Google Introduces A New Algorithm For Training Sparse Neural Networks

Since the explosion of AlexNet paper onto the computer vision scene, machine learning results have improved greatly due to deeper models with high complexity, increased computational power and the availability of large-scale labelled data. The room to refine neural networks still exists as they sometimes fumble and end up using brute force for lightweight tasks. To address this, the researchers at Google, have come up with a RigL, an algorithm for training sparse neural networks that use a fixed parameter count and computational cost throughout training, without sacrificing accuracy. So, what is sparse in the context of neural networks? Each layer of neurons in a network is represented by a matrix. Each entry in the matrix can be thought of as representative of the connection between two neurons.