This paper concerns structure learning or discovery of discrete generative models. It focuses on Bayesian model selection and the assimilation of training data or content, with a special emphasis on the order in which data are ingested. A key move - in the ensuing schemes - is to place priors on the selection of models, based upon expected free energy. In this setting, expected free energy reduces to a constrained mutual information, where the constraints inherit from priors over outcomes (i.e., preferred outcomes). The resulting scheme is first used to perform image classification on the MNIST dataset to illustrate the basic idea, and then tested on a more challenging problem of discovering models with dynamics, using a simple sprite-based visual disentanglement paradigm and the Tower of Hanoi (cf., blocks world) problem. In these examples, generative models are constructed autodidactically to recover (i.e., disentangle) the factorial structure of latent states - and their characteristic paths or dynamics.

该研究论文探讨了离散生成模型的结构学习或发现，并侧重于贝叶斯模型选择和训练数据的吸收，特别关注数据摄入的顺序。基于预期自由能，将先验放置在模型选择上是关键之一。通过在MNIST数据集上进行图像分类以及在具有动力学的模型发现问题上的测试，展示了该方案的基本思想。在这些示例中，通过自主学习生成模型来恢复（即解开）潜在状态的因素结构及其特征路径或动力学。

监督结构学习