English

Time-independent Generalization Bounds for SGLD in Non-convex Settings

Machine Learning 2021-11-29 v1 Machine Learning Optimization and Control Probability

Abstract

We establish generalization error bounds for stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (SGLD) with constant learning rate under the assumptions of dissipativity and smoothness, a setting that has received increased attention in the sampling/optimization literature. Unlike existing bounds for SGLD in non-convex settings, ours are time-independent and decay to zero as the sample size increases. Using the framework of uniform stability, we establish time-independent bounds by exploiting the Wasserstein contraction property of the Langevin diffusion, which also allows us to circumvent the need to bound gradients using Lipschitz-like assumptions. Our analysis also supports variants of SGLD that use different discretization methods, incorporate Euclidean projections, or use non-isotropic noise.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2111.12876,
  title  = {Time-independent Generalization Bounds for SGLD in Non-convex Settings},
  author = {Tyler Farghly and Patrick Rebeschini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.12876},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

22 pages. To appear in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 34 (NeurIPS 2021)