Realizable approximate ERM with constant conditional mutual information

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Let X\mathcal{X} be a domain, let W\mathcal{W} be a class of functions f:X{0,1}f:\mathcal{X}\to\{0,1\} with VC dimension d1d\geq 1, and let n1n\geq 1. For a dataset (x,y)(X×{0,1})n(x,y)\in(\mathcal{X}\times\{0,1\})^n, write (h,(x,y))\ell(h,(x,y)) for the empirical 00-11 loss, and let CMI(A)\mathsf{CMI}(A) denote the conditional mutual information of an algorithm's output. Realizable CMI conjecture. There exist absolute constants c,cc,c' such that, for every such W\mathcal{W} and nn, there is a randomized or deterministic algorithm A:(X×{0,1})nWA:(\mathcal{X}\times\{0,1\})^n\to\mathcal{W} satisfying

CMI(A)cd\mathsf{CMI}(A)\leq c d

and, for every (x,y)(X×{0,1})n(x,y)\in(\mathcal{X}\times\{0,1\})^n, if some hWh\in\mathcal{W} has (h,(x,y))=0\ell(h,(x,y))=0, then

E[(A(x,y),(x,y))]cdn.\mathbb{E}[\ell(A(x,y),(x,y))]\leq c'\frac{d}{n}.

This is the realizable setting, in which a consistent hypothesis exists. The conjecture seeks the sharper d/nd/n empirical-error rate while keeping conditional mutual information linear in VC dimension; the source presents it as a potentially easier alternative to the agnostic conjecture.

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Primary source

Thomas Steinke and Lydia Zakynthinou, “Reasoning About Generalization via Conditional Mutual Information”, arXiv:2001.09122 (2020).

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