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1. Dynamics of finite width Kernel and prediction fluctuations in mean field neural networks

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-5468/ad642b  

   Bordelon, Blake; Pehlevan, Cengiz (October 2024, Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment)

   Abstract We analyze the dynamics of finite width effects in wide but finite feature learning neural networks. Starting from a dynamical mean field theory description of infinite width deep neural network kernel and prediction dynamics, we provide a characterization of the $O\left(1/\sqrt{\text{width}}\right)$fluctuations of the dynamical mean field theory order parameters over random initializations of the network weights. Our results, while perturbative in width, unlike prior analyses, are non-perturbative in the strength of feature learning. We find that once the mean field/µP parameterization is adopted, the leading finite size effect on the dynamics is to introduce initialization variance in the predictions and feature kernels of the networks. In the lazy limit of network training, all kernels are random but static in time and the prediction variance has a universal form. However, in the rich, feature learning regime, the fluctuations of the kernels and predictions are dynamically coupled with a variance that can be computed self-consistently. In two layer networks, we show how feature learning can dynamically reduce the variance of the final tangent kernel and final network predictions. We also show how initialization variance can slow down online learning in wide but finite networks. In deeper networks, kernel variance can dramatically accumulate through subsequent layers at large feature learning strengths, but feature learning continues to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the feature kernels. In discrete time, we demonstrate that large learning rate phenomena such as edge of stability effects can be well captured by infinite width dynamics and that initialization variance can decrease dynamically. For convolutional neural networks trained on CIFAR-10, we empirically find significant corrections to both the bias and variance of network dynamics due to finite width. 

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2. Simple, fast, and flexible framework for matrix completion with infinite width neural networks

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2115064119  

   Radhakrishnan, Adityanarayanan; Stefanakis, George; Belkin, Mikhail; Uhler, Caroline (April 2022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Matrix completion problems arise in many applications including recommendation systems, computer vision, and genomics. Increasingly larger neural networks have been successful in many of these applications but at considerable computational costs. Remarkably, taking the width of a neural network to infinity allows for improved computational performance. In this work, we develop an infinite width neural network framework for matrix completion that is simple, fast, and flexible. Simplicity and speed come from the connection between the infinite width limit of neural networks and kernels known as neural tangent kernels (NTK). In particular, we derive the NTK for fully connected and convolutional neural networks for matrix completion. The flexibility stems from a feature prior, which allows encoding relationships between coordinates of the target matrix, akin to semisupervised learning. The effectiveness of our framework is demonstrated through competitive results for virtual drug screening and image inpainting/reconstruction. We also provide an implementation in Python to make our framework accessible on standard hardware to a broad audience. 

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3. On the Equivalence between Neural Network and Support Vector Machine

   Chen, Y.; Huang, W.; Nguyen, L.; Weng, T.-W. (December 2021, Advances in neural information processing systems)

   Recent research shows that the dynamics of an infinitely wide neural network (NN) trained by gradient descent can be characterized by Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK) [27]. Under the squared loss, the infinite-width NN trained by gradient descent with an infinitely small learning rate is equivalent to kernel regression with NTK [4]. However, the equivalence is only known for ridge regression currently [6], while the equivalence between NN and other kernel machines (KMs), e.g. support vector machine (SVM), remains unknown. Therefore, in this work, we propose to establish the equivalence between NN and SVM, and specifically, the infinitely wide NN trained by soft margin loss and the standard soft margin SVM with NTK trained by subgradient descent. Our main theoretical results include establishing the equivalence between NN and a broad family of L2 regularized KMs with finite width bounds, which cannot be handled by prior work, and showing that every finite-width NN trained by such regularized loss functions is approximately a KM. Furthermore, we demonstrate our theory can enable three practical applications, including (i) non-vacuous generalization bound of NN via the corresponding KM; (ii) nontrivial robustness certificate for the infinite-width NN (while existing robustness verification methods would provide vacuous bounds); (iii) intrinsically more robust infinite-width NNs than those from previous kernel regression. 

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4. Metric flows with neural networks

   https://doi.org/10.1088/2632-2153/ad8533  

   Halverson, James; Ruehle, Fabian (October 2024, Machine Learning: Science and Technology)

   Abstract We develop a general theory of flows in the space of Riemannian metrics induced by neural network (NN) gradient descent. This is motivated in part by recent advances in approximating Calabi–Yau metrics with NNs and is enabled by recent advances in understanding flows in the space of NNs. We derive the corresponding metric flow equations, which are governed by a metric neural tangent kernel (NTK), a complicated, non-local object that evolves in time. However, many architectures admit an infinite-width limit in which the kernel becomes fixed and the dynamics simplify. Additional assumptions can induce locality in the flow, which allows for the realization of Perelman’s formulation of Ricci flow that was used to resolve the 3d Poincaré conjecture. We demonstrate that such fixed kernel regimes lead to poor learning of numerical Calabi–Yau metrics, as is expected since the associated NNs do not learn features. Conversely, we demonstrate that well-learned numerical metrics at finite-width exhibit an evolving metric-NTK, associated with feature learning. Our theory of NN metric flows therefore explains why NNs are better at learning Calabi–Yau metrics than fixed kernel methods, such as the Ricci flow. 

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5. The Recurrent Neural Tangent Kernel

   Alemohammad, Sina; Wang, Zichao; Balestriero, Randall; Baraniuk, Richard (May 2021, The International Conference on Learning Representations)

   The study of deep neural networks (DNNs) in the infinite-width limit, via the so-called neural tangent kernel (NTK) approach, has provided new insights into the dynamics of learning, generalization, and the impact of initialization. One key DNN architecture remains to be kernelized, namely, the recurrent neural network (RNN). In this paper we introduce and study the Recurrent Neural Tangent Kernel (RNTK), which provides new insights into the behavior of overparametrized RNNs. A key property of the RNTK should greatly benefit practitioners is its ability to compare inputs of different length. To this end, we characterize how the RNTK weights different time steps to form its output under different initialization parameters and nonlinearity choices. A synthetic and 56 real-world data experiments demonstrate that the RNTK offers significant performance gains over other kernels, including standard NTKs, across a wide array of data sets. 

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