Why pretraining for DNN is not specified in keras?

Question

The problem is more about the training algorithm for DNN rather than the software keras.

As far as I know, deep neural network works due to the improvement in training algorithm. From the 1980s, the BP algorithm has been used to train neural network but will result in over-fitting problem when the network is deep. About 10 years ago, Hinton improved the algorithm by first pre-traning the network using unlabeled data and then using BP algorithm. The pre-traning plays an important role to avoid over-fitting.

However, as I begin to try Keras, the example (in the below) of mnist DNN using SGD algorithm without any mention about the pre-training process leads to a very high prediction accuracy. So, I begin to wonder where has the pre-training gone? Wheter I misundertood the deep learning training algorithm (I think the classical BP is almost the same as SGD)? Or a new traning technique has replaced the pre-traning process?

Very grateful for your help!

'''Trains a simple deep NN on the MNIST dataset.
Gets to 98.40% test accuracy after 20 epochs
(there is *a lot* of margin for parameter tuning).
2 seconds per epoch on a K520 GPU.
'''

from __future__ import print_function
import numpy as np
np.random.seed(1337)  # for reproducibility

from keras.datasets import mnist
from keras.models import Sequential
from keras.layers.core import Dense, Dropout, Activation
from keras.optimizers import SGD, Adam, RMSprop
from keras.utils import np_utils


batch_size = 128
nb_classes = 10
nb_epoch = 20

# the data, shuffled and split between train and test sets
(X_train, y_train), (X_test, y_test) = mnist.load_data()

X_train = X_train.reshape(60000, 784)
X_test = X_test.reshape(10000, 784)
X_train = X_train.astype('float32')
X_test = X_test.astype('float32')
X_train /= 255
X_test /= 255
print(X_train.shape[0], 'train samples')
print(X_test.shape[0], 'test samples')

# convert class vectors to binary class matrices
Y_train = np_utils.to_categorical(y_train, nb_classes)
Y_test = np_utils.to_categorical(y_test, nb_classes)

model = Sequential()
model.add(Dense(512, input_shape=(784,)))
model.add(Activation('relu'))
model.add(Dropout(0.2))
model.add(Dense(512))
model.add(Activation('relu'))
model.add(Dropout(0.2))
model.add(Dense(10))
model.add(Activation('softmax'))

model.summary()

model.compile(loss='categorical_crossentropy',
              optimizer=RMSprop(),
              metrics=['accuracy'])

history = model.fit(X_train, Y_train,
                    batch_size=batch_size, nb_epoch=nb_epoch,
                    verbose=1, validation_data=(X_test, Y_test))
score = model.evaluate(X_test, Y_test, verbose=0)
print('Test score:', score[0])
print('Test accuracy:', score[1])

Answer 1

You are wrong.

Past vs. Today

The difference between Neural Networks in the past and the ones today is not about the training algorithm. Every DNN is trained with Backpropagation based on some SGD-based algorithm, exactly like in the past. (There are some new algorithms trying to reduce parameter-tuning with adaptive learning-rates like Adam, RMSprop and co.; but plain SGD is still the most common algorithm and was used for AlphaGo for example)

The difference is just the size = number of layers (deepness; which is possible due to GPU-based evaluation) and the choosings of activation-functions. ReLU is just working better than the classic Sigmoid or Tanh activations (regarding speed and stability).

Pre-training

I also think, that pre-training was very popular 5-10 years ago but nobody is doing that today (if you got enough data)! Let me quote from here:

It's true that unsupervised pre-training was initially what made it possible to train deeper networks, but the last few years the pre-training approach has been largely obsoleted. Nowadays, deep neural networks are a lot more similar to their 80's cousins. Instead of pre-training, the difference is now in the activation functions and regularisation methods used (and sometimes in the optimisation algorithm, although much more rarely). I would say that the "pre-training era", which started around 2006, ended in the early '10s when people started using rectified linear units (ReLUs), and later dropout, and discovered that pre-training was no longer beneficial for this type of networks.

I can recommend these slides as introduction to modern Deep Learning (as starting point).