Related papers: Position: Zeroth-Order Optimization in Deep Learni…
Hard-thresholding is an important type of algorithm in machine learning that is used to solve $\ell_0$ constrained optimization problems. However, the true gradient of the objective function can be difficult to access in certain scenarios,…
Online bilevel optimization (OBO) is a powerful framework for machine learning problems where both outer and inner objectives evolve over time, requiring dynamic updates. Current OBO approaches rely on deterministic \textit{window-smoothed}…
Zeroth-order optimization (ZO) typically relies on two-point feedback to estimate the unknown gradient of the objective function. Nevertheless, two-point feedback can not be used for online optimization of time-varying objective functions,…
Bayesian optimization is a broadly applied methodology to optimize the expensive black-box function. Despite its success, it still faces the challenge from the high-dimensional search space. To alleviate this problem, we propose a novel…
We study zeroth-order optimization where solutions must minimize a cost $d(s)$ while maintaining high probability under a complex generative prior $L(s)$ (e.g., a parameterized model). This reduces to sampling from a target distribution…
This paper investigates how to accelerate the convergence of distributed optimization algorithms on nonconvex problems with zeroth-order information available only. We propose a zeroth-order (ZO) distributed primal-dual stochastic…
Bayesian optimization is a powerful method for optimizing black-box functions with limited function evaluations. Recent works have shown that optimization in a latent space through deep generative models such as variational autoencoders…
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…
In this paper, we consider a distributed stochastic non-convex optimization problem, which is about minimizing a sum of $n$ local cost functions over a network with only zeroth-order information. A novel single-loop Decentralized…
Topology optimization (TO) is a method of deriving an optimal design that satisfies a given load and boundary conditions within a design domain. This method enables effective design without initial design, but has been limited in use due to…
Bayesian Optimization (BO) is a popular approach to optimizing expensive-to-evaluate black-box functions. Despite the success of BO, its performance may decrease exponentially as the dimensionality increases. A common framework to tackle…
This work considers stochastic optimization problems in which the objective function values can only be computed by a blackbox corrupted by some random noise following an unknown distribution. The proposed method is based on sequential…
Bayesian optimization (BO) is a widely-used sequential method for zeroth-order optimization of complex and expensive-to-compute black-box functions. The existing BO methods assume that the function evaluation (feedback) is available to the…
Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) using zeroth-order (ZO) optimization has emerged as a promising alternative to traditional gradient-based methods due to its reduced memory footprint requirement. However, existing ZO methods suffer…
Offline model-based optimization (MBO) seeks to discover high-performing designs using only a fixed dataset of past evaluations. Most existing methods rely on learning a surrogate model via regression and implicitly assume that good…
Since deep neural networks were developed, they have made huge contributions to everyday lives. Machine learning provides more rational advice than humans are capable of in almost every aspect of daily life. However, despite this…
The encoding of solutions in black-box optimization is a delicate, handcrafted balance between expressiveness and domain knowledge -- between exploring a wide variety of solutions, and ensuring that those solutions are useful. Our main…
Bayesian Optimization (BO) is a method for globally optimizing black-box functions. While BO has been successfully applied to many scenarios, developing effective BO algorithms that scale to functions with high-dimensional domains is still…
As model sizes grow, finding efficient and cost-effective hyperparameter optimization (HPO) methods becomes increasingly crucial for deep learning pipelines. While multi-fidelity HPO (MF-HPO) trades off computational resources required for…
Differentially private zeroth-order optimization methods have recently gained popularity in private fine tuning of machine learning models due to their reduced memory requirements. Current approaches for privatizing zeroth-order methods…