Gradient Similarity Surgery in Multi-Task Deep Learning

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Borsani, Thomas, Rosani, Andrea, Nicosia, Giuseppe, Di Fatta, Giuseppe
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866915331394502656
author Borsani, Thomas
Rosani, Andrea
Nicosia, Giuseppe
Di Fatta, Giuseppe
author_facet Borsani, Thomas
Rosani, Andrea
Nicosia, Giuseppe
Di Fatta, Giuseppe
contents The multi-task learning ($MTL$) paradigm aims to simultaneously learn multiple tasks within a single model capturing higher-level, more general hidden patterns that are shared by the tasks. In deep learning, a significant challenge in the backpropagation training process is the design of advanced optimisers to improve the convergence speed and stability of the gradient descent learning rule. In particular, in multi-task deep learning ($MTDL$) the multitude of tasks may generate potentially conflicting gradients that would hinder the concurrent convergence of the diverse loss functions. This challenge arises when the gradients of the task objectives have either different magnitudes or opposite directions, causing one or a few to dominate or to interfere with each other, thus degrading the training process. Gradient surgery methods address the problem explicitly dealing with conflicting gradients by adjusting the overall gradient trajectory. This work introduces a novel gradient surgery method, the Similarity-Aware Momentum Gradient Surgery (SAM-GS), which provides an effective and scalable approach based on a gradient magnitude similarity measure to guide the optimisation process. The SAM-GS surgery adopts gradient equalisation and modulation of the first-order momentum. A series of experimental tests have shown the effectiveness of SAM-GS on synthetic problems and $MTL$ benchmarks. Gradient magnitude similarity plays a crucial role in regularising gradient aggregation in $MTDL$ for the optimisation of the learning process.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_06130
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Gradient Similarity Surgery in Multi-Task Deep Learning
Borsani, Thomas
Rosani, Andrea
Nicosia, Giuseppe
Di Fatta, Giuseppe
Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The multi-task learning ($MTL$) paradigm aims to simultaneously learn multiple tasks within a single model capturing higher-level, more general hidden patterns that are shared by the tasks. In deep learning, a significant challenge in the backpropagation training process is the design of advanced optimisers to improve the convergence speed and stability of the gradient descent learning rule. In particular, in multi-task deep learning ($MTDL$) the multitude of tasks may generate potentially conflicting gradients that would hinder the concurrent convergence of the diverse loss functions. This challenge arises when the gradients of the task objectives have either different magnitudes or opposite directions, causing one or a few to dominate or to interfere with each other, thus degrading the training process. Gradient surgery methods address the problem explicitly dealing with conflicting gradients by adjusting the overall gradient trajectory. This work introduces a novel gradient surgery method, the Similarity-Aware Momentum Gradient Surgery (SAM-GS), which provides an effective and scalable approach based on a gradient magnitude similarity measure to guide the optimisation process. The SAM-GS surgery adopts gradient equalisation and modulation of the first-order momentum. A series of experimental tests have shown the effectiveness of SAM-GS on synthetic problems and $MTL$ benchmarks. Gradient magnitude similarity plays a crucial role in regularising gradient aggregation in $MTDL$ for the optimisation of the learning process.
title Gradient Similarity Surgery in Multi-Task Deep Learning
topic Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06130