arXiv AI

Bandits in Prod: Hyperparameter Optimization at Inference Time

The paper introduces Online Hyperparameter Optimization (OHPO), framing it as an infinitely many‑armed bandit problem over mixed and conditional search spaces. It proposes the IMABO framework, which couples any bandit policy with any oracle for proposing new configurations, and presents IMOSS—a restart‑free anytime policy with provable regret bounds. Experiments show that IMABO, combined with practical oracles such as TPE, an incumbent‑mutation oracle, and a pretrained tabular foundation model, outperforms random search across a range of settings from classical ML models to LLM‑based agents.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 3

Parameter-Free Heavy-Tailed Bandits

arXiv:2607. 29460v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Heavy-tailed distributions arise naturally in sequential decision-making problems such as financial investment, online advertising, and network management, where rare but extreme outcomes can dominate performance.

By Gianmarco Genalti, Alberto Maria Metelli
arXiv AI
Jun 9

Bandits for Efficient Experimentation: Adapting to Control Group, Preferences, and Context Drifts

arXiv:2606. 09802v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We consider a variant of the linear contextual stochastic multi-armed bandits, where the learner must provide recommendations to a group of users, each having its personalized preference vector, and in the presence of context distributions that are drifting over time.

By Udvas Das, Waris Radji, Debabrota Basu, Odalric-Ambrym Maillard
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 4

ALMAB-DC: Active Learning, Multi-Armed Bandits, and Distributed Computing for Sequential Experimental Design and Black-Box Optimization

arXiv:2603. 21180v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Sequential experimental design under expensive, gradient-free objectives is a central challenge in computational statistics: evaluation budgets are tightly constrained and information must be extracted efficiently from each observation.

By Foo Hui-Mean, Yuan-chin I Chang
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

Meritocratic Fairness via $K$-Shapley Values in Budgeted Combinatorial Bandits with Full-Bandit Feedback

arXiv:2605. 00762v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study meritocratic fairness in budgeted combinatorial multi-armed bandits with full-bandit feedback, where a learner selects at most $K$ arms per time step and observes only the noisy aggregate reward of the selected set.

By Shradha Sharma, Shweta Jain, Swapnil Dhamal
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 7

Dynamic Regret for Non-Stationary Linear Bandits via Misspecification Reductions

arXiv:2607. 02891v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Many online decision-making problems involve both round-specific feasible actions and drifting reward models: eligible ad impressions, feasible prices, and available treatments can change over time, while user preferences, demand curves, and patient responses may evolve.

By Zihao Hu, Yuan Yao, Jiheng Zhang, Zhengyuan Zhou