Adaptive Pruning with Module Robustness Sensitivity: Balancing Compression and Robustness

TL;DR

This paper introduces Module Robustness Sensitivity (MRS) and an adaptive pruning algorithm MRPF that effectively balances neural network compression with adversarial robustness across various architectures and datasets.

Contribution

The paper proposes MRS as a new metric for layer-wise robustness, and MRPF as a flexible pruning method compatible with any adversarial training, improving robustness and efficiency.

Findings

MRPF outperforms existing pruning methods in robustness and accuracy.

Extensive experiments validate MRPF's effectiveness across multiple datasets and architectures.

The framework provides a practical solution for balancing compression and adversarial robustness.

Abstract

Neural network pruning has traditionally focused on weight-based criteria to achieve model compression, frequently overlooking the crucial balance between adversarial robustness and accuracy. Existing approaches often fail to preserve robustness in pruned networks, leaving them more susceptible to adversarial attacks. This paper introduces Module Robustness Sensitivity (MRS), a novel metric that quantifies layer-wise sensitivity to adversarial perturbations and dynamically informs pruning decisions. Leveraging MRS, we propose Module Robust Pruning and Fine-Tuning (MRPF), an adaptive pruning algorithm compatible with any adversarial training method, offering both flexibility and scalability. Extensive experiments on SVHN, CIFAR, and Tiny-ImageNet across diverse architectures, including ResNet, VGG, and MobileViT, demonstrate that MRPF significantly enhances adversarial robustness while maintaining competitive accuracy and computational efficiency. Furthermore, MRPF consistently outperforms state-of-the-art structured pruning methods in balancing robustness, accuracy, and compression. This work establishes a practical and generalizable framework for robust pruning, addressing the long-standing trade-off between model compression and robustness preservation.