SearcharxivSearch

arXiv · 2503.20825

Debiasing Kernel-Based Generative Models

Abstract

We propose a novel two-stage framework of generative models named Debiasing Kernel-Based Generative Models (DKGM) with the insights from kernel density estimation (KDE) and stochastic approximation. In the first stage of DKGM, we employ KDE to bypass the obstacles in estimating the density of data without losing too much image quality. One characteristic of KDE is oversmoothing, which makes the generated image blurry. Therefore, in the second stage, we formulate the process of reducing the blurriness of images as a statistical debiasing problem and develop a novel iterative algorithm to improve image quality, which is inspired by the stochastic approximation. Extensive experiments illustrate that the image quality of DKGM on CIFAR10 is comparable to state-of-the-art models such as diffusion models and GAN models. The performance of DKGM on CelebA 128x128 and LSUN (Church) 128x128 is also competitive. We conduct extra experiments to exploit how the bandwidth in KDE affects the sample diversity and debiasing effect of DKGM. The connections between DKGM and score-based models are also discussed.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Tian Qin, Wei-Min Huang. 2025-03-26. Debiasing Kernel-Based Generative Models. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20825

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

A Hilbert-Valued Functional Decomposition Framework for Explaining Time-Dependent Outputs

Feature-based explanations quantify features' influence on model predictions, but are primarily designed for scalar outputs. In many applications, however, outputs are functional or multivariate, such as time-dependent trajectories in demand forecasting. Consequently, existing approaches typically explain each output location independently, ignoring dependencies across the output components. We address this limitation by developing a unified framework for feature-based explanations of time-dependent outputs. Specifically, we generalize functional decomposition to Hilbert-valued prediction functions and extend an existing feature-based explanation framework to this setting. Our framework introduces kernel-based output representations that enable time-dependency-aware explanations at multiple levels of temporal granularity, including time-specific, time-resolved, and time-aggregated, while providing a unified view in which existing methods arise as special cases. We validate our framework on synthetic and real-world data, including intraday financial market volatility prediction and energy demand forecasting.

stat.ML

Risk-Averse Decision Making with Multi-Level Reliability Guarantees

Many applications in engineering, including wireless broadcasting, require designs that provide performance certificates at different target outage levels. This paper studies the problem of maximizing the weighted average of such certificates in the presence of uncertainty about the true system state. The problem is shown to be equivalent to an optimization over nested prediction sets, connecting to the literature on conformal prediction and extending prior art on single-level risk-averse decision making. Furthermore, we derive a dual formulation that decouples optimization across input values. Numerical experiments on a diversity-based wireless transmission system illustrate the cost of enforcing multi-level certificates with a single shared policy and trace the Pareto trade-off between multiple reliability levels.

stat.ML

A distribution-free certification framework for trustworthy crash-severity prediction

Crash-severity models inform screening, dispatch and site prioritization, yet are deployed without a finite-sample statement of what one prediction means. Off-the-shelf guarantees fail here, because the features that make crash severity distinctive defeat them: the KABCO outcome is ordinal, the recorded label is a field assessment agreeing with medical severity about half the time, erring in a structured way, and deployment crosses jurisdictions and years calibration never saw. We develop a certification layer that wraps any severity model unmodified, with distribution-free guarantees using this structure: contiguous ordinal sets that read as "B or worse"; per-class validity for any pre-declared partition, with an oracle efficiency characterization; transfer of coverage to unobserved true severity through a declared reporting band, with a worst-case sharpness result; a one-sided certificate under deployment shift; and severity-weighted risk control. The guarantees compose with an attributable slack budget. The same analysis bounds what certification can achieve. A certified set's informativeness is governed by a functional of the true law that no base model can evade and that cannot be lower-bounded distribution-free; given a declared misreporting channel identified from record-linkage data, a nonvacuous lower bound on that floor becomes computable. On 5.2 million Texas records across seven base models spanning four decades, the layer attaches identical validity and certifies, on the vulnerable road users, a model-independent floor on set width that no base model beats, separating it from a remainder that stays bounded but distribution-free unidentifiable. The framework is released as an open-source package with theorem-level tests.

stat.ML