On the expressive power of deep polynomial neural networks

Joe Kileel, Matthew Trager, Joan Bruna

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

Abstract

We study deep neural networks with polynomial activations, particularly their expressive power. For a fixed architecture and activation degree, a polynomial neural network defines an algebraic map from weights to polynomials. The image of this map is the functional space associated to the network, and it is an irreducible algebraic variety upon taking closure. This paper proposes the dimension of this variety as a precise measure of the expressive power of polynomial neural networks. We obtain several theoretical results regarding this dimension as a function of architecture, including an exact formula for high activation degrees, as well as upper and lower bounds on layer widths in order for deep polynomials networks to fill the ambient functional space. We also present computational evidence that it is profitable in terms of expressiveness for layer widths to increase monotonically and then decrease monotonically. Finally, we link our study to favorable optimization properties when training weights, and we draw intriguing connections with tensor and polynomial decompositions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
JournalAdvances in Neural Information Processing Systems
Volume32
StatePublished - 2019
Event33rd Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, NeurIPS 2019 - Vancouver, Canada
Duration: Dec 8 2019Dec 14 2019

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Information Systems
  • Signal Processing

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