papers

Publications (17)

cs.PL2026

Higher Order Automatic Differentiation of Higher Order Functions

Mathieu Huot, Sam Staton, Matthijs Vákár

We present semantic correctness proofs of automatic differentiation (AD). We consider a forward-mode AD method on a higher-order language with algebraic data types and we character…

cs.PL2026

GradInf: Gradient Estimation as Probabilistic Inference

Gaurav Arya, Mathieu Huot, Moritz Schauer +2

Gradient estimation -- the task of computing the gradient of the expected value of a probabilistic program -- has diverse applications in scientific computing, but is notoriously d…

cs.PL2022

Efficient and Sound Differentiable Programming in a Functional Array-Processing Language

Amir Shaikhha, Mathieu Huot, Shabnam Ghasemirad +3

Automatic differentiation (AD) is a technique for computing the derivative of a function represented by a program. This technique is considered as the de-facto standard for computi…

cs.PL2021

Towards Denotational Semantics of AD for Higher-Order, Recursive, Probabilistic Languages

Alexander K. Lew, Mathieu Huot, Vikash K. Mansinghka

Automatic differentiation (AD) aims to compute derivatives of user-defined functions, but in Turing-complete languages, this simple specification does not fully capture AD's behavi…

cs.LO2019

Quantum channels as a categorical completion

Mathieu Huot, Sam Staton

We propose a categorical foundation for the connection between pure and mixed states in quantum information and quantum computation. The foundation is based on distributive monoida…

cs.CV2026

GenMatter: Perceiving Physical Objects with Generative Matter Models

Eric Li, Arijit Dasgupta, Yoni Friedman +5

Human visual perception offers valuable insights for understanding computational principles of motion-based scene interpretation. Humans robustly detect and segment moving entities…

cs.PL2024

Probabilistic Programming with Programmable Variational Inference

McCoy R. Becker, Alexander K. Lew, Xiaoyan Wang +4

Compared to the wide array of advanced Monte Carlo methods supported by modern probabilistic programming languages (PPLs), PPL support for variational inference (VI) is less develo…

cs.PL2020

Correctness of Automatic Differentiation via Diffeologies and Categorical Gluing

Mathieu Huot, Sam Staton, Matthijs Vákár

We present semantic correctness proofs of Automatic Differentiation (AD). We consider a forward-mode AD method on a higher order language with algebraic data types, and we characte…

stat.ML2023

Differentiating Metropolis-Hastings to Optimize Intractable Densities

Gaurav Arya, Ruben Seyer, Frank Schäfer +7

We develop an algorithm for automatic differentiation of Metropolis-Hastings samplers, allowing us to differentiate through probabilistic inference, even if the model has discrete…

cs.PL2022

Functional Collection Programming with Semi-Ring Dictionaries

Amir Shaikhha, Mathieu Huot, Jaclyn Smith +1

This paper introduces semi-ring dictionaries, a powerful class of compositional and purely functional collections that subsume other collection types such as sets, multisets, array…

cs.PL2023

SD: Differentiable Programming for Sparse Tensors

Amir Shaikhha, Mathieu Huot, Shideh Hashemian

Sparse tensors are prevalent in many data-intensive applications, yet existing differentiable programming frameworks are tailored towards dense tensors. This presents a significant…

cs.PL2023

PAP Spaces: Reasoning Denotationally About Higher-Order, Recursive Probabilistic and Differentiable Programs

Mathieu Huot, Alexander K. Lew, Vikash K. Mansinghka +1

We introduce a new setting, the category of PAP spaces, for reasoning denotationally about expressive differentiable and probabilistic programming languages. Our semantics is g…

cs.PL2022

ADEV: Sound Automatic Differentiation of Expected Values of Probabilistic Programs

Alexander K. Lew, Mathieu Huot, Sam Staton +1

Optimizing the expected values of probabilistic processes is a central problem in computer science and its applications, arising in fields ranging from artificial intelligence to o…

cs.PL2022

Compiling Structured Tensor Algebra

Mahdi Ghorbani, Mathieu Huot, Shideh Hashemian +1

Tensor algebra is essential for data-intensive workloads in various computational domains. Computational scientists face a trade-off between the specialization degree provided by d…

quant-ph2019

Universal Properties in Quantum Theory

Mathieu Huot, Sam Staton

We argue that notions in quantum theory should have universal properties in the sense of category theory. We consider the completely positive trace preserving (CPTP) maps, the basi…

cs.PL2023

Denotationally Correct, Purely Functional, Efficient Reverse-mode Automatic Differentiation

Mathieu Huot, Amir Shaikhha

Reverse-mode differentiation is used for optimization, but it introduces references, which break the purity of the underlying programs, making them notoriously harder to optimize.…

cs.PL2024

GenSQL: A Probabilistic Programming System for Querying Generative Models of Database Tables

Mathieu Huot, Matin Ghavami, Alexander K. Lew +6

This article presents GenSQL, a probabilistic programming system for querying probabilistic generative models of database tables. By augmenting SQL with only a few key primitives f…