Related papers: Black-Box Policy Search with Probabilistic Program…

Probabilistic programming systems enable users to encode model structure and naturally reason about uncertainties, which can be leveraged towards improved Bayesian optimization (BO) methods. Here we present a probabilistic program embedding…

Simulation models, in particular agent-based models, are gaining popularity in economics. The considerable flexibility they offer, as well as their capacity to reproduce a variety of empirically observed behaviours of complex systems, give…

Randomized rounding is a technique that was originally used to approximate hard offline discrete optimization problems from a mathematical programming relaxation. Since then it has also been used to approximately solve sequential stochastic…

The discovery of genomic polymorphisms influencing gene expression (also known as expression quantitative trait loci or eQTLs) can be formulated as a sparse Bayesian multivariate/multiple regression problem. An important aspect in the…

A widely used heuristic for solving stochastic optimization problems is to use a deterministic rolling horizon procedure, which has been modified to handle uncertainty (e.g. buffer stocks, schedule slack). This approach has been criticized…

How can robots learn and adapt to new tasks and situations with little data? Systematic exploration and simulation are crucial tools for efficient robot learning. We present a novel black-box policy search algorithm focused on…

Scientists often run experiments to distinguish competing theories. This requires patience, rigor, and ingenuity - there is often a large space of possible experiments one could run. But we need not comb this space by hand - if we represent…

Our goal is to compute a policy that guarantees improved return over a baseline policy even when the available MDP model is inaccurate. The inaccurate model may be constructed, for example, by system identification techniques when the true…

We study discrete-time finite-horizon optimal control problems in probability spaces, whereby the state of the system is a probability measure. We show that, in many instances, the solution of dynamic programming in probability spaces…

In this paper we investigate the applicability of standard model checking approaches to verifying properties in probabilistic programming. As the operational model for a standard probabilistic program is a potentially infinite parametric…

The generation of comprehensible explanations is an essential feature of modern artificial intelligence systems. In this work, we consider probabilistic logic programming, an extension of logic programming which can be useful to model…

State-of-the-art recommender systems have the ability to generate high-quality recommendations, but usually cannot provide intuitive explanations to humans due to the usage of black-box prediction models. The lack of transparency has…

Stochastic algorithms are among the best for solving computationally hard search and reasoning problems. The runtime of such procedures is characterized by a random variable. Different algorithms give rise to different probability…

Even if path planning can be solved using standard techniques from dynamic programming and control, the problem can also be approached using probabilistic inference. The algorithms that emerge using the latter framework bear some appealing…

Probabilistic programming is the idea of writing models from statistics and machine learning using program notations and reasoning about these models using generic inference engines. Recently its combination with deep learning has been…

Probabilistic programming is related to a compositional approach to stochastic modeling by switching from discrete to continuous time dynamics. In continuous time, an operator-algebra semantics is available in which processes proceeding in…

Explaining and reasoning about processes which underlie observed black-box phenomena enables the discovery of causal mechanisms, derivation of suitable abstract representations and the formulation of more robust predictions. We propose to…

Recent work in model-agnostic explanations of black-box machine learning has demonstrated that interpretability of complex models does not have to come at the cost of accuracy or model flexibility. However, it is not clear what kind of…

Checklists have been widely recognized as effective tools for completing complex tasks in a systematic manner. Although originally intended for use in procedural tasks, their interpretability and ease of use have led to their adoption for…

In recent years, solving optimization problems involving black-box simulators has become a point of focus for the machine learning community due to their ubiquity in science and engineering. The simulators describe a forward process…