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Reinforcement learning is crucial for aligning large language models to perform complex reasoning tasks. However, current algorithms such as Group Relative Policy Optimization suffer from coarse grained, sequence level credit assignment,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Hongbo Jin , Rongpeng Zhu , Zhongjing Du , Xu Jiang , Jingqi Tian , Qiaoman Zhang , Jiayu Ding

Early-exit neural networks reduce inference cost by enabling confident predictions at intermediate layers. However, joint training often leads to gradient interference, with deeper classifiers dominating optimization. We propose…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-12 Saad Mokssit , Ouassim Karrakchou , Alejandro Mousist , Mounir Ghogho

We propose a gradient preconditioning method that makes reward-guided generation with one-step generative models both efficient and reliable. Test-time noise optimization can unlock substantially better reward-guided generations from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Jisung Hwang , Minhyuk Sung

End-to-end image/video codecs are getting competitive compared to traditional compression techniques that have been developed through decades of manual engineering efforts. These trainable codecs have many advantages over traditional…

Image and Video Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-08-03 Muhammet Balcilar , Bharath Bhushan Damodaran , Karam Naser , Franck Galpin , Pierre Hellier

This paper presents a new mechanism for producing sanitized statistical summaries that achieve \emph{differential privacy}, called the \emph{K-Norm Gradient} Mechanism, or KNG. This new approach maintains the strong flexibility of the…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-08-03 Matthew Reimherr , Jordan Awan

At the heart of the standard deep learning training loop is a greedy gradient step minimizing a given loss. We propose to add a second step to maximize training generalization. To do this, we optimize the loss of the next training step.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-08 Samuel Müller , André Biedenkapp , Frank Hutter

Differentially private gradient descent (DP-GD) is a popular algorithm to train deep learning models with provable guarantees on the privacy of the training data. In the last decade, the problem of understanding its performance cost with…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-29 Simone Bombari , Marco Mondelli

Forward gradient learning computes a noisy directional gradient and is a biologically plausible alternative to backprop for learning deep neural networks. However, the standard forward gradient algorithm, when applied naively, suffers from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-03 Mengye Ren , Simon Kornblith , Renjie Liao , Geoffrey Hinton

We address the problem of making a pre-trained reinforcement learning (RL) policy safety-aware by incorporating cost constraints without retraining it from scratch. While costs could be numerically encoded, we assume a more general setting…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-21 Richa Verma , Bavish Kulur , Sanjay Chawla , Balaraman Ravindran

Many currently deployed Reinforcement Learning agents work in an environment shared with humans, be them co-workers, users or clients. It is desirable that these agents adjust to people's preferences, learn faster thanks to their help, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-08-14 Hélène Plisnier , Denis Steckelmacher , Tim Brys , Diederik M. Roijers , Ann Nowé

We consider a Markov decision process with deterministic state transition dynamics, adversarially generated rewards that change arbitrarily from round to round, and a bandit feedback model in which the decision maker only observes the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-10-19 Raman Arora , Ofer Dekel , Ambuj Tewari

In this paper, an adjustment to the original differentially private stochastic gradient descent (DPSGD) algorithm for deep learning models is proposed. As a matter of motivation, to date, almost no state-of-the-art machine learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-13 Mehdi Amian

In policy gradient reinforcement learning, access to a differentiable model enables 1st-order gradient estimation that accelerates learning compared to relying solely on derivative-free 0th-order estimators. However, discontinuous dynamics…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Ku Onoda , Paavo Parmas , Manato Yaguchi , Yutaka Matsuo

We propose a new way of deriving policy gradient updates for reinforcement learning. Our technique, based on Fourier analysis, recasts integrals that arise with expected policy gradients as convolutions and turns them into multiplications.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-05-31 Matthew Fellows , Kamil Ciosek , Shimon Whiteson

Weight quantization is an effective technique to compress deep neural networks for their deployment on edge devices with limited resources. Traditional loss-aware quantization methods commonly use the quantized gradient to replace the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-31 Lianbo Ma , Yuee Zhou , Jianlun Ma , Guo Yu , Qing Li

Privacy-preserving training on sensitive data commonly relies on differentially private stochastic optimization with gradient clipping and Gaussian noise. The clipping threshold is a critical control knob: if set too small, systematic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Mohammad Partohaghighi , Roummel Marcia , Bruce J. West , YangQuan Chen

Reinforcement learning is widely used to improve the reasoning ability of large language models, especially when answers can be automatically checked. Standard GRPO-style training updates the model using only the current step, while full…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Ismam Nur Swapnil , Aranya Saha , Tanvir Ahmed Khan , Mohammad Ariful Haque , Ser-Nam Lim

Existing reward alignment methods for diffusion and flow models rely on multi-step stochastic trajectories, making them difficult to extend to deterministic generators. A natural alternative is noise-space optimization, but existing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Jeongsol Kim , Hongeun Kim , Jian Wang , Jong Chul Ye

We develop policy gradients methods for stochastic control with exit time in a model-free setting. We propose two types of algorithms for learning either directly the optimal policy or by learning alternately the value function (critic) and…

Computational Finance · Quantitative Finance 2023-02-16 Mohamed Hamdouche , Pierre Henry-Labordere , Huyen Pham

This study considers a federated learning setup where cost-sensitive and strategic agents train a learning model with a server. During each round, each agent samples a minibatch of training data and sends his gradient update. As an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-06 Abdullah Basar Akbay , Cihan Tepedelenlioglu