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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Makrygiorgos, Georgios, Ip, Joshua Hang Sai, Mesbah, Ali
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.10076
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author Makrygiorgos, Georgios
Ip, Joshua Hang Sai
Mesbah, Ali
author_facet Makrygiorgos, Georgios
Ip, Joshua Hang Sai
Mesbah, Ali
contents Bayesian optimization (BO) is a widely used method for data-driven optimization that generally relies on zeroth-order data of objective function to construct probabilistic surrogate models. These surrogates guide the exploration-exploitation process toward finding global optimum. While Gaussian processes (GPs) are commonly employed as surrogates of the unknown objective function, recent studies have highlighted the potential of Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) as scalable and flexible alternatives. Moreover, incorporating gradient observations into GPs, when available, has been shown to improve BO performance. However, the use of gradients within BNN surrogates remains unexplored. By leveraging automatic differentiation, gradient information can be seamlessly integrated into BNN training, resulting in more informative surrogates for BO. We propose a gradient-informed loss function for BNN training, effectively augmenting function observations with local gradient information. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated on well-known benchmarks in terms of improved BNN predictions and faster BO convergence as the number of decision variables increases.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_10076
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards Scalable Bayesian Optimization via Gradient-Informed Bayesian Neural Networks
Makrygiorgos, Georgios
Ip, Joshua Hang Sai
Mesbah, Ali
Machine Learning
Bayesian optimization (BO) is a widely used method for data-driven optimization that generally relies on zeroth-order data of objective function to construct probabilistic surrogate models. These surrogates guide the exploration-exploitation process toward finding global optimum. While Gaussian processes (GPs) are commonly employed as surrogates of the unknown objective function, recent studies have highlighted the potential of Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) as scalable and flexible alternatives. Moreover, incorporating gradient observations into GPs, when available, has been shown to improve BO performance. However, the use of gradients within BNN surrogates remains unexplored. By leveraging automatic differentiation, gradient information can be seamlessly integrated into BNN training, resulting in more informative surrogates for BO. We propose a gradient-informed loss function for BNN training, effectively augmenting function observations with local gradient information. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated on well-known benchmarks in terms of improved BNN predictions and faster BO convergence as the number of decision variables increases.
title Towards Scalable Bayesian Optimization via Gradient-Informed Bayesian Neural Networks
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.10076