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This paper studies an entropy-based multi-objective Bayesian optimization (MBO). The entropy search is successful approach to Bayesian optimization. However, for MBO, existing entropy-based methods ignore trade-off among objectives or introduce unreliable approximations. We propose a novel entropy-based MBO called Pareto-frontier entropy search (PFES) by considering the entropy of Pareto-frontier, which is an essential notion of the optimality of the multi-objective problem. Our entropy can incorporate the trade-off relation of the optimal values, and further, we derive an analytical formula without introducing additional approximations or simplifications to the standard entropy search setting. We also show that our entropy computation is practically feasible by using a recursive decomposition technique which has been known in studies of the Pareto hyper-volume computation. Besides the usual MBO setting, in which all the objectives are simultaneously observed, we also consider the decoupled setting, in which the objective functions can be observed separately. PFES can easily adapt to the decoupled setting by considering the entropy of the marginal density for each output dimension. This approach incorporates dependency among objectives conditioned on Pareto-frontier, which is ignored by the existing method. Our numerical experiments show effectiveness of PFES through several benchmark datasets.
Federated learning has emerged as a promising, massively distributed way to train a joint deep model over large amounts of edge devices while keeping private user data strictly on device. In this work, motivated from ensuring fairness among users and robustness against malicious adversaries, we formulate federated learning as multi-objective optimization and propose a new algorithm FedMGDA+ that is guaranteed to converge to Pareto stationary solutions. FedMGDA+ is simple to implement, has fewer hyperparameters to tune, and refrains from sacrificing the performance of any participating user. We establish the convergence properties of FedMGDA+ and point out its connections to existing approaches. Extensive experiments on a variety of datasets confirm that FedMGDA+ compares favorably against state-of-the-art.
We study the novel problem of blackbox optimization of multiple objectives via multi-fidelity function evaluations that vary in the amount of resources consumed and their accuracy. The overall goal is to approximate the true Pareto set of solutions by minimizing the resources consumed for function evaluations. For example, in power system design optimization, we need to find designs that trade-off cost, size, efficiency, and thermal tolerance using multi-fidelity simulators for design evaluations. In this paper, we propose a novel approach referred as Multi-Fidelity Output Space Entropy Search for Multi-objective Optimization (MF-OSEMO) to solve this problem. The key idea is to select the sequence of candidate input and fidelity-vector pairs that maximize the information gained about the true Pareto front per unit resource cost. Our experiments on several synthetic and real-world benchmark problems show that MF-OSEMO, with both approximations, significantly improves over the state-of-the-art single-fidelity algorithms for multi-objective optimization.
We develop parallel predictive entropy search (PPES), a novel algorithm for Bayesian optimization of expensive black-box objective functions. At each iteration, PPES aims to select a batch of points which will maximize the information gain about the global maximizer of the objective. Well known strategies exist for suggesting a single evaluation point based on previous observations, while far fewer are known for selecting batches of points to evaluate in parallel. The few batch selection schemes that have been studied all resort to greedy methods to compute an optimal batch. To the best of our knowledge, PPES is the first non-greedy batch Bayesian optimization strategy. We demonstrate the benefit of this approach in optimization performance on both synthetic and real world applications, including problems in machine learning, rocket science and robotics.
Multi-task learning is a powerful method for solving multiple correlated tasks simultaneously. However, it is often impossible to find one single solution to optimize all the tasks, since different tasks might conflict with each other. Recently, a novel method is proposed to find one single Pareto optimal solution with good trade-off among different tasks by casting multi-task learning as multiobjective optimization. In this paper, we generalize this idea and propose a novel Pareto multi-task learning algorithm (Pareto MTL) to find a set of well-distributed Pareto solutions which can represent different trade-offs among different tasks. The proposed algorithm first formulates a multi-task learning problem as a multiobjective optimization problem, and then decomposes the multiobjective optimization problem into a set of constrained subproblems with different trade-off preferences. By solving these subproblems in parallel, Pareto MTL can find a set of well-representative Pareto optimal solutions with different trade-off among all tasks. Practitioners can easily select their preferred solution from these Pareto solutions, or use different trade-off solutions for different situations. Experimental results confirm that the proposed algorithm can generate well-representative solutions and outperform some state-of-the-art algorithms on many multi-task learning applications.
Particle accelerators require constant tuning during operation to meet beam quality, total charge and particle energy requirements for use in a wide variety of physics, chemistry and biology experiments. Maximizing the performance of an accelerator facility often necessitates multi-objective optimization, where operators must balance trade-offs between multiple objectives simultaneously, often using limited, temporally expensive beam observations. Usually, accelerator optimization problems are solved offline, prior to actual operation, with advanced beamline simulations and parallelized optimization methods (NSGA-II, Swarm Optimization). Unfortunately, it is not feasible to use these methods for online multi-objective optimization, since beam measurements can only be done in a serial fashion, and these optimization methods require a large number of measurements to converge to a useful solution.Here, we introduce a multi-objective Bayesian optimization scheme, which finds the full Pareto front of an accelerator optimization problem efficiently in a serialized manner and is thus a critical step towards practical online multi-objective optimization in accelerators.This method uses a set of Gaussian process surrogate models, along with a multi-objective acquisition function, which reduces the number of observations needed to converge by at least an order of magnitude over current methods.We demonstrate how this method can be modified to specifically solve optimization challenges posed by the tuning of accelerators.This includes the addition of optimization constraints, objective preferences and costs related to changing accelerator parameters.