A Sample Complexity Separation between Non-Convex and Convex Meta-Learning
One popular trend in meta-learning is to learn from many training tasks a common initialization for a gradient-based method that can be used to solve a new task with few samples. The theory of meta-learning is still in its early stages, with several recent learning-theoretic analyses of methods such as Reptile [Nichol et al., 2018] being for convex models. This work shows that convex-case analysis might be insufficient to understand the success of meta-learning, and that even for non-convex models it is important to look inside the optimization black-box, specifically at properties of the optimization trajectory. We construct a simple meta-learning instance that captures the problem of one-dimensional subspace learning. For the convex formulation of linear regression on this instance, we show that the new task sample complexity of any initialization-based meta-learning algorithm is $\Omega(d)$, where $d$ is the input dimension. In contrast, for the non-convex formulation of a two layer linear network on the same instance, we show that both Reptile and multi-task representation learning can have new task sample complexity of $\mathcal{O}(1)$, demonstrating a separation from convex meta-learning. Crucially, analyses of the training dynamics of these methods reveal that they can meta-learn the correct subspace onto which the data should be projected.
Code (0)
등록된 구현이 없습니다.
Tasks
Meta-LearningRepresentation LearningMethods 이 논문이 사용한 방법론
Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
The Sample Complexity of Parameter-Free Stochastic Convex Optimization
We study the sample complexity of stochastic convex optimization when problem parameters, e.g., the distance to optimality, are unknown. We pursue two strategies. First, we develop a reliable model selection method that …
Few-Shot LearningModel SelectionPrompt EngineeringStochastic OptimizationThe Sample Complexity Of ERMs In Stochastic Convex Optimization
Stochastic convex optimization is one of the most well-studied models for learning in modern machine learning. Nevertheless, a central fundamental question in this setup remained unresolved: "How many data points must be…
Oracle-based Uniform Sampling from Convex Bodies
We propose new Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms to sample a uniform distribution on a convex body $K$. Our algorithms are based on the proximal sampler, which uses Gibbs sampling on an augmented distribution and assum…
Active Learning of Convex Halfspaces on Graphs
We systematically study the query complexity of learning geodesically convex halfspaces on graphs. Geodesic convexity is a natural generalisation of Euclidean convexity and allows the definition of convex sets and halfsp…
Active LearningComputational Separations between Sampling and Optimization
Two commonly arising computational tasks in Bayesian learning are Optimization (Maximum A Posteriori estimation) and Sampling (from the posterior distribution). In the convex case these two problems are efficiently reduc…