On Random Weights and Unsupervised Feature Learning

Andrew M. Saxe, Pang Wei Koh, Zhenghao Chen, Maneesh Bhand, Bipin Suresh, Andrew Y. Ng

Abstract: Recently two anomalous results in the literature have shown that certain feature learning architectures can yield useful features for object recognition tasks even with untrained, random weights. In this paper we pose the question: why do random weights sometimes do so well? Our answer is that certain convolutional pooling architectures can be inherently frequency selective and translation invariant, even with random weights. Based on this we demonstrate the viability of extremely fast architecture search by using random weights to evaluate candidate architectures, thereby sidestepping the time-consuming learning process. We then show that a surprising fraction of the performance of certain state-of-the-art methods can be attributed to the architecture alone.