ZoAQ: Adaptive Zeroth-Order Querying via Query-Reuse Coupling
Mirrored from arXiv — Machine Learning for archival readability. Support the source by reading on the original site.
Computer Science > Machine Learning
Title:ZoAQ: Adaptive Zeroth-Order Querying via Query-Reuse Coupling
Abstract:Zeroth-order optimization (ZOO) estimates updates from function evaluations, making perturbation queries a primary cost. Fixed budgets spend the same number of queries at every step, while adaptive controllers may offset their savings by using additional oracle calls to test estimator reliability. We introduce ZoAQ, an adaptive ZOO method built around query reuse. Rather than discarding past evaluations after each step, ZoAQ makes them useful for both the next update and the decision to query further. This enables adaptive query allocation without extra validation queries. Our analysis characterizes when this agreement identifies an update that supports descent and guides the controller to a sufficient query budget. On synthetic objectives, ZoAQ reduces queries by 43-48% relative to fixed baselines using 1.2M queries. In black-box attacks, it reaches 100% success with 320 and 625 average queries on MNIST and CIFAR-10, respectively. Across four OPT fine-tuning settings, ZoAQ saves 43-46% forward evaluations relative to fixed K=4, with accuracy changes within tasks ranging from -0.018 to +0.010.
| Comments: | 40 pages, 13 figures, and 19 tables |
| Subjects: | Machine Learning (cs.LG) |
| Cite as: | arXiv:2609.22115 [cs.LG] |
| (or arXiv:2609.22115v1 [cs.LG] for this version) | |
| https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.22115
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
|
Access Paper:
- View PDF
- HTML (experimental)
- TeX Source
References & Citations
Bookmark
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
Demos
Recommenders and Search Tools
arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
More from arXiv — Machine Learning
-
Stable and Faithful Explanations for Knowledge Tracing
Sep 25
-
SMILESGNN: Interpretable Clinical Toxicity Prediction via SMILES-Graph Cross-Attention Fusion
Sep 25
-
CFD Correction of Open Tip Clearance Flow in a Compressor Cascade Using VAE Latent Space Adaptation
Sep 25
-
CARE: Condition-Aware Representation Regularization for Diffusion Models
Sep 25
Discussion (0)
Sign in to join the discussion. Free account, 30 seconds — email code or GitHub.
Sign in →No comments yet. Sign in and be the first to say something.