arXiv Machine Learning By Yannick Lunk, Atell Yehor Krasnopolsky, Damien Garreau, Leon Bungert

Explaining the Saliency Map Sparsity of Adversarially-Trained Neural Networks

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The paper investigates why saliency maps of adversarially‑trained neural networks appear sparse. It provides a theoretical explanation for two‑layer ReLU networks, showing that as data size and neuron count grow, minimizers converge to a Bayes classifier with minimal gradient and Barron norm. The sparsity arises because α−−‑training with λ−1 attacks yields anisotropic gradient norms that favor axis‑aligned, sparse gradients, a claim supported by experimental evaluation of gradient α‑norms and sparsity thresholds.

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