Reviews: An Adaptive Empirical Bayesian Method for Sparse Deep Learning

Neural Information Processing Systems 

This is a novel combination of existing techniques that appears well-formulated with intriguing experimental results. In particular, this work leverages the strengths stochastic gradient MCMC methods with stochastic approximation to form an adaptive empirical Bayesian approach to learning the parameters and hyperparameters of a Bayesian neural network (BNN). My best understanding is that by optimizing the hyperparameters (rather than sampling them), this new method improves upon existing approaches, speeding up inference without sacrificing quality (especially in the model compression domain). Other areas of BNN literature could be cited, but I think the authors were prudent not to distract the reader from the particular area of focus. This work demonstrates considerable theoretical analysis and is supported by intriguing experimental evidence.