A measure for the complexity of Boolean functions related to their implementation in neural networks

We study the space of functions computed by random-layered machines, including deep neural networks and Boolean circuits. Investigating the distribution of Boolean functions computed on the recurrent and layer-dependent architectures, we find that it is the same in both models. Depending on the initial conditions and computing elements used, we characterize the space of functions computed at the large depth limit and show that the macroscopic entropy of Boolean functions is e...

It has been shown \citep{broeck90:physicalreview,patarnello87:europhys} that feedforward Boolean networks can learn to perform specific simple tasks and generalize well if only a subset of the learning examples is provided for learning. Here, we extend this body of work and show experimentally that random Boolean networks (RBNs), where both the interconnections and the Boolean transfer functions are chosen at random initially, can be evolved by using a state-topology evolutio...

In this chapter, a statistical measure of complexity is introduced and some of its properties are discussed. Also, some straightforward applications are shown.

Recent works demonstrated the existence of a double-descent phenomenon for the generalization error of neural networks, where highly overparameterized models escape overfitting and achieve good test performance, at odds with the standard bias-variance trade-off described by statistical learning theory. In the present work, we explore a link between this phenomenon and the increase of complexity and sensitivity of the function represented by neural networks. In particular, we ...

Existing research often posits spurious features as "easier" to learn than core features in neural network optimization, but the impact of their relative simplicity remains under-explored. Moreover they mainly focus on the end performance intead of the learning dynamics of feature learning. In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework and associated synthetic dataset grounded in boolean function analysis which allows for fine-grained control on the relative complexity (c...

Feedforward neural networks have been investigated to understand learning and memory, as well as applied to numerous practical problems in pattern classification. It is a rule of thumb that more complex tasks require larger networks. However, the design of optimal network architectures for specific tasks is still an unsolved fundamental problem. In this study, we consider three-layered neural networks for memorizing binary patterns. We developed a new complexity measure of bi...

We define a notion of complexity, which quantifies the nonlinearity of the computation of a neural network, as well as a complementary measure of the effective dimension of feature representations. We investigate these observables both for trained networks for various datasets as well as explore their dynamics during training, uncovering in particular power law scaling. These observables can be understood in a dual way as uncovering hidden internal structure of the datasets t...

Polynomial threshold gates are basic processing units of an artificial neural network. When the input vectors are binary vectors, these gates correspond to Boolean functions and can be analyzed via their polynomial representations. In practical applications, it is desirable to find a polynomial representation with the smallest number of terms possible, in order to use the least possible number of input lines to the unit under consideration. For this purpose, instead of an exa...

Inspired by Solomonoffs theory of inductive inference, we propose a prior based on circuit complexity. There are several advantages to this approach. First, it relies on a complexity measure that does not depend on the choice of UTM. There is one universal definition for Boolean circuits involving an universal operation such as nand with simple conversions to alternative definitions such as and, or, and not. Second, there is no analogue of the halting problem. The output valu...

We show how complexity theory can be introduced in machine learning to help bring together apparently disparate areas of current research. We show that this new approach requires less training data and is more generalizable as it shows greater resilience to random attacks. We investigate the shape of the discrete algorithmic space when performing regression or classification using a loss function parametrized by algorithmic complexity, demonstrating that the property of diffe...