Multi-Domain Causal Representation Learning via Weak Distributional Invariances

Kartik Ahuja, Amin Mansouri, Yixin Wang

Keywords: Causal Representations, Invariance

Abstract: Causal representation learning has emerged as the center of action in causal machine learning research. In particular, multi-domain datasets present a natural opportunity for showcasing the advantages of causal representation learning over standard unsupervised representation learning. While recent works have taken crucial steps towards learning causal representations, they often lack applicability to multi-domain datasets due to over-simplifying assumptions about the data; e.g. each domain comes from a different single-node perfect intervention. In this work, we relax these assumptions and capitalize on the following observation: there often exists a subset of latents whose certain distributional properties (e.g., support, variance) remain stable across domains (e.g., when each domain comes from a multi-node imperfect intervention). Leveraging this observation, we show that autoencoders that incorporate such invariances can provably identify the stable set of latents from the rest in a host of different settings.

Submission Number: 9