We study how permutation symmetries in overparameterized multi-layer neural networks generate ‘symmetry-induced’ critical points. Assuming a network with $ L $ layers of minimal widths $ r_1^*, \ldots, r_{L-1}^* $ reaches a zero-loss minimum at $ r_1^*! \cdots r_{L-1}^*! $ isolated points that are permutations of one another, we show that adding one extra neuron to each layer is sufficient to connect all these previously discrete minima into a single manifold. For a two-layer overparameterized network of width $ r^*+ h =: m $ we explicitly describe the manifold of global minima: it consists of $ T(r^*, m) $ affine subspaces of dimension at least $ h $ that are connected to one another. For a network of width $m$, we identify the number $G(r,m)$ of affine subspaces containing only symmetry-induced critical points that are related to the critical points of a smaller network of width $r Cite this Paper BibTeX @InProceedings{pmlr-v139-simsek21a, title = {Geometry of the Loss Landscape in Overparameterized Neural Networks: Symmetries and Invariances}, author = {Simsek, Berfin and Ged, Fran{\c{c}}ois and Jacot, Arthur and Spadaro, Francesco and Hongler, Clement and Gerstner, Wulfram and Brea, Johanni}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning}, pages = {9722--9732}, year = {2021}, editor = {Meila, Marina and Zhang, Tong}, volume = {139}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {18--24 Jul}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {http://proceedings.mlr.press/v139/simsek21a/simsek21a.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v139/simsek21a.html}, abstract = {We study how permutation symmetries in overparameterized multi-layer neural networks generate ‘symmetry-induced’ critical points. Assuming a network with $ L $ layers of minimal widths $ r_1^*, \ldots, r_{L-1}^* $ reaches a zero-loss minimum at $ r_1^*! \cdots r_{L-1}^*! $ isolated points that are permutations of one another, we show that adding one extra neuron to each layer is sufficient to connect all these previously discrete minima into a single manifold. For a two-layer overparameterized network of width $ r^*+ h =: m $ we explicitly describe the manifold of global minima: it consists of $ T(r^*, m) $ affine subspaces of dimension at least $ h $ that are connected to one another. For a network of width $m$, we identify the number $G(r,m)$ of affine subspaces containing only symmetry-induced critical points that are related to the critical points of a smaller network of width $r Copy to Clipboard Download Endnote %0 Conference Paper %T Geometry of the Loss Landscape in Overparameterized Neural Networks: Symmetries and Invariances %A Berfin Simsek %A François Ged %A Arthur Jacot %A Francesco Spadaro %A Clement Hongler %A Wulfram Gerstner %A Johanni Brea %B Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2021 %E Marina Meila %E Tong Zhang %F pmlr-v139-simsek21a %I PMLR %P 9722--9732 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v139/simsek21a.html %V 139 %X We study how permutation symmetries in overparameterized multi-layer neural networks generate ‘symmetry-induced’ critical points. Assuming a network with $ L $ layers of minimal widths $ r_1^*, \ldots, r_{L-1}^* $ reaches a zero-loss minimum at $ r_1^*! \cdots r_{L-1}^*! $ isolated points that are permutations of one another, we show that adding one extra neuron to each layer is sufficient to connect all these previously discrete minima into a single manifold. For a two-layer overparameterized network of width $ r^*+ h =: m $ we explicitly describe the manifold of global minima: it consists of $ T(r^*, m) $ affine subspaces of dimension at least $ h $ that are connected to one another. For a network of width $m$, we identify the number $G(r,m)$ of affine subspaces containing only symmetry-induced critical points that are related to the critical points of a smaller network of width $r Copy to Clipboard Download APA Simsek, B., Ged, F., Jacot, A., Spadaro, F., Hongler, C., Gerstner, W. & Brea, J.. (2021). Geometry of the Loss Landscape in Overparameterized Neural Networks: Symmetries and Invariances. Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 139:9722-9732 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v139/simsek21a.html. Copy to Clipboard Download Related Material Download PDF Supplementary PDF This site last compiled Sun, 05 Jul 2026 14:53:09 +0000 Github Account Copyright © The authors and PMLR 2026. MLResearchPress

Random Features (RF) models are used as efficient parametric approximations of kernel methods. We investigate, by means of random matrix theory, the connection between Gaussian RF models and Kernel Ridge Regression (KRR). For a Gaussian RF model with $P$ features, $N$ data points, and a ridge $\lambda$, we show that the average (i.e. expected) RF predictor is close to a KRR predictor with an \emph{effective ridge} $\tilde{\lambda}$. We show that $\tilde{\lambda} > \lambda$ and $\tilde{\lambda} \searrow \lambda$ monotonically as $P$ grows, thus revealing the \emph{implicit regularization effect} of finite RF sampling. We then compare the risk (i.e. test error) of the $\tilde{\lambda}$-KRR predictor with the average risk of the $\lambda$-RF predictor and obtain a precise and explicit bound on their difference. Finally, we empirically find an extremely good agreement between the test errors of the average $\lambda$-RF predictor and $\tilde{\lambda}$-KRR predictor.

We study the risk (i.e. generalization error) of Kernel Ridge Regression (KRR) for a kernel $K$ with ridge $\lambda>0$ and i.i.d. observations. For this, we introduce two objects: the Signal Capture Threshold (SCT) and the Kernel Alignment Risk Estimator (KARE). The SCT $\vartheta_{K,\lambda}$ is a function of the data distribution: it can be used to identify the components of the data that the KRR predictor captures, and to approximate the (expected) KRR risk. This then leads to a KRR risk approximation by the KARE $\rho_{K, \lambda}$, an explicit function of the training data, agnostic of the true data distribution. We phrase the regression problem in a functional setting. The key results then follow from a finite-size adaptation of the resolvent method for general Wishart random matrices. Under a natural universality assumption (that the KRR moments depend asymptotically on the first two moments of the observations) we capture the mean and variance of the KRR predictor. We numerically investigate our findings on the Higgs and MNIST datasets for various classical kernels: the KARE gives an excellent approximation of the risk. This supports our universality hypothesis. Using the KARE, one can compare choices of Kernels and hyperparameters directly from the training set. The KARE thus provides a promising data-dependent procedure to select Kernels that generalize well.