CausalArena: Benchmarking Causal Discovery in the Foundation Model Era
Updated 1 h ago · first seen 11 Sept 2026
paper_01M294FPGV3HBX4DTBXWWTPHDP
- Published
- 11 Sept 2026
- T1 · 1 h ago
- arXiv
- 2609.11897
- T1 · 1 h ago
- Category
- cs.LG
- T1 · 1 h ago
Abstract
Causal discovery aims to uncover causal structures from data and is fundamental to scientific reasoning and intervention-based decision making. Its evaluation relies heavily on structural causal models (SCMs), which specify a causal graph together with the mechanisms that generate data, yet existing studies differ substantially in graph families, mechanisms, and evaluation protocols. The emergence of causal discovery foundation models (CDFMs) further complicates evaluation: performance may reflect not only causal discovery ability, but also overlap between pretraining environments and test SCMs, making results on fixed synthetic benchmarks difficult to interpret. We introduce CausalArena, a unified and evolvable benchmark for causal discovery under a common protocol. Synthetic SCMs supply controlled breadth over structures and mechanisms; semantic operational SCMs provide human-auditable, semantically grounded environments beyond standard synthetic generators; and formula-grounded SCMs test discovery under explicit scientific mechanisms. Public real-world datasets provide an additional external-validity check. Experiments across classical, neural, and pretrained methods reveal substantial ranking shifts across SCM families and protocols, showing that strong performance in one benchmark regime does not reliably transfer to others. These results highlight benchmark diversity and pretraining--evaluation overlap as central challenges for evaluating causal discovery in the foundation model era.
Authors 4
Zi-Rong Li, Si-Yang Liu, Tian-Zuo Wang, Han-Jia Ye
Specification
- Official page
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 1 h agohigh
- Arxiv announce type
- new
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 1 h agohigh
- arXiv id
- 2609.11897
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 1 h agohigh
- Categories
- cs.LG
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 1 h agohigh
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 1 h agohigh
- Primary category
- cs.LG
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 1 h agohigh
- Published
- 11 Sept 2026
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 1 h agohigh
Each value shows its source, tier and observation time. Conflicting claims are kept side by side and flagged — never averaged. How AI Atlas records facts →
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Attributed facts
9
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T19
Freshest observation
1 h ago
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- Authors
- Zi-Rong Li, Si-Yang Liu, Tian-Zuo Wang
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Claim history · Abstract
Abstractabstract1
| Value | Valid from → to | Status | Source | Confidence | Extractor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Causal discovery aims to uncover causal structures from data and is fundamental to scientific reasoning and intervention-based decision making. Its evaluation relies heavily on structural causal models (SCMs), which specify a causal graph together with the mechanisms that generate data, yet existing studies differ substantially in graph families, mechanisms, and evaluation protocols. The emergence of causal discovery foundation models (CDFMs) further complicates evaluation: performance may reflect not only causal discovery ability, but also overlap between pretraining environments and test SCMs, making results on fixed synthetic benchmarks difficult to interpret. We introduce CausalArena, a unified and evolvable benchmark for causal discovery under a common protocol. Synthetic SCMs supply controlled breadth over structures and mechanisms; semantic operational SCMs provide human-auditable, semantically grounded environments beyond standard synthetic generators; and formula-grounded SCMs test discovery under explicit scientific mechanisms. Public real-world datasets provide an additional external-validity check. Experiments across classical, neural, and pretrained methods reveal substantial ranking shifts across SCM families and protocols, showing that strong performance in one benchmark regime does not reliably transfer to others. These results highlight benchmark diversity and pretraining--evaluation overlap as central challenges for evaluating causal discovery in the foundation model era. | → current | current | arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1 | high | deterministic |
Claims are temporal and append-only: a new observation closes the previous claim (valid_to) instead of overwriting it. Conflicting claims from different sources are kept side by side and flagged — never averaged. Methodology →
New paper: CausalArena: Benchmarking Causal Discovery in the Foundation Model Era
arxiv
| Source | Document | Type | Tier | Last observed | Snapshots |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| arXiv (Atom API + RSS) | rss.arxiv.org/rss/cs.LG | feed | T1· Official | 1 h ago | 1 |
Tier 1 = official/primary, 2 = quality secondary, 3 = community, 4 = unverified. Every snapshot is archived; see all sources and the methodology.