{"slug": "sakana-ai-researchers-introduce-pc-alm-a-layer-local-alternative-to-that-trains", "title": "Sakana AI Researchers Introduce PC-ALM, a Layer-Local Alternative to Backpropagation That Trains 1000-Layer Networks", "summary": "Sakana AI researchers Jeffrey Seely and Julian Gould introduced Augmented Lagrangian Predictive Coding (PC-ALM), a layer-local alternative to backpropagation that attaches a Lagrange multiplier to each layer constraint. PC-ALM matches backpropagation across widths and depths from 8 to 128 at an inference budget of T = 2L, lifts gradient cosine to backprop from 0.604 to 0.909 in the reference cell, and trains 1000-layer residual MLPs within about 2 points of backprop on MNIST. MIT-licensed JAX code is available.", "body_md": "Sakana AI researchers Jeffrey Seely and Julian Gould introduce Augmented Lagrangian Predictive Coding (PC-ALM), a local-learning alternative to backpropagation. By attaching a Lagrange multiplier to each layer constraint, PC-ALM keeps predictive coding's layer-local updates while recovering exact backprop gradients in linear networks. It matches BP across widths and depths from 8 to 128 at an inference budget of T = 2L, lifts gradient cosine to BP from 0.604 to 0.909 in the reference cell, and trains 1000-layer residual MLPs within about 2 points of backprop on MNIST. MIT-licensed JAX code is available.\n\nThe post [Sakana AI Researchers Introduce PC-ALM, a Layer-Local Alternative to Backpropagation That Trains 1000-Layer Networks](https://www.marktechpost.com/2026/09/14/sakana-ai-researchers-introduce-pc-alm-a-layer-local-alternative-to-backpropagation-that-trains-1000-layer-networks/) appeared first on [MarkTechPost](https://www.marktechpost.com).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sakana-ai-researchers-introduce-pc-alm-a-layer-local-alternative-to-that-trains", "canonical_source": "https://www.marktechpost.com/2026/09/14/sakana-ai-researchers-introduce-pc-alm-a-layer-local-alternative-to-backpropagation-that-trains-1000-layer-networks/", "published_at": "2026-09-14 20:46:16+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-14 23:02:06.413796+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["machine-learning", "ai-research", "neural-networks"], "entities": ["Sakana AI", "Jeffrey Seely", "Julian Gould", "Augmented Lagrangian Predictive Coding", "PC-ALM", "MNIST", "JAX"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sakana-ai-researchers-introduce-pc-alm-a-layer-local-alternative-to-that-trains", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sakana-ai-researchers-introduce-pc-alm-a-layer-local-alternative-to-that-trains.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sakana-ai-researchers-introduce-pc-alm-a-layer-local-alternative-to-that-trains.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sakana-ai-researchers-introduce-pc-alm-a-layer-local-alternative-to-that-trains.jsonld"}}