Going Deeper: how to build and train your own models using neural networks with PyTorch or TensorFlow

First of all, Deep learning is a subfield of machine learning that involves using neural networks to build models that can process and make predictions on data. These neural networks are typically composed of multiple layers, with the first layer receiving input data and each subsequent layer building on the previous one to learn increasingly complex representations of the data.

Technically, deep learning models are trained by presenting them with large amounts of data and adjusting the model’s parameters to minimize a loss function, which measures the difference between the model’s predicted output and the correct output. This process is known as gradient descent, and it typically involves using algorithms such as backpropagation to compute the gradient of the loss function with respect to the model’s parameters.

In contrast to machine learning, there’s no manual feature classification on the input data needed:

Here is an example of code for training a deep learning model using the PyTorch library:

# Import the necessary PyTorch modules
import torch
import torch.nn as nn
import torch.optim as optim

# Define the neural network architecture
class Net(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self):
        super(Net, self).__init__()
        self.fc1 = nn.Linear(10, 32)
        self.fc2 = nn.Linear(32, 64)
        self.fc3 = nn.Linear(64, 128)
        self.fc4 = nn.Linear(128, 10)

    def forward(self, x):
        x = self.fc1(x)
        x = nn.functional.relu(x)
        x = self.fc2(x)
        x = nn.functional.relu(x)
        x = self.fc3(x)
        x = nn.functional.relu(x)
        x = self.fc4(x)
        return x

# Create an instance of the neural network
net = Net()

# Define the loss function and the optimizer
criterion = nn.CrossEntropyLoss()
optimizer = optim.SGD(net.parameters(), lr=0.01)

# Train the model
for epoch in range(100):
    # Iterate over the training data
    for inputs, labels in train_data:
        # Clear the gradients
        optimizer.zero_grad()

        # Forward pass
        outputs = net(inputs)

        # Compute the loss and the gradients
        loss = criterion(outputs, labels)
        loss.backward()

        # Update the model's parameters
        optimizer.step()

This code creates a neural network with four fully-connected (fc) layers, trains it on some training data using stochastic gradient descent (SGD), and optimizes the model’s parameters to minimize the cross-entropy loss. Of course, this is just a simple example, and in practice you would want to use more sophisticated techniques to train your deep learning models.

A basic code example using TensorFlow to define and train a deep learning model may look like this:

# Import necessary TensorFlow libraries
import tensorflow as tf
from tensorflow.keras import layers

# Define the model architecture
model = tf.keras.Sequential()
model.add(layers.Dense(64, activation='relu'))
model.add(layers.Dense(64, activation='relu'))
model.add(layers.Dense(10, activation='softmax'))

# Compile the model with a loss function and an optimizer
model.compile(optimizer=tf.keras.optimizers.Adam(),
              loss=tf.keras.losses.SparseCategoricalCrossentropy(),
              metrics=['accuracy'])

# Load the training data and labels
train_data = ...
train_labels = ...

# Train the model on the training data
model.fit(train_data, train_labels, epochs=5)

In this code example, the first two lines import the necessary TensorFlow libraries for defining and training a model.

The next three lines define the architecture of the model using the Sequential class and the Dense layer. The model has three dense layers with 64 units each, using the ReLU activation function for the first two layers and the softmax activation function for the final layer.

The compile method is used to specify the loss function and optimizer for training the model. In this case, we are using the SparseCategoricalCrossentropy loss function and the Adam optimizer.

Next, the training data and labels are loaded and the fit method is used to train the model on the data for 5 epochs. This will run the training process and update the model’s weights to improve its performance on the training data.

Once the model is trained, it can be used to make predictions on new, unseen data. This can be done with the predict method, as shown in the following example:

Copy code# Load the test data
test_data = ...

# Make predictions on the test data
predictions = model.predict(test_data)

In this code, the test data is loaded and passed to the predict method of the trained model. The method returns the predicted labels for the data, which can then be compared to the true labels to evaluate the model’s performance.

PyTorch or Tensorflow?

Whether you want to use PyTorch or Tensorflow for creating, training and asking your neural network, might be based on personal or usecase related preferences, but there are some subtle differences to it:

1. Ease of use: PyTorch is generally considered to be more user-friendly than TensorFlow, particularly for tasks such as building and training neural networks. PyTorch provides a high-level interface for defining and training models, while TensorFlow can be more verbose and require more boilerplate code.
2. Performance: TensorFlow is generally considered to be more efficient and scalable than PyTorch, particularly for distributed training and serving models in production. TensorFlow also has a number of tools and libraries for optimizing performance, such as the XLA compiler and TensorRT.
3. Community: TensorFlow has a larger and more established community, with more resources and support available online. PyTorch is a newer framework and is rapidly growing in popularity, but it may not have as much support as TensorFlow.

Questions? Comments? Want to chat? Contact me on Mastodon,Twitter or send a mail to ingmar@motionet.de