Skip to yearly menu bar Skip to main content


Poster

Implicit regularization of multi-task learning and finetuning: multiple regimes of feature reuse

Samuel Lippl · Jack Lindsey


Abstract:

In this work, we investigate the inductive biases that arise from learning multiple tasks, either simultaneously (multi-task learning, MTL) or sequentially (pretraining and subsequent finetuning, PT+FT). We describe novel implicit regularization penalties associated with MTL and PT+FT in diagonal linear networks and single-hidden-layer ReLU networks. These penalties indicate that MTL and PT+FT induce the network to reuse features in different ways. 1) Both MTL and PT+FT exhibit biases towards feature reuse between tasks, and towards sparsity in the set of learned features. We show a "conservation law" that implies a direct tradeoff between these two biases. Our results also imply that during finetuning, networks operate in a hybrid of the kernel (or "lazy") regime and the feature-learning ("rich") regime identified in prior work. 2) PT+FT exhibits a novel "nested feature selection" behavior not described by either the lazy or rich regimes, which biases it to extract a sparse subset of the features learned during pretraining. This regime is much narrower for MTL. 3) PT+FT (but not MTL) in ReLU networks benefits from features that are correlated between the auxiliary and main task. We confirm our insights empirically with teacher-student models. Finally, we validate our theory in deep neural networks trained on image classification tasks, finding that they may exhibit a nested feature selection regime. We also introduce a practical technique -- weight rescaling following pretraining -- and provide evidence that this method can improve finetuning performance by inducing the network to operate in the nested feature selection regime.

Live content is unavailable. Log in and register to view live content