Loss functions for discriminative training of energy-based models

Probabilistic graphical models associate a probability to each configuration of the relevant variables. Energy-based models (EBM) associate an energy to those configurations, eliminating the need for proper normalization of probability distributions. Making a decision (an inference) with an EBM consists in comparing the energies associated with various configurations of the variable to be predicted, and choosing the one with the smallest energy. Such systems must be trained discriminatively to associate low energies to the desired configurations and higher energies to un-desired configurations. A wide variety of loss function can be used for this purpose. We give sufficient conditions that a loss function should satisfy so that its minimization will cause the system to approach to desired behavior. We give many specific examples of suitable loss functions, and show an application to object recognition in images.