Approximating Latent Manifolds in Neural Networks via Vanishing Ideals

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Pelleriti, Nico, Zimmer, Max, Wirth, Elias, Pokutta, Sebastian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Pelleriti, Nico
Zimmer, Max
Wirth, Elias
Pokutta, Sebastian
author_facet Pelleriti, Nico
Zimmer, Max
Wirth, Elias
Pokutta, Sebastian
contents Deep neural networks have reshaped modern machine learning by learning powerful latent representations that often align with the manifold hypothesis: high-dimensional data lie on lower-dimensional manifolds. In this paper, we establish a connection between manifold learning and computational algebra by demonstrating how vanishing ideals can characterize the latent manifolds of deep networks. To that end, we propose a new neural architecture that (i) truncates a pretrained network at an intermediate layer, (ii) approximates each class manifold via polynomial generators of the vanishing ideal, and (iii) transforms the resulting latent space into linearly separable features through a single polynomial layer. The resulting models have significantly fewer layers than their pretrained baselines, while maintaining comparable accuracy, achieving higher throughput, and utilizing fewer parameters. Furthermore, drawing on spectral complexity analysis, we derive sharper theoretical guarantees for generalization, showing that our approach can in principle offer tighter bounds than standard deep networks. Numerical experiments confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_15051
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Approximating Latent Manifolds in Neural Networks via Vanishing Ideals
Pelleriti, Nico
Zimmer, Max
Wirth, Elias
Pokutta, Sebastian
Machine Learning
Deep neural networks have reshaped modern machine learning by learning powerful latent representations that often align with the manifold hypothesis: high-dimensional data lie on lower-dimensional manifolds. In this paper, we establish a connection between manifold learning and computational algebra by demonstrating how vanishing ideals can characterize the latent manifolds of deep networks. To that end, we propose a new neural architecture that (i) truncates a pretrained network at an intermediate layer, (ii) approximates each class manifold via polynomial generators of the vanishing ideal, and (iii) transforms the resulting latent space into linearly separable features through a single polynomial layer. The resulting models have significantly fewer layers than their pretrained baselines, while maintaining comparable accuracy, achieving higher throughput, and utilizing fewer parameters. Furthermore, drawing on spectral complexity analysis, we derive sharper theoretical guarantees for generalization, showing that our approach can in principle offer tighter bounds than standard deep networks. Numerical experiments confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.
title Approximating Latent Manifolds in Neural Networks via Vanishing Ideals
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.15051