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In this work, we study first-order algorithms for solving Bilevel Optimization (BO) where the objective functions are smooth but possibly nonconvex in both levels and the variables are restricted to closed convex sets. As a first step, we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-13 Jeongyeol Kwon , Dohyun Kwon , Stephen Wright , Robert Nowak

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 (BLO) is a popular approach with many applications including hyperparameter optimization, neural architecture search, adversarial robustness and model-agnostic meta-learning. However, the approach suffers from time and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-08 Valerii Likhosherstov , Xingyou Song , Krzysztof Choromanski , Jared Davis , Adrian Weller

Gradient methods have become mainstream techniques for Bi-Level Optimization (BLO) in learning and vision fields. The validity of existing works heavily relies on solving a series of approximation subproblems with extraordinarily high…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-05-23 Risheng Liu , Xuan Liu , Wei Yao , Shangzhi Zeng , Jin Zhang

Bilevel optimization (BO) is useful for solving a variety of important machine learning problems including but not limited to hyperparameter optimization, meta-learning, continual learning, and reinforcement learning. Conventional BO…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-20 Mao Ye , Bo Liu , Stephen Wright , Peter Stone , Qiang Liu

This paper presents new first-order methods for achieving optimal oracle complexities in convex optimization with convex functional constraints. Oracle complexities are measured by the number of function and gradient evaluations. To achieve…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-17 Qi Deng , Guanghui Lan , Zhenwei Lin

Bilevel optimization (BLO) problem, where two optimization problems (referred to as upper- and lower-level problems) are coupled hierarchically, has wide applications in areas such as machine learning and operations research. Recently, many…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-19 Xiaotian Jiang , Ioannis Tsaknakis , Prashant Khanduri , Mingyi Hong

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

Simple bilevel problems are optimization problems in which we want to find an optimal solution to an inner problem that minimizes an outer objective function. Such problems appear in many machine learning and signal processing applications…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-12-21 Lior Doron , Shimrit Shtern

In this paper, we focus on the nonconvex-nonconvex bilevel optimization problem (BLO), where both upper-level and lower-level objectives are nonconvex, with the upper-level problem potentially being nonsmooth. We develop a two-timescale…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-24 Nachuan Xiao , Xiaoyin Hu , Xin Liu , Kim-Chuan Toh

Algorithms for bilevel optimization often encounter Hessian computations, which are prohibitive in high dimensions. While recent works offer first-order methods for unconstrained bilevel problems, the constrained setting remains relatively…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-22 Guy Kornowski , Swati Padmanabhan , Kai Wang , Zhe Zhang , Suvrit Sra

In this work, we consider bilevel optimization when the lower-level problem is strongly convex. Recent works show that with a Hessian-vector product (HVP) oracle, one can provably find an $\epsilon$-stationary point within…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-26 Lesi Chen , Yaohua Ma , Jingzhao Zhang

This work provides the first finite-time convergence guarantees for linearly constrained stochastic bilevel optimization using only first-order methods, requiring solely gradient information without any Hessian computations or second-order…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-18 Cac Phan , Kai Wang

We consider stochastic unconstrained bilevel optimization problems when only the first-order gradient oracles are available. While numerous optimization methods have been proposed for tackling bilevel problems, existing methods either tend…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-01-27 Jeongyeol Kwon , Dohyun Kwon , Stephen Wright , Robert Nowak

This paper studies the complexity of finding an $\epsilon$-stationary point for stochastic bilevel optimization when the upper-level problem is nonconvex and the lower-level problem is strongly convex. Recent work proposed the first-order…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-10 Lesi Chen , Junru Li , El Mahdi Chayti , Jingzhao Zhang

Bilevel optimization (BLO) offers a principled framework for hierarchical decision-making and has been widely applied in machine learning tasks such as hyperparameter optimization and meta-learning. While existing BLO methods are mostly…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-20 Zhuo Chen , Xinjian Xu , Shihui Ying , Tieyong Zeng

In this work, we study nonconvex-strongly convex online bilevel optimization (OBO) using only first-order oracle. Existing OBO algorithms are mainly based on hypergradient descent, which requires access to a Hessian-vector product (HVP)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Tingkai Jia , Cheng Chen

Although upper bound guarantees for bilevel optimization have been widely studied, progress on lower bounds has been limited due to the complexity of the bilevel structure. In this work, we focus on the smooth nonconvex-strongly-convex…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-27 Kaiyi Ji

This paper studies simple bilevel problems, where a convex upper-level function is minimized over the optimal solutions of a convex lower-level problem. We first show the fundamental difficulty of simple bilevel problems, that the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-28 Huaqing Zhang , Lesi Chen , Jing Xu , Jingzhao Zhang

We study a class of bilevel optimization problems in which both the upper- and lower-level problems have minimax structures. This setting captures a broad range of emerging applications. Despite the extensive literature on bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-11 Yiyang Shen , Yutian He , Weiran Wang , Qihang Lin
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