## Theory

##### Ballroom 3 & 4

Moderator: Younggeun Kim

Wed 20 Jul 10:15 a.m. PDT — 11:45 a.m. PDT

Abstract:

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Wed 20 July 10:15 - 10:20 PDT

(Spotlight)

Marc Jourdan · Rémy Degenne

In pure-exploration problems, information is gathered sequentially to answer a question on the stochastic environment.While best-arm identification for linear bandits has been extensively studied in recent years, few works have been dedicated to identifying one arm that is $\varepsilon$-close to the best one (and not exactly the best one).In this problem with several correct answers, an identification algorithm should focus on one candidate among those answers and verify that it is correct.We demonstrate that picking the answer with highest mean does not allow an algorithm to reach asymptotic optimality in terms of expected sample complexity.Instead, a \textit{furthest answer} should be identified.Using that insight to choose the candidate answer carefully, we develop a simple procedure to adapt best-arm identification algorithms to tackle $\varepsilon$-best-answer identification in transductive linear stochastic bandits. Finally, we propose an asymptotically optimal algorithm for this setting, which is shown to achieve competitive empirical performance against existing modified best-arm identification algorithms.

Wed 20 July 10:20 - 10:25 PDT

(Spotlight)
##### On the Finite-Time Performance of the Knowledge Gradient Algorithm

Yanwen Li · Siyang Gao

The knowledge gradient (KG) algorithm is a popular and effective algorithm for the best arm identification (BAI) problem. Due to the complex calculation of KG, theoretical analysis of this algorithm is difficult, and existing results are mostly about the asymptotic performance of it, e.g., consistency, asymptotic sample allocation, etc. In this research, we present new theoretical results about the finite-time performance of the KG algorithm. Under independent and normally distributed rewards, we derive lower bounds and upper bounds for the probability of error and simple regret of the algorithm. With these bounds, existing asymptotic results become simple corollaries. We also show the performance of the algorithm for the multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem. These developments not only extend the existing analysis of the KG algorithm, but can also be used to analyze other improvement-based algorithms. Last, we use numerical experiments to further demonstrate the finite-time behavior of the KG algorithm.

Wed 20 July 10:25 - 10:30 PDT

(Spotlight)
##### Expression might be enough: representing pressure and demand for reinforcement learning based traffic signal control

Liang Zhang · Qiang Wu · Jun Shen · Linyuan Lü · Bo Du · Jianqing Wu

Wed 20 July 10:30 - 10:35 PDT

(Spotlight)
##### Generalization Bounds using Lower Tail Exponents in Stochastic Optimizers

Liam Hodgkinson · Umut Simsekli · Rajiv Khanna · Michael Mahoney

Despite the ubiquitous use of stochastic optimization algorithms in machine learning, the precise impact of these algorithms and their dynamics on generalization performance in realistic non-convex settings is still poorly understood. While recent work has revealed connections between generalization and heavy-tailed behavior in stochastic optimization, they mainly relied on continuous-time approximations; and a rigorous treatment for the original discrete-time iterations is yet to be performed. To bridge this gap, we present novel bounds linking generalization to the lower tail exponent of the transition kernel associated with the optimizer around a local minimum, in both discrete- and continuous-time settings. To achieve this, we first prove a data- and algorithm-dependent generalization bound in terms of the celebrated Fernique-Talagrand functional applied to the trajectory of the optimizer. Then, we specialize this result by exploiting the Markovian structure of stochastic optimizers, and derive bounds in terms of their (data-dependent) transition kernels. We support our theory with empirical results from a variety of neural networks, showing correlations between generalization error and lower tail exponents.

Wed 20 July 10:35 - 10:40 PDT

(Spotlight)
##### No-Regret Learning in Time-Varying Zero-Sum Games

Mengxiao Zhang · Peng Zhao · Haipeng Luo · Zhi-Hua Zhou

Learning from repeated play in a fixed two-player zero-sum game is a classic problem in game theory and online learning. We consider a variant of this problem where the game payoff matrix changes over time, possibly in an adversarial manner. We first present three performance measures to guide the algorithmic design for this problem: 1) the well-studied \emph{individual regret}, 2) an extension of \emph{duality gap}, and 3) a new measure called \emph{dynamic Nash Equilibrium regret}, which quantifies the cumulative difference between the player's payoff and the minimax game value. Next, we develop a single parameter-free algorithm that \emph{simultaneously} enjoys favorable guarantees under all these three performance measures. These guarantees are adaptive to different non-stationarity measures of the payoff matrices and, importantly, recover the best known results when the payoff matrix is fixed. Our algorithm is based on a two-layer structure with a meta-algorithm learning over a group of black-box base-learners satisfying a certain property, along with several novel ingredients specifically designed for the time-varying game setting. Empirical results further validate the effectiveness of our algorithm.

