# Bounded Rational Decision-Making in Feedforward Neural Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.08332 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.08332/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 26 Feb 2016.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [BIASeD: Bringing Irrationality into Automated System Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01122/) (2022)
- [Variational Inference for Model-Free and Model-Based Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.01693/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Bounded rational decision-makers transform sensory input into motor output under limited computational resources. Mathematically, such decision-makers can be modeled as information-theoretic channels with limited transmission rate. Here, we apply this formalism for the first time to multilayer feedforward neural networks. We derive synaptic weight update rules for two scenarios, where either each neuron is considered as a bounded rational decision-maker or the network as a whole. In the update rules, bounded rationality translates into information-theoretically motivated types of regularization in weight space. In experiments on the MNIST benchmark classification task for handwritten digits, we show that such information-theoretic regularization successfully prevents overfitting across different architectures and attains results that are competitive with other recent techniques like dropout, dropconnect and Bayes by backprop, for both ordinary and convolutional neural networks.