  In this paper, we introduce a new image representation based on a multilayer
kernel machine. Unlike traditional kernel methods where data representation is
decoupled from the prediction task, we learn how to shape the kernel with
supervision. We proceed by first proposing improvements of the
recently-introduced convolutional kernel networks (CKNs) in the context of
unsupervised learning; then, we derive backpropagation rules to take advantage
of labeled training data. The resulting model is a new type of convolutional
neural network, where optimizing the filters at each layer is equivalent to
learning a linear subspace in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). We
show that our method achieves reasonably competitive performance for image
classification on some standard "deep learning" datasets such as CIFAR-10 and
SVHN, and also for image super-resolution, demonstrating the applicability of
our approach to a large variety of image-related tasks.
