Foldable SuperNets: Scalable Merging of Transformers with Different Initializations and Tasks

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Kinderman, Edan, Hubara, Itay, Maron, Haggai, Soudry, Daniel
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Kinderman, Edan
Hubara, Itay
Maron, Haggai
Soudry, Daniel
author_facet Kinderman, Edan
Hubara, Itay
Maron, Haggai
Soudry, Daniel
contents Recent methods aim to merge neural networks (NNs) with identical architectures trained on different tasks into a single multi-task model. While most works focus on the simpler setup of merging NNs initialized from a common pre-trained network, we target the harder problem of merging large transformers trained on different tasks from distinct initializations. We show that traditional merging methods fail catastrophically in this setup, while Knowledge Distillation (KD) achieves much better results, though at a higher cost. However, KD is data-inefficient, as it does not exploit the original models' weights. To solve this, we introduce "Foldable SuperNet Merge" (FS-Merge), which trains a SuperNet containing the original models (with frozen weights) using a feature reconstruction objective. After training, the SuperNet is folded back to the size of a single original model. FS-Merge is simple, data-efficient, has a computational cost comparable to KD, and is proven to have superior expressiveness compared to traditional merging methods on MLP models. It achieves SOTA results when tested on MLPs and transformers across various sizes, tasks, modalities, and distribution shifts, especially in low-data scenarios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_01483
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Foldable SuperNets: Scalable Merging of Transformers with Different Initializations and Tasks
Kinderman, Edan
Hubara, Itay
Maron, Haggai
Soudry, Daniel
Machine Learning
Recent methods aim to merge neural networks (NNs) with identical architectures trained on different tasks into a single multi-task model. While most works focus on the simpler setup of merging NNs initialized from a common pre-trained network, we target the harder problem of merging large transformers trained on different tasks from distinct initializations. We show that traditional merging methods fail catastrophically in this setup, while Knowledge Distillation (KD) achieves much better results, though at a higher cost. However, KD is data-inefficient, as it does not exploit the original models' weights. To solve this, we introduce "Foldable SuperNet Merge" (FS-Merge), which trains a SuperNet containing the original models (with frozen weights) using a feature reconstruction objective. After training, the SuperNet is folded back to the size of a single original model. FS-Merge is simple, data-efficient, has a computational cost comparable to KD, and is proven to have superior expressiveness compared to traditional merging methods on MLP models. It achieves SOTA results when tested on MLPs and transformers across various sizes, tasks, modalities, and distribution shifts, especially in low-data scenarios.
title Foldable SuperNets: Scalable Merging of Transformers with Different Initializations and Tasks
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.01483