Related papers: Zeroth-order Optimization with Weak Dimension Depe…
In this paper we introduce a new classification algorithm called Optimization of Distributions Differences (ODD). The algorithm aims to find a transformation from the feature space to a new space where the instances in the same class are as…
In this paper we present an inexact zeroth-order method suitable for the solution nonsmooth and nonconvex stochastic composite optimization problems, in which the objective is split into a real-valued Lipschitz continuous stochastic…
Deep metric learning objectives (e.g., triplet loss) require storing and comparing high-dimensional embeddings, making the per-batch loss buffer scale as $O(S\cdot D)$, where $S$ is the number of samples in a batch and $D$ is the feature…
This paper introduces a class of model-free feedback methods for solving generic constrained optimization problems where the specific mathematical forms of the objective and constraint functions are not available. The proposed methods,…
The choice of the stepsize in first-order convex optimization is typically based on the smoothness constant and plays a crucial role in the performance of algorithms. Recently, there has been a resurgent interest in introducing adaptive…
We study quantum algorithms based on quantum (sub)gradient estimation using noisy function evaluation oracles, and demonstrate the first dimension-independent query complexities (up to poly-logarithmic factors) for zeroth-order convex…
Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization has emerged as a promising alternative to gradient-based backpropagation methods, particularly for black-box optimization and large language model (LLM) fine-tuning. However, ZO methods often suffer from slow…
This paper studies second-order methods for convex-concave minimax optimization. Monteiro and Svaiter (2012) proposed a method to solve the problem with an optimal iteration complexity of $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-3/2})$ to find an…
Many important machine learning applications amount to solving minimax optimization problems, and in many cases there is no access to the gradient information, but only the function values. In this paper, we focus on such a gradient-free…
State-of-the-art methods in convex and non-convex optimization employ higher-order derivative information, either implicitly or explicitly. We explore the limitations of higher-order optimization and prove that even for convex optimization,…
In this work we address the problem of convex optimization in a multi-agent setting where the objective is to minimize the mean of local cost functions whose derivatives are not available (e.g. black-box models). Moreover agents can only…
In many practical applications, heuristic or approximation algorithms are used to efficiently solve the task at hand. However their solutions frequently do not satisfy natural monotonicity properties of optimal solutions. In this work we…
Stochastic zeroth-order (SZO), or gradient-free, optimization allows to optimize arbitrary functions by relying only on function evaluations under parameter perturbations, however, the iteration complexity of SZO methods suffers a factor…
Most existing distance metric learning methods assume perfect side information that is usually given in pairwise or triplet constraints. Instead, in many real-world applications, the constraints are derived from side information, such as…
We introduce a class of first-order methods for smooth constrained optimization that are based on an analogy to non-smooth dynamical systems. Two distinctive features of our approach are that (i) projections or optimizations over the entire…
Alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is a popular optimization tool for the composite and constrained problems in machine learning. However, in many machine learning problems such as black-box attacks and bandit feedback, ADMM…
We study (constrained) nonconvex (composite) optimization problems where the decision variables vector can be split into blocks of variables. Random block projection is a popular technique to handle this kind of problem for its remarkable…
We consider max-min and min-max problems with objective functions that are possibly non-smooth, submodular with respect to the minimiser and concave with respect to the maximiser. We investigate the performance of a zeroth-order method…
The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms…
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…