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In recent years, a variety of gradient-based first-order methods have been developed to solve bi-level optimization problems for learning applications. However, theoretical guarantees of these existing approaches heavily rely on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-03 Risheng Liu , Pan Mu , Xiaoming Yuan , Shangzhi Zeng , Jin Zhang

We introduce contextual stochastic bilevel optimization (CSBO) -- a stochastic bilevel optimization framework with the lower-level problem minimizing an expectation conditioned on some contextual information and the upper-level decision…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-10-31 Yifan Hu , Jie Wang , Yao Xie , Andreas Krause , Daniel Kuhn

We derive an online learning algorithm with improved regret guarantees for `easy' loss sequences. We consider two types of `easiness': (a) stochastic loss sequences and (b) adversarial loss sequences with small effective range of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-28 Tobias Sommer Thune , Yevgeny Seldin

Stochastic bilevel optimization, which captures the inherent nested structure of machine learning problems, is gaining popularity in many recent applications. Existing works on bilevel optimization mostly consider either unconstrained…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-14 Quan Xiao , Han Shen , Wotao Yin , Tianyi Chen

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

In centralized, distributed, and federated learning with stochastic gradients and $n$ workers, it was recently shown that it is infeasible to find an $\varepsilon$-stationary point faster than $\tilde{\Omega}\left(\min\left\{\frac{d \kappa…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-11 Grigory Begunov , Alexander Tyurin

Constrained bilevel optimization tackles nested structures present in constrained learning tasks like constrained meta-learning, adversarial learning, and distributed bilevel optimization. However, existing bilevel optimization methods…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-05 Wei Yao , Haian Yin , Shangzhi Zeng , Jin Zhang

Conditional stochastic optimization covers a variety of applications ranging from invariant learning and causal inference to meta-learning. However, constructing unbiased gradient estimators for such problems is challenging due to the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-04 Yifan Hu , Siqi Zhang , Xin Chen , Niao He

Bilevel optimization has recently attracted significant attention in machine learning due to its wide range of applications and advanced hierarchical optimization capabilities. In this paper, we propose a plug-and-play framework, named…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-05 Tianshu Chu , Dachuan Xu , Wei Yao , Chengming Yu , Jin Zhang

We develop and analyze stochastic approximation algorithms for solving nested compositional bi-level optimization problems. These problems involve a nested composition of $T$ potentially non-convex smooth functions in the upper-level, and a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-12 Xuxing Chen , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Saeed Ghadimi

In this paper, we consider non-convex stochastic bilevel optimization (SBO) problems that have many applications in machine learning. Although numerous studies have proposed stochastic algorithms for solving these problems, they are limited…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-15 Zhishuai Guo , Quanqi Hu , Lijun Zhang , Tianbao Yang

In this paper, we explore a broad class of constrained saddle point problems with a bilevel structure, wherein the upper-level objective function is nonconvex-concave and smooth over compact and convex constraint sets, subject to a strongly…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-31 Mohammad Mahdi Ahmadi , Erfan Yazdandoost Hamedani

We study bilevel optimization problems where the lower-level problems are strongly convex and have coupled linear constraints. To overcome the potential non-smoothness of the hyper-objective and the computational challenges associated with…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-06 Wei Shen , Jiawei Zhang , Minhui Huang , Cong Shen

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

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

In this thesis, I study the minimax oracle complexity of distributed stochastic optimization. First, I present the "graph oracle model", an extension of the classic oracle complexity framework that can be applied to study distributed…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-03 Blake Woodworth

This paper consider solving a class of nonconvex-strongly-convex distributed stochastic bilevel optimization (DSBO) problems with personalized inner-level objectives. Most existing algorithms require computational loops for hypergradient…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-08 Youcheng Niu , Jinming Xu , Ying Sun , Yan Huang , Li Chai

Stochastic bilevel optimization (SBO) has become a standard framework for hyperparameter learning, data reweighting, representation learning, and data-mixture optimization in deep learning. Existing exact single-loop SBO methods and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Hengrui Zhang , Boao Kong , Engao Zhang , Kun Yuan

Bilevel optimization problems are receiving increasing attention in machine learning as they provide a natural framework for hyperparameter optimization and meta-learning. A key step to tackle these problems is the efficient computation of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-20 Riccardo Grazzi , Massimiliano Pontil , Saverio Salzo

We present a comprehensive theoretical analysis of first-order methods for escaping strict saddle points in smooth non-convex optimization. Our main contribution is a Perturbed Saddle-escape Descent (PSD) algorithm with fully explicit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-25 Faruk Alpay , Hamdi Alakkad