We introduce two new particle-based algorithms for learning latent variable models via marginal maximum likelihood estimation, including one which is entirely tuning-free. Our methods are based on the perspective of marginal maximum likelihood estimation as an optimization problem: namely, as the minimization of a free energy functional. One way to solve this problem is via the discretization of a gradient flow associated with the free energy. We study one such approach, which resembles an extension of Stein variational gradient descent, establishing a descent lemma which guarantees that the free energy decreases at each iteration. This method, and any other obtained as the discretization of the gradient flow, necessarily depends on a learning rate which must be carefully tuned by the practitioner in order to ensure convergence at a suitable rate. With this in mind, we also propose another algorithm for optimizing the free energy which is entirely learning rate free, based on coin betting techniques from convex optimization. We validate the performance of our algorithms across several numerical experiments, including several high-dimensional settings. Our results are competitive with existing particle-based methods, without the need for any hyperparameter tuning.

In recent years, interest in gradient-based optimization over Riemannian manifolds has surged. However, a significant challenge lies in the reliance on hyperparameters, especially the learning rate, which requires meticulous tuning by practitioners to ensure convergence at a suitable rate. In this work, we introduce innovative learning-rate-free algorithms for stochastic optimization over Riemannian manifolds, eliminating the need for hand-tuning and providing a more robust and user-friendly approach. We establish high probability convergence guarantees that are optimal, up to logarithmic factors, compared to the best-known optimally tuned rate in the deterministic setting. Our approach is validated through numerical experiments, demonstrating competitive performance against learning-rate-dependent algorithms.

We introduce Sequential Neural Posterior Score Estimation (SNPSE), a score-based method for Bayesian inference in simulator-based models. Our method, inspired by the remarkable success of score-based methods in generative modelling, leverages conditional score-based diffusion models to generate samples from the posterior distribution of interest. The model is trained using an objective function which directly estimates the score of the posterior. We embed the model into a sequential training procedure, which guides simulations using the current approximation of the posterior at the observation of interest, thereby reducing the simulation cost. We also introduce several alternative sequential approaches, and discuss their relative merits. We then validate our method, as well as its amortised, non-sequential, variant on several numerical examples, demonstrating comparable or superior performance to existing state-of-the-art methods such as Sequential Neural Posterior Estimation (SNPE).

Continuous normalizing flows (CNFs) learn the probability path between a reference distribution and a target distribution by modeling the vector field generating said path using neural networks. Recently, Lipman et al. (2022) introduced a simple and inexpensive method for training CNFs in generative modeling, termed flow matching (FM). In this paper, we repurpose this method for probabilistic inference by incorporating Markovian sampling methods in evaluating the FM objective, and using the learned CNF to improve Monte Carlo sampling. Specifically, we propose an adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm, which combines a local Markov transition kernel with a non-local, flow-informed transition kernel, defined using a CNF. This CNF is adapted on-the-fly using samples from the Markov chain, which are used to specify the probability path for the FM objective. Our method also includes an adaptive tempering mechanism that allows the discovery of multiple modes in the target distribution. Under mild assumptions, we establish convergence of our method to a local optimum of the FM objective. We then benchmark our approach on several synthetic and real-world examples, achieving similar performance to other state-of-the-art methods but often at a significantly lower computational cost.

In recent years, particle-based variational inference (ParVI) methods such as Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) have grown in popularity as scalable methods for Bayesian inference. Unfortunately, the properties of such methods invariably depend on hyperparameters such as the learning rate, which must be carefully tuned by the practitioner in order to ensure convergence to the target measure at a suitable rate. In this paper, we introduce a suite of new particle-based methods for scalable Bayesian inference based on coin betting, which are entirely learning-rate free. We illustrate the performance of our approach on a range of numerical examples, including several high-dimensional models and datasets, demonstrating comparable performance to other ParVI algorithms with no need to tune a learning rate.