Principled Weight Initialisation for Input-Convex Neural Networks

Neural Information Processing Systems 

Input-Convex Neural Networks (ICNNs) are networks that guarantee convexity in their input-output mapping. These networks have been successfully applied for energy-based modelling, optimal transport problems and learning invariances.The convexity of ICNNs is achieved by using non-decreasing convex activation functions and non-negative weights. Because of these peculiarities, previous initialisation strategies, which implicitly assume centred weights, are not effective for ICNNs. By studying signal propagation through layers with non-negative weights, we are able to derive a principled weight initialisation for ICNNs. Concretely, we generalise signal propagation theory by removing the assumption that weights are sampled from a centred distribution.