Source-Optimal Training is Transfer-Suboptimal
We prove that training a source model optimally for its own task is generically suboptimal when the objective is downstream transfer. We study the source-side optimization problem in L2-SP ridge regression and show a fundamental mismatch between the source-optimal and transfer-optimal source regularization: outside of a measure-zero set, $τ_0^* \neq τ_S^*$. We characterize the transfer-optimal source penalty $τ_0^*$ as a function of task alignment and identify an…