The Price of Correlated Tests: How Strict Should a Model Release Gate Be?
This study addresses the issue that pass-all gating in machine learning model release tends to erroneously reject high-quality models while offering unclear reliability guarantees, by reformulating gate design as a test quantity optimization problem. This work proposes a two-class latent factor model that integrates one-dimensional integral computation with exact binomial bound verification procedures to quantify the cost of test correlation and balance reliability against retention rate. The analysis demonstrates that lenient gating is optimal under uniform correlation, revealing that test correlation substantially increases compliance costs and necessitates extensive testing when correlations are high. Furthermore, this paper provides a validation methodology for certifying gates using labeled data, thereby establishing a theoretical foundation for model release pipelines.