Amortized Inference

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Overview

Amortized inference learns a reusable mapping from observations and model information to posterior estimates, predictions, or samples, shifting computation from each new case to training. Common approaches include simulation-based neural posterior estimation, variational encoders and normalizing flows, structured message passing, and transformer-based prior-fitted or in-context models. These methods are used in settings such as inverse problems, state-space models, survival analysis, and hierarchical statistics, often with MCMC or benchmark posteriors used to assess accuracy and calibration. The central tension is that fast single-pass inference can lose accuracy or uncertainty calibration on rare cases, shifted data, or complex posteriors, motivating test-time refinement and stronger evaluations of generalization.

Latest papers

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87 papers17 papers in the last four weeks, up 113% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. It Just Takes Two: Scaling Amortized Inference to Large Sets

    May 8, 2026Antoine Wehenkel, Michael Kagan, Lukas Heinrich +1Neural Posterior EstimationRepresentation Learning

    Apple · SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory · TU München +1

  2. One Operator for Many Densities: Amortized Approximation of Conditioning by Neural Operators

    May 7, 2026Panos Tsimpos, Edoardo Calvello, Ayoub Belhadji +1Amortized InferenceBayesian Inference

    Operations Research Center MASSachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA 02139 · Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA 91125 · Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems Center for Computational Science and Engineering MASSachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA 02139 +2

  3. Amortized Variational Inference for Joint Posterior and Predictive Distributions in Bayesian Uncertainty Quantification

    May 5, 2026Nan Feng, Xun HuanUncertainty QuantificationAmortized Inference

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States

  4. Fast Bayesian equipment condition monitoring via simulation based inference: applications to heat exchanger health

    Apr 22, 2026Peter Collett, Alexander Johannes Stasik, Simone Casolo +1Simulation-Based InferenceEfficient Inference

    Cognite AS, Oslo, Norway · Department of Data Science, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway · Department for Mathematics and Cybernetics, SINTEF Digital, Oslo, Norway

  5. Amortized Vine Copulas for High-Dimensional Density and Information Estimation

    Apr 22, 2026Houman SafaaiCopula ModelsAmortized Inference

    Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University

  6. Fast Amortized Fitting of Scientific Signals Across Time and Ensembles via Transferable Neural Fields

    Apr 21, 2026Sophia Zorek, Kushal Vyas, Yuhao Liu +3Implicit Neural RepresentationsAmortized Inference

    Rice University · Argonne National Laboratory

  7. Overcoming Selection Bias in Statistical Studies With Amortized Bayesian Inference

    Apr 20, 2026Jonas Arruda, Sophie Chervet, Paula Staudt +6Simulation-Based InferenceAmortized Inference

    Bonn Center for Mathematical Life Sciences, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany · Life & Medical Sciences Institute, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany · Epidemiology and Modeling of Antibiotic Evasion Unit, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France +12

  8. Amortized Filtering and Smoothing with Conditional Normalizing Flows

    Apr 8, 2026Tiangang Cui, Xiaodong Feng, Chenlong Pei +2Bayesian FilteringData Assimilation

    School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia · Institute of Advanced Study, Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University, Zhuhai 519087, China · SKLMS & Institute of Computational Mathematics and Scientific/Engineering Computing, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences +1

  9. Instance-Adaptive Parametrization for Amortized Variational Inference

    Apr 8, 2026Andrea Pollastro, Andrea Apicella, Francesco Isgrò +1Variational AutoencodersAmortized Inference

    Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University of Naples Federico II, 80125, Naples, Italy · Department of Information Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Applied Mathematics, University of Salerno, 84084, Fisciano (Salerno), Italy

  10. Survival In-Context: Amortized Bayesian Survival Analysis via Prior-Fitted Networks

    Mar 31, 2026Dmitrii Seletkov, Paul Hager, Georgios Kaissis +3Survival AnalysisPrior-Data Fitted Networks

    Institute of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Technical University of Munich, Germany · Chair for AI in Healthcare and Medicine, Technical University of Munich, Germany · Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering, University of Potsdam, Germany +3

  11. Amortized Inference for Correlated Discrete Choice Models via Equivariant Neural Networks

    Mar 25, 2026Easton Huch, Michael KeaneNeural Surrogate ModelingAmortized Inference

    Postdoctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School · Carey Distinguished Professor, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

  12. Identifiability and amortized inference limitations in Kuramoto models

    Mar 23, 2026Emma Hannula, Jana de Wiljes, Matthew T. Moores +2Kuramoto ModelAmortized Inference

    LUT University, Yliopistonkatu 34, Lappeenranta, 53850, Finland · TU Ilmenau, Ehrenbergstraße 29, Ilmenau, 98693, Germany · University of Cambridge, Herschel Road, Cambridge, CB3 9AL, United Kingdom

