Learning Invariances using the Marginal Likelihood

Abstract

Kernels provide a powerful way of encoding assumptions about the class of functions that should be used for a particular learning problem. As a consequence, the generalisation ability of kernel methods depends strongly on the choice of kernel. In this work, we use invariances to create kernels with sophisticated inductive biases. Crucially, we show how the marginal likelihood from the Gaussian process framework can be used to learn an appropriate invariance through backpropagation for a given dataset. I will also discuss some technical advances that were made along the way, notably the ability to learn using only unbiased evaluations of the kernel function.

Date
Feb 17, 2020
Location
EURECOM, Sophia Antipolis, France