# Gradient-EM Bayesian Meta-learning

Source: [Gradient-EM Bayesian Meta-learning](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa68c31e209131cea1e303>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-25T22:45:52.748Z

Authors: Yayi Zou, Xiaoqi Lu

Published: 2020-06-21T10:52:59.000Z

## Abstract

Bayesian meta-learning enables robust and fast adaptation to new tasks with uncertainty assessment. The key idea behind Bayesian meta-learning is empirical Bayes inference of hierarchical model. In this work, we extend this framework to include a variety of existing methods, before proposing our variant based on gradient-EM algorithm. Our method improves computational efficiency by avoiding back-propagation computation in the meta-update step, which is exhausting for deep neural networks. Furthermore, it provides flexibility to the inner-update optimization procedure by decoupling it from meta-update. Experiments on sinusoidal regression, few-shot image classification, and policy-based reinforcement learning show that our method not only achieves better accuracy with less computation cost, but is also more robust to uncertainty.

## Recorded benchmark results

A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage.

## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.11764>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.11764.pdf>)
