Guide: Generalized-Prior and Data Encoders for DAG Estimation

Modern causal discovery methods face critical limitations in scalability, computational efficiency, and adaptability to mixed data types, as evidenced by benchmarks on node scalability (30, ≤ 50, ≥ 70 nodes), computational energy demands, and continuous/non-continuous data handling. While traditional algorithms like PC, GES, and ICA-LiNGAM struggle with these challenges, exhibiting prohibitive energy costs for higher-order nodes and poor scalability beyond 70 nodes, we propose GUIDE, a framework that integrates Large Language Model (LLM)-generated adjacency matrices with observational data through a dual-encoder architecture. GUIDE uniquely optimizes computational efficiency, reducing runtime on average by ≈ 42% compared to RL-BIC and KCRL methods, while achieving an average ≈ 117% improvement in accuracy over both NOTEARS and GraN-DAG individually. During training, GUIDE's reinforcement learning agent dynamically balances reward maximization (accuracy) and penalty avoidance (DAG constraints), enabling robust performance across mixed data types and scalability to ≥ 70 nodes -- a setting where baseline methods fail.