Invertibility of ReLU-Layers: A Practical Approach
Hannah Eckert
1 a
, Daniel Haider
1 b
, Martin Ehler
2 c
and Peter Balazs
1 d
1
Acoustics Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Dominikanerbastei 16, Vienna, Austria
2
Faculty of Mathematics, University of Vienna, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1, Vienna, Austria
{hannah.eckert, daniel.haider, peter.balazs}@oeaw.ac.at, martin.ehler@univie.ac.at
Keywords:
Invertible Neural Networks, Reconstruction, Frame Theory, Stability, Interpretability.
Abstract:
Invertibility in machine learning models is a pivotal feature that bridges the gap between model complexity and
interpretability. For ReLU-layers, the practical verification of invertibility has been shown to be a difficult task
that still remains unsolved. Recently, a frame theoretic condition has been proposed to verify invertibility on
an open or convex set, however, the computations for this condition are computationally infeasible in high di-
mensions. As an alternative, we propose an algorithm that stochastically samples the dataset to approximately
verify the above condition for invertibility and can be efficiently implemented even in high dimensions. We
use the algorithm to monitor invertibility and to enforce it during training in standard classification tasks.
1 INTRODUCTION
Keeping models powerful while designing them in a
transparent and interpretable way is one of the most
significant challenges in modern machine learning
(Fan et al., 2020). In this context, understanding
the underlying mechanisms by which a model makes
its predictions has become a focal point of research
(Samek et al., 2019). One of the fundamental proper-
ties associated with the interpretability of a model is
invertibility. When a model is invertible, each predic-
tion can be traced back to its source inputs, providing
the ability to decipher the decision-making process
(Kothari et al., 2021). This traceability is crucial for
diagnosing model behavior, identifying biases, and
ensuring accountability (Lipton, 2016). Invertibility
offers a multitude of avenues for interpretability. One
such avenue is the potential for the systematic pertur-
bation of single features of the intermediate represen-
tations, mapping them back to the data space, and the
subsequent interpretation of the reconstructed input
with perturbed features. However, unless the model
is designed to be invertible, the practical verification
is generally an ill-posed problem.
Given the prevalence of ReLU-layers as build-
ing blocks in neural networks, understanding how in-
a
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2987-650X
b
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8012-5521
c
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3247-6279
d
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4939-0831
formation flows through can be essential to under-
standing the whole model architecture and enhanc-
ing its interpretability. So, in this paper we focus on
putting existing theoretical results on the invertibility
of ReLU-layers (Haider et al., 2024; Maillard et al.,
2023; Puthawala et al., 2022) into practice. Our ap-
proach to this can be described as follows: For any
given weight matrix W and bias vector α we want to
assess if the associated ReLU-layer is invertible on
some set K, that contains data points of interest. By
appropriate sampling from (a part of) this dataset, in-
stead of K, we compute an approximation of a bias
vector α
∗
which is maximal with the property that the
associated ReLU-layer is invertible on K. Hence, if
α ≤ α
∗
(entry-wise) we can deduce that the original
ReLU-layer is invertible, too. We use this to promote
the invertibility of ReLU-layers by enforcing α ≤ α
∗
during training via regularization. With these exper-
iments, we explore the trade-off between model ex-
pressivity versus information preservation of ReLU-
layers.
This manuscript is organized as follows. In Sec-
tion 2 we present frame theory as theoretical back-
bone of our approach and derive a sufficient condi-
tion for the invertibility of ReLU-layers on a given
set. Section 3 introduces an algorithm that satisfies
the condition, which is demonstrated in practical ap-
plications in Section 4.
Eckert, H., Haider, D., Ehler, M. and Balazs, P.
Invertibility of ReLU-Layers: A Practical Approach.
DOI: 10.5220/0012951300003837
Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
In Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence (IJCCI 2024), pages 423-429
ISBN: 978-989-758-721-4; ISSN: 2184-3236
Proceedings Copyright © 2024 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda.
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