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Enhancing Interpretability in Generative Modeling: Statistically Disentangled Latent Spaces Guided by Generative Factors in Scientific Datasets

Journal Article · · Machine Learning
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  1. Argonne National Laboratory
  2. National Renewable Energy Lab., Golden, CO (United States)
This study addresses the challenge of statistically extracting generative factors from complex, high-dimensional datasets in unsupervised or semi-supervised settings. We investigate encoder-decoder-based generative models for nonlinear dimensionality reduction, focusing on disentangling low-dimensional latent variables corresponding to independent physical factors. Introducing Aux-VAE, a novel architecture within the classical Variational Autoencoder framework, we achieve disentanglement with minimal modifications to the standard VAE loss function by leveraging prior statistical knowledge through auxiliary variables. These variables guide the shaping of the latent space by aligning latent factors with learned auxiliary variables. We validate the efficacy of Aux-VAE through comparative assessments on multiple datasets, including astronomical simulations.
Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR). Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC)
DOE Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308
OSTI ID:
2584766
Report Number(s):
NREL/JA-2C00-93144
Journal Information:
Machine Learning, Journal Name: Machine Learning Journal Issue: 9 Vol. 114
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English