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Related papers: Benign Overfitting in Single-Head Attention

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Existing large-dimensional theory for spectral algorithms resolves either the optimally tuned point or the interpolation limit, but leaves the under-regularized regime unexplored. We study the learning curve and benign overfitting of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-28 Weihao Lu , Qian Lin , Yingcun Xia , Dongming Huang

Transformer attention is typically implemented using softmax normalization, which enforces attention weights with unit sum normalization. While effective in many settings, this constraint can limit flexibility in controlling attention…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-27 Jeongin Bae , Baeseong Park , Gunho Park , Minsub Kim , Joonhyung Lee , Junhee Yoo , Sunghyeon Woo , Jiwon Ryu , Se Jung Kwon , Dongsoo Lee

Understanding how overparameterized neural networks generalize despite perfect interpolation of noisy training data is a fundamental question. Mallinar et. al. 2022 noted that neural networks seem to often exhibit ``tempered overfitting'',…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-25 Nirmit Joshi , Gal Vardi , Nathan Srebro

Meta-learning has arisen as a successful method for improving training performance by training over many similar tasks, especially with deep neural networks (DNNs). However, the theoretical understanding of when and why overparameterized…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-11 Peizhong Ju , Yingbin Liang , Ness B. Shroff

Transformers have recently revolutionized many domains in modern machine learning and one salient discovery is their remarkable in-context learning capability, where models can solve an unseen task by utilizing task-specific prompts without…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-10 Yu Huang , Yuan Cheng , Yingbin Liang

A recent line of work has shown that an overparametrized neural network can perfectly fit the training data, an otherwise often intractable nonconvex optimization problem. For (fully-connected) shallow networks, in the best case scenario,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-30 Armin Eftekhari , ChaeHwan Song , Volkan Cevher

Many modern machine learning models are trained to achieve zero or near-zero training error in order to obtain near-optimal (but non-zero) test error. This phenomenon of strong generalization performance for "overfitted" / interpolated…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-10-29 Mikhail Belkin , Daniel Hsu , Partha Mitra

We study the least-square regression problem with a two-layer fully-connected neural network, with ReLU activation function, trained by gradient flow. Our first result is a generalization result, that requires no assumptions on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-10 Junhyung Park , Patrick Bloebaum , Shiva Prasad Kasiviswanathan

Overfitting is a phenomenon that occurs when a machine learning model is trained for too long and focused too much on the exact fitness of the training samples to the provided training labels and cannot keep track of the predictive rules…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-22 Nuri Korhan , Samet Bayram

Many modern neural network architectures are trained in an overparameterized regime where the parameters of the model exceed the size of the training dataset. Sufficiently overparameterized neural network architectures in principle have the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-02-14 Samet Oymak , Mahdi Soltanolkotabi

This paper analyzes the generalization error of minimum-norm interpolating solutions in linear regression using spiked covariance data models. The paper characterizes how varying spike strengths and target-spike alignments can affect risk,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-03 Jiping Li , Rishi Sonthalia

In this paper, we provide sufficient conditions of benign overfitting of fixed width leaky ReLU two-layer neural network classifiers trained on mixture data via gradient descent. Our results are derived by establishing directional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Ichiro Hashimoto

Neural networks are known to develop latent representations that are $aligned$, namely structurally similar across networks trained with different architectures, training protocols, or training datasets. We study this phenomenon in a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-27 Ali Hussaini Umar , Alessandro Laio

The training and generalization dynamics of the Transformer's core mechanism, namely the Attention mechanism, remain under-explored. Besides, existing analyses primarily focus on single-head attention. Inspired by the demonstrated benefits…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-15 Puneesh Deora , Rouzbeh Ghaderi , Hossein Taheri , Christos Thrampoulidis

Transformers have the capacity to act as supervised learning algorithms: by properly encoding a set of labeled training ("in-context") examples and an unlabeled test example into an input sequence of vectors of the same dimension, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-16 Spencer Frei , Gal Vardi

Graph neural networks (GNNs) are commonly used in semi-supervised settings. Previous research has primarily focused on finding appropriate graph filters (e.g. aggregation methods) to perform well on both homophilic and heterophilic graphs.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-17 Yoonhyuk Choi , Jiho Choi , Taewook Ko , Chong-Kwon Kim

Since its inception in "Attention Is All You Need", transformer architecture has led to revolutionary advancements in NLP. The attention layer within the transformer admits a sequence of input tokens $X$ and makes them interact through…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-23 Davoud Ataee Tarzanagh , Yingcong Li , Christos Thrampoulidis , Samet Oymak

A recent line of research has highlighted the existence of a "double descent" phenomenon in deep learning, whereby increasing the number of training examples $N$ causes the generalization error of neural networks to peak when $N$ is of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-12 Stéphane d'Ascoli , Levent Sagun , Giulio Biroli

Overparametrized neural networks tend to perfectly fit noisy training data yet generalize well on test data. Inspired by this empirical observation, recent work has sought to understand this phenomenon of benign overfitting or harmless…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-02-23 Andrew D. McRae , Santhosh Karnik , Mark A. Davenport , Vidya Muthukumar

Classical wisdom suggests that estimators should avoid fitting noise to achieve good generalization. In contrast, modern overparameterized models can yield small test error despite interpolating noise -- a phenomenon often called "benign…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-03-02 Michael Aerni , Marco Milanta , Konstantin Donhauser , Fanny Yang