Small Towers Make Big Differences

13 Aug 2020  ·  Yuyan Wang, Zhe Zhao, Bo Dai, Christopher Fifty, Dong Lin, Lichan Hong, Ed H. Chi ·

Multi-task learning aims at solving multiple machine learning tasks at the same time. A good solution to a multi-task learning problem should be generalizable in addition to being Pareto optimal. In this paper, we provide some insights on understanding the trade-off between Pareto efficiency and generalization as a result of parameterization in multi-task deep learning models. As a multi-objective optimization problem, enough parameterization is needed for handling task conflicts in a constrained solution space; however, from a multi-task generalization perspective, over-parameterization undermines the benefit of learning a shared representation which helps harder tasks or tasks with limited training examples. A delicate balance between multi-task generalization and multi-objective optimization is therefore needed for finding a better trade-off between efficiency and generalization. To this end, we propose a method of under-parameterized self-auxiliaries for multi-task models to achieve the best of both worlds. It is task-agnostic and works with other multi-task learning algorithms. Empirical results show that small towers of under-parameterized self-auxiliaries can make big differences in improving Pareto efficiency in various multi-task applications.

PDF Abstract
No code implementations yet. Submit your code now

Results from the Paper


  Submit results from this paper to get state-of-the-art GitHub badges and help the community compare results to other papers.

Methods


No methods listed for this paper. Add relevant methods here