论文标题
关于模型不可吻合的元学习的全球最优性
On the Global Optimality of Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning
论文作者
论文摘要
模型 - 静态元学习(MAML)将元学习制定为双重优化问题,其中内部级别基于共享先验求解每个子任务,而外部级别通过在所有子任务上优化其聚合性能来搜索最佳共享先验。尽管经验成功,MAML在理论上仍然不太了解,尤其是在其全球最优性方面,由于元视频(外部级别目标)的非概念性。为了弥合理论和实践之间的差距,我们表征了MAML在强化学习和监督学习方面所达到的固定点的最佳差距,其中内部级别和外部级别的问题通过一阶优化方法解决了。特别是,我们的表征将此类固定点的最佳差距与(i)内部级别目标的功能几何形状联系起来,以及(ii)功能近似器的表示功能,包括线性模型和神经网络。据我们所知,我们的分析首次使用非凸元目标建立了MAML的全球最优性。
Model-agnostic meta-learning (MAML) formulates meta-learning as a bilevel optimization problem, where the inner level solves each subtask based on a shared prior, while the outer level searches for the optimal shared prior by optimizing its aggregated performance over all the subtasks. Despite its empirical success, MAML remains less understood in theory, especially in terms of its global optimality, due to the nonconvexity of the meta-objective (the outer-level objective). To bridge such a gap between theory and practice, we characterize the optimality gap of the stationary points attained by MAML for both reinforcement learning and supervised learning, where the inner-level and outer-level problems are solved via first-order optimization methods. In particular, our characterization connects the optimality gap of such stationary points with (i) the functional geometry of inner-level objectives and (ii) the representation power of function approximators, including linear models and neural networks. To the best of our knowledge, our analysis establishes the global optimality of MAML with nonconvex meta-objectives for the first time.