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arXiv 提交日期: 2026-02-23
📄 Abstract - Softmax is not Enough (for Adaptive Conformal Classification)

The merit of Conformal Prediction (CP), as a distribution-free framework for uncertainty quantification, depends on generating prediction sets that are efficient, reflected in small average set sizes, while adaptive, meaning they signal uncertainty by varying in size according to input difficulty. A central limitation for deep conformal classifiers is that the nonconformity scores are derived from softmax outputs, which can be unreliable indicators of how certain the model truly is about a given input, sometimes leading to overconfident misclassifications or undue hesitation. In this work, we argue that this unreliability can be inherited by the prediction sets generated by CP, limiting their capacity for adaptiveness. We propose a new approach that leverages information from the pre-softmax logit space, using the Helmholtz Free Energy as a measure of model uncertainty and sample difficulty. By reweighting nonconformity scores with a monotonic transformation of the energy score of each sample, we improve their sensitivity to input difficulty. Our experiments with four state-of-the-art score functions on multiple datasets and deep architectures show that this energy-based enhancement improves the adaptiveness of the prediction sets, leading to a notable increase in both efficiency and adaptiveness compared to baseline nonconformity scores, without introducing any post-hoc complexity.

顶级标签: theory model evaluation machine learning
详细标签: conformal prediction uncertainty quantification adaptive prediction sets nonconformity scores energy-based models 或 搜索:

Softmax还不够(用于自适应共形分类) / Softmax is not Enough (for Adaptive Conformal Classification)


1️⃣ 一句话总结

这篇论文提出了一种新方法,通过利用神经网络在Softmax激活前的原始输出(logits)中的信息,特别是使用亥姆霍兹自由能来衡量模型的不确定性,从而改进了共形预测框架,使其生成的预测集能更智能地根据输入样本的难易程度自动调整大小,在保证准确性的同时提高了效率。

源自 arXiv: 2602.19498