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We consider the zeroth-order optimization problem in the huge-scale setting, where the dimension of the problem is so large that performing even basic vector operations on the decision variables is infeasible. In this paper, we propose a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-08-17 HanQin Cai , Yuchen Lou , Daniel McKenzie , Wotao Yin

Recent advancements in Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) have shown groundbreaking capabilities across diverse multimodal tasks. However, these models remain vulnerable to adversarial jailbreak attacks, where adversaries craft subtle…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-01-23 Jiwei Guan , Haibo Jin , Haohan Wang

Recent studies have shown that adversarial examples in state-of-the-art image classifiers trained by deep neural networks (DNN) can be easily generated when the target model is transparent to an attacker, known as the white-box setting.…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2020-02-03 Chun-Chen Tu , Paishun Ting , Pin-Yu Chen , Sijia Liu , Huan Zhang , Jinfeng Yi , Cho-Jui Hsieh , Shin-Ming Cheng

The adaptive momentum method (AdaMM), which uses past gradients to update descent directions and learning rates simultaneously, has become one of the most popular first-order optimization methods for solving machine learning problems.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-17 Xiangyi Chen , Sijia Liu , Kaidi Xu , Xingguo Li , Xue Lin , Mingyi Hong , David Cox

In this paper, we propose a provably convergent and practical framework for multi-objective reinforcement learning with max-min criterion. From a game-theoretic perspective, we reformulate max-min multi-objective reinforcement learning as a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-24 Woohyeon Byeon , Giseung Park , Jongseong Chae , Amir Leshem , Youngchul Sung

We address black-box convex optimization problems, where the objective and constraint functions are not explicitly known but can be sampled within the feasible set. The challenge is thus to generate a sequence of feasible points converging…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-11-08 Baiwei Guo , Yuning Jiang , Maryam Kamgarpour , Giancarlo Ferrari-Trecate

This paper considers robust solutions to a class of nonlinear least squares problems using min-max optimization approach. We give an explicit formula for the value function of the inner maximization problem and show the existence of global…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-02-03 Xiaojun Chen , Carl Kelley

Zeroth-order methods are extensively used in machine learning applications where gradients are infeasible or expensive to compute, such as black-box attacks, reinforcement learning, and language model fine-tuning. Existing optimization…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-12 Liang Zhang , Bingcong Li , Kiran Koshy Thekumparampil , Sewoong Oh , Michael Muehlebach , Niao He

In this paper, we consider multi-objective reinforcement learning, which arises in many real-world problems with multiple optimization goals. We approach the problem with a max-min framework focusing on fairness among the multiple goals and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-13 Giseung Park , Woohyeon Byeon , Seongmin Kim , Elad Havakuk , Amir Leshem , Youngchul Sung

In many real-world problems, first-order (FO) derivative evaluations are too expensive or even inaccessible. For solving these problems, zeroth-order (ZO) methods that only need function evaluations are often more efficient than FO methods…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-12-22 Zichong Li , Pin-Yu Chen , Sijia Liu , Songtao Lu , Yangyang Xu

We study alternating first-order algorithms with no inner loops for solving nonconvex-strongly-concave min-max problems. We show the convergence of the alternating gradient descent--ascent algorithm method by proposing a substantially…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-31 Guido Tapia-Riera , Camille Castera , Nicolas Papadakis

We study the problem of attacking a machine learning model in the hard-label black-box setting, where no model information is revealed except that the attacker can make queries to probe the corresponding hard-label decisions. This is a very…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-13 Minhao Cheng , Thong Le , Pin-Yu Chen , Jinfeng Yi , Huan Zhang , Cho-Jui Hsieh

This paper considers minimax optimization $\min_x \max_y f(x, y)$ in the challenging setting where $f$ can be both nonconvex in $x$ and nonconcave in $y$. Though such optimization problems arise in many machine learning paradigms including…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-04 Tanner Fiez , Chi Jin , Praneeth Netrapalli , Lillian J. Ratliff

The worst-case training principle that minimizes the maximal adversarial loss, also known as adversarial training (AT), has shown to be a state-of-the-art approach for enhancing adversarial robustness. Nevertheless, min-max optimization…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-02 Jingkang Wang , Tianyun Zhang , Sijia Liu , Pin-Yu Chen , Jiacen Xu , Makan Fardad , Bo Li

The increasing computational and memory demands in deep learning present significant challenges, especially in resource-constrained environments. We introduce a zero-order quantized optimization (ZOQO) method designed for training models…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-14 Noga Bar , Raja Giryes

Black-box global optimization aims at minimizing an objective function whose analytical form is not known. To do so, many state-of-the-art methods rely on sampling-based strategies, where sampling distributions are built in an iterative…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-30 Thomas Guilmeau , Emilie Chouzenoux , Víctor Elvira

Finite-difference methods are a class of algorithms designed to solve black-box optimization problems by approximating a gradient of the target function on a set of directions. In black-box optimization, the non-smooth setting is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-07 Marco Rando , Cesare Molinari , Lorenzo Rosasco , Silvia Villa

Recently, zeroth-order (ZO) optimization plays an essential role in scenarios where gradient information is inaccessible or unaffordable, such as black-box systems and resource-constrained environments. While existing adaptive methods such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-10 Yao Shu , Qixin Zhang , Kun He , Zhongxiang Dai

In this paper, we consider two types of problems that have some similarity in their structure, namely, min-min problems and min-max saddle-point problems. Our approach is based on considering the outer minimization problem as a minimization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-29 Egor Gladin , Abdurakhmon Sadiev , Alexander Gasnikov , Pavel Dvurechensky , Aleksandr Beznosikov , Mohammad Alkousa

In this letter, we first propose a \underline{Z}eroth-\underline{O}rder c\underline{O}ordinate \underline{M}ethod~(ZOOM) to solve the stochastic optimization problem over a decentralized network with only zeroth-order~(ZO) oracle feedback…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-10-11 Shengjun Zhang , Tan Shen , Hongwei Sun , Yunlong Dong , Dong Xie , Heng Zhang