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1. Kernel-Based Smoothness Analysis of Residual Networks

   Tom Tirer; Joan Bruna; Raja Giryes (August 2021, Mathematical and Scientific Machine Learning)

   A major factor in the success of deep neural networks is the use of sophisticated architectures rather than the classical multilayer perceptron (MLP). Residual networks (ResNets) stand out among these powerful modern architectures. Previous works focused on the optimization advantages of deep ResNets over deep MLPs. In this paper, we show another distinction between the two models, namely, a tendency of ResNets to promote smoother interpolations than MLPs. We analyze this phenomenon via the neural tangent kernel (NTK) approach. First, we compute the NTK for a considered ResNet model and prove its stability during gradient descent training. Then, we show by various evaluation methodologies that for ReLU activations the NTK of ResNet, and its kernel regression results, are smoother than the ones of MLP. The better smoothness observed in our analysis may explain the better generalization ability of ResNets and the practice of moderately attenuating the residual blocks. 

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2. Kernel-Based Smoothness Analysis of Residual Networks

   Tirer, Tom; Bruna, Joan; Giryes, Raja (August 2021, Mathematical and Scientific Machine Learning)

   null (Ed.)

   A major factor in the success of deep neural networks is the use of sophisticated architectures rather than the classical multilayer perceptron (MLP). Residual networks (ResNets) stand out among these powerful modern architectures. Previous works focused on the optimization advantages of deep ResNets over deep MLPs. In this paper, we show another distinction between the two models, namely, a tendency of ResNets to promote smoother interpolations than MLPs. We analyze this phenomenon via the neural tangent kernel (NTK) approach. First, we compute the NTK for a considered ResNet model and prove its stability during gradient descent training. Then, we show by various evaluation methodologies that for ReLU activations the NTK of ResNet, and its kernel regression results, are smoother than the ones of MLP. The better smoothness observed in our analysis may explain the better generalization ability of ResNets and the practice of moderately attenuating the residual blocks. 

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3. Diffeomorphic Image Registration using Lipschitz Continuous Residual Networks

   Joshi, Ankita; Hong, Yi (October 2022, Proceedings of Machine Learning Research)

   Image registration is an essential task in medical image analysis. We propose two novel unsupervised diffeomorphic image registration networks, which use deep Residual Networks (ResNets) as numerical approximations of the underlying continuous diffeomorphic setting governed by ordinary differential equations (ODEs), viewed as a Eulerian discretization scheme. While considering the ODE-based parameterizations of diffeomorphisms, we consider both stationary and non-stationary (time varying) velocity fields as the driving velocities to solve the ODEs, which give rise to our two proposed architectures for diffeomorphic registration. We also employ Lipschitz-continuity on the Residual Networks in both architectures to define the admissible Hilbert space of velocity fields as a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces (RKHS) and regularize the smoothness of the velocity fields. We apply both registration networks to align and segment the OASIS brain MRI dataset. Experimental results demonstrate that our models are computational efficient and achieve comparable registration results with a smoother deformation field. 

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4. What Can the Neural Tangent Kernel Tell Us About Adversarial Robustness?

   Tsilivis, Nikolaos; Kempe, Julia (October 2022, NeurIPS)

   The adversarial vulnerability of neural nets, and subsequent techniques to create robust models have attracted significant attention; yet we still lack a full understanding of this phenomenon. Here, we study adversarial examples of trained neural networks through analytical tools afforded by recent theory advances connecting neural networks and kernel methods, namely the Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK), following a growing body of work that leverages the NTK approximation to successfully analyze important deep learning phenomena and design algorithms for new applications. We show how NTKs allow to generate adversarial examples in a ``training-free'' fashion, and demonstrate that they transfer to fool their finite-width neural net counterparts in the ``lazy'' regime. We leverage this connection to provide an alternative view on robust and non-robust features, which have been suggested to underlie the adversarial brittleness of neural nets. Specifically, we define and study features induced by the eigendecomposition of the kernel to better understand the role of robust and non-robust features, the reliance on both for standard classification and the robustness-accuracy trade-off. We find that such features are surprisingly consistent across architectures, and that robust features tend to correspond to the largest eigenvalues of the model, and thus are learned early during training. Our framework allows us to identify and visualize non-robust yet useful features. Finally, we shed light on the robustness mechanism underlying adversarial training of neural nets used in practice: quantifying the evolution of the associated empirical NTK, we demonstrate that its dynamics falls much earlier into the ``lazy'' regime and manifests a much stronger form of the well known bias to prioritize learning features within the top eigenspaces of the kernel, compared to standard training. 

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5. Deep learning versus kernel learning: an empirical study of loss landscape geometry and the time evolution of the Neural Tangent Kernel

   Fort, S; Dziugaite, G.K.; Paul, M.; Kharaghani, S.; Roy, D.M.; Ganguli, S. (December 2020, Advances in neural information processing systems)

   null (Ed.)

   In suitably initialized wide networks, small learning rates transform deep neural networks (DNNs) into neural tangent kernel (NTK) machines, whose training dynamics is well-approximated by a linear weight expansion of the network at initialization. Standard training, however, diverges from its linearization in ways that are poorly understood. We study the relationship between the training dynamics of nonlinear deep networks, the geometry of the loss landscape, and the time evolution of a data-dependent NTK. We do so through a large-scale phenomenological analysis of training, synthesizing diverse measures characterizing loss landscape geometry and NTK dynamics. In multiple neural architectures and datasets, we find these diverse measures evolve in a highly correlated manner, revealing a universal picture of the deep learning process. In this picture, deep network training exhibits a highly chaotic rapid initial transient that within 2 to 3 epochs determines the final linearly connected basin of low loss containing the end point of training. During this chaotic transient, the NTK changes rapidly, learning useful features from the training data that enables it to outperform the standard initial NTK by a factor of 3 in less than 3 to 4 epochs. After this rapid chaotic transient, the NTK changes at constant velocity, and its performance matches that of full network training in 15\% to 45\% of training time. Overall, our analysis reveals a striking correlation between a diverse set of metrics over training time, governed by a rapid chaotic to stable transition in the first few epochs, that together poses challenges and opportunities for the development of more accurate theories of deep learning. 

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