Towards a mathematical theory of superposition

Source abstract

We develop a mathematical theory of superposition in neural networks using tools from frame theory and compressed sensing. In our model, a sparse binary vector $x$ of active features is encoded through an overcomplete dictionary $W$, and feature recovery is performed by applying $\operatorname{ReLU}(W^\top W x+b)$ with an appropriate bias vector $b$. We prove several recovery theorems for this model. In the random-support setting, we establish high-probability support recovery for nearly tight, low-coherence dictionaries, with guarantees when the expected sparsity is up to order $d/\log n$. In the worst-case support setting, we give a sharp and computable criterion for which sparsity levels permit support recovery. We apply this criterion to Gaussian random matrices and equiangular tight frames. For real equiangular tight frames with $n>d+1$, we determine the exact recovery threshold in terms of the coherence. The proof of this result for real equiangular tight frames relies on a novel characterization---which should be of independent interest to frame theorists---of the distribution of signs in the Gram matrix.