Softmax is an output activation function for modeling categorical probability distributions in many applications of deep learning. However, a recent study revealed that softmax can be a bottleneck of representational capacity of neural networks in language modeling (the softmax bottleneck). In this paper, we propose an…
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48 results for “softmax function”
Unpacking Softmax: How Temperature Drives Representation Collapse, Compression, and Generalizationcs.LG
Softmax temperature influences model representation rank and performance.
problem Understanding and optimizing softmax function's impact on model representations.
method Investigated softmax function's role in deep neural networks, introduced rank deficit bias.
result Softmax temperature affects model representation rank and can improve performance.
The paper proves neural networks with ReLU and softmax can approximate any function.
problem Approximating functions and class labels in neural networks.
method Extended universal approximator theory to neural networks with ReLU and softmax.
result Neural networks with ReLU and softmax can approximate any function and class labels.
In a multi-class classification problem, it is standard to model the output of a neural network as a categorical distribution conditioned on the inputs. The output must therefore be positive and sum to one, which is traditionally enforced by a softmax. This probabilistic mapping allows to use the maximum likelihood pri…
Solves challenges in estimating parameters of softmax gating Gaussian mixture models.
problem Identifiability issues and complex interactions in Gaussian mixture of experts.
method Proposes novel Voronoi loss functions and establishes convergence rates of MLE.
result Connects convergence rate of MLE to a solvability problem of polynomial equations.
Speaker Recognition is a challenging task with essential applications such as authentication, automation, and security. The SincNet is a new deep learning based model which has produced promising results to tackle the mentioned task. To train deep learning systems, the loss function is essential to the network performa…
New insights into the top-K sparse softmax gating function for deep learning.
problem Understanding the theoretical effects of the top-K sparse softmax gating function on density and parameter estimations.
method Using a Gaussian mixture of experts, novel loss functions, and theoretical analysis.
result The convergence rates of density and parameter estimations are parametric under certain conditions, but slow under over-specified models.
Unified interpretation of softmax cross-entropy and negative sampling for knowledge graph embedding.
problem Lack of theoretical relationship between softmax cross-entropy and negative sampling loss functions in knowledge graph embedding.
method Used Bregman divergence to provide a unified interpretation of the two loss functions.
result Theoretical findings for fair comparison of softmax cross-entropy and negative sampling are derived.
Value function estimation is an important task in reinforcement learning, i.e., prediction. The Boltzmann softmax operator is a natural value estimator and can provide several benefits. However, it does not satisfy the non-expansion property, and its direct use may fail to converge even in value iteration. In this pape…
Even before deep learning architectures became the de facto models for complex computer vision tasks, the softmax function was, given its elegant properties, already used to analyze the predictions of feedforward neural networks. Nowadays, the output of the softmax function is also commonly used to assess the strength …
Paper introduces Balanced Meta-Softmax for better long-tailed visual recognition.
problem Long-tailed distribution mismatch between training and testing data.
method Balanced Meta-Softmax, an unbiased extension of Softmax, using a Meta Sampler.
result Balanced Meta-Softmax outperforms state-of-the-art solutions on visual recognition and instance segmentation.
Minimalist softmax attention learns constrained Boolean functions with supervision.
problem Learning -bit Boolean functions, especially AND and OR.
method Minimalist single-head softmax-attention mechanism with teacher forcing.
result Minimalist attention can solve Boolean tasks with supervision, but not without.
Sigmoid gating is more sample efficient than softmax in mixture of experts.
problem Softmax gating leads to unnecessary competition among experts, causing representation collapse.
method Theoretical analysis of a regression framework with mixture of experts, identifying identifiability conditions and convergence rates.
result Sigmoid gating requires fewer samples to achieve the same expert estimation error as softmax gating.
Evidential Softmax preserves multimodality in sparse probability distributions for generative models.
problem Sparse probability distributions in deep generative models make exact marginalization computationally intractable.
method Introduce ev-softmax, a sparse normalization function that preserves multimodality and can be trained with probabilistic loss functions.
result ev-softmax outperforms existing techniques in distributional accuracy and dimensionality reduction.
Softmax attention approximates complex functions and subsumes many known universal approximators.
problem Universal approximation of continuous sequence-to-sequence functions.
method Interpolation-based analysis of attention's internal mechanism, showing its ability to approximate ReLU functions.
result Softmax attention is a universal approximator for continuous sequence-to-sequence functions.
