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Adversarial training, a special case of multi-objective optimization, is an increasingly prevalent machine learning technique: some of its most notable applications include GAN-based generative modeling and self-play techniques in…

We develop provably efficient reinforcement learning algorithms for two-player zero-sum finite-horizon Markov games with simultaneous moves. To incorporate function approximation, we consider a family of Markov games where the reward…

Lower-bound analyses for nonconvex strongly-concave minimax optimization problems have shown that stochastic first-order algorithms require at least $\mathcal{O}(\varepsilon^{-4})$ oracle complexity to find an $\varepsilon$-stationary…

The min-max optimization problem, also known as the saddle point problem, is a classical optimization problem which is also studied in the context of zero-sum games. Given a class of objective functions, the goal is to find a value for the…

Many emerging applications - such as adversarial training, AI alignment, and robust optimization - can be framed as zero-sum games between neural nets, with von Neumann-Nash equilibria (NE) capturing the desirable system behavior. While…

Min-max optimization problems arise in several key machine learning setups, including adversarial learning and generative modeling. In their general form, in absence of convexity/concavity assumptions, finding pure equilibria of the…

Minimax optimization has found extensive applications in modern machine learning, in settings such as generative adversarial networks (GANs), adversarial training and multi-agent reinforcement learning. As most of these applications involve…

Zero-sum games arise in a wide variety of problems, including robust optimization and adversarial learning. However, algorithms deployed for finding a local Nash equilibrium in these games often converge to non-Nash stationary points. This…

We review convergence and behavior of stochastic gradient descent for convex and nonconvex optimization, establishing various conditions for convergence to zero of the variance of the gradient of the objective function, and presenting a…

A variety of widely used optimization methods like SignSGD and Muon can be interpreted as instances of steepest descent under different norm-induced geometries. In this work, we study the implicit bias of mini-batch stochastic steepest…

Minimax optimization has been central in addressing various applications in machine learning, game theory, and control theory. Prior literature has thus far mainly focused on studying such problems in the continuous domain, e.g.,…

The training of modern machine learning models often consists in solving high-dimensional non-convex optimisation problems that are subject to large-scale data. In this context, momentum-based stochastic optimisation algorithms have become…

A game theory inspired methodology is proposed for finding a function's saddle points. While explicit descent methods are known to have severe convergence issues, implicit methods are natural in an adversarial setting, as they take the…

Zero-sum and non-zero-sum (aka general-sum) games are relevant in a wide range of applications. While general non-zero-sum games are computationally hard, researchers focus on the special class of monotone games for gradient-based…

Momentum is known to accelerate the convergence of gradient descent in strongly convex settings without stochastic gradient noise. In stochastic optimization, such as training neural networks, folklore suggests that momentum may help deep…

In this paper, we provide exponential rates of convergence to the interior Nash equilibrium for continuous-time dual-space game dynamics such as mirror descent (MD) and actor-critic (AC). We perform our analysis in $N$-player continuous…

This paper considers the problem of inverse reinforcement learning in zero-sum stochastic games when expert demonstrations are known to be not optimal. Compared to previous works that decouple agents in the game by assuming optimality in…

Recently, {\it stochastic momentum} methods have been widely adopted in training deep neural networks. However, their convergence analysis is still underexplored at the moment, in particular for non-convex optimization. This paper fills the…

This work proposes a novel distributed approach for computing a Nash equilibrium in convex games with merely monotone and restricted strongly monotone pseudo-gradients. By leveraging the idea of the centralized operator extrapolation method…

We focus on the design of algorithms for finding equilibria in 2-player zero-sum games. Although it is well known that such problems can be solved by a single linear program, there has been a surge of interest in recent years for simpler…