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Transfer Learning with Dynamic Adversarial Adaptation Network (1909.08184v1)

Published 18 Sep 2019 in cs.LG and stat.ML

Abstract: The recent advances in deep transfer learning reveal that adversarial learning can be embedded into deep networks to learn more transferable features to reduce the distribution discrepancy between two domains. Existing adversarial domain adaptation methods either learn a single domain discriminator to align the global source and target distributions or pay attention to align subdomains based on multiple discriminators. However, in real applications, the marginal (global) and conditional (local) distributions between domains are often contributing differently to the adaptation. There is currently no method to dynamically and quantitatively evaluate the relative importance of these two distributions for adversarial learning. In this paper, we propose a novel Dynamic Adversarial Adaptation Network (DAAN) to dynamically learn domain-invariant representations while quantitatively evaluate the relative importance of global and local domain distributions. To the best of our knowledge, DAAN is the first attempt to perform dynamic adversarial distribution adaptation for deep adversarial learning. DAAN is extremely easy to implement and train in real applications. We theoretically analyze the effectiveness of DAAN, and it can also be explained in an attention strategy. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DAAN achieves better classification accuracy compared to state-of-the-art deep and adversarial methods. Results also imply the necessity and effectiveness of the dynamic distribution adaptation in adversarial transfer learning.

Citations (266)

Summary

  • The paper introduces a dynamic adversarial network that adjusts the balance between marginal and conditional distributions to enhance domain adaptation.
  • It integrates a dual-discriminator architecture with an attention-like mechanism to reduce domain divergence compared to static alignment methods.
  • Empirical results on benchmarks like ImageCLEF-DA and Office-Home validate DAAN's superior classification accuracy and computational efficiency.

Transfer Learning with Dynamic Adversarial Adaptation Network: An In-Depth Analysis

The paper "Transfer Learning with Dynamic Adversarial Adaptation Network" presents a novel approach to unsupervised domain adaptation through the introduction of the Dynamic Adversarial Adaptation Network (DAAN). This work engages with the challenge of reducing distribution discrepancy between domains by leveraging adversarial learning within deep neural networks. Specifically, the central innovation lies in DAAN's ability to dynamically evaluate and address the relative contributions of marginal (global) and conditional (local) distributions to adaptation tasks, which are often varied and context-dependent in real-world applications.

Context and Contribution

Domain adaptation, a subfield of transfer learning, aims to mitigate performance drops due to shifts between data distributions from different domains, known as the source and target domains. Prior methodologies in this area typically adopt static approaches that either focus on global distribution alignment or concentrate on specific local subdomain alignments. The DAAN introduces a dynamic adversarial factor within its network, allowing the model to quantitatively balance these distributions' influence during the training process dynamically.

The introduction of the Dynamic Adversarial Factor is particularly noteworthy, enabling DAAN to adjust the importance of different distribution contributions efficiently without requiring complex additional computations or model architectures. This simplicity and efficiency in implementation make DAAN practical for application in scenarios with large-scale data where computational efficiency is paramount.

Methodological Insights

DAAN's architecture combines existing principles of adversarial learning with a novel attention-like mechanism that allows for real-time adjustments during training. The network employs a deep feature extractor in tandem with a label classifier and dual discriminators for global and local domains. Notably, the paper supplies a theoretical analysis and empirically validates DAAN, evidencing its capability to outperform other state-of-the-art methods across standard unsupervised domain adaptation benchmarks, such as ImageCLEF-DA and Office-Home.

The architecture also emphasizes the significance of dynamically aligned adaptations. The results highlight improved classification accuracies when comparing DAAN to static alignment methods like DANN and MADA. Specifically, it reduces the domain divergence effectively by quantifying marginal and conditional distribution contributions, a feat verified by reduced error rates against benchmarks.

Implications and Future Directions

The practical implications of DAAN are broad and promising, particularly for tasks where labeled data is scarce in the target domain but abundant in the source domain, such as cross-domain image classification, visual tracking, and potentially other domains requiring shift-invariant features, like audio or text data. Furthermore, by quantifying the relative importance of domain adaptations, DAAN enhances decision transparency, allowing for more informed deployment in application-specific contexts.

Future research directions may involve extending DAAN's architecture to cater to multi-modal and semi-supervised domains, where the challenges of divergence are compounded by other factors like noise or incomplete data. Additionally, integrating DAAN into applications beyond classification, such as object detection or natural language processing, represents a fertile ground for further advancement.

Overall, DAAN presents a significant advancement in the domain adaptation landscape, offering a robust, scalable, and theoretically sound framework for the continuous challenge of reducing domain discrepancies in machine learning models. The paper’s results underscore the need for dynamic strategies in adversarial learning, setting a foundation for the next generation of adaptive machine learning solutions.