arXiv:2509.23915cs.CV2025-09被引 4

发现多任务学习失衡源于梯度范数差异,按梯度大小调损失可省去繁琐调参。

Revisit the Imbalance Optimization in Multi-task Learning: An Experimental Analysis

  • 按任务梯度范数动态调整损失权重,避免传统网格搜索。
  • 大模型初始化和增加数据量对解决失衡作用有限。
  • 梯度范数与优化不平衡强相关,适合追求高效多任务训练的研究者。

多任务学习(MTL)旨在通过单一网络联合训练多个任务构建通用视觉系统。尽管前景广阔,其潜力常因“优化失衡”受阻,即任务干扰导致性能低于单任务模型。本文通过系统实验分析揭示该问题根源:现有优化方法在不同数据集上表现不一致,先进架构仍需依赖昂贵的网格搜索来确定损失权重。我们进一步发现,即使使用强大的视觉基础模型(VFMs)进行初始化,也无法自动解决优化失衡问题;单纯增加数据量也仅带来有限提升。关键发现是:优化失衡与任务专属梯度的范数存在强相关性。基于此,我们提出一种简单策略——根据梯度范数缩放任务损失,即可达到与耗时昂贵的网格搜索相当的性能。全面分析表明,理解并控制梯度动态,比开发日益复杂的优化方法更直接有效。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Multi-task learning (MTL) aims to build general-purpose vision systems by training a single network to perform multiple tasks jointly. While promising, its potential is often hindered by "unbalanced optimization", where task interference leads to subpar performance compared to single-task models. To facilitate research in MTL, this paper presents a systematic experimental analysis to dissect the factors contributing to this persistent problem. Our investigation confirms that the performance of existing optimization methods varies inconsistently across datasets, and advanced architectures still rely on costly grid-searched loss weights. Furthermore, we show that while powerful Vision Foundation Models (VFMs) provide strong initialization, they do not inherently resolve the optimization imbalance, and merely increasing data quantity offers limited benefits. A crucial finding emerges from our analysis: a strong correlation exists between the optimization imbalance and the norm of task-specific gradients. We demonstrate that this insight is directly applicable, showing that a straightforward strategy of scaling task losses according to their gradient norms can achieve performance comparable to that of an extensive and computationally expensive grid search. Our comprehensive analysis suggests that understanding and controlling gradient dynamics is a more direct path to stable MTL than developing increasingly complex methods.

多任务学习梯度分析损失权重视觉模型

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