Deep Topic Models for Multi-label Learning

We present a probabilistic framework for multi-label learning based on a deep generative model for the binary label vector associated with each observation. Our generative model learns deep multi-layer latent embeddings of the binary label vector, which are conditioned on the input features of the observation. The model also has an interesting interpretation in terms of a deep topic model, with each label vector representing a bag-of-words document, with the input features being its meta-data. In addition to capturing the structural properties of the label space (e.g., a near-low-rank label matrix), the model also offers a clean, geometric interpretation. In particular, the nonlinear classification boundaries learned by the model can be seen as the union of multiple convex polytopes. Our model admits a simple and scalable inference via efficient Gibbs sampling or EM algorithm. We compare our model with state-of-the-art baselines for multi-label learning on benchmark data sets, and also report some interesting qualitative results.