arXiv Machine Learning

ZO-Act: Efficient Zeroth-Order Fine-Tuning via One-Shot Activation-Informed Low-Rank Subspaces

arXiv:2607. 01125v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization enables fine-tuning large language models when backpropagation is unavailable or memory-prohibitive, but existing methods often perturb full model weights or randomly constructed low-dimensional subspaces, yielding high-variance estimates and limited performance.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 5

Dominant-Layer ZO: A Single Layer Dominates Zeroth-Order Fine-Tuning of LLMs

arXiv:2606. 05516v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization enables memory-efficient fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs) using only forward passes, but it remains unclear how useful adaptation is distributed across layers.

By Wanhao Yu, Ziyan Wang, Zheng Wang, Abeer Matar Almalky, Yihang Zuo, Shuteng Niu, Sen Lin, Adnan Siraj Rakin, Deliang Fan, Li Yang
arXiv Machine Learning
1d ago

SubZero+: Efficient Zeroth-Order LLM Fine-Tuning via Large Learning Rates

arXiv:2608. 15665v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization enables backpropagation-free fine-tuning of large language models, but existing ZO methods suffer from high-variance gradient estimators, making convergence unstable and highly sensitive to learning rates.

By Ziming Yu, Shuyao Xiao, Xingyu Zhao, Sike Wang, Pan Zhou, Peiyu Zang, Xiangda Yan, Yongjie Yang, Jia Li
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 30

BaRA: Bayesian Adaptive Rank Allocation for Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning

arXiv:2606. 29184v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: While Low-rank adaptation (LoRA) enables highly efficient fine-tuning by constraining task-specific updates to fixed low-rank subspaces, this rigid design limits representational flexibility and often results in overconfident predictions and miscalibrated uncertainty, especially in low-data regimes.

By Zhibin Duan, Yuhong Wang, Jiahong Fu, Zongsheng Yue, Bo Chen, Zongben Xu