Predictor-Rejector Multi-Class Abstention: Theoretical Analysis and Algorithms

Anqi Mao, Mehryar Mohri, Yutao Zhong

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

Abstract

We study the key framework of learning with abstention in the multi-class classification setting. In this setting, the learner can choose to abstain from making a prediction with some pre-defined cost. We present a series of new theoretical and algorithmic results for this learning problem in the predictor-rejector framework. We introduce several new families of surrogate losses for which we prove strong non-asymptotic and hypothesis set-specific consistency guarantees, thereby resolving positively two existing open questions. These guarantees provide upper bounds on the estimation error of the abstention loss function in terms of that of the surrogate loss. We analyze both a single-stage setting where the predictor and rejector are learned simultaneously and a two-stage setting crucial in applications, where the predictor is learned in a first stage using a standard surrogate loss such as cross-entropy. These guarantees suggest new multi-class abstention algorithms based on minimizing these surrogate losses. We also report the results of extensive experiments comparing these algorithms to the current state-of-the-art algorithms on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and SVHN datasets. Our results demonstrate empirically the benefit of our new surrogate losses and show the remarkable performance of our broadly applicable two-stage abstention algorithm.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)822-867
Number of pages46
JournalProceedings of Machine Learning Research
Volume237
StatePublished - 2024
Event35th International Conference on Algorithmic Learning Theory, ALT 2024 - La Jolla, United States
Duration: Feb 25 2024Feb 28 2024

Keywords

  • abstention
  • consistency
  • learning theory
  • learning to abstain

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Software
  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Statistics and Probability

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