Natasha 2: Faster Non-Convex Optimization Than SGD
We design a stochastic algorithm to train any smooth neural network to ε-approximate local minima, using O(ε^-3.25) backpropagations. The best result was essentially O(ε^-4) by SGD. More broadly, it finds ε-approximate local minima of any smooth nonconvex function in rate O(ε^-3.25), with only oracle access to stochastic gradients and Hessian-vector products.
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