Adversarial Curriculum Graph Contrastive Learning with Pair-wise Augmentation

Abstract

Graph contrastive learning (GCL) has emerged as a pivotal technique in the domain of graph representation learning. A crucial aspect of effective GCL is the caliber of generated positive and negative samples, which is intrinsically dictated by their resemblance to the original data. Nevertheless, precise control over similarity during sample generation presents a formidable challenge, often impeding the effective discovery of representative graph patterns. To address this challenge, we propose an innovative framework: Adversarial Curriculum Graph Contrastive Learning (ACGCL), which capitalizes on the merits of pair-wise augmentation to engender graph-level positive and negative samples with controllable similarity, alongside subgraph contrastive learning to discern effective graph patterns therein. Within the ACGCL framework, we have devised a novel adversarial curriculum training methodology that facilitates progressive learning by sequentially increasing the difficulty of distinguishing the generated samples. Notably, this approach transcends the prevalent sparsity issue inherent in conventional curriculum learning strategies by adaptively concentrating on more challenging training data. Finally, a comprehensive assessment of ACGCL is conducted through extensive experiments on six well-known benchmark datasets, wherein ACGCL conspicuously surpasses a set of state-of-the-art baselines.