# BEND: Bagging Deep Learning Training Based on Efficient Neural Network Diffusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.15766 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15766/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 22 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion foundations and sampling](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-foundations-and-sampling/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [Variational Inference with Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.05770/) (2015)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [Generating Diverse High-Fidelity Images with VQ-VAE-2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.00446/) (2019)
- [NICE: Non-linear Independent Components Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1410.8516/) (2014)
- [Is synthetic data from generative models ready for image recognition?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07574/) (2022)
- [Your Diffusion Model is Secretly a Zero-Shot Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16203/) (2023)
- [Unlabeled Samples Generated by GAN Improve the Person Re-identification Baseline in vitro](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.07717/) (2017)
- [DatasetGAN: Efficient Labeled Data Factory with Minimal Human Effort](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06490/) (2021)
- [Generative Models as a Data Source for Multiview Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05258/) (2021)
- [Image GANs meet Differentiable Rendering for Inverse Graphics and Interpretable 3D Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.09125/) (2020)
- [Sora as a World Model? A Complete Survey on Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05131/) (2024)
- [A Bayesian Data Augmentation Approach for Learning Deep Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10564/) (2017)
- [EC-GAN: Low-Sample Classification using Semi-Supervised Algorithms and GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15864/) (2020)
- [Analyzing Bagging Methods for Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09099/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Bagging has achieved great success in the field of machine learning by integrating multiple base classifiers to build a single strong classifier to reduce model variance. The performance improvement of bagging mainly relies on the number and diversity of base classifiers. However, traditional deep learning model training methods are expensive to train individually and difficult to train multiple models with low similarity in a restricted dataset. Recently, diffusion models, which have been tremendously successful in the fields of imaging and vision, have been found to be effective in generating neural network model weights and biases with diversity. We creatively propose a Bagging deep learning training algorithm based on Efficient Neural network Diffusion (BEND). The originality of BEND comes from the first use of a neural network diffusion model to efficiently build base classifiers for bagging. Our approach is simple but effective, first using multiple trained model weights and biases as inputs to train autoencoder and latent diffusion model to realize a diffusion model from noise to valid neural network parameters. Subsequently, we generate several base classifiers using the trained diffusion model. Finally, we integrate these ba se classifiers for various inference tasks using the Bagging method. Resulting experiments on multiple models and datasets show that our proposed BEND algorithm can consistently outperform the mean and median accuracies of both the original trained model and the diffused model. At the same time, new models diffused using the diffusion model have higher diversity and lower cost than multiple models trained using traditional methods. The BEND approach successfully introduces diffusion models into the new deep learning training domain and provides a new paradigm for future deep learning training and inference.
