Related papers: DeepZero: Scaling up Zeroth-Order Optimization for…

Despite the great achievements of the modern deep neural networks (DNNs), the vulnerability/robustness of state-of-the-art DNNs raises security concerns in many application domains requiring high reliability. Various adversarial attacks are…

We introduce a novel training methodology named zELO, which optimizes retrieval performance via the analysis that ranking tasks are statically equivalent to a Thurstone model. Based on the zELO method, we use unsupervised data in order…

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) remains resource-intensive due to their sheer scale. While zeroth-order (ZO) optimization provides a memory-efficient alternative by eliminating backward passes, its application to…

Split Learning (SL) is a distributed learning approach that enables resource-constrained clients to collaboratively train deep neural networks (DNNs) by offloading most layers to a central server while keeping in- and output layers on the…

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization is widely used to handle challenging tasks, such as query-based black-box adversarial attacks and reinforcement learning. Various attempts have been made to integrate prior information into the gradient…

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,…

In this letter, we first propose a \underline{Z}eroth-\underline{O}rder c\underline{O}ordinate \underline{M}ethod~(ZOOM) to solve the stochastic optimization problem over a decentralized network with only zeroth-order~(ZO) oracle feedback…

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization is indispensable for complex non-convex tasks where explicit gradients are computationally prohibitive or strictly inaccessible. For deploying ZO methods over distributed heterogeneous networks, the gradient…

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…

Prompt learning has become a key method for adapting large language models to specific tasks with limited data. However, traditional gradient-based optimization methods for tuning prompts are computationally intensive, posing challenges for…

In this paper, we consider a stochastic distributed nonconvex optimization problem with the cost function being distributed over $n$ agents having access only to zeroth-order (ZO) information of the cost. This problem has various machine…

Topology optimization by optimally distributing materials in a given domain requires non-gradient optimizers to solve highly complicated problems. However, with hundreds of design variables or more involved, solving such problems would…

Test-time adaptation (TTA) aims to improve model robustness under distribution shifts by adapting to unlabeled test data, but most existing methods rely on backpropagation (BP), which is computationally costly and incompatible with…

DNNs have been quickly and broadly exploited to improve the data analysis quality in many complex science and engineering applications. Today's DNNs are becoming deeper and wider because of increasing demand on the analysis quality and more…

Hard-thresholding is an important type of algorithm in machine learning that is used to solve $\ell_0$ constrained optimization problems. However, the true gradient of the objective function can be difficult to access in certain scenarios,…

First-order optimization methods, such as SGD and Adam, are widely used for training large-scale deep neural networks due to their computational efficiency and robust performance. However, relying solely on gradient information, these…

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization with ordinal feedback has emerged as a fundamental problem in modern machine learning systems, particularly in human-in-the-loop settings such as reinforcement learning from human feedback, preference…

Balancing convergence speed, generalization capability, and computational efficiency remains a core challenge in deep learning optimization. First-order gradient descent methods, epitomized by stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and Adam,…

This paper considers a consensus optimization problem, where all the nodes in a network, with access to the zeroth-order information of its local objective function only, attempt to cooperatively achieve a common minimizer of the sum of…

In this study, we delve into an emerging optimization challenge involving a black-box objective function that can only be gauged via a ranking oracle-a situation frequently encountered in real-world scenarios, especially when the function…