Loss function for differences between two tensors - tensorflow

I'm training a convolution neural network (using Tensorflow) with the method of the so called 'Knowledge Distillation (KD)' that in few words consist on training a big model (the teacher) on the task that you want to achieve and after that to train a smaller model (the student) in a way that it can simulate the results of the teacher but using less parameters and so being more quickly at test time.
The problem that I'm facing regards how to build in an effective way the loss function between the result of the student model and the teacher model on the same input (the result is a tensor with the same size either for student and teacher model).
I don't have a classification task, so I don't have a label for the input, but I have only the result from the teacher that I want to simulate.
At now the loss function is defined like this:
loss_value = tf.nn.l2_loss(student_prediction - teacher_prediction)
The 'student_prediction' and 'teacher_prediction' are calculated runtime given each input in the dataset.
With this definition I'm still not able to reach convergence with my student model.
Thank you.

I found myself the answer (using MSE). That is this:
loss = tf.reduce_mean(tf.squared_difference(tensor_1, tensor_2))

Related

Multiple BERT binary classifications on a single graph to save on inference time

I have five classes and I want to compare four of them against one and the same class. This isn't a One vs Rest classifier, as for each output I want to score them against one base class.
The four outputs should be: base class vs classA, base class vs classB, etc.
I could do this by having multiple binary classification tasks, but that's wasting computation time if the first layers are BERT preprocessing + pretrained BERT layers, and the only differences between the four classifiers are the last few layers of BERT (finetuned ones) and the Dense layer.
So why not merge the graphs for more performance?
My inputs are four different datasets, each annotated with true/false for each class.
As I understand it, I can re-use most of the pipeline (BERT preprocessing and the first layers of BERT), as those have shared weights. I should then be able to train the last few layers of BERT and the Dense layer on top differently depending on the branch of the classifier (maybe using something like keras.switch?).
I have tried many alternative options including multi-class and multi-label classifiers, with actual and generated (eg, machine-annotated) labels in the case of multiple input labels, different activation and loss functions, but none of the results were acceptable to me (none were as good as the four separate models).
Is there a solution for merging the four different models for more performance, or am I stuck with using 4x binary classifiers?
When you train DNN for specific task it will be (in vast majority of cases) be better than the more general model that can handle several task simultaneously. Saying that, based on my experience the properly trained general model produces very similar results to the original binary ones. Anyways, here couple of suggestions for training strategies (assuming your training datasets for each task are completely different):
Weak supervision approach
Train your binary classifiers, and label your datasets using them (i.e. label with binary classifier trained on dataset 2 datasets [1,3,4]). Then train your joint model as multilabel task using all the newly labeled datasets (don't forget to randomize samples before feeding them to trainer ;) ). Here you will need to experiment if you will use threshold and set a label to 0/1 or use the scores of the binary classifiers.
Create custom loss function that will not penalize if no information provided for certain class. So when your will introduce sample from (say) dataset 2, your loss will be calculated only for the 2nd class.
Of course you can apply both simultaneously. For example, if you know that binary classifier produces scores that are polarized (most results are near 0 or 1), you can use weak labels, and automatically label your data with scores. Now during the second stage penalize loss such that for score x' = 4(x-0.5)^2 (note that you get logits from the model, so you will need to apply sigmoid function). This way you will increase contribution of the samples binary classifier is confident about, and reduce that of less certain ones.
As for releasing last layers of BERT, usually unfreezing upper 3-6 layers is enough. Releasing more layers improves results very little and increases time and memory requirements.

How is teacher-forcing implemented for the Transformer training?

In this part of Tensorflow's tutorial here, they mentioned that they are training with teacher-forcing. To my knowledge, teacher-forcing involves feeding the target output into the model so that it converges faster. So I'm curious as to how this is done here? The real target is tar_real, and as far as I can see, it is only used to calculate loss and accuracy. I'm curious as to how this code is implementing teacher-forcing?
Thanks in advance.
Each train_step takes in inp and tar objects from the dataset in the training loop. Teacher forcing is indeed used since the correct example from the dataset is always used as input during training (as opposed to the "incorrect" output from the previous training step):
tar is split into tar_inp, tar_real (offset by one character)
inp, tar_inp is used as input to the model
model produces an output which is compared with tar_real to calculate loss
model output is discarded (not used anymore)
repeat loop
Teacher forcing is a procedure ... in which during training the model receives the ground truth output y(t) as input at time t+1.
Page 372, Deep Learning, 2016.
Source: https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/30852#issuecomment-513528114

For what are responsible weights?

I'm reading the google ML crash course and have one question.
What is a weight? (I understand that this is a slope in a plot, but it doesn't fit into my understanding)
I also don't understand an impact of weight on the model prediction (for example, in this playground)
Many thanks for the help.
Every layer in a model is a huge mathematical function with many "unknown" variables.
When you build a model, you build a monster function (with thousands or millions of unknown variables) that gives an output from an input.
Something like this:
output_tensor = huge_function(your_input_tensor,var1,var2,var3,var4.......,var10000000)
These variables are the weights. At the beginning, they receive random values, and obviously your function gives you terrible results.
As you train, you adjust the values of these variables so that your results improve.
Weights are such variables, the ones in the model that you are going to adjust so that your huge function brings you good results.
Weights x Biases
Depending on what you are reading, or what program you're using, they will be called weights. According to what I wrote above, both fit the description.
But usually:
Weights - Multiply the inputs
Biases - Are added to the multiplied outputs
So, the usual layers (with some important differences, of course), perform operations like:
output_matrix = input_matrix x weights + biases
Nothing prevents you from creating custom operations, though, where your variables/weights neither multiply nor add.

