Proof Transfer for Neural Network Verification

We introduce the novel concept of proof transfer for neural network verification. We show that by generating proof templates that capture and generalize existing proofs, we can speed up subsequent proofs. In particular we create these templates from previous proofs on the same neural network and consider two cases: (i) where the proofs are created online when verifying other properties and (ii) where the templates are created offline using a dataset. We base our methods on three key hypotheses of neural network robustness proofs. Our evaluation shows the potential of proof transfer for benefitting robustness verification of neural networks against adversarial patches, geometric, and $\ell_{\infty}$-perturbations.