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Record W4409362925 · doi:10.1609/aaai.v39i21.34460

Causally Consistent Normalizing Flow

2025· article· en· W4409362925 on OpenAlexafffund
Quan Zhou, Kangjie Lu, Meng Xu

Bibliographic record

VenueProceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldComputer Science
TopicExplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Waterloo
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
KeywordsFlow (mathematics)GeologyEconometricsMathematicsGeometry

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Causal inconsistency arises when the underlying causal graphs captured by generative models like Normalizing Flows are inconsistent with those specified in causal models like Struct Causal Models. This inconsistency can cause unwanted issues including unfairness. Prior works to achieve causal consistency inevitably compromise the expressiveness of their models by disallowing hidden layers. In this work, we introduce a new approach: Causally Consistent Normalizing Flow (CCNF). To the best of our knowledge, CCNF is the first causally consistent generative model that can approximate any distribution with multiple layers. CCNF relies on two novel constructs: a sequential representation of SCMs and partial causal transformations. These constructs allow CCNF to inherently maintain causal consistency without sacrificing expressiveness. CCNF can handle all forms of causal inference tasks, including interventions and counterfactuals. Through experiments, we show that CCNF outperforms current approaches in causal inference. We also empirically validate the practical utility of CCNF by applying it to real-world datasets and show how CCNF addresses challenges like unfairness effectively.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.010
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.059
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.013
Threshold uncertainty score0.053

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0100.059
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.002
Bibliometrics0.0030.002
Science and technology studies0.0020.004
Scholarly communication0.0030.008
Open science0.0030.003
Research integrity0.0020.004
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0090.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.062
GPT teacher head0.298
Teacher spread0.236 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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