Generalizing Linear Autoencoder Recommenders with Decoupled Expected Quadratic Loss

Linear autoencoders (LAEs) have gained increasing popularity in recommender systems due to their simplicity and strong empirical performance. Most LAE models, including the Emphasized Denoising Linear Autoencoder (EDLAE) introduced by (Steck, 2020), use quadratic loss during training. However, the original EDLAE only provides closed-form solutions for the hyperparameter choice b = 0, which limits its capacity. In this work, we generalize EDLAE objective into a Decoupled Expected Quadratic Loss (DEQL). We show that DEQL simplifies the process of deriving EDLAE solutions and reveals solutions in a broader hyperparameter range b > 0, which were not derived in Steck's original paper. Additionally, we propose an efficient algorithm based on Miller's matrix inverse theorem to ensure the computational tractability for the b > 0 case. Empirical results on benchmark datasets show that the b > 0 solutions provided by DEQL outperform the b = 0 EDLAE baseline, demonstrating that DEQL expands the solution space and enables the discovery of models with better testing performance.