Related papers: Introducing Elitist Black-Box Models: When Does El…

There is a long history in machine learning of model ensembling, beginning with boosting and bagging and continuing to the present day. Much of this history has focused on combining models for classification and regression, but recently…

This paper proposes a novel evolutionary algorithm called Epistocracy which incorporates human socio-political behavior and intelligence to solve complex optimization problems. The inspiration of the Epistocracy algorithm originates from a…

In a seminal paper, Valiant (2006) introduced a computational model for evolution to address the question of complexity that can arise through Darwinian mechanisms. Valiant views evolution as a restricted form of computational learning,…

We present a new method for proving lower bounds on the expected running time of evolutionary algorithms. It is based on fitness-level partitions and an additional condition on transition probabilities between fitness levels. The method is…

This work concerns the evolutionary approaches to distributed stochastic black-box optimization, in which each worker can individually solve an approximation of the problem with nature-inspired algorithms. We propose a distributed evolution…

This paper introduces a multi-level (m-lev) mechanism into Evolution Strategies (ESs) in order to address a class of global optimization problems that could benefit from fine discretization of their decision variables. Such problems arise…

The challenge of taking many variables into account in optimization problems may be overcome under the hypothesis of low effective dimensionality. Then, the search of solutions can be reduced to the random embedding of a low dimensional…

We present a scalable, black box, perception-in-the-loop technique to find adversarial examples for deep neural network classifiers. Black box means that our procedure only has input-output access to the classifier, and not to the internal…

Choosing the number of topics $T$ in Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is a key design decision that strongly affects both the statistical fit and interpretability of topic models. In this work, we formulate the selection of $T$ as a…

As machine learning models become more accurate, they typically become more complex and uninterpretable by humans. The black-box character of these models holds back its acceptance in practice, especially in high-risk domains where the…

Theory of evolutionary computation (EC) aims at providing mathematically founded statements about the performance of evolutionary algorithms (EAs). The predominant topic in this research domain is runtime analysis, which studies the time it…

The performance of evolutionary algorithms can be heavily undermined when constraints limit the feasible areas of the search space. For instance, while Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy is one of the most efficient algorithms…

Bayesian optimization is a sample-efficient method for black-box global optimization. How- ever, the performance of a Bayesian optimization method very much depends on its exploration strategy, i.e. the choice of acquisition function, and…

In this paper we propose a novel method for learning how algorithms perform. Classically, algorithms are compared on a finite number of existing (or newly simulated) benchmark datasets based on some fixed metrics. The algorithm(s) with the…

Evolutionary algorithms have been applied to a wide range of stochastic problems. Motivated by real-world problems where constraint violations have disruptive effects, this paper considers the chance-constrained knapsack problem (CCKP)…

For a wide range of applications the structure of systems like Neural Networks or complex simulations, is unknown and approximation is costly or even impossible. Black-box optimization seeks to find optimal (hyper-) parameters for these…

In real-world applications, users often favor structurally diverse design choices over one high-quality solution. It is hence important to consider more solutions that decision makers can compare and further explore based on additional…

The emergence of tools based on artificial intelligence has also led to the need of producing explanations which are understandable by a human being. In most approaches, the system is considered a black box, making it difficult to generate…

Black-box optimization is a very active area of research, with many new algorithms being developed every year. This variety is needed, on the one hand, since different algorithms are most suitable for different types of optimization…

Many important problems in science and engineering, such as drug design, involve optimizing an expensive black-box objective function over a complex, high-dimensional, and structured input space. Although machine learning techniques have…