Understanding deep architectures and the effect of unsupervised pre-training
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis studies a class of algorithms called deep architectures. We argue that models that are based on a shallow composition of local features are not appropriate for the set of real-world functions and datasets that are of interest to us, namely data with many factors of variation. Modelling such functions and datasets is important if we are hoping to create an intelligent agent that can learn from complicated data. Deep architectures are hypothesized to be a step in the right direction, as they are compositions of nonlinearities and can learn compact distributed representations of data with many factors of variation. Training fully-connected artificial neural networks—the most common form of a deep architecture—was not possible before Hinton (2006) showed that one can use stacks of unsupervised Restricted Boltzmann Machines to initialize or pre-train a supervised multi-layer network. This breakthrough has been influential, as the basic idea of using unsupervised learning to improve generalization in deep networks has been reproduced in a multitude of other settings and models. In this thesis, we cast the deep learning ideas and techniques as defining a special kind of inductive bias. This bias is defined not only by the kind of functions that are eventually represented by such deep models, but also by the learning process that is commonly used for them. This work is a study of the reasons for why this class of functions generalizes well, the situations where they should work well, and the qualitative statements that one could make about such functions. This thesis is thus an attempt to understand why deep architectures work. In the first of the articles presented we study the question of how well our intuitions about the need for deep models correspond to functions that they can actually model well. In the second article we perform an in-depth study of why unsupervised pre-training helps deep learning and explore a variety of hypotheses that give us an intuition for the dynamics of learning in such architectures. Finally, in the third article, we want to better understand what a deep architecture models, qualitatively speaking. Our visualization approach enables us to understand the representations and invariances modelled and learned by deeper layers. Keywords: machine learning, artificial neural networks, deep architectures, unsupervised learning, visualization.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.028 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.011 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".