arXiv Machine Learning

Efficient Robust Learning at the Information-Theoretic Limit

The paper presents a polynomial‑time algorithm for robustly learning Boolean concept classes with respect to a fixed distribution, achieving the optimal error rate of η + ε where η is the noise rate. It builds on Blanc’s earlier, computationally inefficient algorithm and introduces no‑regret learners to overcome the previous limitations. Additionally, the authors provide an efficient method that does not require an ERM oracle for any function class admitting sandwiching polynomials under hypercontractive distributions, including a first polynomial‑time solution for learning halfspaces with Gaussian marginals at error η + ε.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 3

Smoothed Analysis for Learning Concepts with Low Intrinsic Dimension

arXiv:2407. 00966v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: In traditional models of supervised learning, the goal of a learner-- given examples from an arbitrary joint distribution on $\mathbb{R}^d \times \{\pm 1\}$-- is to output a hypothesis that is competitive (to within $\epsilon$) of the best fitting concept from some class.

By Gautam Chandrasekaran, Adam Klivans, Vasilis Kontonis, Raghu Meka, Konstantinos Stavropoulos
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

Relatively Smart II: Tractable or Semi-Supervised Instance-Optimal Learning

The paper extends the study of relatively smart learning, showing that ERM and any proper consistent learner are relatively smart for binary classification in the distribution‑free setting, achieving a quadratic sample‑complexity blowup. It further demonstrates that semi‑supervised relatively smart learning is possible with only a quadratic blowup in unlabeled data and no blowup in labeled data, though this requires a leave‑most‑out transductive approach and incurs intractability when only an agnostic ERM oracle is available. The results clarify the trade‑offs between sample efficiency, label efficiency, and computational tractability in relatively smart learning.

By Shaddin Dughmi, Alireza F. Pour
arXiv Machine Learning
2d ago

Learning Distributionally Robust First-Order Methods for Convex Optimization

The paper introduces a distributionally robust method for learning hyperparameters of first‑order convex optimization algorithms. By minimizing a Wasserstein‑robust performance estimation problem over a dataset of problem instances, the approach interpolates between classical learning‑to‑optimize (L2O) and worst‑case PEP design. The authors solve the resulting problem with stochastic gradient descent, provide high‑probability risk bounds, and demonstrate that the learned algorithms outperform both worst‑case optimal and vanilla L2O baselines on logistic regression, LASSO, and linear programming tasks.

By Vinit Ranjan, Jisun Park, Bartolomeo Stellato
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 11

Optimal Learning Under Tsybakov Noise

arXiv:2608. 08416v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) learning [Val84] is a fundamental learning model that has been extensively investigated.

By Steve Hanneke, Hongao Wang, Mingyue Xu
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 17

Reliable learning in challenging environments

The paper addresses the challenge of creating machine learning learners that can guarantee provably correct predictions in difficult test-time scenarios, such as adversarial attacks and natural distribution shifts. It introduces a reliable learner with optimal theoretical guarantees for these settings and discusses practical implementations. The authors demonstrate strong performance on examples like linear separators under log-concave distributions and smooth boundary classifiers under smooth probability distributions.

By Maria-Florina Balcan, Steve Hanneke, Rattana Pukdee, Dravyansh Sharma
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Aug 13

Bagging Robustly Learns VC Classes with Linear Sample Complexity

We revisit the problem of learning predictors robust to adversarial examples at test-time. We prove that VC classes are adversarially robustly learnable with sample complexity linear in the VC dimension $d$, providing an exponential improvement over the previous upper bound of Montasser, Hanneke, and Srebro (2019).

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 15

Learning and Testing Convex Functions

arXiv:2511. 11498v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We consider the problems of \emph{learning} and \emph{testing} real-valued convex functions over Gaussian space.

By Renato Ferreira Pinto Jr., Cassandra Marcussen, Elchanan Mossel, Shivam Nadimpalli