Główne pojęcia
Equilibrium propagation (EP) is a promising alternative to backpropagation for training neural networks on biological or analog substrates, but requires weight symmetry and infinitesimal perturbations. We show that weight asymmetry introduces bias in the gradient estimates of generalized EP, and propose a homeostatic objective to improve the functional symmetry of the Jacobian, enabling EP to scale to complex tasks like ImageNet 32x32 without perfect weight symmetry.
Streszczenie
The content discusses the challenges of using equilibrium propagation (EP) for training neural networks on physical substrates, where weight symmetry and infinitesimal perturbations are difficult to achieve.
The key insights are:
- Weight asymmetry introduces two sources of bias in the gradient estimates of generalized EP: finite nudge size and Jacobian asymmetry.
- The bias from finite nudge can be avoided by using a Cauchy integral to estimate the exact derivatives, as in holomorphic EP (hEP).
- The bias from Jacobian asymmetry can be mitigated by introducing a homeostatic objective that directly penalizes functional asymmetries of the Jacobian at the network's fixed point.
- The homeostatic objective improves the performance of generalized hEP on complex tasks like ImageNet 32x32, with only a small gap compared to the symmetric case.
- The homeostatic objective is more general than just enforcing weight symmetry, as it can also improve training in architectures without reciprocal connections.
Overall, the work provides a theoretical and empirical framework for studying and mitigating the adverse effects of physical constraints on learning algorithms that rely on the substrate's relaxation dynamics.