Constraining Generative Models for Engineering Design with Negative Data
Abstract: Generative models have recently achieved remarkable success and widespread adoption in society, yet they still often struggle to generate realistic and accurate outputs. This challenge extends beyond language and vision into fields like engineering design, where safety-critical engineering standards and non-negotiable physical laws tightly constrain what outputs are considered acceptable.
In this work, we introduce two approaches to guide models toward constraint-satisfying outputs using `negative data' -- examples of what to avoid. Our negative data generative models (NDGMs) outperform state-of-the-art NDGMs by 4x in constraint satisfaction and easily outperform classic generative models using 8x less data in certain problems. To demonstrate this, we rigorously benchmark our NDGMs against 14 baseline models across numerous synthetic and real engineering problems, such as ship hulls with hydrodynamic constraints and vehicle design with impact safety constraints. Our benchmarks showcase both the best-in-class performance of our new NDGM models and the widespread dominance of NDGMs over classic generative models in general. In doing so, we advocate for the more widespread use of NDGMs in engineering design tasks.
Submission Length: Long submission (more than 12 pages of main content)
Changes Since Last Submission: Added experiments from rebuttals; remade most figures; updated text to reflect changes. Note: new content brings submission over 12 pages.
Assigned Action Editor: ~Atsushi_Nitanda1
Submission Number: 2808
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