Google Inc.

Yair Alon

Elad Eban

Xiaofeng Wang

A combination of two or more trained machine learning models can exhibit a combined accuracy greater than the accuracy of any one of the constituent models. However, this increase accuracy comes at additional computational cost. Cascades of machine learning models are provided herein that result in increased model accuracy and/or reduced model compute cost. These benefits are obtained by conditionally executing one or more of the models of the cascade based on the estimated correctness of already-executed models. The estimated correctness can be obtained as an additional output of the already-executed model(s) or could be determined as an entropy, maximum class probability, maximum class logit, or other function of the output(s) of the already-executed model(s). The expected computational cost of executing the model cascade is reduced by only executing the downstream model(s) when the upstream model(s) has resulted in an output whose accuracy is suspect.

Efficient neural networks via ensembles and cascades

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for neural network compression. In one aspect, a method comprises receiving a neural network and identifying a particular set of multiple weights of the neural network. Multiple anchor points are determined based on current values of the particular set of weights of the neural network. The neural network is trained by, at each of multiple training iterations, performing operations comprising adjusting the values of the particular set of weights by backpropagating gradients of a loss function. The loss function comprises a first loss function term based on a prediction accuracy of the neural network and a second loss function term based on a similarity of the current values of the particular set of weights to the anchor points. After training, the values of the particular set of weights are quantized based on the anchor points.

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Mountain View, CA, United States of America

Yair Alon