Neural Information Processing Systems http://nips.cc/

A broad class of convex optimization problems can be formulated as a semidefinite program (SDP), minimization of a convex function over the positive-semidefinite cone subject to some affine constraints. The majority of classical SDP solvers are designed for the deterministic setting where problem data is readily available. In this setting, generalized conditional gradient methods (aka Frank-Wolfe-type methods) provide scalable solutions by leveraging the so-called linear minimization oracle instead of the projection onto the semidefinite cone. Most problems in machine learning and modern engineering applications, however, contain some degree of stochasticity. In this work, we propose the first conditional-gradient-type method for solving stochastic optimization problems under affine constraints.

A broad class of convex optimization problems can be formulated as a semidefinite program (SDP), minimization of a convex function over the positive-semidefinite cone subject to some affine constraints. The majority of classical SDP solvers are designed for the deterministic setting where problem data is readily available. In this setting, generalized conditional gradient methods (aka Frank-Wolfe-type methods) provide scalable solutions by leveraging the so-called linear minimization oracle instead of the projection onto the semidefinite cone. Most problems in machine learning and modern engineering applications, however, contain some degree of stochasticity. In this work, we propose the first conditional-gradient-type method for solving stochastic optimization problems under affine constraints.

Incorporating prior knowledge or specifications of input-output relationships into machine learning models has gained significant attention, as it enhances generalization from limited data and leads to conforming outputs. However, most existing approaches use soft constraints by penalizing violations through regularization, which offers no guarantee of constraint satisfaction -- an essential requirement in safety-critical applications. On the other hand, imposing hard constraints on neural networks may hinder their representational power, adversely affecting performance. To address this, we propose HardNet, a practical framework for constructing neural networks that inherently satisfy hard constraints without sacrificing model capacity. Specifically, we encode affine and convex hard constraints, dependent on both inputs and outputs, by appending a differentiable projection layer to the network's output. This architecture allows unconstrained optimization of the network parameters using standard algorithms while ensuring constraint satisfaction by construction. Furthermore, we show that HardNet retains the universal approximation capabilities of neural networks. We demonstrate the versatility and effectiveness of HardNet across various applications: fitting functions under constraints, learning optimization solvers, optimizing control policies in safety-critical systems, and learning safe decision logic for aircraft systems.

A broad class of convex optimization problems can be formulated as a semidefinite program (SDP), minimization of a convex function over the positive-semidefinite cone subject to some affine constraints. The majority of classical SDP solvers are designed for the deterministic setting where problem data is readily available. In this setting, generalized conditional gradient methods (aka Frank-Wolfe-type methods) provide scalable solutions by leveraging the so-called linear minimization oracle instead of the projection onto the semidefinite cone. Most problems in machine learning and modern engineering applications, however, contain some degree of stochasticity. In this work, we propose the first conditional-gradient-type method for solving stochastic optimization problems under affine constraints.

Minimizing the rank of a matrix subject to affine constraints is a fundamental problem with many important applications in machine learning and statistics. In this paper we propose a simple and fast algorithm SVP (Singular Value Projection) for rank minimization under affine constraints (ARMP) and show that SVP recovers the minimum rank solution for affine constraints that satisfy a restricted isometry property (RIP). Our method guarantees geometric convergence rate even in the presence of noise and requires strictly weaker assumptions on the RIP constants than the existing methods. We also introduce a Newton-step for our SVP framework to speed-up the convergence with substantial empirical gains. Next, we address a practically important application of ARMP - the problem of lowrank matrix completion, for which the defining affine constraints do not directly obey RIP, hence the guarantees of SVP do not hold. However, we provide partial progress towards a proof of exact recovery for our algorithm by showing a more restricted isometry property and observe empirically that our algorithm recovers low-rank incoherent matrices from an almost optimal number of uniformly sampled entries. We also demonstrate empirically that our algorithms outperform existing methods, such as those of [5, 18, 14], for ARMP and the matrix completion problem by an order of magnitude and are also more robust to noise and sampling schemes. In particular, results show that our SVP-Newton method is significantly robust to noise and performs impressively on a more realistic power-law sampling scheme for the matrix completion problem.

This paper studies the problem of distributed multi-agent Bayesian optimization with both coupled black-box constraints and known affine constraints. A primal-dual distributed algorithm is proposed that achieves similar regret/violation bounds as those in the single-agent case for the black-box objective and constraint functions. Additionally, the algorithm guarantees an $\mathcal{O}(N\sqrt{T})$ bound on the cumulative violation for the known affine constraints, where $N$ is the number of agents. Hence, it is ensured that the average of the samples satisfies the affine constraints up to the error $\mathcal{O}({N}/{\sqrt{T}})$. Furthermore, we characterize certain conditions under which our algorithm can bound a stronger metric of cumulative violation and provide best-iterate convergence without affine constraint. The method is then applied to both sampled instances from Gaussian processes and a real-world optimal power allocation problem for wireless communication; the results show that our method simultaneously provides close-to-optimal performance and maintains minor violations on average, corroborating our theoretical analysis.

Minimizing the rank of a matrix subject to affine constraints is a fundamental problem with many important applications in machine learning and statistics. In this paper we propose a simple and fast algorithm SVP (Singular Value Projection) for rank minimization under affine constraints ARMP and show that SVP recovers the minimum rank solution for affine constraints that satisfy a Restricted Isometry Property} (RIP). Our method guarantees geometric convergence rate even in the presence of noise and requires strictly weaker assumptions on the RIP constants than the existing methods. We also introduce a Newton-step for our SVP framework to speed-up the convergence with substantial empirical gains. Next, we address a practically important application of ARMP - the problem of low-rank matrix completion, for which the defining affine constraints do not directly obey RIP, hence the guarantees of SVP do not hold.

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) outshine alternative function approximators in many settings thanks to their modularity in composing any desired differentiable operator. The formed parametrized functional is then tuned to solve a task at hand from simple gradient descent. This modularity comes at the cost of making strict enforcement of constraints on DNNs, e.g. from a priori knowledge of the task, or from desired physical properties, an open challenge. In this paper we propose the first provable affine constraint enforcement method for DNNs that only requires minimal changes into a given DNN's forward-pass, that is computationally friendly, and that leaves the optimization of the DNN's parameter to be unconstrained, i.e. standard gradient-based method can be employed. Our method does not require any sampling and provably ensures that the DNN fulfills the affine constraint on a given input space's region at any point during training, and testing. We coin this method POLICE, standing for Provably Optimal LInear Constraint Enforcement. Github: https://github.com/RandallBalestriero/POLICE

We propose online nonstochastic control algorithms that achieve both sublinear regret and sublinear adversarial constraint violation while keeping static constraint violation minimal against the optimal constrained linear control policy in hindsight. To establish the results, we introduce an online convex optimization with memory framework under adversarial and static constraints, which serves as a subroutine for the constrained online nonstochastic control algorithms. This subroutine also achieves the state-of-the-art regret and constraint violation bounds for constrained online convex optimization problems, which is of independent interest. Our experiments demonstrate the proposed control algorithms are adaptive to adversarial constraints and achieve smaller cumulative costs and violations. Moreover, our algorithms are less conservative and achieve significantly smaller cumulative costs than the state-of-the-art algorithm.