  13. Amortized Variational Inference for Logistic Regression with Missing Covariates

    Mar 22, 2026M. Cherifi, Aude Sportisse, Xujia Zhu +2Learning with Missing DataLogistic Regression

    Lab. Traitement du signal, Ecole Militaire Polytechnique, BP 17 Bordj El Bahri, Algeria · Lab. d’Informatique de Grenoble, CNRS, France · University of Paris Saclay, CNRS, CentraleSupelec, Laboratoire des signaux et systèmes, 91190, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

  14. CogFormer: Learn All Your Models Once

    Mar 20, 2026Jerry M. Huang, Lukas Schumacher, Niek Stevenson +1Amortized InferenceSimulation-Based Inference

    Center for Modeling, Simulation, and Imaging in Medicine (CeMSIM), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, United States · Center for Economic Psychology, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland · Amsterdam Mathematical Psychology Lab, University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam, Netherlands

  15. Sparsely-Supervised Data Assimilation via Physics-Informed Schrödinger Bridge

    Mar 20, 2026Dohyun Bu, Chanho Kim, Seokun Choi +1Data AssimilationPhysics-Informed Generative Modeling

    Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon, Repulic of Korea · Department of Mathematical Sciences, KAIST, Daejeon, Repulic of Korea

  16. FalconBC: Flow matching for Amortized inference of Latent-CONditioned physiologic Boundary Conditions

    Mar 18, 2026Chloe H. Choi, Alison L. Marsden, Daniele E. SchiavazziAmortized InferenceConditional Flow Matching

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. USA · Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. · Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. +2

  17. Scalable Simulation-Based Model Inference with Test-Time Complexity Control

    Mar 16, 2026Manuel Gloeckler, J. P. Manzano-Patrón, Stamatios N. Sotiropoulos +2Model SelectionSimulation-Based Inference

    Machine Learning in Science, University of Tübingen and Tübingen AI Center, Tübingen, Germany · Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, UK · National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham, United Kingdom +1

  18. Amortized Maximum Inner Product Search with Learned Support Functions

    Mar 9, 2026Theo X. Olausson, João Monteiro, Michal Klein +1Amortized InferenceInformation Retrieval

    Apple

  19. Unsupervised Continual Learning for Amortized Bayesian Inference

    Feb 26, 2026Aayush Mishra, Šimon Kucharský, Paul-Christian BürknerAmortized InferenceOnline Continual Learning

    Department of Statistics, TU Dortmund University, Germany

  20. Amortized Bayesian inference for actigraph time sheet data from mobile devices

    Feb 24, 2026Daniel Zhou, Sudipto BanerjeeAmortized InferenceWearable Health Monitoring

    UCLA DEPARTMENT OF BIOSTATISTICS, 650 CHARLES E. YOUNG DRIVE, LOS ANGELES, 90095-1772.

  21. OneFlowSBI: One Model, Many Queries for Simulation-Based Inference

    Jan 30, 2026Mayank Nautiyal, Li Ju, Melker Ernfors +5Simulation-Based InferenceAmortized Inference

    Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden · Science for Life Laboratory, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

  22. Neural Architectures for Amortized Bayesian Inference: Statistical Foundations and Empirical Assessments

    Jan 12, 2026Roy Shivam Ram Shreshtth, Arnab Hazra, Gourab MukherjeeUncertainty QuantificationAmortized Inference

    Department of Statistics and Data Science, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India 208016 · Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, United States 90089-0809

  23. JADAI: Jointly Amortizing Adaptive Design and Bayesian Inference

    Dec 28, 2025Niels Bracher, Lars Kühmichel, Desi R. Ivanova +3Parameter EstimationAmortized Inference

    1Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA · 2TU Dortmund University, Germany · University of Oxford, UK.

  24. ACTIVA: Amortized Causal Effect Estimation via Variational Autoencoders

    Mar 3, 2025Andreas Sauter, Saber Salehkaleybar, Frank van Harmelen +2Causal Effect EstimationCausal Intervention

    Learning and Reasoning Group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam · Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), Leiden University · Informatics Institute & Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam

  25. Adaptive teachers for amortized samplers

    Oct 2, 2024Minsu Kim, Sanghyeok Choi, Taeyoung Yun +7Amortized InferenceRL Exploration

    Mila, KAIST · KAIST · Recursion +1

  26. Amortizing intractable inference in large language models

    Oct 6, 2023Edward J. Hu, Moksh Jain, Eric Elmoznino +4Amortized InferenceLLM Fine-Tuning

    Mila – Quebec AI Institute, Universit´e de Montr´eal · University of Oxford

  27. Delta-AI: Local objectives for amortized inference in sparse graphical models

    Oct 3, 2023Jean-Pierre Falet, Hae Beom Lee, Esmeralda S. Whitammer +6Amortized InferenceProbabilistic Graphical Models

    Mila – Qu´ebec AI Institute, Universit´e de Montr´eal · Mila – Québec AI Institute, Université de Montréal