Safe Multi-View Deep Classification

Multi-view deep classification expects to obtain better classification performance than using a single view. However, due to the uncertainty and inconsistency of data sources, adding data views does not necessarily lead to the performance improvements in multi-view classification. How to avoid worsening classification performance when adding views is crucial for multi-view deep learning but rarely studied. To tackle this limitation, in this paper, we reformulate the multi-view classification problem from the perspective of safe learning and thereby propose a Safe Multi-view Deep Classification (SMDC) method, which can guarantee that the classification performance does not deteriorate when fusing multiple views. In the SMDC method, we dynamically integrate multiple views and estimate the inherent uncertainties among multiple views with different root causes based on evidence theory. Through minimizing the uncertainties, SMDC promotes the evidences from data views for correct classification, and in the meantime excludes the incorrect evidences to produce the safe multi-view classification results. Furthermore, we theoretically prove that in the safe multi-view classification, adding data views will certainly not increase the empirical risk of classification. The experiments on various kinds of multi-view datasets validate that the proposed SMDC method can achieve precise and safe classification results.