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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…
In this paper, we study the problem of constrained robust (min-max) optimization ina black-box setting, where the desired optimizer cannot access the gradients of the objective function but may query its values. We present a principled…
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…
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities across numerous NLP tasks. Nevertheless, conventional first-order fine-tuning techniques impose heavy memory demands, creating practical obstacles to real-world…
Bayesian optimization and Lipschitz optimization have developed alternative techniques for optimizing black-box functions. They each exploit a different form of prior about the function. In this work, we explore strategies to combine these…
Current state-of-the-art multi-objective optimization solvers, by computing gradients of all $m$ objective functions per iteration, produce after $k$ iterations a measure of proximity to critical conditions that is upper-bounded by…
We study a class of zeroth-order distributed optimization problems, where each agent can control a partial vector and observe a local cost that depends on the joint vector of all agents, and the agents can communicate with each other with…
We study mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints, in which a leader knows their own cost function, but lacks a model of the followers' response. Instead, the leader can only query this response at specific points. While this…
Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) using zeroth-order optimization (ZO) offers a memory-efficient alternative to gradient-based methods but suffers from slower convergence and unstable optimization due to noisy gradient estimates.…
Continual learning requires new-task adaptation without damaging previously acquired capabilities. Recent forward-pass and zeroth-order (ZO) results show that low-query adaptation may retain better than first-order (FO) descent, but the…
Bayesian optimization (BO) is a widely-used sequential method for zeroth-order optimization of complex and expensive-to-compute black-box functions. The existing BO methods assume that the function evaluation (feedback) is available to the…
We propose a new framework for analyzing zeroth-order optimization (ZOO) from the perspective of \emph{oblivious randomized sketching}.In this framework, commonly used gradient estimators in ZOO-such as finite difference (FD) and random…
Fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLMs) has proven effective for a variety of downstream tasks. However, as LLMs grow in size, the memory demands for backpropagation become increasingly prohibitive. Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization methods…
Recently introduced distributed zeroth-order optimization (ZOO) algorithms have shown their utility in distributed reinforcement learning (RL). Unfortunately, in the gradient estimation process, almost all of them require random samples…
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…
The dual challenges of prohibitive communication overhead and the impracticality of gradient computation due to data privacy or black-box constraints in distributed systems motivate this work on communication-constrained gradient-free…
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.…
Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization has become a popular technique for solving machine learning (ML) problems when first-order (FO) information is difficult or impossible to obtain. However, the scalability of ZO optimization remains an open…
We consider online convex optimization with a zero-order oracle feedback. In particular, the decision maker does not know the explicit representation of the time-varying cost functions, or their gradients. At each time step, she observes…
We propose a first order algorithm, a modified version of FISTA, to solve an optimization problem with an objective function that is a sum of a possibly nonconvex function, with Lipschitz continuous gradient, and a convex function which can…