Robustness in deep learning: The good (width), the bad (depth), and the ugly (initialization)Download PDF

Published: 31 Oct 2022, Last Modified: 31 Dec 2022NeurIPS 2022 AcceptReaders: Everyone
Keywords: over-parameterized model, robustness, perturbation stability, initialization scheme
Abstract: We study the average robustness notion in deep neural networks in (selected) wide and narrow, deep and shallow, as well as lazy and non-lazy training settings. We prove that in the under-parameterized setting, width has a negative effect while it improves robustness in the over-parameterized setting. The effect of depth closely depends on the initialization and the training mode. In particular, when initialized with LeCun initialization, depth helps robustness with the lazy training regime. In contrast, when initialized with Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK) and He-initialization, depth hurts the robustness. Moreover, under the non-lazy training regime, we demonstrate how the width of a two-layer ReLU network benefits robustness. Our theoretical developments improve the results by [Huang et al. NeurIPS21; Wu et al. NeurIPS21] and are consistent with [Bubeck and Sellke NeurIPS21; Bubeck et al. COLT21].
TL;DR: We explore the interplay of the width, the depth and the initialization(s) on the average robustness of neural networks with new theoretical bounds in an effort to address the apparent contradiction in the literature.
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