On damage of interpolation to adversarial robustness in regression

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Peng, Jingfu, Yang, Yuhong
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Peng, Jingfu
Yang, Yuhong
author_facet Peng, Jingfu
Yang, Yuhong
contents Deep neural networks (DNNs) typically involve a large number of parameters and are trained to achieve zero or near-zero training error. Despite such interpolation, they often exhibit strong generalization performance on unseen data, a phenomenon that has motivated extensive theoretical investigations. Comforting results show that interpolation indeed may not affect the minimax rate of convergence under the squared error loss. In the mean time, DNNs are well known to be highly vulnerable to adversarial perturbations in future inputs. A natural question then arises: Can interpolation also escape from suboptimal performance under a future $X$-attack? In this paper, we investigate the adversarial robustness of interpolating estimators in a framework of nonparametric regression. A finding is that interpolating estimators must be suboptimal even under a subtle future $X$-attack, and achieving perfect fitting can substantially damage their robustness. An interesting phenomenon in the high interpolation regime, which we term the curse of simple size, is also revealed and discussed. Numerical experiments support our theoretical findings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_16070
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On damage of interpolation to adversarial robustness in regression
Peng, Jingfu
Yang, Yuhong
Machine Learning
Statistics Theory
Deep neural networks (DNNs) typically involve a large number of parameters and are trained to achieve zero or near-zero training error. Despite such interpolation, they often exhibit strong generalization performance on unseen data, a phenomenon that has motivated extensive theoretical investigations. Comforting results show that interpolation indeed may not affect the minimax rate of convergence under the squared error loss. In the mean time, DNNs are well known to be highly vulnerable to adversarial perturbations in future inputs. A natural question then arises: Can interpolation also escape from suboptimal performance under a future $X$-attack? In this paper, we investigate the adversarial robustness of interpolating estimators in a framework of nonparametric regression. A finding is that interpolating estimators must be suboptimal even under a subtle future $X$-attack, and achieving perfect fitting can substantially damage their robustness. An interesting phenomenon in the high interpolation regime, which we term the curse of simple size, is also revealed and discussed. Numerical experiments support our theoretical findings.
title On damage of interpolation to adversarial robustness in regression
topic Machine Learning
Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16070