MetaInit: Initializing learning by learning to initialize

Deep learning models frequently trade handcrafted features for deep features learned with much less human intervention using gradient descent. While this paradigm has been enormously successful, deep networks are often difficult to train and performance can depend crucially on the initial choice of parameters. In this work, we introduce an algorithm called MetaInit as a step towards automating the search for good initializations using meta-learning. Our approach is based on a hypothesis that good initializations make gradient descent easier by starting in regions that look locally linear with minimal second order effects. We formalize this notion via a quantity that we call the gradient quotient, which can be computed with any architecture or dataset.