Instability in deep learning – when algorithms cannot compute uncertainty quantifications for neural networks
Luca Eva Gazdag, Vegard Antun, Anders C. Hansen · European Journal of Applied Mathematics · 2025
Abstract In deep learning, interval neural networks are used to quantify the uncertainty of a pre-trained neural network. Suppose we are given a computational problem $P$ and a pre-trained neural network $\Phi _P$ that aims to solve $P$ . An interval neural network is then a pair of neural networks $(\underline {\phi }, \overline {\phi })$ , with the property that $\underline {\phi }(y) \leq \Phi _P(y) \leq \overline {\phi }(y)$ for all inputs $y$ , where the inequalities are meant componentwise. $(\underline {\phi }, \overline {\phi })$ are specifically trained to quantify the uncertainty of $\Phi _P$ , in the sense that the size of the interval $[\underline {\phi }(y),\overline {\phi }(y)]$ quantifies the uncertainty of the prediction $\Phi _P(y)$ . In this paper, we investigate the phenomenon when algorithms cannot compute interval neural networks in the setting of inverse problems. We show that in the typical setting of a linear inverse problem, the problem of constructing an optimal pair of interval neural networks is non-computable, even with the assumption that the pre-trained neural network $\Phi _P$ is an optimal solution. In other words, there exist classes of training sets $\Omega$ , such that there is no algorithm, even randomised (with probability $p \geq 1/2$ ), that computes an optimal pair of interval neural networks for each training set ${\mathcal{T}} \in \Omega$ . This phenomenon happens even when we are given a pre-trained neural network $\Phi _{{\mathcal{T}}}$ that is optimal for $\mathcal{T}$ . This phenomenon is intimately linked to instability in deep learning.