The critical slowing down in training diffusion models
Read the original on arXiv AI →The Flow has not summarised this story yet — read it at arXiv AI.
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arXiv:2310. 05264v5 Announce Type: replace Abstract: In this work, we investigate an intriguing and prevalent phenomenon of diffusion models which we term as "consistent model reproducibility": given the same starting noise input and a deterministic sampler, different diffusion models often yield remarkably similar outputs.
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:2607. 23226v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Despite the empirical success of score-based diffusion models, a complete theoretical understanding of how finite-sample learning, network parameterization, and numerical discretization jointly dictate generative quality remains underdeveloped.
arXiv:2606. 13796v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recursive training of generative models on their own outputs can lead to model collapse, a compounding drift away from the true data distribution.
The paper investigates memorization in diffusion models, showing that the empirical score function is a weighted sum of Gaussian score functions with sharp softmax weights, causing individual training samples to dominate and lead to sampling collapse. By approximating this function with a neural network, the authors obtain a smoother representation that generalizes better. They introduce two techniques—Noise Unconditioning and Temperature Smoothing—to further reduce single‑sample dominance, and demonstrate improved generalization across multiple datasets while preserving generation quality.
Generative models have undergone many generations of evolution, from VAEs/GANs to diffusion/flow matching. Along the way, the underlying techniques have become more complicated and various beliefs about what drives strong empirical performance have taken hold.