Coverage Guarantees for Pseudo-Calibrated Conformal Prediction under Distribution Shift

Conformal prediction (CP) offers distribution-free marginal coverage guarantees under an exchangeability assumption, but these guarantees can fail if the data distribution shifts. We analyze the use of pseudo-calibration as a tool to counter this performance loss under a bounded label-conditional covariate shift model. Using tools from domain adaptation, we derive a lower bound on target coverage in terms of the source-domain loss of the classifier and a Wasserstein measure of the shift. Using this result, we provide a method to design pseudo-calibrated sets that inflate the conformal threshold by a slack parameter to keep target coverage above a prescribed level. Finally, we propose a source-tuned pseudo-calibration algorithm that interpolates between hard pseudo-labels and randomized labels as a function of classifier uncertainty. Numerical experiments show that our bounds qualitatively track pseudo-calibration behavior and that the source-tuned scheme mitigates coverage degradation under distribution shift while maintaining nontrivial prediction set sizes.

Towards Opinion Shaping: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach in Bot-User Interactions

This paper aims to investigate the impact of interference in social network algorithms via user-bot interactions, focusing on the Stochastic Bounded Confidence Model (SBCM). This paper explores two approaches: positioning bots controlled by agents into the network and targeted advertising under various circumstances, operating with an advertising budget. This study integrates the Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) algorithm and its variants to experiment with different Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL). Finally, experimental results demonstrate that this approach can result in efficient opinion shaping, indicating its potential in deploying advertising resources on social platforms.