ICML 2020poster125 citations

Neural Networks are Convex Regularizers: Exact Polynomial-time Convex Optimization Formulations for Two-layer Networks

Mert Pilanci, Tolga Ergen

Abstract

We develop exact representations of training two-layer neural networks with rectified linear units (ReLUs) in terms of a single convex program with number of variables polynomial in the number of training samples and the number of hidden neurons. Our theory utilizes semi-infinite duality and minimum norm regularization. We show that ReLU networks trained with standard weight decay are equivalent to block $\ell_1$ penalized convex models. Moreover, we show that certain standard convolutional linear networks are equivalent semi-definite programs which can be simplified to $\ell_1$ regularized linear models in a polynomial sized discrete Fourier feature space

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v119-pilanci20a,
  title = 	 {Neural Networks are Convex Regularizers: Exact Polynomial-time Convex Optimization Formulations for Two-layer Networks},
  author =       {Pilanci, Mert and Ergen, Tolga},
  booktitle = 	 {Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Machine Learning},
  pages = 	 {7695--7705},
  year = 	 {2020},
  editor = 	 {III, Hal Daumé and Singh, Aarti},
  volume = 	 {119},
  series = 	 {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research},
  month = 	 {13--18 Jul},
  publisher =    {PMLR},
  pdf = 	 {http://proceedings.mlr.press/v119/pilanci20a/pilanci20a.pdf},
  url = 	 {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v119/pilanci20a.html},
  abstract = 	 {We develop exact representations of training two-layer neural networks with rectified linear units (ReLUs) in terms of a single convex program with number of variables polynomial in the number of training samples and the number of hidden neurons. Our theory utilizes semi-infinite duality and minimum norm regularization. We show that ReLU networks trained with standard weight decay are equivalent to block $\ell_1$ penalized convex models. Moreover, we show that certain standard convolutional linear networks are equivalent semi-definite programs which can be simplified to $\ell_1$ regularized linear models in a polynomial sized discrete Fourier feature space}
}
Neural Networks are Convex Regularizers: Exact Polynomial-time Convex Optimization Formulations for Two-layer Networks · ICML 2020