On Inductive Abilities of Latent Factor Models for Relational Learning

Latent factor models are increasingly popular for modeling multi-relational knowledge graphs. By their vectorial nature, it is not only hard to interpret why this class of models works so well, but also to understand where they fail and how the might be improved. We conduct an experimental survey of state-of-the-art models, not towards a purely comparative end, but as a means to get insight about their inductive abilities. To assess the strengths and weaknesses of each model, we create simple tasks that exhibit first atomic properties of binary relations, and then common inter-relational inference through synthetic families. Based on these experimental results, we propose new research directions to improve on existing models.