# Learning to Learn with Generative Models of Neural Network Checkpoints

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.12892 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.12892/

## Key facts

- Cited by 86 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 54 of its 79 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Sep 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 54)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning for Fast Adaptation of Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.03400/) (2017)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [Delving Deep into Rectifiers: Surpassing Human-Level Performance on ImageNet Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.01852/) (2015)
- [Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09841/) (2020)
- [Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1311.2524/) (2013)
- [WaveNet: A Generative Model for Raw Audio](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03499/) (2016)
- [Decision Transformer: Reinforcement Learning via Sequence Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01345/) (2021)
- [Competition-Level Code Generation with AlphaCode](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07814/) (2022)
- [Scaling Autoregressive Models for Content-Rich Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10789/) (2022)
- [Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15282/) (2021)
- [Visualizing the Loss Landscape of Neural Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.09913/) (2017)
- [Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10470/) (2021)
- [Designing Network Design Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13678/) (2020)
- [Exact solutions to the nonlinear dynamics of learning in deep linear neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6120/) (2013)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 86)

- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [HyperDiffusion: Generating Implicit Neural Fields with Weight-Space Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17015/) (2023)
- [Equivariant Architectures for Learning in Deep Weight Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12780/) (2023)
- [Permutation Equivariant Neural Functionals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14040/) (2023)
- [Hyper-Representations as Generative Models: Sampling Unseen Neural Network Weights](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14733/) (2022)
- [Graph Neural Networks for Learning Equivariant Representations of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12143/) (2024)
- [Graph Metanetworks for Processing Diverse Neural Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04501/) (2023)
- [Neural Functional Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13546/) (2023)
- [HyperTuning: Toward Adapting Large Language Models without Back-propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12485/) (2022)
- [Neural Network Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13144/) (2024)
- [Towards Scalable and Versatile Weight Space Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09997/) (2024)
- [Model Zoos: A Dataset of Diverse Populations of Neural Network Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14764/) (2022)
- [Geometry-Complete Diffusion for 3D Molecule Generation and Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04313/) (2023)
- [Interpreting the Weight Space of Customized Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09413/) (2024)
- [Can We Scale Transformers to Predict Parameters of Diverse ImageNet Models?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04143/) (2023)
- [Universal Neural Functionals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05232/) (2024)
- [We Should Chart an Atlas of All the World's Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10633/) (2025)
- [Scale Equivariant Graph Metanetworks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10685/) (2024)
- [Learning on LoRAs: GL-Equivariant Processing of Low-Rank Weight Spaces for Large Finetuned Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04207/) (2024)
- [Sampling weights of deep neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16830/) (2023)
- [Drag-and-Drop LLMs: Zero-Shot Prompt-to-Weights](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.16406/) (2025)
- [Monomial Matrix Group Equivariant Neural Functional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.11697/) (2024)
- [Deep Linear Probe Generators for Weight Space Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10811/) (2024)
- [Conditional LoRA Parameter Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01415/) (2024)
- [Spatio-Temporal Few-Shot Learning via Diffusive Neural Network Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11922/) (2024)
- [Recurrent Diffusion for Large-Scale Parameter Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.11587/) (2025)
- [In-Context Meta LoRA Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.17635/) (2025)
- [Make-An-Agent: A Generalizable Policy Network Generator with Behavior-Prompted Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10973/) (2024)
- [Generative Modeling of Weights: Generalization or Memorization?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07998/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We explore a data-driven approach for learning to optimize neural networks. We construct a dataset of neural network checkpoints and train a generative model on the parameters. In particular, our model is a conditional diffusion transformer that, given an initial input parameter vector and a prompted loss, error, or return, predicts the distribution over parameter updates that achieve the desired metric. At test time, it can optimize neural networks with unseen parameters for downstream tasks in just one update. We find that our approach successfully generates parameters for a wide range of loss prompts. Moreover, it can sample multimodal parameter solutions and has favorable scaling properties. We apply our method to different neural network architectures and tasks in supervised and reinforcement learning.