Concept Bottleneck Models (CBMs) predict through human-interpretable concepts, but they typically output point concept probabilities that conflate epistemic uncertainty (reducible model underspecification) with aleatoric uncertainty (irreducible input ambiguity). This makes concept-level uncertainty hard to interpret and, more importantly, hard to act upon. We introduce CREDENCE (Credal Ensemble Concept Estimation), a CBM framework that decomposes concept uncertainty by construction. CREDENCE represents each concept as a credal prediction (a probability interval), derives epistemic uncertainty from disagreement across diverse concept heads, and estimates aleatoric uncertainty via a dedicated ambiguity output trained to match annotator disagreement when available. The resulting signals support prescriptive decisions: automate low-uncertainty cases, prioritize data collection for high-epistemic cases, route high-aleatoric cases to human review, and abstain when both are high. Across several tasks, we show that epistemic uncertainty is positively associated with prediction errors, whereas aleatoric uncertainty closely tracks annotator disagreement, providing guidance beyond error correlation. Our implementation is available at the following link: https://github.com/Tankiit/Credal_Sets/tree/ensemble-credal-cbm
Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull’Intelligenza Artificiale (IDSIA)(达莱莫莱人工智能研究所 (IDSIA))
Credal networks are graph-based statistical models whose parameters take values in a set, instead of being sharply specified as in traditional statistical models (e.g., Bayesian networks). The computational complexity of inferences on such models depends on the irrelevance/independence concept adopted. In this paper, we study inferential complexity under the concepts of epistemic irrelevance and strong independence. We show that inferences under strong independence are NP-hard even in trees with ternary variables. We prove that under epistemic irrelevance the polynomial time complexity of infe…
We present a new approach to credal nets, which are graphical models that generalise Bayesian nets to imprecise probability. Instead of applying the commonly used notion of strong independence, we replace it by the weaker notion of epistemic irrelevance. We show how assessments of epistemic irrelevance allow us to construct a global model out of given local uncertainty models and mention some useful properties. The main results and proofs are presented using the language of sets of desirable gambles, which provides a very general and expressive way of representing imprecise probability models.
A credal network under epistemic irrelevance is a generalised type of Bayesian network that relaxes its two main building blocks. On the one hand, the local probabilities are allowed to be partially specified. On the other hand, the assessments of independence do not have to hold exactly. Conceptually, these two features turn credal networks under epistemic irrelevance into a powerful alternative to Bayesian networks, offering a more flexible approach to graph-based multivariate uncertainty modelling. However, in practice, they have long been perceived as very hard to work with, both theoretic…
We focus on credal nets, which are graphical models that generalise Bayesian nets to imprecise probability. We replace the notion of strong independence commonly used in credal nets with the weaker notion of epistemic irrelevance, which is arguably more suited for a behavioural theory of probability. Focusing on directed trees, we show how to combine the given local uncertainty models in the nodes of the graph into a global model, and we use this to construct and justify an exact message-passing algorithm that computes updated beliefs for a variable in the tree. The algorithm, which is linear …
Quantification of Credal Uncertainty: A Distance-Based Approach
Public University of Navarre(纳瓦拉公立大学);Nanyang Technological University(南洋理工大学);CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security(CISPA亥姆霍兹信息安全中心);LMU Munich(慕尼黑大学);The University of Manchester(曼彻斯特大学);Université de Technologie de Compiègne(贡比涅技术大学);Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML)(慕尼黑机器学习中心);German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI, DSA)(德国人工智能研究中心)
HybridFlow: Quantification of Aleatoric and Epistemic Uncertainty with a Single Hybrid Model
Department of Earth, Environment, and Planetary Sciences, Brown University(布朗大学地球、环境与行星科学系);Data Science Institute, Brown University(布朗大学数据科学研究院);Department of Computer Science, Brown University(布朗大学计算机科学系)
University of Colorado Boulder(科罗拉多大学博尔德分校);The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc.(查尔斯·斯塔克·德雷珀实验室公司)
Giving autonomous agents the ability to forecast their own outcomes and uncertainty will allow them to communicate their competencies and be used more safely. We accomplish this by using a learned world model of the agent system to forecast full agent trajectories over long time horizons. Real world systems involve significant sources of both aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty that compound and interact over time in the trajectory forecasts. We develop a deep generative world model that quantifies aleatoric uncertainty while incorporating the effects of epistemic uncertainty during the learni…
Soil moisture is an important variable that determines floods, vegetation health, agriculture productivity, and land surface feedbacks to the atmosphere, etc. Accurately modeling soil moisture has important implications in both weather and climate models. The recently available satellite-based observations give us a unique opportunity to build data-driven models to predict soil moisture instead of using land surface models, but previously there was no uncertainty estimate. We tested Monte Carlo dropout (MCD) with an aleatoric term for our long short-term memory models for this problem, and ask…
Disentangling Aleatoric and Epistemic Uncertainty in Physics-Informed Neural Networks. Application to Insulation Material Degradation Prognostics
Department of Electronics and Computer Science(电子与计算机科学系);Mondragon University(蒙得龙大学);Research & Development(研发);CARTIF Technology Centre(CARTIF技术中心);Department of Physical Chemistry(物理化学系);University of the Basque Country (EHU)(巴斯克国家大学(EHU));Basque Centre for Applied Mathematics (BCAM)(巴斯克应用数学中心(BCAM));Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence(计算机科学与人工智能系)
