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Interpretability of Recurrent Neural Networks Trained on Regular Languages

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Advances in Computational Intelligence (IWANN 2019)

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Abstract

We study the ability of recurrent neural networks to model and recognize simple regular languages. Training the networks under different levels of noise and regularization, we analyze their response in terms of accuracy and interpretability using a complete set of validation data. Our results show that a small noise level improves the generalization of the networks, while regularization provides a higher interpretability. Under proper levels of noise and regularization, the networks are able to obtain a high accuracy, and the hidden units display activation patterns that could be related to discrete states in a deterministic finite automaton.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by grant S2017/BMD-3688 from Comunidad de Madrid, and by Spanish project MINECO/FEDER TIN2017-84452-R (http://www.mineco.gob.es/).

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Correspondence to Christian Oliva .

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Oliva, C., Lago-Fernández, L.F. (2019). Interpretability of Recurrent Neural Networks Trained on Regular Languages. In: Rojas, I., Joya, G., Catala, A. (eds) Advances in Computational Intelligence. IWANN 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11507. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20518-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20518-8_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-20517-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-20518-8

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