Mila is hosting its first quantum computing hackathon on November 21, a unique day to explore quantum and AI prototyping, collaborate on Quandela and IBM platforms, and learn, share, and network in a stimulating environment at the heart of Quebec’s AI and quantum ecosystem.
This new initiative aims to strengthen connections between Mila’s research community, its partners, and AI experts across Quebec and Canada through in-person meetings and events focused on AI adoption in industry.
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Pierre-Antoine Manzagol
Alumni
Publications
On the interplay between noise and curvature and its effect on optimization and generalization
The speed at which one can minimize an expected loss using stochastic methods depends on two properties: the curvature of the loss and the v… (see more)ariance of the gradients. While most previous works focus on one or the other of these properties, we explore how their interaction affects optimization speed. Further, as the ultimate goal is good generalization performance, we clarify how both curvature and noise are relevant to properly estimate the generalization gap. Realizing that the limitations of some existing works stems from a confusion between these matrices, we also clarify the distinction between the Fisher matrix, the Hessian, and the covariance matrix of the gradients.
This work revisits the use of information criteria to characterize the generalization of deep learning models. In particular, we empirically… (see more) demonstrate the effectiveness of the Takeuchi information criterion (TIC), an extension of the Akaike information criterion (AIC) for misspecified models, in estimating the generalization gap, shedding light on why quantities such as the number of parameters cannot quantify generalization. The TIC depends on both the Hessian of the loss H and the covariance of the gradients C. By exploring the similarities and differences between these two matrices as well as the Fisher information matrix F, we study the interplay between noise and curvature in deep models. We also address the question of whether C is a reasonable approximation to F, as is commonly assumed.
This work revisits the use of information criteria to characterize the generalization of deep learning models. In particular, we empirically… (see more) demonstrate the effectiveness of the Takeuchi information criterion (TIC), an extension of the Akaike information criterion (AIC) for misspecified models, in estimating the generalization gap, shedding light on why quantities such as the number of parameters cannot quantify generalization. The TIC depends on both the Hessian of the loss H and the covariance of the gradients C. By exploring the similarities and differences between these two matrices as well as the Fisher information matrix F, we study the interplay between noise and curvature in deep models. We also address the question of whether C is a reasonable approximation to F, as is commonly assumed.
Most stochastic optimization methods use gradients once before discarding them. While variance reduction methods have shown that reusing pas… (see more)t gradients can be beneficial when there is a finite number of datapoints, they do not easily extend to the online setting. One issue is the staleness due to using past gradients. We propose to correct this staleness using the idea of implicit gradient transport (IGT) which transforms gradients computed at previous iterates into gradients evaluated at the current iterate without using the Hessian explicitly. In addition to reducing the variance and bias of our updates over time, IGT can be used as a drop-in replacement for the gradient estimate in a number of well-understood methods such as heavy ball or Adam. We show experimentally that it achieves state-of-the-art results on a wide range of architectures and benchmarks. Additionally, the IGT gradient estimator yields the optimal asymptotic convergence rate for online stochastic optimization in the restricted setting where the Hessians of all component functions are equal.
The loss function of deep networks is known to be non-convex but the precise nature of this nonconvexity is still an active area of research… (see more). In this work, we study the loss landscape of deep networks through the eigendecompositions of their Hessian matrix. In particular, we examine how important the negative eigenvalues are and the benefits one can observe in handling them appropriately.
Theano is a Python library that allows to define, optimize, and evaluate mathematical expressions involving multi-dimensional arrays efficie… (see more)ntly. Since its introduction, it has been one of the most used CPU and GPU mathematical compilers - especially in the machine learning community - and has shown steady performance improvements. Theano is being actively and continuously developed since 2008, multiple frameworks have been built on top of it and it has been used to produce many state-of-the-art machine learning models.
The present article is structured as follows. Section I provides an overview of the Theano software and its community. Section II presents the principal features of Theano and how to use them, and compares them with other similar projects. Section III focuses on recently-introduced functionalities and improvements. Section IV compares the performance of Theano against Torch7 and TensorFlow on several machine learning models. Section V discusses current limitations of Theano and potential ways of improving it.
Theano is a Python library that allows to define, optimize, and evaluate mathematical expressions involving multi-dimensional arrays efficie… (see more)ntly. Since its introduction, it has been one of the most used CPU and GPU mathematical compilers - especially in the machine learning community - and has shown steady performance improvements. Theano is being actively and continuously developed since 2008, multiple frameworks have been built on top of it and it has been used to produce many state-of-the-art machine learning models.
The present article is structured as follows. Section I provides an overview of the Theano software and its community. Section II presents the principal features of Theano and how to use them, and compares them with other similar projects. Section III focuses on recently-introduced functionalities and improvements. Section IV compares the performance of Theano against Torch7 and TensorFlow on several machine learning models. Section V discusses current limitations of Theano and potential ways of improving it.