提出有限扰动下的精确梯度计算方法,突破传统EP对微小扰动的依赖。
Finite-Nudge Equilibrium Propagation in Thermal Ensembles
- 用吉布斯-玻尔兹曼分布建模网络状态,实现有限扰动下的梯度估计。
- 证明有限扰动下梯度等于能量导数期望差,无需无穷小近似。
- 适用于强误差信号,训练时噪声鲁棒性更强,适合实际应用。
我们通过建立有限扰动的理论基础,摆脱了平衡传播(EP)对无穷小扰动的依赖。将网络状态建模为吉布斯-玻尔兹曼分布而非确定性点,证明在扰动相与自由相之间,亥姆霍兹自由能差的梯度恰好等于预期局部能量导数之差。这验证了经典对比赫布学习更新规则作为任意有限扰动下的精确梯度估计器,无需无穷小近似或凸性假设。在零温极限下,该恒等式退化为任意局部能量谷中的确定性对比规则,无需假设唯一全局最小值;随后的小扰动极限恢复传统EP。最后,我们推导出同一梯度的积分表示:损失-能量协方差对扰动强度的积分,将微扰EP推广至其小扰动近似无法支持的强误差信号。数值实验表明,有限扰动在训练中相比无穷小方法具有更高的信噪比优势。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
We liberate Equilibrium Propagation (EP) from the limit of infinitesimal perturbations by establishing a finite-nudge foundation for local credit assignment. By modeling network states as Gibbs-Boltzmann distributions rather than deterministic points, we prove that the gradient of the difference in Helmholtz free energy between a nudged and free phase is exactly the difference in expected local energy derivatives. This validates the classic Contrastive Hebbian Learning update as an exact gradient estimator for arbitrary finite nudging, requiring neither infinitesimal approximations nor convexity. In the zero-temperature limit, we prove that the same identity reduces to the deterministic contrastive rule around any local energy basin without assuming a unique global minimum, and a subsequent small-nudge limit recovers traditional EP. Finally, we derive an equivalent representation of the same gradient as an integral of the loss--energy covariance over nudging strength, which generalizes infinitesimal EP to strong error signals that its small-nudge approximation cannot support. Numerical experiments corroborate that finite nudging provides a practical signal-to-noise advantage over infinitesimal methods during training.
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