Related papers: A Theory on Adam Instability in Large-Scale Machin…
Adam is the default algorithm for training neural networks, including large language models (LLMs). However, \citet{reddi2019convergence} provided an example that Adam diverges, raising concerns for its deployment in AI model training. We…
Adam has been shown to outperform gradient descent on large language models by a larger margin than on other tasks, but it is unclear why. We show that a key factor in this performance gap is the heavy-tailed class imbalance found in…
Adam is one of the most influential adaptive stochastic algorithms for training deep neural networks, which has been pointed out to be divergent even in the simple convex setting via a few simple counterexamples. Many attempts, such as…
In this research, we address critical concerns related to the numerical instability observed in 16-bit computations of machine learning models. Such instability, particularly when employing popular optimization algorithms like Adam, often…
This paper examines a critical yet unexplored dimension of the AI alignment problem: the potential for Large Language Models (LLMs) to inherit and amplify existing misalignments between human espoused theories and theories-in-use. Drawing…
Adam is widely adopted in practical applications due to its fast convergence. However, its theoretical analysis is still far from satisfactory. Existing convergence analyses for Adam rely on the bounded smoothness assumption, referred to as…
Stochastic optimization algorithms using exponential moving averages of the past gradients, such as ADAM, RMSProp and AdaGrad, have been having great successes in many applications, especially in training deep neural networks. ADAM in…
As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into agentic workflows, their unpredictability stemming from numerical instability has emerged as a critical reliability issue. While recent studies have demonstrated the…
Adam is known to perform significantly better than Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) in language models, a phenomenon for which a number of explanations have been proposed. In this work, we revisit this "optimizer gap" through a series of…
Large-scale pretraining datasets drive the success of large language models (LLMs). However, these web-scale corpora inevitably contain large amounts of noisy data due to unregulated web content or randomness inherent in data. Although LLM…
Adaptive optimization algorithms, particularly Adam and its variant AdamW, are fundamental components of modern deep learning. However, their training dynamics lack comprehensive theoretical understanding, with limited insight into why…
Deep learning systems achieve remarkable empirical performance, yet the stability of the training process itself remains poorly understood. Training unfolds as a high-dimensional dynamical system in which small perturbations to…
It is widely believed that stochastic gradient descent (SGD) performs significantly worse than adaptive optimizers such as Adam in pre-training Large Language Models (LLMs). Yet the underlying reason for this gap remains unclear. In this…
The impressive performance of large language models (LLMs) arises from their massive scale and heterogeneous module composition. However, this structural heterogeneity introduces additional optimization challenges. While adaptive optimizers…
Convergence and convergence rate analyses of adaptive methods, such as Adaptive Moment Estimation (Adam) and its variants, have been widely studied for nonconvex optimization. The analyses are based on assumptions that the expected or…
Human decision-making belongs to the foundation of our society and civilization, but we are on the verge of a future where much of it will be delegated to artificial intelligence. The arrival of Large Language Models (LLMs) has transformed…
In recent years, written language, particularly in science and education, has undergone remarkable shifts in word usage. These changes are widely attributed to the growing influence of Large Language Models (LLMs), which frequently rely on…
Ever since Reddi et al. 2018 pointed out the divergence issue of Adam, many new variants have been designed to obtain convergence. However, vanilla Adam remains exceptionally popular and it works well in practice. Why is there a gap between…
Robust and effective scaling of models from small to large width typically requires the precise adjustment of many algorithmic and architectural details, such as parameterization and optimizer choices. In this work, we propose a new…
Adam has been at the core of large-scale training for almost a decade, yet a simple empirical fact remains unaccounted for: both validation scores and the qualitative behaviour of the training runs improve when the momentum parameters…