English

Reachability In Simple Neural Networks

Computational Complexity 2026-04-08 v4 Machine Learning

Abstract

We investigate the complexity of the reachability problem for (deep) neural networks: does it compute valid output given some valid input? It was recently claimed that the problem is NP-complete for general neural networks and specifications over the input/output dimension given by conjunctions of linear inequalities. We recapitulate the proof and repair some flaws in the original upper and lower bound proofs. Motivated by the general result, we show that NP-hardness already holds for restricted classes of simple specifications and neural networks. Allowing for a single hidden layer and an output dimension of one as well as neural networks with just one negative, zero and one positive weight or bias is sufficient to ensure NP-hardness. Additionally, we give a thorough discussion and outlook of possible extensions for this direction of research on neural network verification.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2203.07941,
  title  = {Reachability In Simple Neural Networks},
  author = {Marco Sälzer and Martin Lange},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.07941},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2108.13179

R2 v1 2026-06-24T10:14:05.130Z