Universal Approximation Under Constraints is Possible with Transformers
Authors: Anastasis Kratsios,Behnoosh Zamanlooy,Tianlin Liu,Ivan Dokmanić
ICLR 2022,Spotlight

Abstract: Many practical problems need the output of a machine learning model to satisfy a set of constraints, $K$.  Nevertheless, there is no known guarantee that classical neural network architectures can exactly encode constraints while simultaneously achieving universality.  We provide a quantitative constrained universal approximation theorem which guarantees that for any non-convex compact set $K$ and any continuous function $f:\mathbb{R}^n\rightarrow K$, there is a probabilistic transformer $\hat{F}$ whose randomized outputs all lie in $K$ and whose expected output uniformly approximates $f$.  Our second main result is a ``deep neural version'' of Berge's Maximum Theorem (1963).  The result guarantees that given an objective function $L$, a constraint set $K$, and a family of soft constraint sets, there is a probabilistic transformer $\hat{F}$ that approximately minimizes $L$ and whose outputs belong to $K$; moreover, $\hat{F}$ approximately satisfies the soft constraints.  Our results imply the first universal approximation theorem for classical transformers with exact convex constraint satisfaction.  They also yield that a chart-free universal approximation theorem for Riemannian manifold-valued functions subject to suitable geodesically convex constraints.