Feature Representation Transferring to Lightweight Models via Perception Coherence

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Nguyen, Hai-Vy, Gamboa, Fabrice, Zhang, Sixin, Chhaibi, Reda, Gratton, Serge, Giaccone, Thierry
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Nguyen, Hai-Vy
Gamboa, Fabrice
Zhang, Sixin
Chhaibi, Reda
Gratton, Serge
Giaccone, Thierry
author_facet Nguyen, Hai-Vy
Gamboa, Fabrice
Zhang, Sixin
Chhaibi, Reda
Gratton, Serge
Giaccone, Thierry
contents In this paper, we propose a method for transferring feature representation to lightweight student models from larger teacher models. We mathematically define a new notion called \textit{perception coherence}. Based on this notion, we propose a loss function, which takes into account the dissimilarities between data points in feature space through their ranking. At a high level, by minimizing this loss function, the student model learns to mimic how the teacher model \textit{perceives} inputs. More precisely, our method is motivated by the fact that the representational capacity of the student model is weaker than the teacher model. Hence, we aim to develop a new method allowing for a better relaxation. This means that, the student model does not need to preserve the absolute geometry of the teacher one, while preserving global coherence through dissimilarity ranking. Importantly, while rankings are defined only on finite sets, our notion of \textit{perception coherence} extends them into a probabilistic form. This formulation depends on the input distribution and applies to general dissimilarity metrics. Our theoretical insights provide a probabilistic perspective on the process of feature representation transfer. Our experiments results show that our method outperforms or achieves on-par performance compared to strong baseline methods for representation transferring.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_06595
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Feature Representation Transferring to Lightweight Models via Perception Coherence
Nguyen, Hai-Vy
Gamboa, Fabrice
Zhang, Sixin
Chhaibi, Reda
Gratton, Serge
Giaccone, Thierry
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Probability
In this paper, we propose a method for transferring feature representation to lightweight student models from larger teacher models. We mathematically define a new notion called \textit{perception coherence}. Based on this notion, we propose a loss function, which takes into account the dissimilarities between data points in feature space through their ranking. At a high level, by minimizing this loss function, the student model learns to mimic how the teacher model \textit{perceives} inputs. More precisely, our method is motivated by the fact that the representational capacity of the student model is weaker than the teacher model. Hence, we aim to develop a new method allowing for a better relaxation. This means that, the student model does not need to preserve the absolute geometry of the teacher one, while preserving global coherence through dissimilarity ranking. Importantly, while rankings are defined only on finite sets, our notion of \textit{perception coherence} extends them into a probabilistic form. This formulation depends on the input distribution and applies to general dissimilarity metrics. Our theoretical insights provide a probabilistic perspective on the process of feature representation transfer. Our experiments results show that our method outperforms or achieves on-par performance compared to strong baseline methods for representation transferring.
title Feature Representation Transferring to Lightweight Models via Perception Coherence
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.06595