Wavelet Logic Machines: Learning and Reasoning in the Spectral Domain Without Neural Networks
This work offers a more efficient and interpretable alternative to overparameterized neural models for vision and language tasks.
The paper tackles the problem of reducing computational and memory costs in deep learning by introducing a fully spectral learning framework that operates in the wavelet domain without neural networks, achieving 89.3% accuracy on SST-2 sentiment classification with 72% fewer parameters and 58% less peak memory compared to a Transformer baseline.
We introduce a fully spectral learning framework that eliminates traditional neural layers by operating entirely in the wavelet domain. The model applies learnable nonlinear transformations, including soft-thresholding and gain-phase modulation, directly to wavelet coefficients. It also includes a differentiable wavelet basis selection mechanism, enabling adaptive processing using families such as Haar, Daubechies, and Biorthogonal wavelets. Implemented in PyTorch with full 3D support, the model maintains a spectral pipeline without spatial convolutions or attention. On synthetic 3D denoising and natural language tasks from the GLUE benchmark, including SST-2 sentiment classification, the model achieves 89.3 percent accuracy, close to a 4-layer Transformer baseline (90.1 percent), while using 72 percent fewer parameters and 58 percent less peak memory. Faster early convergence is observed due to spectral sparsity priors. In contrast to the quadratic complexity of self-attention and large matrix multiplications in Transformers, our approach uses linear-time wavelet transforms and pointwise nonlinearities, significantly reducing inference cost. This yields a compact, interpretable, and efficient alternative to neural models. Our results support the viability of principled spectral learning in both vision and language tasks, offering new directions for model design without overparameterized architectures.