ERASE: Error-Resilient Representation Learning on Graphs for Label Noise Tolerance

Ling-Hao Chen, Yuanshuo Zhang, Taohua Huang, Liangcai Su, Zeyi Lin, Xi Xiao, Xiaobo Xia, Tongliang Liu

Abstract: Deep learning has achieved remarkable success in graph-related tasks, yet this accomplishment heavily relies on large-scale high-quality annotated datasets. However, acquiring such datasets can be cost-prohibitive, leading to the practical use of labels obtained from economically efficient sources such as web searches and user tags. Unfortunately, these labels often come with noise, compromising the generalization performance of deep networks. To tackle this challenge and enhance the robustness of deep learning models against label noise in graph-based tasks, we propose a method called ERASE (Error-Resilient representation learning on graphs for lAbel noiSe tolerancE). The core idea of ERASE is to learn representations with error tolerance by maximizing coding rate reduction. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that the error-resilient mechanism is introduced into graph representation learning against label noise. Particularly, we also propose a decoupled label propagation method to estimate coding rate reduction. Before training, noisy labels are pre-corrected through structural denoising. During training, ERASE combines prototype pseudo-labels with propagated denoised labels and updates representations with error resilience, which significantly improves the generalization performance in node classification. The proposed method allows us to more effectively withstand errors caused by mislabeled nodes, thereby strengthening the robustness of deep networks in handling noisy graph data. Extensive experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method. Codes: https://github.com/eraseai/erase.