Wed 20 July 10:40 - 10:45 PDT

(Spotlight)
##### Achieving Minimax Rates in Pool-Based Batch Active Learning

Claudio Gentile · Zhilei Wang · Tong Zhang

We consider a batch active learning scenario where the learner adaptively issues batches of points to a labeling oracle. Sampling labels in batches is highly desirable in practice due to the smaller number of interactive rounds with the labeling oracle (often human beings). However, batch active learning typically pays the price of a reduced adaptivity, leading to suboptimal results. In this paper we propose a solution which requires a careful trade off between the informativeness of the queried points and their diversity. We theoretically investigate batch active learning in the practically relevant scenario where the unlabeled pool of data is available beforehand ({\em pool-based} active learning). We analyze a novel stage-wise greedy algorithm and show that, as a function of the label complexity, the excess risk of this algorithm%operating in the realizable setting for which we prove matches the known minimax rates in standard statistical learning settings. Our results also exhibit a mild dependence on the batch size. These are the first theoretical results that employ careful trade offs between informativeness and diversity to rigorously quantify the statistical performance of batch active learning in the pool-based scenario.

Wed 20 July 10:45 - 10:50 PDT

(Spotlight)

Yifang Chen · Kevin Jamieson · Simon Du

Wed 20 July 10:50 - 11:10 PDT

(Oral)
##### Active fairness auditing

Tom Yan · Chicheng Zhang

The fast spreading adoption of machine learning (ML) by companies across industries poses significant regulatory challenges. One such challenge is scalability: how can regulatory bodies efficiently \emph{audit} these ML models, ensuring that they are fair? In this paper, we initiate the study of query-based auditing algorithms that can estimate the demographic parity of ML models in a query-efficient manner. We propose an optimal deterministic algorithm, as well as a practical randomized, oracle-efficient algorithm with comparable guarantees. Furthermore, we make inroads into understanding the optimal query complexity of randomized active fairness estimation algorithms. Our first exploration of active fairness estimation aims to put AI governance on firmer theoretical foundations.

Wed 20 July 11:10 - 11:15 PDT

(Spotlight)
##### Metric-Fair Active Learning

Jie Shen · Nan Cui · Jing Wang

Active learning has become a prevalent technique for designing label-efficient algorithms, where the central principle is to only query and fit informative'' labeled instances. It is, however, known that an active learning algorithm may incur unfairness due to such instance selection procedure. In this paper, we henceforth study metric-fair active learning of homogeneous halfspaces, and show that under the distribution-dependent PAC learning model, fairness and label efficiency can be achieved simultaneously. We further propose two extensions of our main results: 1) we show that it is possible to make the algorithm robust to the adversarial noise~--~one of the most challenging noise models in learning theory; and 2) it is possible to significantly improve the label complexity when the underlying halfspace is sparse.

Wed 20 July 11:15 - 11:20 PDT

(Spotlight)
##### Metric-Fair Classifier Derandomization

Jimmy Wu · Yatong Chen · Yang Liu

We study the problem of \emph{classifier derandomization} in machine learning: given a stochastic binary classifier $f: X \to [0,1]$, sample a deterministic classifier $\hat{f}: X \to \{0,1\}$ that approximates the output of $f$ in aggregate over any data distribution. Recent work revealed how to efficiently derandomize a stochastic classifier with strong output approximation guarantees, but at the cost of individual fairness --- that is, if $f$ treated similar inputs similarly, $\hat{f}$ did not. In this paper, we initiate a systematic study of classifier derandomization with metric fairness guarantees. We show that the prior derandomization approach is almost maximally metric-unfair, and that a simple random threshold'' derandomization achieves optimal fairness preservation but with weaker output approximation. We then devise a derandomization procedure that provides an appealing tradeoff between these two: if $f$ is $\alpha$-metric fair according to a metric $d$ with a locality-sensitive hash (LSH) family, then our derandomized $\hat{f}$ is, with high probability, $O(\alpha)$-metric fair and a close approximation of $f$. We also prove generic results applicable to all (fair and unfair) classifier derandomization procedures, including a bias-variance decomposition and reductions between various notions of metric fairness.

