Nonclosedness of Sets of Neural Networks in Sobolev Spaces
This addresses a theoretical gap in understanding neural network approximation properties for researchers in mathematical analysis and machine learning, but it is incremental as it builds on existing Sobolev space theory.
The paper tackles the problem of whether sets of neural networks with fixed architectures are closed in Sobolev spaces, showing they are not closed in order-(m-1) Sobolev spaces for m-times differentiable activation functions, and not closed in higher-order spaces under stronger conditions, with experimental validation of approximation via unbounded parameter growth.
We examine the closedness of sets of realized neural networks of a fixed architecture in Sobolev spaces. For an exactly $m$-times differentiable activation function $ρ$, we construct a sequence of neural networks $(Φ_n)_{n \in \mathbb{N}}$ whose realizations converge in order-$(m-1)$ Sobolev norm to a function that cannot be realized exactly by a neural network. Thus, sets of realized neural networks are not closed in order-$(m-1)$ Sobolev spaces $W^{m-1,p}$ for $p \in [1,\infty]$. We further show that these sets are not closed in $W^{m,p}$ under slightly stronger conditions on the $m$-th derivative of $ρ$. For a real analytic activation function, we show that sets of realized neural networks are not closed in $W^{k,p}$ for any $k \in \mathbb{N}$. The nonclosedness allows for approximation of non-network target functions with unbounded parameter growth. We partially characterize the rate of parameter growth for most activation functions by showing that a specific sequence of realized neural networks can approximate the activation function's derivative with weights increasing inversely proportional to the $L^p$ approximation error. Finally, we present experimental results showing that networks are capable of closely approximating non-network target functions with increasing parameters via training.