CUPID: A Plug-in Framework for Joint Aleatoric and Epistemic Uncertainty Estimation with a Single Model
Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore(南洋理工大学李科钦医学院,新加坡);College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore(南洋理工大学计算与数据科学学院,新加坡);Centre for Medical Technologies & Innovations, National Health Group, Singapore(国家健康集团医学技术与创新中心,新加坡)
UbiQTree: Uncertainty Quantification in XAI with Tree Ensembles
Center for Artificial Intelligence in Public Health Research (ZKI-PH), Robert Koch Institute(人工智能在公共卫生研究中的中心(ZKI-PH),罗伯特· Koch 研究所);Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Freie Universität Berlin(数学与计算机科学系,柏林自由大学)
From Aleatoric to Epistemic: Exploring Uncertainty Quantification Techniques in Artificial Intelligence
University of Liverpool(利物浦大学);University of Edinburgh(爱丁堡大学);The University of Texas at Dallas(德州大学达拉斯分校);Georgia Institute of Technology(佐治亚理工学院);Emory University(埃默里大学);Simon Fraser University(西蒙菲莎大学);Kyoto University(京都大学);Zhejiang University(浙江大学);National Taiwan Normal University(国立台湾师范大学);Indiana University(印第安纳大学);Purdue University(普渡大学);AppCubic(AppCubic公司);University of Wisconsin-Madison(威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校);The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology(香港科技大学)
Radboud University(拉德堡德大学);University of Oxford(牛津大学)
Capturing uncertainty in models of complex dynamical systems is crucial to designing safe controllers. Stochastic noise causes aleatoric uncertainty, whereas imprecise knowledge of model parameters leads to epistemic uncertainty. Several approaches use formal abstractions to synthesize policies that satisfy temporal specifications related to safety and reachability. However, the underlying models exclusively capture aleatoric but not epistemic uncertainty, and thus require that model parameters are known precisely. Our contribution to overcoming this restriction is a novel abstraction-based co…
Credal Wrapper of Model Averaging for Uncertainty Estimation in Classification
DistriNet, Department of Computer Science, KU Leuven, Belgium(DistriNet,计算机科学系,KU Leuven,比利时);LMSD, Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, Belgium(LMSD,机械工程系,KU Leuven,比利时);School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics, Oxford Brookes University, UK(工程、计算与数学学院,奥克斯福德布鲁克斯大学,英国);M-Group, KU Leuven, Belgium(M-Group,KU Leuven,比利时)
A calibration test for evaluating set-based epistemic uncertainty representations
Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modeling(数据分析与数学建模系);Ghent University(根特大学);Department of Environment(环境系);Department of Informatics(信息系);Munich Center for Machine Learning(慕尼黑机器学习中心);LMU Munich(慕尼黑大学)
Interpretable Uncertainty Routing Separating Emotion Ambiguity from Distribution Shift in Facial Expression Recognition
Faculty of Business and Commerce, Kansai University(关西大学商学部);Data Science and AI Innovation Research Promotion Center, Shiga University(滋贺大学数据科学与人工智能创新研究促进中心);Graduate School of Data Science, Shiga University(滋贺大学数据科学研究科)
Reinforcement Learning (RL) is emerging as tool for tackling complex control and decision-making problems. However, in high-risk environments such as healthcare, manufacturing, automotive or aerospace, it is often challenging to bridge the gap between an apparently optimal policy learnt by an agent and its real-world deployment, due to the uncertainties and risk associated with it. Broadly speaking RL agents face two kinds of uncertainty, 1. aleatoric uncertainty, which reflects randomness or noise in the dynamics of the world, and 2. epistemic uncertainty, which reflects the bounded knowledge…
Credal Large Language Models for Semantic Commitment under Uncertainty
Oxford Dynamics(牛津动力学);Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München(慕尼黑大学);Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Data Analysis and Systems (AIDAS)(人工智能、数据分析与系统研究所);School of Engineering Computing & Mathematics(工程计算与数学学院);Oxford Brookes University(牛津布鲁克斯大学)
Redesigning the ensemble Kalman filter with a dedicated model of epistemic uncertainty
Warwick Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick(华威大学华威数学研究所);Division of Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University(南洋理工大学数学科学学院);Department of Statistics, University of Warwick(华威大学统计系)
ConformaDecompose: Explaining Uncertainty via Calibration Localization
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Bologna, Italy(博洛尼亚大学计算机科学与工程系);Marketing and Sales, Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A, Sant'Agata Bolognese, Italy(法拉利拉尔布奇公司);RCT Data Science and Security, Technical University Dortmund, Germany(多特蒙德技术大学数据科学与安全部);Jönköping AI Lab, Department of Computing, Jönköping University, Sweden(约翰内斯堡大学人工智能实验室);Jönköping International Business School, Sweden(约翰内斯堡国际商学院);Department of Software Engineering, Haliç University, Istanbul, Turkey(伊斯坦布尔哈利奇大学软件工程系);University College Cork, Ireland(科克大学)
This position paper reflects on the state-of-the-art in decision-making under uncertainty. A classical assumption is that probabilities can sufficiently capture all uncertainty in a system. In this paper, the focus is on the uncertainty that goes beyond this classical interpretation, particularly by employing a clear distinction between aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty. The paper features an overview of Markov decision processes (MDPs) and extensions to account for partial observability and adversarial behavior. These models sufficiently capture aleatoric uncertainty but fail to account for…
Instituto de Ingenieria de Aragon (I3A)(阿拉贡工程研究所);Universidad de Zaragoza(萨拉戈萨大学)
Affordances are a fundamental concept in robotics since they relate available actions for an agent depending on its sensory-motor capabilities and the environment. We present a novel Bayesian deep network to detect affordances in images, at the same time that we quantify the distribution of the aleatoric and epistemic variance at the spatial level. We adapt the Mask-RCNN architecture to learn a probabilistic representation using Monte Carlo dropout. Our results outperform the state-of-the-art of deterministic networks. We attribute this improvement to a better probabilistic feature space repre…