# SLAW: Scaled Loss Approximate Weighting for Efficient Multi-Task Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.08218 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.08218/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Sep 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Multi-Task Learning Using Uncertainty to Weigh Losses for Scene Geometry and Semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07115/) (2017)
- [Depth Map Prediction from a Single Image using a Multi-Scale Deep Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2283/) (2014)
- [Gradient Surgery for Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06782/) (2020)
- [Efficient Lifelong Learning with A-GEM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00420/) (2018)
- [Meta-Learning in Neural Networks: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05439/) (2020)
- [A Survey on Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.08114/) (2017)
- [GradNorm: Gradient Normalization for Adaptive Loss Balancing in Deep Multitask Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.02257/) (2017)
- [Taskonomy: Disentangling Task Transfer Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08328/) (2018)
- [End-to-End Multi-Task Learning with Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10704/) (2018)
- [Predicting Depth, Surface Normals and Semantic Labels with a Common Multi-Scale Convolutional Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4734/) (2014)
- [Cross-stitch Networks for Multi-task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.03539/) (2016)
- [Which Tasks Should Be Learned Together in Multi-task Learning?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.07553/) (2019)
- [Multi-Task Learning with Deep Neural Networks: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09796/) (2020)
- [Task2Vec: Task Embedding for Meta-Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.03545/) (2019)
- [Actor-Mimic: Deep Multitask and Transfer Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06342/) (2015)
- [NDDR-CNN: Layerwise Feature Fusing in Multi-Task CNNs by Neural Discriminative Dimensionality Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.08297/) (2018)
- [Instance-aware Semantic Segmentation via Multi-task Network Cascades](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.04412/) (2015)
- [Fully-adaptive Feature Sharing in Multi-Task Networks with Applications in Person Attribute Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05377/) (2016)
- [Massively Multitask Networks for Drug Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.02072/) (2015)
- [Learning to Push by Grasping: Using multiple tasks for effective learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.09025/) (2016)
- [When is multitask learning effective? Semantic sequence prediction under varying data conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.02251/) (2016)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Relaxed Equivariance via Multitask Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17878/) (2024)
- [On Steering Multi-Annotations per Sample for Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02946/) (2022)
- [CRRS: Concentric Rectangles Regression Strategy for Multi-point Representation on Fisheye Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14639/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multi-task learning (MTL) is a subfield of machine learning with important applications, but the multi-objective nature of optimization in MTL leads to difficulties in balancing training between tasks. The best MTL optimization methods require individually computing the gradient of each task's loss function, which impedes scalability to a large number of tasks. In this paper, we propose Scaled Loss Approximate Weighting (SLAW), a method for multi-task optimization that matches the performance of the best existing methods while being much more efficient. SLAW balances learning between tasks by estimating the magnitudes of each task's gradient without performing any extra backward passes. We provide theoretical and empirical justification for SLAW's estimation of gradient magnitudes. Experimental results on non-linear regression, multi-task computer vision, and virtual screening for drug discovery demonstrate that SLAW is significantly more efficient than strong baselines without sacrificing performance and applicable to a diverse range of domains.