Deep Stochastic Processes via Functional Markov Transition Operators

Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 36 (NeurIPS 2023) Main Conference Track

Bibtex Paper Supplemental

Authors

Jin Xu, Emilien Dupont, Kaspar Märtens, Thomas Rainforth, Yee Whye Teh

Abstract

We introduce Markov Neural Processes (MNPs), a new class of Stochastic Processes (SPs) which are constructed by stacking sequences of neural parameterised Markov transition operators in function space. We prove that these Markov transition operators can preserve the exchangeability and consistency of SPs. Therefore, the proposed iterative construction adds substantial flexibility and expressivity to the original framework of Neural Processes (NPs) without compromising consistency or adding restrictions. Our experiments demonstrate clear advantages of MNPs over baseline models on a variety of tasks.