Provides the first theoretical proof that dataset distillation efficiently encodes the low-dimensional structure of non-linear tasks.
arXiv · March 17, 2026 · 2603.14830
The Takeaway
This moves dataset distillation from a purely empirical hack to a theoretically grounded technique, quantifying how intrinsic task dimensionality dictates the achievable compression rate for synthetic training data.
From the abstract
Dataset distillation, a training-aware data compression technique, has recently attracted increasing attention as an effective tool for mitigating costs of optimization and data storage. However, progress remains largely empirical. Mechanisms underlying the extraction of task-relevant information from the training process and the efficient encoding of such information into synthetic data points remain elusive. In this paper, we theoretically analyze practical algorithms of dataset distillation a