# Can Bayesian Neural Networks Explicitly Model Input Uncertainty?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.08285 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08285/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Jan 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [On Calibration of Modern Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.04599/) (2017)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Fashion-MNIST: a Novel Image Dataset for Benchmarking Machine Learning Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.07747/) (2017)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [Identity Mappings in Deep Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.05027/) (2016)
- [Can You Trust Your Model's Uncertainty? Evaluating Predictive Uncertainty Under Dataset Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02530/) (2019)
- [Aleatoric and Epistemic Uncertainty in Machine Learning: An Introduction to Concepts and Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.09457/) (2019)
- [Deep Neural Networks are Easily Fooled: High Confidence Predictions for Unrecognizable Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.1897/) (2014)
- [A Simple Baseline for Bayesian Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.02476/) (2019)
- [Flipout: Efficient Pseudo-Independent Weight Perturbations on Mini-Batches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.04386/) (2018)
- [A Deeper Look into Aleatoric and Epistemic Uncertainty Disentanglement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.09308/) (2022)
- [I Find Your Lack of Uncertainty in Computer Vision Disturbing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08188/) (2021)
- [The information of attribute uncertainties: what convolutional neural networks can learn about errors in input data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.04742/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [LUCAS-MEGA: A Large-Scale Multimodal Dataset for Representation Learning in Soil-Environment Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.04323/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Inputs to machine learning models can have associated noise or uncertainties, but they are often ignored and not modelled. It is unknown if Bayesian Neural Networks and their approximations are able to consider uncertainty in their inputs. In this paper we build a two input Bayesian Neural Network (mean and standard deviation) and evaluate its capabilities for input uncertainty estimation across different methods like Ensembles, MC-Dropout, and Flipout. Our results indicate that only some uncertainty estimation methods for approximate Bayesian NNs can model input uncertainty, in particular Ensembles and Flipout.