Bias and Generalization in Deep Generative Models: An Empirical Study

NeurIPS 2018 · Shengjia Zhao, Hongyu Ren, Arianna Yuan, Jiaming Song, Noah Goodman, Stefano Ermon ·

In high dimensional settings, density estimation algorithms rely crucially on their inductive bias. Despite recent empirical success, the inductive bias of deep generative models is not well understood. In this paper we propose a framework to systematically investigate bias and generalization in deep generative models of images. Inspired by experimental methods from cognitive psychology, we probe each learning algorithm with carefully designed training datasets to characterize when and how existing models generate novel attributes and their combinations. We identify similarities to human psychology and verify that these patterns are consistent across commonly used models and architectures.