11 accepted papers
We study nonmonotone games satisfying the weak Minty variational inequality (MVI) with parameter $\rho \in (-\tfrac{1}{L}, \infty)$, where $L$ is the Lipschitz constant of the gradient operator. An error corrected version of the inexact proximal point algorithm is proposed, with which we establish t…
This work introduces a hybrid non-Euclidean optimization method which generalizes gradient norm clipping by combining steepest descent and conditional gradient approaches. The method achieves the best of both worlds by establishing a descent property under a generalized notion of ($L_0$,$L_1$)-smoot…
In this work, we study optimization methods that leverage the linear minimization oracle (LMO) over a norm-ball. We propose a new stochastic family of algorithms that uses the LMO to adapt to the geometry of the problem and, perhaps surprisingly, show that they can be applied to unconstrained proble…
This paper rethinks Sharpness-Aware Minimization (SAM), which is originally formulated as a zero-sum game where the weights of a network and a bounded perturbation try to minimize/maximize, respectively, the same differentiable loss. To fundamentally improve this design, we argue that SAM should ins…
Sharpness-aware minimization (SAM) has been shown to improve the generalization of neural networks. However, each SAM update requires _sequentially_ computing two gradients, effectively doubling the per-iteration cost compared to base optimizers like SGD. We propose a simple modification of SAM, ter…
Adversarial Training using a strong first-order adversary (PGD) is the gold standard for training Deep Neural Networks that are robust to adversarial examples. We show that, contrary to the general understanding of the method, the gradient at an optimal adversarial example may increase, rather than…
This paper introduces a family of stochastic extragradient-type algorithms for a class of nonconvex-nonconcave problems characterized by the weak Minty variational inequality (MVI). Unlike existing results on extragradient methods in the monotone setting, employing diminishing stepsizes is no longer…
This paper presents a theoretical analysis of linear interpolation as a principled method for stabilizing (large-scale) neural network training. We argue that instabilities in the optimization process are often caused by the nonmonotonicity of the loss landscape and show how linear interpolation can…
This paper introduces a new extragradient-type algorithm for a class of nonconvex-nonconcave minimax problems. It is well-known that finding a local solution for general minimax problems is computationally intractable. This observation has recently motivated the study of structures sufficient for co…
We examine a flexible algorithmic framework for solving monotone variational inequalities in the presence of randomness and uncertainty. The proposed template encompasses a wide range of popular first-order methods, including dual averaging, dual extrapolation and optimistic gradient algorithms – bo…
Overparameterization refers to the important phenomenon where the width of a neural network is chosen such that learning algorithms can provably attain zero loss in nonconvex training. The existing theory establishes such global convergence using various initialization strategies, training modificat…