about
Holographic Neural Architectures (2018) (arxiv.org)
37 points by headalgorithm on Feb 19, 2019 | hide | past | pdf | 2 comments on HN

In plain words: Like a hologram that shows a 3D object from different angles, this approach turns a training set into a continuous dial you slide along to generate or predict outputs. Its models resist noise far better than standard networks and learn from very few examples.

Abstract · Holographic Neural Architectures

Representation learning is at the heart of what makes deep learning effective. In this work, we introduce a new framework for representation learning that we call "Holographic Neural Architectures" (HNAs). In the same way that an observer can experience the 3D structure of a holographed object by looking at its hologram from several angles, HNAs derive Holographic Representations from the training set. These representations can then be explored by moving along a continuous bounded single dimension. We show that HNAs can be used to make generative networks, state-of-the-art regression models and that they are inherently highly resistant to noise. Finally, we argue that because of their denoising abilities and their capacity to generalize well from very few examples, models based upon HNAs are particularly well suited for biological applications where training examples are rare or noisy.

Tariq Daouda, Jeremie Zumer, Claude Perreault, Sébastien Lemieux
arXiv:1806.00931 · stat.ML, cs.AI, cs.LG, q-bio.GN, q-bio.TO · submitted Jun 4, 2018
abstract · pdf · html · 10 pages, 7 figures, 1 table

add comment on HN

I wonder if this should really be called a holographic network:

"we are projecting all training example into a single bounded dimension. As with VAEs, we also combine the input information with an optimized prior. However, we treat the prior as a separate input to the network. Because the network has very little information from the training examples, it must complement it with an accurate general representation of the training set. Because these representations are continuous, multi-dimensional, and represent the whole training set, we call them ‘Holographic Representations’ and the architectures capable of generating them ‘Holographic Neural Architectures’ (HNAs)."

This seems to me to be very similar to what has always been done in regressions on complex data.

> it must complement it with an accurate general representation of the training set

This in particular smells off, it sounds magical. This could only work when the sort of general representations the network knows how to complement with already match the data.