arXiv Machine Learning
5d ago

Gradient-Momentum Coupling: A Parameter-Space Proxy for Learning Progress

The paper introduces Gradient‑Momentum Coupling (GMC), a method that quantifies learning progress by measuring how strongly a sample influences changes in the parameter space, using the normalized absolute product of its gradient and the momentum of previous gradients. GMC filters out noise by accumulating consistent directions of change while canceling random fluctuations, leading to a more uniform prioritization across tasks with varying noise levels and better ranking of learnable tasks by improvement speed. Experiments on MiniGrid MultiRoom tasks show that replacing prediction error with GMC in the Intrinsic Curiosity Module restores exploration capabilities that were lost to unpredictable observations.

By Samuel Blad, Martin L\"angkvist, Amy Loutfi