Related papers: A Stochastic Approach to Bi-Level Optimization for…
A common strategy in modern learning systems is to learn a representation that is useful for many tasks, a.k.a. representation learning. We study this strategy in the imitation learning setting for Markov decision processes (MDPs) where…
We study a new two-time-scale stochastic gradient method for solving optimization problems, where the gradients are computed with the aid of an auxiliary variable under samples generated by time-varying MDPs controlled by the underlying…
Bi-level optimization (BO) has become a fundamental mathematical framework for addressing hierarchical machine learning problems. As deep learning models continue to grow in size, the demand for scalable bi-level optimization solutions has…
We establish the first global convergence result of neural networks for two stage least squares (2SLS) approach in nonparametric instrumental variable regression (NPIV). This is achieved by adopting a lifted perspective through mean-field…
A core capability of intelligent systems is the ability to quickly learn new tasks by drawing on prior experience. Gradient (or optimization) based meta-learning has recently emerged as an effective approach for few-shot learning. In this…
This paper investigates a class of stochastic bilevel optimization problems where the upper-level function is nonconvex with potentially unbounded smoothness and the lower-level problem is strongly convex. These problems have significant…
Sparse inversion and classification problems are ubiquitous in modern data science and imaging. They are often formulated as non-smooth minimisation problems. In sparse inversion, we minimise, e.g., the sum of a data fidelity term and an…
Finding the optimal hyperparameters of a model can be cast as a bilevel optimization problem, typically solved using zero-order techniques. In this work we study first-order methods when the inner optimization problem is convex but…
In this paper, we consider both first- and second-order techniques to address continuous optimization problems arising in machine learning. In the first-order case, we propose a framework of transition from deterministic or…
Stochastic optimisation algorithms are the de facto standard for machine learning with large amounts of data. Handling only a subset of available data in each optimisation step dramatically reduces the per-iteration computational costs,…
Existing decentralized stochastic optimization methods assume the lower-level loss function is strongly convex and the stochastic gradient noise has finite variance. These strong assumptions typically are not satisfied in real-world machine…
We propose a new computationally-efficient first-order algorithm for Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning (MAML). The key enabling technique is to interpret MAML as a bilevel optimization (BLO) problem and leverage the sign-based SGD(signSGD) as a…
When gradient-based methods are impractical, black-box optimization (BBO) provides a valuable alternative. However, BBO often struggles with high-dimensional problems and limited trial budgets. In this work, we propose a novel approach…
Langevin algorithms are gradient descent methods with additive noise. They have been used for decades in Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling, optimization, and learning. Their convergence properties for unconstrained non-convex…
This paper proposes two algorithms for solving stochastic control problems with deep learning, with a focus on the utility maximisation problem. The first algorithm solves Markovian problems via the Hamilton Jacobi Bellman (HJB) equation.…
Learning to Optimize (L2O) is a subfield of machine learning (ML) in which ML models are trained to solve parametric optimization problems. The general goal is to learn a fast approximator of solutions to constrained optimization problems,…
In modern decentralized applications, ensuring communication efficiency and privacy for the users are the key challenges. In order to train machine-learning models, the algorithm has to communicate to the data center and sample data for its…
In this paper, we consider a general stochastic optimization problem which is often at the core of supervised learning, such as deep learning and linear classification. We consider a standard stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method with a…
In this work, we propose a Bayesian type sparse deep learning algorithm. The algorithm utilizes a set of spike-and-slab priors for the parameters in the deep neural network. The hierarchical Bayesian mixture will be trained using an…
We consider a class of a nested optimization problems involving inner and outer objectives. We observe that by taking into explicit account the optimization dynamics for the inner objective it is possible to derive a general framework that…