What is the difference between model.fit() an model.evaluate() in Keras?

I am using Keras with TensorFlow backend to train CNN models.
What is the between model.fit() and model.evaluate()? Which one should I ideally use? (I am using model.fit() as of now).
I know the utility of model.fit() and model.predict(). But I am unable to understand the utility of model.evaluate(). Keras documentation just says:
It is used to evaluate the model.
I feel this is a very vague definition.
fit() is for training the model with the given inputs (and corresponding training labels).
evaluate() is for evaluating the already trained model using the validation (or test) data and the corresponding labels. Returns the loss value and metrics values for the model.
predict() is for the actual prediction. It generates output predictions for the input samples.
Let us consider a simple regression example:
# input and output
x = np.random.uniform(0.0, 1.0, (200))
y = 0.3 + 0.6*x + np.random.normal(0.0, 0.05, len(y))
Now lets apply a regression model in keras:
# A simple regression model
model = Sequential()
model.add(Dense(1, input_shape=(1,)))
model.compile(loss='mse', optimizer='rmsprop')
# The fit() method - trains the model
model.fit(x, y, nb_epoch=1000, batch_size=100)
Epoch 1000/1000
200/200 [==============================] - 0s - loss: 0.0023
# The evaluate() method - gets the loss statistics
model.evaluate(x, y, batch_size=200)
# returns: loss: 0.0022612824104726315
# The predict() method - predict the outputs for the given inputs
model.predict(np.expand_dims(x[:3],1))
# returns: [ 0.65680361],[ 0.70067143],[ 0.70482892]
In Deep learning you first want to train your model. You take your data and split it into two sets: the training set, and the test set. It seems pretty common that 80% of your data goes into your training set and 20% goes into your test set.
Your training set gets passed into your call to fit() and your test set gets passed into your call to evaluate(). During the fit operation a number of rows of your training data are fed into your neural net (based on your batch size). After every batch is sent the fit algorithm does back propagation to adjust the weights in your neural net.
After this is done your neural net is trained. The problem is sometimes your neural net gets overfit which is a condition where it performs well for the training set but poorly for other data. To guard against this situation you run the evaluate() function to send new data (your test set) through your neural net to see how it performs with data it has never seen. There is no training occurring, this is purely a test. If all goes well then the score from training is similar to the score from testing.
fit(): Trains the model for a given number of epochs (this is for training time, with the training dataset).
predict(): Generates output predictions for the input samples (this is for somewhere between training and testing time).
evaluate(): Returns the loss value & metrics values for the model in test mode (this is for testing time, with the testing dataset).
While all the above answers explain what these functions : fit(), evaluate() or predict() do however more important point to keep in mind in my opinion is what data you should use for fit() and evaluate().
The most clear guideline that I came across in Machine Learning Mastery and particular quote in there:
Training set: A set of examples used for learning, that is to fit the parameters of the classifier.
Validation set: A set of examples used to tune the parameters of a classifier, for example to choose the number of hidden units in a neural network.
Test set: A set of examples used only to assess the performance of a fully-specified classifier.
: By Brian Ripley, page 354, Pattern Recognition and Neural Networks, 1996
You should not use the same data that you used to train(tune) the model (validation data) for evaluating the performance (generalization) of your fully trained model (evaluate).
The test data used for evaluate() should be unseen/not used for training(fit()) in order to be any reliable indicator of model evaluation (for generlization).
For Predict() you can use just one or few example(s) that you choose (from anywhere) to get quick check or answer from your model. I don't believe it can be used as sole parameter for generalization.
One thing which was not mentioned here, I believe needs to be specified. model.evaluate() returns a list which contains a loss figure and an accuracy figure. What has not been said in the answers above, is that the "loss" figure is the sum of ALL the losses calculated for each item in the x_test array. x_test would contain your test data and y_test would contain your labels. It should be clear that the loss figure is the sum of ALL the losses, not just one loss from one item in the x_test array.
I would say the mean of losses incurred from all iterations, not the sum. But sure, that's the most important information here, otherwise the modeler would be slightly confused.

Using unlabeled dataset in Keras

Usually, when using Keras, the datasets used to train the neural network are labeled.
For example, if I have a 100,000 rows of patients with 12 field per each row, then the last field will indicate if this patient is diabetic or no (0 or 1).
And then after training is finished I can insert a new record and predict if this person is diabetic or no.
But in the case of unlabeled datasets, where I can not label the data due to some reasons, how can I train the neural network to let him know that those are the normal records and any new record that does not match this network will be malicious or not accepted ?
This is called one-class learning and is usually done by using autoencoders. You train an autoencoder on the training data to reconstruct the data itself. The labels in this case is the input itself. This will give you a reconstruction error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoencoder
Now you can define a threshold where the data is benign or not, depending on the reconstruction error. The hope is that the reconstruction of the good data is better than the reconstruction of the bad data.
Edit to answer the question about the difference in performance between supervised and unsupervised learning.
This cannot be said with any certainty, because I have not tried it and I do not know what the final accuracy is going to be. But for a rough estimate supervised learning will perform better on the trained data, because more information is supplied to the algorithm. However if the actual data is quite different to the training data the network will underperform in practice, while the autoencoder tends to deal better with different data. Additionally, per rule of thumb you should have 5000 examples per class to train a neural network reliably, so labeling could take some time. But you will need some data to test anyways.
It sounds like you need fit two different models:
a model for bad record detection
a model for prediction of a patient's likelihood to be diabetic
For both of these models, you will need to have labels. For the first model your labels would indicate whether the record is good or bad (malicious) and the second would be whether the patient is diabetic or not.
In order to detect bad records, you may find that simple logistic regression or SVM performs adequately.