Surrogate

Use that as a “surrogate” - Kyle Vedder

A surrogate is:

• Any stand-in for a more complex process
• Used to approximate behavior, often for faster computation
• Common in black-box optimization, simulations, and reinforcement learning

How is this different from a Model Distillation?

Distillation is: A training procedure where a small model learns from a larger model. Typically supervised with soft labels (e.g. logits) from the teacher. Aims to preserve accuracy while shrinking model size.