Operator Learning of Lipschitz Operators: An Information-Theoretic Perspective

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Lanthaler, Samuel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Lanthaler, Samuel
author_facet Lanthaler, Samuel
contents Operator learning based on neural operators has emerged as a promising paradigm for the data-driven approximation of operators, mapping between infinite-dimensional Banach spaces. Despite significant empirical progress, our theoretical understanding regarding the efficiency of these approximations remains incomplete. This work addresses the parametric complexity of neural operator approximations for the general class of Lipschitz continuous operators. Motivated by recent findings on the limitations of specific architectures, termed curse of parametric complexity, we here adopt an information-theoretic perspective. Our main contribution establishes lower bounds on the metric entropy of Lipschitz operators in two approximation settings; uniform approximation over a compact set of input functions, and approximation in expectation, with input functions drawn from a probability measure. It is shown that these entropy bounds imply that, regardless of the activation function used, neural operator architectures attaining an approximation accuracy $ε$ must have a size that is exponentially large in $ε^{-1}$. The size of architectures is here measured by counting the number of encoded bits necessary to store the given model in computational memory. The results of this work elucidate fundamental trade-offs and limitations in operator learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_18794
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Operator Learning of Lipschitz Operators: An Information-Theoretic Perspective
Lanthaler, Samuel
Machine Learning
Numerical Analysis
Operator learning based on neural operators has emerged as a promising paradigm for the data-driven approximation of operators, mapping between infinite-dimensional Banach spaces. Despite significant empirical progress, our theoretical understanding regarding the efficiency of these approximations remains incomplete. This work addresses the parametric complexity of neural operator approximations for the general class of Lipschitz continuous operators. Motivated by recent findings on the limitations of specific architectures, termed curse of parametric complexity, we here adopt an information-theoretic perspective. Our main contribution establishes lower bounds on the metric entropy of Lipschitz operators in two approximation settings; uniform approximation over a compact set of input functions, and approximation in expectation, with input functions drawn from a probability measure. It is shown that these entropy bounds imply that, regardless of the activation function used, neural operator architectures attaining an approximation accuracy $ε$ must have a size that is exponentially large in $ε^{-1}$. The size of architectures is here measured by counting the number of encoded bits necessary to store the given model in computational memory. The results of this work elucidate fundamental trade-offs and limitations in operator learning.
title Operator Learning of Lipschitz Operators: An Information-Theoretic Perspective
topic Machine Learning
Numerical Analysis
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.18794