When dynamics meet machine learning

Series
Time
Friday, September 16, 2022 - 11:00am for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Online
Speaker
Molei Tao – Georgia Tech – https://mtao8.math.gatech.edu/
Organizer
Jorge Gonzalez

https://gatech.zoom.us/j/95197085752?pwd=WmtJUVdvM1l6aUJBbHNJWTVKcVdmdz09

Abstract:  The interaction of machine learning and dynamics can lead to both new methodology for dynamics, and deepened understanding and/or efficacious algorithms for machine learning. This talk will give examples in both directions. Specifically, I will first discuss data-driven learning and prediction of mechanical dynamics, for which I will demonstrate one strong benefit of having physics hard-wired into deep learning models; more precisely, how to make symplectic predictions, and how that probably improves the accuracy of long-time predictions. Then I will discuss how dynamics can be used to better understand the implicit biases of large learning rates in the training of machine learning models. They could lead to quantitative escapes from local minima via chaos, which is an alternative mechanism to commonly known noisy escapes due to stochastic gradients. I will also report how large learning rates bias toward flatter minimizers, which arguably generalize better.