PPI-SVRG: Unifying Prediction-Powered Inference and Variance Reduction for Semi-Supervised Optimization

arXiv:2601.21470v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: We study semi-supervised stochastic optimization when labeled data is scarce but predictions from pre-trained models are available. PPI and SVRG both reduce variance through control variates — PPI uses predictions, SVRG uses reference gradients. We show they are mathematically equivalent and develop PPI-SVRG, which combines both. Our convergence bound decomposes into the standard SVRG rate plus an error floor from prediction uncertainty. The rate depends only on loss geometry; predictions affect only the neighborhood size. When predictions are perfect, we recover SVRG exactly. When predictions degrade, convergence remains stable but reaches a larger neighborhood. Experiments confirm the theory: PPI-SVRG reduces MSE by 43–52% under label scarcity on mean estimation benchmarks and improves test accuracy by 2.7–2.9 percentage points on MNIST with only 10% labeled data.