The impact of softmax on the value function itself in reinforcement learning (RL) is often viewed as problematic because it leads to sub-optimal value (or Q) functions and interferes with the contraction properties of the Bellman operator. Surprisingly, despite these concerns, and independent of its effect on explorati…
Improves adversarial robustness by constraining logits with a bounded function.
problem Improving adversarial robustness in deep learning models.
method Addition of a bounded function before softmax to constrain logits.
result Our method improves adversarial robustness without requiring adversarial training.
Computations for the softmax function are significantly expensive when the number of output classes is large. In this paper, we present a novel softmax inference speedup method, Doubly Sparse Softmax (DS-Softmax), that leverages sparse mixture of sparse experts to efficiently retrieve top-k classes. Different from most…
The Softmax function on top of a final linear layer is the de facto method to output probability distributions in neural networks. In many applications such as language models or text generation, this model has to produce distributions over large output vocabularies. Recently, this has been shown to have limited repres…
A new catnat function improves gradient descent for categorical variables.
problem Gradient descent challenges with discrete latent categorical variables.
method Replaced softmax with catnat, a hierarchical binary split function.
result Catnat function offers significant advantages in gradient descent.
The paper establishes convergence rates for MoE models in classification problems.
problem Understanding the behavior of MoE models in classification settings.
method Established convergence rates for density and parameter estimation in softmax gating multinomial logistic MoE models.
result Parameter estimation rates are significantly improved with a novel modified softmax gating function.
Bayesian approach improves neural network classification accuracy and uncertainty.
problem Overconfidence and lack of uncertainty in softmax for classification tasks.
method Model categorical probability using a random variable with a prior distribution.
result Consistent gains in generalization performance across multiple tasks.
A softmax operator applied to a set of values acts somewhat like the maximization function and somewhat like an average. In sequential decision making, softmax is often used in settings where it is necessary to maximize utility but also to hedge against problems that arise from putting all of one's weight behind a sing…
Proposes an iterative algorithm for optimizing attention mechanisms in large language models.
problem Optimizing attention mechanisms in large language models.
method Iterative algorithm for rescaled hyperbolic functions regression.
result Efficiency and generalizability of the rescaled softmax regression framework.
A new loss function improves neural networks' out-of-distribution detection without side effects.
problem Neural networks struggle with out-of-distribution detection due to SoftMax loss issues.
method Proposes IsoMax loss replacing SoftMax loss, maintaining high entropy and fast inferences.
result Significantly improves neural networks' out-of-distribution detection performance.
Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) have limitations when the goal is to generate sequences of discrete elements. The reason for this is that samples from a distribution on discrete objects such as the multinomial are not differentiable with respect to the distribution parameters. This problem can be avoided by using…
In recent years, the softmax model and its fast approximations have become the de-facto loss functions for deep neural networks when dealing with multi-class prediction. This loss has been extended to language modeling and recommendation, two fields that fall into the framework of learning from Positive and Unlabeled d…
Improved HMoE models using Laplace gating function enhance expert specialization and performance.
problem Improving performance of hierarchical mixture of experts models.
method Used Laplace gating function instead of Softmax in hierarchical mixture of experts models.
result Laplace gating function accelerates expert convergence and enhances specialization.
Paper improves Gumbel-Softmax estimator variance reduction.
problem Challenges in gradient estimation for models with discrete latent variables.
method Rao-Blackwellization applied to straight-through Gumbel-Softmax estimator.
result Reduces mean squared error and variance of Gumbel-Softmax estimator.
ZeroS improves Transformers by adding negative weights, matching or beating softmax attention.
problem Limited performance of linear attention methods, especially in long context sequences.
method Proposes Zero-Sum Linear Attention (ZeroS) that removes the zero-order term and reweights zero-sum softmax residuals.
result ZeroS matches or exceeds standard softmax attention across various benchmarks, theoretically expanding representable functions.
The Gumbel-Softmax is a continuous distribution over the simplex that is often used as a relaxation of discrete distributions. Because it can be readily interpreted and easily reparameterized, it enjoys widespread use. We propose a modular and more flexible family of reparameterizable distributions where Gaussian noise…
Density-Softmax improves uncertainty estimation and robustness without sampling, reducing model size and latency.
problem Sampling-based uncertainty estimation methods suffer from large model size and high latency.
method Combines a Lipschitz-constrained feature extractor with the softmax layer to create a sampling-free deterministic framework.
result Density-Softmax reduces over-confidence under distribution shifts and achieves competitive results in uncertainty and robustness.
