Approximation in Contrastive Representation Learning

Abstract:Contrastive representation learning (CRL) is a fundamental paradigm for learning transferable representations. Recent work identifies its population target as the pointwise mutual information (PMI) $\log\frac{p(x,y)}{p_X(x)p_Y(y)}$ between two modalities $X,Y$, where $p$ is the joint density function and $p_X,p_Y$ are the marginals. However, it remains unclear why standard inner-product scores $f(x)^\top g(y)$ can effectively approximate a generally nonseparable population target PMI. In this paper, we address this question from the aspect of approximation for CRL. By linking PMI to a compact operator, we show that $D$-dimensional inner-product models perform rank-$D$ spectral approximation, with error controlled by the spectral tail. We then study neural network realizations: in general settings, we show that deep neural network scoring functions are universally consistent, and the approximation error rates depend on the smoothness of the PMI function; under structured low-rank data models we obtain improved rates attained by moderate-width encoders. Finally, we establish a fast calibration rate from contrastive excess risk to downstream retrieval error under a density-ratio Tsybakov noise condition.

Machine Learning (cs.LG)

arXiv:2610.15388 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2610.15388v1 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.15388 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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