Uncertainty Quantification with the Empirical Neural Tangent Kernel
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Abstract (arXiv)
While neural networks have demonstrated impressive performance across various tasks, accurately quantifying uncertainty in their predictions is essential to ensure their trustworthiness and enable widespread adoption in critical systems. Several Bayesian uncertainty quantification (UQ) methods exist that are either cheap or reliable, but not both. We propose a post-hoc, sampling-based UQ method for over-parameterized networks at the end of training. Our approach constructs efficient and meaningful deep ensembles by employing a (stochastic) gradient-descent sampling process on appropriately linearized networks. We demonstrate that our method effectively approximates the posterior of a Gaussian process using the empirical Neural Tangent Kernel. Through a series of numerical experiments, we show that our method not only outperforms competing approaches in computational efficiency-often reducing costs by multiple factors-but also maintains state-of-the-art performance across a variety of UQ metrics for both regression and classification tasks.
Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 55 of its 89 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 Feb 2025.
Builds on
55 of 89 references.
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50 most cited of 55 All 55 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 5; 2026: 6.
11 papers.
- 2025Models of Heavy-Tailed Mechanistic Universalitycited by 9
- 2025Determinant Estimation under Memory Constraints and Neural Scaling Lawscited by 3
- 2025Contextual Similarity Distillation: Ensemble Uncertainties with a Single Modelcited by 3
- 2025Finite-Width Neural Tangent Kernels from Feynman Diagramscited by 3
- 2026Richer Bayesian Last Layers with Subsampled NTK Featurescited by 3
- 2026Efficient Analysis of the Distilled Neural Tangent Kernelcited by 1
- 2026Is the Last Layer Sufficient for Uncertainty Quantification?cited by 1
- 2026Scalable Uncertainty Quantification for Extreme Weather Forecasting via Empirical Neural Tangent Kernelscited by 1
- 2025Spectral Estimation with Free Decompressioncited by 0
- 2026On the Equivalence of Random Network Distillation, Deep Ensembles, and Bayesian Inferencecited by 0
- 2026AdaptNTK: Adaptive Uncertainty Quantification and Active Learning for Neural Network Potentialscited by 0
- 2026AdaptNTK: Adaptive Uncertainty Quantification and Active Learning for Neural Network Potentials31 Aug 2026
- 2026Scalable Uncertainty Quantification for Extreme Weather Forecasting via Empirical Neural Tangent Kernels1 Jun 2026
- 2026Is the Last Layer Sufficient for Uncertainty Quantification?29 May 2026
- 2026On the Equivalence of Random Network Distillation, Deep Ensembles, and Bayesian Inference23 Feb 2026
- 2026Efficient Analysis of the Distilled Neural Tangent Kernel11 Feb 2026
- 2026Richer Bayesian Last Layers with Subsampled NTK Features1 Feb 2026
- 2025Finite-Width Neural Tangent Kernels from Feynman Diagrams15 Aug 2025
- 2025Spectral Estimation with Free Decompression13 Jun 2025
- 2025Models of Heavy-Tailed Mechanistic Universality4 Jun 2025
- 2025Contextual Similarity Distillation: Ensemble Uncertainties with a Single Model14 Mar 2025
- 2025Determinant Estimation under Memory Constraints and Neural Scaling Laws6 Mar 2025