible without supervision, auxiliary signals, or strong inductive biases. In this work, we propose the Latent Additive Noise Model Causal Autoencoder (LANCA) to operationalize the Additive Noise Model (ANM) as a strong inductive bias for unsupervised discovery. Theoretically, we prove that while the ANM constraint does not guarantee unique identifiability in the general mixing case, it resolves component-wise indeterminacy by restricting the admissible transformations from arbitrary diffeomorphisms to the affine class. Methodologically, arguing that the stochastic encoding inherent to VAEs obscures the structural residuals required for latent causal discovery, LANCA employs a deterministic Wasserstein Auto-Encoder (WAE) coupled with a differentiable ANM Layer. This architecture transforms residual independence from a passive assumption into an explicit optimization objective. Empirically, LANCA outperforms state-of-the-art baselines on synthetic physics benchmarks (Pendulum, Flow), and on photorealistic environments (CANDLE), where it demonstrates superior robustness to spurious correlations arising from complex background scenes.
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