Bilevel optimization and machine learning

  • Authors:
  • Kristin P. Bennett;Gautam Kunapuli;Jing Hu;Jong-Shi Pang

  • Affiliations:
  • Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY;Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY;Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY;Dept. of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Urbana Champaign, IL

  • Venue:
  • WCCI'08 Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE world conference on Computational intelligence: research frontiers
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

We examine the interplay of optimization and machine learning. Great progress has been made in machine learning by cleverly reducing machine learning problems to convex optimization problems with one or more hyper-parameters. The availability of powerful convex-programming theory and algorithms has enabled a flood of new research in machine learning models and methods. But many of the steps necessary for successful machine learning models fall outside of the convex machine learning paradigm. Thus we now propose framing machine learning problems as Stackelberg games. The resulting bilevel optimization problem allows for efficient systematic search of large numbers of hyper-parameters. We discuss recent progress in solving these bilevel problems and the many interesting optimization challenges that remain. Finally, we investigate the intriguing possibility of novel machine learning models enabled by bilevel programming.