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A Theory for Understanding, Designing, and Training Deep Learning Systems

Objective

The rise of deep learning, in the form of artificial neural networks, has been the most dramatic and important development in machine learning over the past decade. Much more than a merely academic topic, deep learning is currently being widely adopted in industry, placed inside commercial products, and is expected to play a key role in anticipated technological leaps such as autonomous driving and general-purpose artificial intelligence. However, our scientific understanding of deep learning is woefully incomplete. Most methods to design and train these systems are based on rules-of-thumb and heuristics, and there is a drastic theory-practice gap in our understanding of why these systems work in practice. We believe this poses a significant risk to the long-term health of the field, as well as an obstacle to widening the applicability of deep learning beyond what has been achieved with current methods.

Our goal is to tackle head-on this important problem, and develop principled tools for understanding, designing, and training deep learning systems, based on rigorous theoretical results.

Our approach is to focus on three inter-related sources of performance losses in neural networks learning: Their optimization error (that is, how to train a given network in a computationally efficient manner); their estimation error (how to ensure that training a network on a finite training set will ensure good performance on future examples); and their approximation error (how architectural choices of the networks affect the type of functions they can compute). For each of these problems, we show how recent advances allow us to effectively approach them, and describe concrete preliminary results and ideas, which will serve as starting points and indicate the feasibility of this challenging project.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

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Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-STG - Starting Grant

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2017-STG

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Host institution

WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 442 360,00
Address
HERZL STREET 234
7610001 Rehovot
Israel

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Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 442 360,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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