Wed 20 July 11:20 - 11:25 PDT

(Spotlight)
##### Interactively Learning Preference Constraints in Linear Bandits

David Lindner · Sebastian Tschiatschek · Katja Hofmann · Andreas Krause

We study sequential decision-making with known rewards and unknown constraints, motivated by situations where the constraints represent expensive-to-evaluate human preferences, such as safe and comfortable driving behavior. We formalize the challenge of interactively learning about these constraints as a novel linear bandit problem which we call constrained linear best-arm identification. To solve this problem, we propose the Adaptive Constraint Learning (ACOL) algorithm. We provide an instance-dependent lower bound for constrained linear best-arm identification and show that ACOL's sample complexity matches the lower bound in the worst-case. In the average case, ACOL's sample complexity bound is still significantly tighter than bounds of simpler approaches. In synthetic experiments, ACOL performs on par with an oracle solution and outperforms a range of baselines. As an application, we consider learning constraints to represent human preferences in a driving simulation. ACOL is significantly more sample efficient than alternatives for this application. Further, we find that learning preferences as constraints is more robust to changes in the driving scenario than encoding the preferences directly in the reward function.

Wed 20 July 11:25 - 11:30 PDT

(Spotlight)
##### Convergence of Uncertainty Sampling for Active Learning

Anant Raj · Francis Bach

Uncertainty sampling in active learning is heavily used in practice to reduce the annotation cost. However, there has been no wide consensus on the function to be used for uncertainty estimation in binary classification tasks and convergence guarantees of the corresponding active learning algorithms are not well understood. The situation is even more challenging for multi-category classification. In this work, we propose an efficient uncertainty estimator for binary classification which we also extend to multiple classes, and provide a non-asymptotic rate of convergence for our uncertainty sampling based active learning algorithm in both cases under no-noise conditions (i.e., linearly separable data). We also extend our analysis to the noisy case and provide theoretical guarantees for our algorithm under the influence of noise in the task of binary and multi-class classification.

Wed 20 July 11:30 - 11:35 PDT

(Spotlight)
##### Thompson Sampling for Robust Transfer in Multi-Task Bandits

Zhi Wang · Chicheng Zhang · Kamalika Chaudhuri

We study the problem of online multi-task learning where the tasks are performed within similar but not necessarily identical multi-armed bandit environments. In particular, we study how a learner can improve its overall performance across multiple related tasks through robust transfer of knowledge. While an upper confidence bound (UCB)-based algorithm has recently been shown to achieve nearly-optimal performance guarantees in a setting where all tasks are solved concurrently, it remains unclear whether Thompson sampling (TS) algorithms, which have superior empirical performance in general, share similar theoretical properties. In this work, we present a TS-type algorithm for a more general online multi-task learning protocol, which extends the concurrent setting. We provide its frequentist analysis and prove that it is also nearly-optimal using a novel concentration inequality for multi-task data aggregation at random stopping times. Finally, we evaluate the algorithm on synthetic data and show that the TS-type algorithm enjoys superior empirical performance in comparison with the UCB-based algorithm and a baseline algorithm that performs TS for each individual task without transfer.

Wed 20 July 11:35 - 11:40 PDT

(Spotlight)
##### Constants Matter: The Performance Gains of Active Learning

Stephen Mussmann · Sanjoy Dasgupta

Within machine learning, active learning studies the gains in performance made possible by adaptively selecting data points to label. In this work, we show through upper and lower bounds, that for a simple benign setting of well-specified logistic regression on a uniform distribution over a sphere, the expected excess error of both active learning and random sampling have the same inverse proportional dependence on the number of samples. Importantly, due to the nature of lower bounds, any more general setting does not allow a better dependence on the number of samples. Additionally, we show a variant of uncertainty sampling can achieve a faster rate of convergence than random sampling by a factor of the Bayes error, a recent empirical observation made by other work. Qualitatively, this work is pessimistic with respect to the asymptotic dependence on the number of samples, but optimistic with respect to finding performance gains in the constants.

Wed 20 July 11:40 - 11:45 PDT

(Spotlight)
##### Cross-Space Active Learning on Graph Convolutional Networks

Yufei Tao · Hao WU · Shiyuan Deng

This paper formalizes {\em cross-space} active learning on a graph convolutional network (GCN). The objective is to attain the most accurate hypothesis available in any of the instance spaces generated by the GCN. Subject to the objective, the challenge is to minimize the {\em label cost}, measured in the number of vertices whose labels are requested. Our study covers both {\em budget algorithms} which terminate after a designated number of label requests, and {\em verifiable algorithms} which terminate only after having found an accurate hypothesis. A new separation in label complexity between the two algorithm types is established. The separation is unique to GCNs.