arXiv:2510.14168cs.LGstat.ML2025-10TPAMI

将反向传播与动态规划结合,提出新型神经网络优化器。

Optimal Control Theoretic Neural Optimizer: From Backpropagation to Dynamic Programming

  • 从最优控制视角重构建模反向传播,揭示其变分结构。
  • 基于贝尔曼方程一阶展开,设计新优化算法,提升训练效率。
  • 适用于连续时间模型和博弈场景,理论基础扎实。

深度神经网络(DNN)的优化是现代机器学习与人工智能发展的核心驱动力。由于DNN具有长时间非线性传播序列,给定目标求解最优参数天然契合最优控制框架。将DNN视为动力系统,为从数值方程到物理原理的严谨分析提供了理论基础。本文从算法角度出发,观察到反向传播与动态规划在计算梯度时存在显著算法相似性,后者通过逆向过程实现最优性条件。整合此联系,即反向传播具备变分结构,求解至一阶展开的近似动态规划,可导出一类探索贝尔曼方程高阶展开的新优化方法。由此提出的最优控制理论神经优化器(OCNOpt),支持层间反馈策略、博弈论应用及连续时间模型(如Neural ODEs)的高阶训练。大量实验表明,OCNOpt在鲁棒性和效率上优于现有方法,且计算复杂度可控,为基于动力系统与最优控制理论的算法设计开辟了新路径。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Optimization of deep neural networks (DNNs) has been a driving force in the advancement of modern machine learning and artificial intelligence. With DNNs characterized by a prolonged sequence of nonlinear propagation, determining their optimal parameters given an objective naturally fits within the framework of Optimal Control Programming. Such an interpretation of DNNs as dynamical systems has proven crucial in offering a theoretical foundation for principled analysis from numerical equations to physics. In parallel to these theoretical pursuits, this paper focuses on an algorithmic perspective. Our motivated observation is the striking algorithmic resemblance between the Backpropagation algorithm for computing gradients in DNNs and the optimality conditions for dynamical systems, expressed through another backward process known as dynamic programming. Consolidating this connection, where Backpropagation admits a variational structure, solving an approximate dynamic programming up to the first-order expansion leads to a new class of optimization methods exploring higher-order expansions of the Bellman equation. The resulting optimizer, termed Optimal Control Theoretic Neural Optimizer (OCNOpt), enables rich algorithmic opportunities, including layer-wise feedback policies, game-theoretic applications, and higher-order training of continuous-time models such as Neural ODEs. Extensive experiments demonstrate that OCNOpt improves upon existing methods in robustness and efficiency while maintaining manageable computational complexity, paving new avenues for principled algorithmic design grounded in dynamical systems and optimal control theory.

优化器动态规划神经ODE

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