Expressive Graph Neural Networks via Equivariant Use of Noise

Xiyuan Wang, Muhan Zhang

Keywords: Graph Neural Network, Expressivity

TL;DR: Expressive GNN with a balance of efficiency, real-world performance, and theoretical expressivity.

Abstract: Expressivity has been a major focus in the design of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), yet a significant gap persists between theoretical universal expressivity and practical performance. While many expressive GNNs are efficient and achieve strong results, they often focus on specific graph properties and lack theoretical expressivity for general graph tasks. Conversely, theoretically universal-expressive models often suffer from high computational costs or poor generalization, limiting their real-world applicability. To bridge this gap, we introduce Equivariant Noise GNNs (ENGNNs), a framework that utilizes random noise features to enhance the expressivity of GNNs. Crucially, unlike prior methods that naively use noise, we enforce equivariance to nodewise noise transformations, such as orthogonal transformations. We prove that this property reduces the model's theoretical sample complexity, thereby improving generalization. Our framework simultaneously reaches theoretical universal expressivity, maintains the linear scalability of standard Message-Passing Neural Networks in practice, and achieves performance comparable to computationally expensive, high-expressivity models. Extensive experiments confirm strong performance across node, link, subgraph, and graph-level prediction tasks, demonstrating that the equivariant use of noise provides a powerful and practical pathway for building expressive GNNs. Our code is available at \url{https://anonymous.4open.science/r/EquivNoiseGNN/}.

Primary Area: learning on graphs and other geometries & topologies

Submission Number: 7752