Meta-Learning Mean Functions for Gaussian Processes

Abstract: When fitting Bayesian machine learning models on scarce data, the main challenge is to obtain suitable prior knowledge and encode it into the model. Recent advances in meta-learning offer powerful methods for extracting such prior knowledge from data acquired in related tasks. When it comes to meta-learning in Gaussian process models, approaches in this setting have mostly focused on learning the kernel function of the prior, but not on learning its mean function. In this work, we explore meta-learning the mean function of a Gaussian process prior. We present analytical and empirical evidence that mean function learning can be useful in the meta-learning setting, discuss the risk of overfitting, and draw connections to other meta-learning approaches, such as model agnostic meta-learning and functional PCA.