Explaining Neural Scaling Laws

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Bahri, Yasaman, Dyer, Ethan, Kaplan, Jared, Lee, Jaehoon, Sharma, Utkarsh
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2021
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author Bahri, Yasaman
Dyer, Ethan
Kaplan, Jared
Lee, Jaehoon
Sharma, Utkarsh
author_facet Bahri, Yasaman
Dyer, Ethan
Kaplan, Jared
Lee, Jaehoon
Sharma, Utkarsh
contents The population loss of trained deep neural networks often follows precise power-law scaling relations with either the size of the training dataset or the number of parameters in the network. We propose a theory that explains the origins of and connects these scaling laws. We identify variance-limited and resolution-limited scaling behavior for both dataset and model size, for a total of four scaling regimes. The variance-limited scaling follows simply from the existence of a well-behaved infinite data or infinite width limit, while the resolution-limited regime can be explained by positing that models are effectively resolving a smooth data manifold. In the large width limit, this can be equivalently obtained from the spectrum of certain kernels, and we present evidence that large width and large dataset resolution-limited scaling exponents are related by a duality. We exhibit all four scaling regimes in the controlled setting of large random feature and pretrained models and test the predictions empirically on a range of standard architectures and datasets. We also observe several empirical relationships between datasets and scaling exponents under modifications of task and architecture aspect ratio. Our work provides a taxonomy for classifying different scaling regimes, underscores that there can be different mechanisms driving improvements in loss, and lends insight into the microscopic origins of and relationships between scaling exponents.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2102_06701
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Explaining Neural Scaling Laws
Bahri, Yasaman
Dyer, Ethan
Kaplan, Jared
Lee, Jaehoon
Sharma, Utkarsh
Machine Learning
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
The population loss of trained deep neural networks often follows precise power-law scaling relations with either the size of the training dataset or the number of parameters in the network. We propose a theory that explains the origins of and connects these scaling laws. We identify variance-limited and resolution-limited scaling behavior for both dataset and model size, for a total of four scaling regimes. The variance-limited scaling follows simply from the existence of a well-behaved infinite data or infinite width limit, while the resolution-limited regime can be explained by positing that models are effectively resolving a smooth data manifold. In the large width limit, this can be equivalently obtained from the spectrum of certain kernels, and we present evidence that large width and large dataset resolution-limited scaling exponents are related by a duality. We exhibit all four scaling regimes in the controlled setting of large random feature and pretrained models and test the predictions empirically on a range of standard architectures and datasets. We also observe several empirical relationships between datasets and scaling exponents under modifications of task and architecture aspect ratio. Our work provides a taxonomy for classifying different scaling regimes, underscores that there can be different mechanisms driving improvements in loss, and lends insight into the microscopic origins of and relationships between scaling exponents.
title Explaining Neural Scaling Laws
topic Machine Learning
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.06701