mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

All-in-one simulation-based inference

arXiv 2404.09636 ↗First posted 15 Apr 2024cs.LG cs.AI stat.MLcited by 74

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Abstract (arXiv)

Amortized Bayesian inference trains neural networks to solve stochastic inference problems using model simulations, thereby making it possible to rapidly perform Bayesian inference for any newly observed data. However, current simulation-based amortized inference methods are simulation-hungry and inflexible: They require the specification of a fixed parametric prior, simulator, and inference tasks ahead of time. Here, we present a new amortized inference method -- the Simformer -- which overcomes these limitations. By training a probabilistic diffusion model with transformer architectures, the Simformer outperforms current state-of-the-art amortized inference approaches on benchmark tasks and is substantially more flexible: It can be applied to models with function-valued parameters, it can handle inference scenarios with missing or unstructured data, and it can sample arbitrary conditionals of the joint distribution of parameters and data, including both posterior and likelihood. We showcase the performance and flexibility of the Simformer on simulators from ecology, epidemiology, and neuroscience, and demonstrate that it opens up new possibilities and application domains for amortized Bayesian inference on simulation-based models.

Key facts. Cited by 74 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 52 of its 77 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Apr 2024.

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52 of 77 references.

References · 52

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38 more
  1. 2015MADE: Masked Autoencoder for Distribution Estimationcited by 307
  2. 2022Flexible Diffusion Modeling of Long Videoscited by 294
  3. 2021Robust Compressed Sensing MRI with Deep Generative Priorscited by 286
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  7. 2021Benchmarking Simulation-Based Inferencecited by 162
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  10. 2023Flow Matching for Scalable Simulation-Based Inferencecited by 101
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  13. 2021Sparse is Enough in Scaling Transformerscited by 86
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  19. 2022Truncated proposals for scalable and hassle-free simulation-based inferencecited by 41
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  30. 2021A Trust Crisis In Simulation-Based Inference? Your Posterior Approximations Can Be Unfaithfulcited by 28
  31. 2021Arbitrary Conditional Distributions with Energycited by 22
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50 most cited of 52 All 52 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 18; 2025: 35; 2026: 21.

74 papers.

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  1. 2025PaperBench: Evaluating AI's Ability to Replicate AI Researchcited by 321
  2. 2025Do-PFN: In-Context Learning for Causal Effect Estimationcited by 51
  3. 2024Neural Methods for Amortized Inferencecited by 39
  4. 2025Simulation-Based Inference: A Practical Guidecited by 32
  5. 2024Amortized Probabilistic Conditioning for Optimization, Simulation and Inferencecited by 23
  6. 2024sbi reloaded: a toolkit for simulation-based inference workflowscited by 23
  7. 2025Position: The Future of Bayesian Prediction Is Prior-Fittedcited by 20
  8. 2024Amortized Bayesian Multilevel Modelscited by 14
  9. 2025Distribution Transformers: Fast Approximate Bayesian Inference With On-The-Fly Prior Adaptationcited by 13
  10. 2025Effortless, Simulation-Efficient Bayesian Inference using Tabular Foundation Modelscited by 13
  11. 2025Solving Empirical Bayes via Transformerscited by 11
  12. 2025Does Unsupervised Domain Adaptation Improve the Robustness of Amortized Bayesian Inference? A Systematic Evaluationcited by 10
38 more
  1. 2024Compositional simulation-based inference for time seriescited by 9
  2. 2025Multifidelity Simulation-based Inference for Computationally Expensive Simulatorscited by 9
  3. 2025Simulation-based Bayesian inference under model misspecificationcited by 9
  4. 2024FUSE: Fast Unified Simulation and Estimation for PDEscited by 8
  5. 2025PABBO: Preferential Amortized Black-Box Optimizationcited by 8
  6. 2025ALINE: Joint Amortization for Bayesian Inference and Active Data Acquisitioncited by 8
  7. 2024A Kernel-Based Conditional Two-Sample Test Using Nearest Neighbors (with Applications to Calibration, Regression Curves, and Simulation-Based Inference)cited by 7
  8. 2024Domain-Adaptive Neural Posterior Estimation for Strong Gravitational Lens Analysiscited by 7
  9. 2024Differentiable and Learnable Wireless Simulation with Geometric Transformerscited by 6
  10. 2024Simulation-based Inference with the Python Package sbijaxcited by 6
  11. 2025Robust Simulation-Based Inference under Missing Data via Neural Processescited by 5
  12. 2025Multilevel neural simulation-based inferencecited by 5
  13. 2024Fast and Reliable Probabilistic Reflectometry Inversion with Prior-Amortized Neural Posterior Estimationcited by 4
  14. 2024Arbitrarily-Conditioned Multi-Functional Diffusion for Multi-Physics Emulationcited by 4
  15. 2025FNOPE: Simulation-based inference on function spaces with Fourier Neural Operatorscited by 4
  16. 2025Efficient Autoregressive Inference for Transformer Probabilistic Modelscited by 4
  17. 2026One Operator for Many Densities: Amortized Approximation of Conditioning by Neural Operatorscited by 4
  18. 2024Amortized Bayesian Workflowcited by 3
  19. 2024Embed and Emulate: Contrastive representations for simulation-based inferencecited by 3
  20. 2025Meta-Statistical Learning: Supervised Learning of Statistical Estimatorscited by 3
  21. 2025Simulation as Supervision: Mechanistic Pretraining for Scientific Discoverycited by 3
  22. 2025PriorGuide: Test-Time Prior Adaptation for Simulation-Based Inferencecited by 3
  23. 2026Minimum Distance Summaries for Robust Neural Posterior Estimationcited by 3
  24. 2024Variational Autoencoders for Efficient Simulation-Based Inferencecited by 2
  25. 2025Hyper-Transforming Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 2
  26. 2025ConDiSim: Conditional Diffusion Models for Simulation Based Inferencecited by 2
  27. 2025Provable Mixed-Noise Learning with Flow-Matchingcited by 2
  28. 2026From Mice to Trains: Amortized Bayesian Inference on Graph Datacited by 2
  29. 2026Do Diffusion Models Dream of Electric Planes? Discrete and Continuous Simulation-Based Inference for Aircraft Designcited by 2
  30. 2026Scalable Simulation-Based Model Inference with Test-Time Complexity Controlcited by 2
  31. 2024Estimation of System Parameters Including Repeated Cross-Sectional Data through Emulator-Informed Deep Generative Modelcited by 1
  32. 2025A Unified Framework for Simultaneous Parameter and Function Discovery in Differential Equationscited by 1
  33. 2025Causal Posterior Estimationcited by 1
  34. 2025Conformal C2ST: Turning weak classifiers into strong two-sample testscited by 1
  35. 2025Unified Spatiotemporal Physics-Informed Learning (USPIL): A Framework for Modeling Complex Predator-Prey Dynamicscited by 1
  36. 2025MIST: Mutual Information Estimation Via Supervised Trainingcited by 1
  37. 2025Flexible Gravitational-Wave Parameter Estimation with Transformerscited by 1
  38. 2025A Review of Diffusion-based Simulation-Based Inference: Foundations and Applications in Non-Ideal Data Scenarioscited by 1

50 most cited of 74 All 74 (JSON)

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  4. 2023Leveraging Self-Consistency for Data-Efficient Amortized Bayesian Inference
  5. 2023Adversarial robustness of amortized Bayesian inference
  6. 2026Divide-and-Conquer: Towards Generalizable Amortized Bayesian Inference for the Drift Diffusion Model
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