Deconstructing Denoising Diffusion Models for Self-Supervised Learning
Xinlei Chen Zhuang Liu Saining Xie Kaiming He
In this study, we examine the representation learning abilities of Denoising
Diffusion Models (DDM) that were originally purposed for image generation. Our
philosophy is to deconstruct a DDM, gradually transforming it into a classical
Denoising Autoencoder (DAE). This deconstructive procedure allows us to explore
how various components of modern DDMs influence self-supervised representation
learning. We observe that only a very few modern components are critical for
learning good representations, while many others are nonessential. Our study
ultimately arrives at an approach that is highly simplified and to a large
extent resembles a classical DAE. We hope our study will rekindle interest in a
family of classical methods within the realm of modern self-supervised
learning.