Related papers: On Adaptivity in Zeroth-Order Optimization

Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have evolved into powerful and ubiquitous tools. Fine-tuning on small datasets allows LLMs to acquire specialized skills for specific tasks efficiently. Although LLMs provide great utility in…

In this work, we focus on the study of stochastic zeroth-order (ZO) optimization which does not require first-order gradient information and uses only function evaluations. The problem of ZO optimization has emerged in many recent machine…

Continual learning requires new-task adaptation without damaging previously acquired capabilities. Recent forward-pass and zeroth-order (ZO) results show that low-query adaptation may retain better than first-order (FO) descent, but the…

We consider the problem of minimizing a high-dimensional objective function, which may include a regularization term, using (possibly noisy) evaluations of the function. Such optimization is also called derivative-free, zeroth-order, or…

Adaptive optimizers such as Adam have achieved great success in training large-scale models like large language models and diffusion models. However, they often generalize worse than non-adaptive methods, such as SGD on classical…

To solve unmodeled optimization problems with hard constraints, this paper proposes a novel zeroth-order approach called Safe Zeroth-order Optimization using Linear Programs (SZO-LP). The SZO-LP method solves a linear program in each…

Modern optimizers, like Muon, impose matrix-wise geometry constraints on their updates. These matrix-wise constraints can be unified under Linear Minimization Oracle (LMO) theory. However, all current methods impose fixed LMO geometries for…

Adaptive optimizers are the de facto standard in non-private training as they often enable faster convergence and improved performance. In contrast, differentially private (DP) training is still predominantly performed with DP-SGD,…

The concept of learning to optimize involves utilizing a trainable optimization strategy rather than relying on manually defined full gradient estimations such as ADAM. We present a framework that jointly trains the full gradient estimator…

We consider the zeroth-order optimization problem in the huge-scale setting, where the dimension of the problem is so large that performing even basic vector operations on the decision variables is infeasible. In this paper, we propose a…

In this paper, we study zeroth-order algorithms for minimax optimization problems that are nonconvex in one variable and strongly-concave in the other variable. Such minimax optimization problems have attracted significant attention lately…

Alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is a popular optimization tool for the composite and constrained problems in machine learning. However, in many machine learning problems such as black-box attacks and bandit feedback, ADMM…

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…

Safety alignment for large language models (LLMs) aims to reduce harmful or unsafe behavior while preserving general utility. However, recent findings reveal that alignment effects can be fragile: lightweight post-alignment manipulations,…

Gradient descent is slow to converge for ill-conditioned problems and non-convex problems. An important technique for acceleration is step-size adaptation. The first part of this paper contains a detailed review of step-size adaptation…

Large Language Models (LLMs) perform well on many NLP tasks, but fine-tuning them on resource-constrained mobile devices is challenging due to high memory and computation costs, despite growing demands for privacy-preserving…

Objective functions in large-scale machine-learning and artificial intelligence applications often live in high dimensions with strong non-convexity and massive local minima. First-order methods, such as the stochastic gradient method and…

We study stochastic zeroth-order (ZO) optimization of smooth nonconvex objectives under heavy-tailed sample-gradient noise. This regime is motivated by empirical evidence that gradient noise in modern machine learning can violate the…

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization enables dimension-free communication in federated learning (FL), making it attractive for fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs) due to significant communication savings. However, existing ZO-FL methods…

In many real-world problems, first-order (FO) derivative evaluations are too expensive or even inaccessible. For solving these problems, zeroth-order (ZO) methods that only need function evaluations are often more efficient than FO methods…