Self-classifying MNIST Digits (Paper Explained)

#ai #biology #machinelearning

Neural Cellular Automata are models for how living creatures can use local message passing to reach global consensus without a central authority. This paper teaches pixels of an image to communicate with each other and figure out as a group which digit they represent. On the way, the authors have to deal with pesky side-effects that come from applying the Cross-Entropy Loss in combination with a Softmax layer, but ultimately achieve a self-sustaining, stable and continuous algorithm that models living systems.

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Intro & Overview
3:10 - Neural Cellular Automata
7:30 - Global Agreement via Message-Passing
11:05 - Neural CAs as Recurrent Convolutions
14:30 - Training Continuously Alive Systems
17:30 - Problems with Cross-Entropy
26:10 - Out-of-Distribution Robustness
27:10 - Chimeric Digits
27:45 - Visualizing Latent State Dimensions
29:05 - Conclusion & Comments

Paper: https://distill.pub/2020/selforg/mnist/

My Video on Neural CAs: https://youtu.be/9Kec_7WFyp0

Abstract:
Growing Neural Cellular Automata [1] demonstrated how simple cellular automata (CAs) can learn to self-organise into complex shapes while being resistant to perturbations. Such a computational model approximates a solution to an open question in biology, namely, how do cells cooperate to create a complex multicellular anatomy and work to regenerate it upon damage? The model parameterizing the cells’ rules is parameter-efficient, end-to-end differentiable, and illustrates a new approach to modeling the regulation of anatomical homeostasis. In this work, we use a version of this model to show how CAs can be applied to a common task in machine learning: classification. We pose the question: can CAs use local message passing to achieve global agreement on what digit they compose?

Authors: Ettore Randazzo, Alexander Mordvintsev, Eyvind Niklasson, Michael Levin, Sam Greydanus

Links:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/yannickilcher
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ykilcher
Discord: https://discord.gg/4H8xxDF
BitChute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/yannic-kilcher
Minds: https://www.minds.com/ykilcher
Parler: https://parler.com/profile/YannicKilcher
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannic-kilcher-488534136/

If you want to support me, the best thing to do is to share out the content :)

If you want to support me financially (completely optional and voluntary, but a lot of people have asked for this):
SubscribeStar: https://www.subscribestar.com/yannickilcher
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/yannickilcher
Bitcoin (BTC): bc1q49lsw3q325tr58ygf8sudx2dqfguclvngvy2cq
Ethereum (ETH): 0x7ad3513E3B8f66799f507Aa7874b1B0eBC7F85e2
Litecoin (LTC): LQW2TRyKYetVC8WjFkhpPhtpbDM4Vw7r9m
Monero (XMR): 4ACL8AGrEo5hAir8A9CeVrW8pEauWvnp1WnSDZxW7tziCDLhZAGsgzhRQABDnFy8yuM9fWJDviJPHKRjV4FWt19CJZN9D4n