Model Lineage Analysis: Determination and Closeness Measurement

This research addresses how to identify whether one machine learning model is derived from another model through modification techniques (adjusting or fine-tuning an existing model rather than training from scratch), and how to measure how much two models differ from each other. The authors propose a method that determines lineage (derivative relationships) by checking if two models' parameters exist in the same local optimum of the loss landscape (the mathematical space of possible model configurations), and measure closeness by analyzing how their decision boundaries (the lines or surfaces that separate different predictions) differ from each other.