In this study, we examine the representation learning abilities of Denoising
Diffusion Models (DDM) that were originally purposed for image generation. Our
philosophy is to deconstruct a DDM, gradually transforming it into a classical
Denoising Autoencoder (DAE). This deconstructive procedure allows us to explore
how various components of modern DDMs influence self-supervised representation
learning. We observe that only a very few modern components are critical for
learning good representations, while many others are nonessential. Our study
ultimately arrives at an approach that is highly simplified and to a large
extent resembles a classical DAE. We hope our study will rekindle interest in a
family of classical methods within the realm of modern self-supervised
learning.

我们研究了最初用于图像生成的去噪扩散模型（DDM）的表示学习能力。我们的研究目的是逐步分解 DDM，将其转化为经典的去噪自编码器（DAE）。我们观察到现代 DDM 的很少组件对于学习良好的表示是至关重要的，而许多其他组件则不是必要的。我们的研究最终提出了一种高度简化并在很大程度上类似于经典 DAE 的方法。我们希望我们的研究能够在现代自监督学习领域重新激发对经典方法家族的兴趣。