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We propose efficient methods for solving stochastic simple bilevel optimization problems with convex inner levels, where the goal is to minimize an outer stochastic objective function subject to the solution set of an inner stochastic…
In this paper, we study the behavior of solutions of the ODE associated to Nesterov acceleration. It is well-known since the pioneering work of Nesterov that the rate of convergence $O(1/t^2)$ is optimal for the class of convex functions…
We work towards a unifying paradigm for accelerating policy optimization methods in reinforcement learning (RL) by integrating foresight in the policy improvement step via optimistic and adaptive updates. Leveraging the connection between…
We introduce a notion of inexact model of a convex objective function, which allows for errors both in the function and in its gradient. For this situation, a gradient method with an adaptive adjustment of some parameters of the model is…
In this paper we consider the question of whether it is possible to apply a gradient averaging strategy to improve on the sublinear convergence rates without any increase in storage. Our analysis reveals that a positive answer requires an…
We consider infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes and study the convergence rates of the natural policy gradient (NPG) and the Q-NPG methods with the log-linear policy class. Using the compatible function approximation…
Policy optimization is a core component of reinforcement learning (RL), and most existing RL methods directly optimize parameters of a policy based on maximizing the expected total reward, or its surrogate. Though often achieving…
Stochastic approximation is a foundation for many algorithms found in machine learning and optimization. It is in general slow to converge: the mean square error vanishes as $O(n^{-1})$. A deterministic counterpart known as quasi-stochastic…
We propose policy gradient algorithms for solving a risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RL) problem in on-policy as well as off-policy settings. We consider episodic Markov decision processes, and model the risk using the broad class of…
In this work, we develop new optimization algorithms that use approximate second-order information combined with the gradient regularization technique to achieve fast global convergence rates for both convex and non-convex objectives. The…
We consider minimization problems with the well-known Polya-Lojasievich condition and Lipshitz-continuous gradient. Such problem occurs in different places in machine learning and related fields. Furthermore, we assume that a gradient is…
Communication has been seen as a significant bottleneck in industrial applications over large-scale networks. To alleviate the communication burden, sign-based optimization algorithms have gained popularity recently in both industrial and…
This paper considers convex programs with a general (possibly non-differentiable) convex objective function and Lipschitz continuous convex inequality constraint functions. A simple algorithm is developed and achieves an $O(1/t)$…
We present a new algorithm for solving optimization problems with objective functions that are the sum of a smooth function and a (potentially) nonsmooth regularization function, and nonlinear equality constraints. The algorithm may be…
We prove explicit bounds on the exponential rate of convergence for the momentum stochastic gradient descent scheme (MSGD) for arbitrary, fixed hyperparameters (learning rate, friction parameter) and its continuous-in-time counterpart in…
We develop a framework for convexifying a fairly general class of optimization problems. Under additional assumptions, we analyze the suboptimality of the solution to the convexified problem relative to the original nonconvex problem and…
We study the convergence of several natural policy gradient (NPG) methods in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes with regular policy parametrizations. For a variety of NPGs and reward functions we show that the…
Our work focuses on stochastic gradient methods for optimizing a smooth non-convex loss function with a non-smooth non-convex regularizer. Research on this class of problem is quite limited, and until recently no non-asymptotic convergence…
Proximal policy optimization and trust region policy optimization (PPO and TRPO) with actor and critic parametrized by neural networks achieve significant empirical success in deep reinforcement learning. However, due to nonconvexity, the…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as a powerful framework for sequential decision-making in dynamic environments, particularly when system parameters are unknown. This paper investigates RL-based control for entropy-regularized…