In plain words: Instead of scoring answers by dot products, this training signal measures how close each example sits to a learned center for each class, keeping scores scale-free. Models trained this way were easier to interpret and needed less data than standard training.
Abstract
In this paper, we introduce harmonic loss as an alternative supervisory signal for training neural networks and large language models (LLMs). Harmonic loss differs from standard cross-entropy loss by (a) replacing the usual SoftMax normalization with a scale-invariant HarMax function and (b) computing logits via Euclidean distance rather than a dot product. Harmonic loss enables improved interpretability and faster convergence, owing to its scale invariance and finite convergence point by design, which can be interpreted as a class center. We first validate the performance of harmonic models across algorithmic, vision, and language datasets. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that models trained with harmonic loss perform better than standard models by: (a) enhancing interpretability, (b) requiring less data for generalization, and (c) reducing grokking. Moreover, we compare a GPT-2 model trained with harmonic loss to the standard GPT-2, illustrating that the harmonic model develops more interpretable representations. Looking forward, we believe harmonic loss may become a valuable tool in domains with limited data availability or in high-stakes applications where interpretability and reliability are paramount, paving the way for more robust and efficient neural network models.
David D. Baek, Ziming Liu, Riya Tyagi, Max Tegmark
arXiv:2502.01628 · cs.LG · submitted Feb 3, 2025 · updated Jul 10, 2025
abstract · pdf · html · 21 pages, 14 figures; The first two authors contributed equally
Src: https://github.com/KindXiaoming/grow-crystals :
> What is Harmonic Loss?
Cross Entropy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-entropy
XAI: Explainable AI > Interpretability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explainable_artificial_intelli...
Right to explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_explanation