The impact of Graph Neural Network task types on the stability of Graph Neural Networks in face of perturbations

A coded experiment on GNN stability

Bachelor thesis (2024)

Authors

V.C.J.R. Rullens Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Contributors

M. Sabbaqi (mentor)
Maosheng Yang (mentor)
E. Isufi (mentor)
Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Perturbation Stability Link Prediction Node Classification GNN Graph Neural Network Graph Classification
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Published Date

25-06-2024

Language

English

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Abstract

Graph Neural Networks (GNN) are Machine Learning models which are trained on graph data in order to handle complex state-of-the-art tasks such as recommender systems and molecular property prediction. However, the graphs that these models are trained on can be perturbed in various ways post training resulting in reductions in performance. This study compares the stability of various Graph Neural Network task types (Node Classification, Link Prediction, and Graph Classification) by investigating each of their performances across a range of perturbation severities performed on graphs. Further experiments explore whether this performance ranking changes for different types of perturbations and GNN architectures. Through results, it is shown that there is a noticeable difference in stability between the investigated tasks. However, it is also shown that under certain conditions, such as different types of perturbations or architectures, the performance ranking may shift. This paper highlights weak points in GNNs that should be explored for stronger defenses against potential attacks.