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Poster
Thu Jul 12 09:15 AM -- 12:00 PM (PDT) @ Hall B #100
The Multilinear Structure of ReLU Networks
Thomas Laurent · James von Brecht
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We study the loss surface of neural networks equipped with a hinge loss criterion and ReLU or leaky ReLU nonlinearities. Any such network defines a piecewise multilinear form in parameter space. By appealing to harmonic analysis we show that all local minima of such network are non-differentiable, except for those minima that occur in a region of parameter space where the loss surface is perfectly flat. Non-differentiable minima are therefore not technicalities or pathologies; they are heart of the problem when investigating the loss of ReLU networks. As a consequence, we must employ techniques from nonsmooth analysis to study these loss surfaces. We show how to apply these techniques in some illustrative cases.