What Do Deep Nets Learn? Class-wise Patterns Revealed in the Input Space

Shihao Zhao, Xingjun Ma, Yisen Wang, James Bailey, Bo Li, Yu-Gang Jiang

Keywords: deep neural networks, deep learning understanding, backdoor vulnerability, adversarial vulnerability

Abstract: Deep neural networks (DNNs) have been widely adopted in different applications to achieve state-of-the-art performance. However, they are often applied as a black box with limited understanding of what the model has learned from the data. In this paper, we focus on image classification and propose a method to visualize and understand the class-wise patterns learned by DNNs trained under three different settings including natural, backdoored and adversarial. Different from existing class-wise deep representation visualizations, our method searches for a single predictive pattern in the input (i.e. pixel) space for each class. Based on the proposed method, we show that DNNs trained on natural (clean) data learn abstract shapes along with some texture, and backdoored models learn a small but highly predictive pattern for the backdoor target class. Interestingly, the existence of class-wise predictive patterns in the input space indicates that even DNNs trained on clean data can have backdoors, and the class-wise patterns identified by our method can be readily applied to “backdoor” attack the model. In the adversarial setting, we show that adversarially trained models learn more simplified shape patterns. Our method can serve as a useful tool to better understand DNNs trained on different datasets under different settings.

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One-sentence Summary: An input space visualization method that reveals what deep nets learn for each class.

Reviewed Version (pdf): https://openreview.net/references/pdf?id=oc6w7oIVi