arXiv AI
Jul 28
Scale Weight Decay and Train Better
arXiv:2607. 23777v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The discovery of scaling laws has motivated training neural networks on ever increasing quantities of data.
Weibull Weight-Scale Parameter Evolution under AdamW Training Dynamics
arXiv:2606. 19367v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Building on a two-parameter Weibull framework for diagnosing transformer weight distributions, we study why the Weibull weight-scale parameter $\lambda$ grows, overshoots, and then relaxes during AdamW training.
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arXiv AI
Jul 14
Learning in Curved Weight Space:Exponential-Linear Weight Reparameterization for Improved Optimization
arXiv:2607. 09967v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Many neural networks operations have a multiplicative nature rather than additive: halving or doubling a norm are analogous relatively but require unequal optimization distances when taking linear steps.
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 5
Wiring Beats Blending: What Transfers Between Transformer Sizes -- and What Doesn't
arXiv:2608. 02829v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Model families train every size from scratch.
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 24
Thermodynamic Weight Decay: Exploring Grokking Acceleration via Attention Specific Heat
arXiv:2607. 20552v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Grokking -- the delayed generalization of neural networks long after they have memorized their training data -- wastes thousands of training epochs and is notoriously unpredictable.
arXiv AI
Jun 2
Lying Is Just a Phase: The Hidden Alignment Transition in Language Model Scaling
arXiv:2605. 18838v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Scaling laws predict loss from compute but not how capabilities interact.
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 8
Data-Constrained Language Model Pretraining: Improved Regularization and Scaling Laws
arXiv:2606. 06888v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Classical scaling laws for language model pretraining balance model size against training dataset size under a fixed compute budget, assuming abundant data and a single pass over the corpus.
arXiv AI
Jul 1
Evil Spectra: How Optimisers can Amplify or Suppress Emergent Misalignment
arXiv:2606. 31591v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Emergent misalignment (EM) is a recently discovered phenomenon in LLMs where fine-tuning on a narrow misaligned task, such as writing insecure code, leads to broadly misaligned behaviour on unrelated prompts.
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4
Tunneling the Loss Landscape: Bypassing Memorization with Monte Carlo Parameter Swapping
arXiv:2608. 01833v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Grokking is a striking phenomenon in neural network training, where a model can undergo a prolonged period of pure memorization before abrupt generalization.
arXiv AI
Jul 21
Singularity-aware Optimization via Randomized Geometric Probing: Towards Stable Non-smooth Optimization
arXiv:2605. 29547v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Deep learning optimization relies heavily on the assumption of smooth loss landscapes, a condition systematically violated by modern architectures due to non-smooth components such as ReLU activations and quantization operators.
arXiv AI
Jul 28
Grokking on the Weight-Decay Clock: A Rate Hierarchy from Softly Broken Symmetries
arXiv:2607. 23967v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Delayed generalization, or grokking, remains poorly understood despite extensive empirical study.
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 24
Weight-norm Criticality: A Mechanism for Loss Spikes Induced by the Normalization and Weight Decay
arXiv:2607. 21005v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Most explanations of training instability focus on \emph{learning-rate criticality}, typically characterized by the Edge of Stability, beyond which optimization becomes unstable.
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 5
Neural Collapse Dynamics: Depth, Activation, Regularisation, and Feature Norm Threshold
arXiv:2604. 00230v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Neural collapse (NC) -- the convergence of penultimate-layer features to a simplex equiangular tight frame -- is well understood at equilibrium, but the dynamics governing its onset remain poorly characterised.