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On Advancements of the Forward-Forward Algorithm

Machine Learning 2025-06-26 v2

Abstract

The Forward-Forward algorithm has evolved in machine learning research, tackling more complex tasks that mimic real-life applications. In the last years, it has been improved by several techniques to perform better than its original version, handling a challenging dataset like CIFAR10 without losing its flexibility and low memory usage. We have shown in our results that improvements are achieved through a combination of convolutional channel grouping, learning rate schedules, and independent block structures during training that lead to a 20\% decrease in test error percentage. Additionally, to approach further implementations on low-capacity hardware projects, we have presented a series of lighter models that achieve low test error percentages within (21±\pm3)\% and number of trainable parameters between 164,706 and 754,386. This serves as a basis for our future study on complete verification and validation of these kinds of neural networks.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.21662,
  title  = {On Advancements of the Forward-Forward Algorithm},
  author = {Mauricio Ortiz Torres and Markus Lange and Arne P. Raulf},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.21662},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication

R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:16:50.554Z