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In this paper, we study the convergence of the Adaptive Moment Estimation (Adam) algorithm under unconstrained non-convex smooth stochastic optimizations. Despite the widespread usage in machine learning areas, its theoretical properties…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-06 Yusu Hong , Junhong Lin

Stochastic optimizers play a crucial role in the successful training of deep neural network models. To achieve optimal model performance, designers must carefully select both model and optimizer hyperparameters. However, this process is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-17 Gustavo Silva , Paul Rodriguez

Understanding cognitive processes in the brain demands sophisticated models capable of replicating neural dynamics at large scales. We present a physiologically inspired speech recognition architecture, compatible and scalable with deep…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-09-26 Alexandre Bittar , Philip N. Garner

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…

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-15 Frederik Kunstner , Robin Yadav , Alan Milligan , Mark Schmidt , Alberto Bietti

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,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-23 Ansh Nagwekar

Optimization is essential in deep learning. The foundational method upon which most optimizers are built is momentum-based stochastic gradient descent. However, it suffers from two key drawbacks. First, it has noisy and varying gradients,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Saurabh Saini , Kapil Ahuja , Thomas Wick , Saurav Kumar

Traditional analyses of gradient descent show that when the largest eigenvalue of the Hessian, also known as the sharpness $S(\theta)$, is bounded by $2/\eta$, training is "stable" and the training loss decreases monotonically. Recent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-12 Alex Damian , Eshaan Nichani , Jason D. Lee

This paper revisits the so-called vanishing gradient phenomenon, which commonly occurs in deep randomly initialized neural networks. Leveraging an in-depth analysis of neural chains, we first show that vanishing gradients cannot be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-08 Antonio Orvieto , Jonas Kohler , Dario Pavllo , Thomas Hofmann , Aurelien Lucchi

We propose a new, more general approach to the design of stochastic gradient-based optimization methods for machine learning. In this new framework, optimizers assume access to a batch of gradient estimates per iteration, rather than a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-02 Julius Kunze , James Townsend , David Barber

Harnessing the local topography of the loss landscape is a central challenge in advanced optimization tasks. By accounting for the effect of potential parameter changes, we can alter the model more efficiently. Contrary to standard…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-27 Jed A. Duersch , Tommie A. Catanach , Alexander Safonov , Jeremy Wendt

Gradient descent (GD) based optimization methods are these days the standard tools to train deep neural networks in artificial intelligence systems. In optimization procedures in deep learning the employed optimizer is often not the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-24 Steffen Dereich , Robin Graeber , Arnulf Jentzen , Adrian Riekert

How does the choice of optimization algorithm shape a model's ability to learn features? To address this question for steepest descent methods --including sign descent, which is closely related to Adam --we introduce steepest mirror flows…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Tom Jacobs , Chao Zhou , Rebekka Burkholz

In gradient descent dynamics of neural networks, the top eigenvalue of the loss Hessian (sharpness) displays a variety of robust phenomena throughout training. This includes early time regimes where the sharpness may decrease during early…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-17 Dayal Singh Kalra , Tianyu He , Maissam Barkeshli

Adam is one of the most popular optimization algorithms in deep learning. However, it is known that Adam does not converge in theory unless choosing a hyperparameter, i.e., $\beta_2$, in a problem-dependent manner. There have been many…

In artificial neural networks trained with gradient descent, the weights used for processing stimuli are also used during backward passes to calculate gradients. For the real brain to approximate gradients, gradient information would have…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2020-02-04 Jordan Guerguiev , Konrad P. Kording , Blake A. Richards

In the context of stochastic gradient descent(SGD) and adaptive moment estimation (Adam),researchers have recently proposed optimization techniques that transition from Adam to SGD with the goal of improving both convergence and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-01 Jiaxuan Wang , Jenna Wiens

Trajectory prediction models often fail in real-world automated driving due to distributional shifts between training and test conditions. Such distributional shifts, whether behavioural or environmental, pose a critical risk by causing the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-15 Michele De Vita , Julian Wiederer , Vasileios Belagiannis

We empirically demonstrate that full-batch gradient descent on neural network training objectives typically operates in a regime we call the Edge of Stability. In this regime, the maximum eigenvalue of the training loss Hessian hovers just…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-24 Jeremy M. Cohen , Simran Kaur , Yuanzhi Li , J. Zico Kolter , Ameet Talwalkar

The Adam optimizer is widely used for transformer optimization in practice, which makes understanding the underlying optimization mechanisms an important problem. However, due to the Adam's complexity, theoretical analysis of how it…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Bingrui Li , Wei Huang , Andi Han , Zhanpeng Zhou , Taiji Suzuki , Jun Zhu , Jianfei Chen