arXiv:2602.11219cs.LGcs.AI2026-02

让预测不确定性的两类来源分开计算,提升可解释性。

Structurally Separated Uncertainty in Supervised Latent Variable Models

  • 将认知不确定性与随机不确定性分配到独立参数路径,用不同目标训练。
  • 在五个基准上显著降低两类不确定性的相关性,性能不变。
  • 适合需要区分错误原因和数据模糊性的模型可靠性分析场景。

预测不确定性通常被分解为认知不确定性和随机不确定性,但传统方法因两者源于同一预测分布而产生强相关估计。本文提出结构分离原则:将认知不确定性(可减少的预测误差)与随机不确定性(持续的标签模糊性)分别分配至不重叠的参数路径,并采用不同监督目标训练。我们在两种有监督隐变量模型——可信概念瓶颈模型和可信自解释神经网络中实现该原则,并证明梯度隔离结果:在所提参数化下,两类不确定性头无共享训练梯度耦合。在五个感知模糊性的基准上,结构分离显著降低两类不确定性的相关性,同时保持预测性能。进一步分析表明,随机不确定性估计与标注者或语料库定义的模糊性一致,而认知不确定性更敏感于预测误差和数据可用性。结果表明,有监督隐变量架构为获得不仅去相关、且操作上可区分的不确定性估计提供了可行路径。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Predictive uncertainty is commonly decomposed into epistemic and aleatoric components, but standard decompositions often produce strongly correlated estimates because both quantities are derived from the same predictive distribution. We study an alternative design principle, \emph{structural separation}, which assigns epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty to disjoint parameter paths trained with distinct supervision targets: reducible prediction error for epistemic uncertainty and persistent label ambiguity for aleatoric uncertainty. We instantiate this principle in two supervised latent-variable models, a Credal Concept Bottleneck Model and a credal Self-Explaining Neural Network, and prove a gradient-isolation result showing that the two uncertainty heads are not coupled through shared training gradients under the proposed parameterization. Across five ambiguity-aware benchmarks, structural separation substantially reduces epistemic-aleatoric correlation while preserving predictive performance. Further analyses show that aleatoric estimates track annotator- or corpus-derived ambiguity, while epistemic estimates are more sensitive to prediction error and data availability. These results suggest that supervised latent-variable architectures provide a practical route toward uncertainty estimates that are not merely decorrelated, but operationally distinguishable.

不确定性建模隐变量模型可解释性结构分离

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