AIExplainer
Machine Learning Deep Learning Intermediate 1 min read

What is a co-adaptation?

An undesirable behavior in which neurons predict patterns in training data by relying almost exclusively on outputs of specific other neurons instead of relying on the network's behavior as a whole.

An undesirable behavior in which neurons predict patterns in training data by relying almost exclusively on outputs of specific other neurons instead of relying on the network's behavior as a whole. When the patterns that cause co-adaptation are not present in validation data, then co-adaptation causes overfitting. Dropout regularization reduces co-adaptation because dropout ensures neurons cannot rely solely on specific other neurons.

Practitioners refer to co-adaptation when building, training, or evaluating machine learning systems. It appears in research papers, product documentation, and technical discussions about AI capabilities and limitations.