What My Project Does

Target propagation was a biologically plausible alternative to backpropagation introduced in 2015 by Yoshua Bengio. I implemented the original paper to find out why it did not go mainstream.

Target Audience

Researchers interested in alternatives to backpropagation and other gradient-based neural network training algorithms

Comparison

Biologically-inspired alternatives to gradient-based learning include the

– forward-forward algorithm (Hinton, 2022),

– NEAT or Neuro-Evolution of Augmenting Topologies (Stanley & Miikkulainen, 2002),

– equilibrium propagation (Bengio & Scellier, 2016)

– direct feedback alignment (Nøkland, 2016)

– NoPropagation

I compared Target Propagation to backpropagation only and found it super slow tbh.

Github

Repository: https://github.com/MurageKibicho/Target-Propagation

Caveats

Target propagation seems unlikely to ever go mainstream. It is rather slow compared to backprop