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We study the problem of transfer learning and fine-tuning in linear models for both regression and binary classification. In particular, we consider the use of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) on a linear model initialized with pretrained…
The ADAM optimizer is exceedingly popular in the deep learning community. Often it works very well, sometimes it doesn't. Why? We interpret ADAM as a combination of two aspects: for each weight, the update direction is determined by the…
Neural network optimization remains one of the most consequential yet poorly understood challenges in modern AI research, where improvements in training algorithms can lead to enhanced feature learning in foundation models,…
The rapid scaling of large language models (LLMs) has made low-precision training essential for reducing memory, improving efficiency, and enabling larger models and datasets. Existing convergence theories for adaptive optimizers, however,…
Machine learning systems must adapt to data distributions that evolve over time, in applications ranging from sensor networks and self-driving car perception modules to brain-machine interfaces. We consider gradual domain adaptation, where…
Deep neural networks are usually trained with stochastic gradient descent (SGD), which minimizes objective function using very rough approximations of gradient, only averaging to the real gradient. Standard approaches like momentum or ADAM…
We explore conditions for when the gradient of a deep declarative node can be approximated by ignoring constraint terms and still result in a descent direction for the global loss function. This has important practical application when…
The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method and its variants are algorithms of choice for many Deep Learning tasks. These methods operate in a small-batch regime wherein a fraction of the training data, say $32$-$512$ data points, is…
Post-training quantization is an effective method for reducing the serving cost of large language models, where the standard approach is to use a round-to-nearest quantization level scheme. However, this often introduces large errors due to…
The minimization of the loss function is of paramount importance in deep neural networks. On the other hand, many popular optimization algorithms have been shown to correspond to some evolution equation of gradient flow type. Inspired by…
Uncertainty computation in deep learning is essential to design robust and reliable systems. Variational inference (VI) is a promising approach for such computation, but requires more effort to implement and execute compared to…
Optimizers like Adam and AdaGrad have been very successful in training large-scale neural networks. Yet, the performance of these methods is heavily dependent on a carefully tuned learning rate schedule. We show that in many large-scale…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) has achieved great success in training deep neural network, where the gradient is computed through back-propagation. However, the back-propagated values of different layers vary dramatically. This…
We conjecture that the inherent difference in generalisation between adaptive and non-adaptive gradient methods in deep learning stems from the increased estimation noise in the flattest directions of the true loss surface. We demonstrate…
In this paper, we develop a new optimization framework for the least squares learning problem via fully connected neural networks or physics-informed neural networks. The gradient descent sometimes behaves inefficiently in deep learning…
We study the problem of learning similarity functions over very large corpora using neural network embedding models. These models are typically trained using SGD with sampling of random observed and unobserved pairs, with a number of…
We study the convergence of gradient descent (GD) and stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for training $L$-hidden-layer linear residual networks (ResNets). We prove that for training deep residual networks with certain linear transformations…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is an important algorithm in machine learning. With constant learning rates, it is a stochastic process that, after an initial phase of convergence, generates samples from a stationary distribution. We show…
Gradient dynamics play a central role in determining the stability and generalization of deep neural networks. In this work, we provide an empirical analysis of how variance and standard deviation of gradients evolve during training,…
The success of neural networks over the past decade has established them as effective models for many relevant data generating processes. Statistical theory on neural networks indicates graceful scaling of sample complexity. For example,…