Lower bounds set for infinite-precision transformers.
problem Understanding limitations of infinite-precision transformers.
method Used VC dimension technique to prove lower bounds.
result First lower bounds for two tasks: function composition and SUM.
Introduces gradient decay in Softmax for better generalization.
problem Improving generalization performance in neural networks.
method Gradient decay hyperparameter in Softmax for varying gradient rates based on probability.
result Gradient decay rate affects generalization performance and can be tuned for better optimization.
Softmax policy gradient achieves global optimality in wide neural networks with entropy regularization.
problem Optimizing softmax policies with neural networks in the mean-field regime.
method Modeling neural networks as Wasserstein gradient flows and proving global optimality of fixed points.
result Global optimality of softmax policy gradient in wide single hidden layer neural networks with entropy regularization.
We propose sparsemax, a new activation function similar to the traditional softmax, but able to output sparse probabilities. After deriving its properties, we show how its Jacobian can be efficiently computed, enabling its use in a network trained with backpropagation. Then, we propose a new smooth and convex loss func…
A new method speeds up SoftMax normalization for embedding learning.
problem Efficiently learning distributed representations with SoftMax normalization.
method Proposes a linear-time heuristic approximation for , optimizing cross entropy.
result Achieves higher or comparable accuracy to existing methods with lower computational time.
With an eye towards human-centered automation, we contribute to the development of a systematic means to infer features of human decision-making from behavioral data. Motivated by the common use of softmax selection in models of human decision-making, we study the maximum likelihood parameter estimation problem for sof…
A new algorithm optimizes softmax units in large language models.
problem Efficiently computing gradients for large-scale language models.
method Zero-th Order method for approximating gradients.
result The algorithm converges and efficiently computes gradients.
The computational cost of training with softmax cross entropy loss grows linearly with the number of classes. For the settings where a large number of classes are involved, a common method to speed up training is to sample a subset of classes and utilize an estimate of the loss gradient based on these classes, known as…
Proposes a new method to approximate Gaussian inference in classification tasks.
problem Uncertainty quantification in classification tasks using softmax functions.
method Develops a new formalism to approximate Gaussian distributions over logit space and proposes using element-wise normCDF or sigmoid instead of softmax.
result Improves uncertainty quantification compared to softmax Monte Carlo sampling.
We formally prove the connection between k-means clustering and the predictions of neural networks based on the softmax activation layer. In existing work, this connection has been analyzed empirically, but it has never before been mathematically derived. The softmax function partitions the transformed input space into…
Despite being the standard loss function to train multi-class neural networks, the log-softmax has two potential limitations. First, it involves computations that scale linearly with the number of output classes, which can restrict the size of problems we are able to tackle with current hardware. Second, it remains unc…
Revises logistic-softmax likelihood for Bayesian meta-learning in few-shot classification.
problem Inherent uncertainty in logistic-softmax leads to suboptimal performance in meta-learning.
method Redesigns logistic-softmax likelihood with a temperature parameter for better control of prior confidence.
result Achieves well-calibrated uncertainty estimates and comparable/superior performance on benchmark datasets.
Entropy regularization improves policy optimization in reinforcement learning.
problem Improving policy optimization in reinforcement learning.
method Entropy regularization is introduced to soften the greedy policy towards a more diverse softmax policy, leading to a continuously parameterized algorithm that interpolates between policy gradient and Q-learning.
result An intermediate algorithm can improve performance in reinforcement learning.
Paper introduces hierarchical softmax for global hierarchical classification tasks.
problem Improving classification accuracy in tasks with class hierarchies.
method Global hierarchical neural networks using hierarchical softmax.
result Hierarchical softmax outperforms regular softmax in multiple datasets.
Learning Theory of Transformers: Local-to-Global Approximation via Softmax Partition of Unitystat.ML
Paper studies Transformer learning theory for Euclidean and Riemannian domains.
problem Understanding and optimizing Transformer networks for regression tasks.
method Constructive approximation framework using softmax partition of unity and attention mechanism.
result Transformer can achieve uniform ε-approximation error with minimal parameters.
Balanced Activation improves object detection performance on long-tailed datasets.
problem Mismatch between training and testing label distributions in object detection.
method Introduces Balanced Activation (Balanced Softmax and Balanced Sigmoid) to address label distribution shift.
result Balanced Activation provides ~3% gain in mAP on LVIS-1.0 compared to state-of-the-art methods.