通过直接约束输出差异,提升模型不确定性估计的多样性与准确性。
Covariance Last-Layer Ensembles: Function-Space Diversity for Efficient Uncertainty Quantification

- 在函数空间直接施加协方差惩罚,防止成员预测趋同。
- 相同参数量下,性能接近深度集成,且保持准确率不变。
- 适用于需要可靠置信度评估的场景,如异常检测与安全系统。
最后层集成(LLE)通过共享冻结特征图上的K个线性单元,实现单次前向传播的分布外(OOD)检测不确定性估计,但因成员共享主干梯度,易收敛至相同函数,导致成员间多样性丧失。本文提出协方差最后层集成(cov-LLE),直接在成员激活上施加协方差惩罚,恢复函数空间多样性。在相同K值下,cov-LLE在保持准确率的前提下,使分布内预测方差从0.05提升至9.3(×10⁻³),误差校准度(ECE)从0.135降至0.090,接近深度集成(22.1和0.035)的表现,且仅需1倍主干计算成本。同时,将正交证书(OC)重新理解为一种LLE,构建了基于训练方式与评分策略的双轴分类体系,并提出无标签、尺度无关的方向分数,修复其近似分布外检测失效问题,在各主干上提升ROC AUC 0.16~0.18。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
A Last-Layer Ensemble (LLE), $K$ linear units on one shared frozen feature map, is an efficient single-pass approach to the disagreement-based epistemic uncertainty for out-of-distribution (OOD) detection. Its weakness is that members share the backbone gradient and can converge toward the same function, collapsing the inter-member diversity the signal depends on. Whether last-layer diversity can be restored, and what mitigates the collapse, is an open question. The weight-orthonormality defining Orthonormal Certificates (OC), the weight-orthonormal special case of the LLE, is only an indirect correction; it decorrelates the weights of the members, not their predictions. Here, we instead target the collapse directly in function space, with a Covariance Last-Layer Ensemble (cov-LLE) that places a direct covariance penalty on member activations. Cov-LLE restores the function-space diversity that weight-orthonormality cannot, and at matched $K$ recovers much of the diversity and calibration of a deep ensemble at $1\times$ backbone cost (in-distribution prediction variance $0.05\!\to\!9.3$ vs. $22.1$ ($\times10^{-3}$), and ECE $0.135\!\to\!0.090$ vs. $0.035$, for a $K\times$-cost deep ensemble), at no cost to accuracy. Viewing OC as a last-layer ensemble also organizes detectors into a two-axis taxonomy (by how their units are trained and how their outputs are scored) and exposes the OC score as a magnitude, motivating a scale-invariant, label-free direction score that repairs its near-OOD failure, adding $+0.16$ to $+0.18$ ROC AUC on every backbone.
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