Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Tian, Yuandong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.01779
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909815647764480
author Tian, Yuandong
author_facet Tian, Yuandong
contents We prove rich algebraic structures of the solution space for 2-layer neural networks with quadratic activation and $L_2$ loss, trained on reasoning tasks in Abelian group (e.g., modular addition). Such a rich structure enables \emph{analytical} construction of global optimal solutions from partial solutions that only satisfy part of the loss, despite its high nonlinearity. We coin the framework as CoGS (\emph{\underline{Co}mposing \underline{G}lobal \underline{S}olutions}). Specifically, we show that the weight space over different numbers of hidden nodes of the 2-layer network is equipped with a semi-ring algebraic structure, and the loss function to be optimized consists of \emph{sum potentials}, which are ring homomorphisms, allowing partial solutions to be composed into global ones by ring addition and multiplication. Our experiments show that around $95\%$ of the solutions obtained by gradient descent match exactly our theoretical constructions. Although the global solutions constructed only required a small number of hidden nodes, our analysis on gradient dynamics shows that overparameterization asymptotically decouples training dynamics and is beneficial. We further show that training dynamics favors simpler solutions under weight decay, and thus high-order global solutions such as perfect memorization are unfavorable. The code is open sourced at https://github.com/facebookresearch/luckmatters/tree/yuandong3/ssl/real-dataset.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_01779
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Composing Global Solutions to Reasoning Tasks via Algebraic Objects in Neural Nets
Tian, Yuandong
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Commutative Algebra
Rings and Algebras
We prove rich algebraic structures of the solution space for 2-layer neural networks with quadratic activation and $L_2$ loss, trained on reasoning tasks in Abelian group (e.g., modular addition). Such a rich structure enables \emph{analytical} construction of global optimal solutions from partial solutions that only satisfy part of the loss, despite its high nonlinearity. We coin the framework as CoGS (\emph{\underline{Co}mposing \underline{G}lobal \underline{S}olutions}). Specifically, we show that the weight space over different numbers of hidden nodes of the 2-layer network is equipped with a semi-ring algebraic structure, and the loss function to be optimized consists of \emph{sum potentials}, which are ring homomorphisms, allowing partial solutions to be composed into global ones by ring addition and multiplication. Our experiments show that around $95\%$ of the solutions obtained by gradient descent match exactly our theoretical constructions. Although the global solutions constructed only required a small number of hidden nodes, our analysis on gradient dynamics shows that overparameterization asymptotically decouples training dynamics and is beneficial. We further show that training dynamics favors simpler solutions under weight decay, and thus high-order global solutions such as perfect memorization are unfavorable. The code is open sourced at https://github.com/facebookresearch/luckmatters/tree/yuandong3/ssl/real-dataset.
title Composing Global Solutions to Reasoning Tasks via Algebraic Objects in Neural Nets
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Commutative Algebra
Rings and Algebras
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.01779