Towards a Mechanistic Explanation of Diffusion Model Generalization

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Niedoba, Matthew, Zwartsenberg, Berend, Murphy, Kevin, Wood, Frank
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Niedoba, Matthew
Zwartsenberg, Berend
Murphy, Kevin
Wood, Frank
author_facet Niedoba, Matthew
Zwartsenberg, Berend
Murphy, Kevin
Wood, Frank
contents We propose a simple, training-free mechanism which explains the generalization behaviour of diffusion models. By comparing pre-trained diffusion models to their theoretically optimal empirical counterparts, we identify a shared local inductive bias across a variety of network architectures. From this observation, we hypothesize that network denoisers generalize through localized denoising operations, as these operations approximate the training objective well over much of the training distribution. To validate our hypothesis, we introduce novel denoising algorithms which aggregate local empirical denoisers to replicate network behaviour. Comparing these algorithms to network denoisers across forward and reverse diffusion processes, our approach exhibits consistent visual similarity to neural network outputs, with lower mean squared error than previously proposed methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_19339
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards a Mechanistic Explanation of Diffusion Model Generalization
Niedoba, Matthew
Zwartsenberg, Berend
Murphy, Kevin
Wood, Frank
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
We propose a simple, training-free mechanism which explains the generalization behaviour of diffusion models. By comparing pre-trained diffusion models to their theoretically optimal empirical counterparts, we identify a shared local inductive bias across a variety of network architectures. From this observation, we hypothesize that network denoisers generalize through localized denoising operations, as these operations approximate the training objective well over much of the training distribution. To validate our hypothesis, we introduce novel denoising algorithms which aggregate local empirical denoisers to replicate network behaviour. Comparing these algorithms to network denoisers across forward and reverse diffusion processes, our approach exhibits consistent visual similarity to neural network outputs, with lower mean squared error than previously proposed methods.
title Towards a Mechanistic Explanation of Diffusion Model Generalization
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.19339