Jan 30, 2026 · cs.AIJ/K move · Enter open · S save
Yani Zhang, Helmut Bölcskei
Chair for Mathematical Information Science, ETH Zürich
Two deep ReLU networks can have entirely different architectures and parameters, yet realize the same function. We provide a complete characterization of this nonuniqueness. This is effected by building a symbolic calculus for deep ReLU networks, equivalence and simplification of networks becoming derivation of formulae, in close parallel to Shannon's analysis of switching circuits through Boolean logic. Inspired by Shannon, who turned circuit synthesis into the manipulation of Boolean formulae by the axioms of Boolean algebra, we turn ReLU network identification into the derivation of Łukasiewicz formulae by the axioms of many-valued (MV) logic. Two non-degenerate ReLU networks realize the same function on the unit cube if and only if one is obtained from the other by finitely many applications of the MV axioms for integer weights and biases, the divisible MV axioms for rational ones, and the Riesz MV axioms for real ones. The MV logic axioms characterize all symmetries of ReLU networks, the single-layer ones, which for tanh networks are the only kind, and the deep ones, spanning three or more layers. Our framework consists of three steps, an extraction algorithm turning a network into a substitution graph, whose represented formula has the network's input-output map as its truth function, a completeness theorem, by which functionally equivalent formulae are interderivable, and a construction algorithm returning from graphs to networks. The substitution graph is layered, carrying at each node a formula in the variables of the layer feeding it, encodes the network uniquely, and induces a new normal form for MV logic, compositional rather than flat as in the literature, hence retaining the algebraic structure of the network, with three local operations--node rewrite, layer collapse, layer expansion--realizing every derivation.