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Gradient-based Bi-Level Optimization (BLO) methods have been widely applied to handle modern learning tasks. However, most existing strategies are theoretically designed based on restrictive assumptions (e.g., convexity of the lower-level…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-09 Risheng Liu , Xuan Liu , Shangzhi Zeng , Jin Zhang , Yixuan Zhang

Bilevel optimization deals with nested problems in which a leader takes the first decision to minimize their objective function while accounting for a follower's best-response reaction. Constrained bilevel problems with integer variables…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-11-04 Justin Dumouchelle , Esther Julien , Jannis Kurtz , Elias B. Khalil

Bilevel optimization problems consist of minimizing a value function whose evaluation depends on the solution of an inner optimization problem. These problems are typically tackled using first-order methods that require computing the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-30 Marco Rando , Samuel Vaiter

Bilevel optimization (BO) has recently gained prominence in many machine learning applications due to its ability to capture the nested structure inherent in these problems. Recently, many hypergradient methods have been proposed as…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-04 Wanli Shi , Yi Chang , Bin Gu

Existing methods for nonconvex bilevel optimization (NBO) require prior knowledge of first- and second-order problem-specific parameters (e.g., Lipschitz constants and the Polyak-{\L}ojasiewicz (P{\L}) parameters) to set step sizes, a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-01 Xu Shi , Yinglin Du , Rufeng Xiao , Rujun Jiang

Bilevel optimization has arisen as a powerful tool for solving a variety of machine learning problems. Two current popular bilevel optimizers AID-BiO and ITD-BiO naturally involve solving one or two sub-problems, and consequently, whether…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-02 Kaiyi Ji , Mingrui Liu , Yingbin Liang , Lei Ying

In this paper, we study a class of bilevel optimization problems, also known as simple bilevel optimization, where we minimize a smooth objective function over the optimal solution set of another convex constrained optimization problem.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-04-25 Ruichen Jiang , Nazanin Abolfazli , Aryan Mokhtari , Erfan Yazdandoost Hamedani

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization provides a gradient-free alternative to first-order (FO) methods by estimating gradients via finite differences of function evaluations, and has recently emerged as a memory-efficient paradigm for fine-tuning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-24 Yicheng Lang , Changsheng Wang , Yihua Zhang , Mingyi Hong , Zheng Zhang , Wotao Yin , Sijia Liu

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization has gained attention as a memory-efficient alternative to first-order (FO) methods, particularly in settings where gradient computation is expensive or even impractical. Beyond its memory efficiency, in this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-13 Wanhao Yu , Zheng Wang , Shuteng Niu , Sen Lin , Li Yang

We introduce contextual stochastic bilevel optimization (CSBO) -- a stochastic bilevel optimization framework with the lower-level problem minimizing an expectation conditioned on some contextual information and the upper-level decision…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-10-31 Yifan Hu , Jie Wang , Yao Xie , Andreas Krause , Daniel Kuhn

First Order Bayesian Optimization (FOBO) is a sample efficient sequential approach to find the global maxima of an expensive-to-evaluate black-box objective function by suitably querying for the function and its gradient evaluations. Such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-21 Utkarsh Prakash , Aryan Chollera , Kushagra Khatwani , Prabuchandran K. J. , Tejas Bodas

Scaling RL for LLMs is computationally expensive, largely due to multi-sampling for policy optimization and evaluation, making efficient data selection crucial. Inspired by the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) theory, we hypothesize LLMs…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Yang Zhao , Kai Xiong , Xiao Ding , Li Du , YangouOuyang , Zhouhao Sun , Jiannan Guan , Wenbin Zhang , Bin Liu , Dong Hu , Bing Qin , Ting Liu

First-order optimization (FOO) algorithms are pivotal in numerous computational domains such as machine learning and signal denoising. However, their application to complex tasks like neural network training often entails significant…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-30 Yao Shu , Jiongfeng Fang , Ying Tiffany He , Fei Richard Yu

In recent years, Bi-Level Optimization (BLO) techniques have received extensive attentions from both learning and vision communities. A variety of BLO models in complex and practical tasks are of non-convex follower structure in nature…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-29 Risheng Liu , Yaohua Liu , Shangzhi Zeng , Jin Zhang

With the development of large-scale models, traditional distributed bilevel optimization algorithms cannot be applied directly in low-resource clients. The key reason lies in the excessive computation involved in optimizing both the lower-…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2026-01-01 Mingyi Li , Xiao Zhang , Ruisheng Zheng , Hongjian Shi , Yuan Yuan , Xiuzhen Cheng , Dongxiao Yu

We introduce a framework based on bilevel programming that unifies gradient-based hyperparameter optimization and meta-learning. We show that an approximate version of the bilevel problem can be solved by taking into explicit account the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-07-04 Luca Franceschi , Paolo Frasconi , Saverio Salzo , Riccardo Grazzi , Massimilano Pontil

Federated bilevel optimization (FBO) has shown great potential recently in machine learning and edge computing due to the emerging nested optimization structure in meta-learning, fine-tuning, hyperparameter tuning, etc. However, existing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-29 Yifan Yang , Peiyao Xiao , Kaiyi Ji

Bilevel reinforcement learning (RL), which features intertwined two-level problems, has attracted growing interest recently. The inherent non-convexity of the lower-level RL problem is, however, to be an impediment to developing bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-02-28 Yan Yang , Bin Gao , Ya-xiang Yuan

This work focuses on addressing two major challenges in the context of large-scale nonconvex Bi-Level Optimization (BLO) problems, which are increasingly applied in machine learning due to their ability to model nested structures. These…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-05-17 Risheng Liu , Zhu Liu , Wei Yao , Shangzhi Zeng , Jin Zhang

Optimal control of obstacle problems arises in a wide range of applications and is computationally challenging due to its nonsmoothness, nonlinearity, and bilevel structure. Classical numerical approaches rely on mesh-based discretization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-08 Yongcun Song , Shangzhi Zeng , Jin Zhang , Lvgang Zhang