BOND: License to Train with Black-Box Functions

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Clark, Andrew, Moursounidis, Jack, Rasouli, Osmaan, Gan, William, Doyle, Cooper, Leontjeva, Anna
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Clark, Andrew
Moursounidis, Jack
Rasouli, Osmaan
Gan, William
Doyle, Cooper
Leontjeva, Anna
author_facet Clark, Andrew
Moursounidis, Jack
Rasouli, Osmaan
Gan, William
Doyle, Cooper
Leontjeva, Anna
contents We introduce Bounded Numerical Differentiation (BOND), a perturbative method for estimating the gradients of black-box functions. BOND is distinguished by its formulation, which adaptively bounds perturbations to ensure accurate sign estimation, and by its implementation, which operates at black-box interfaces. This enables BOND to be more accurate and scalable compared to existing methods, facilitating end-to-end training of architectures that incorporate non-autodifferentiable modules. We observe that these modules, implemented in our experiments as frozen networks, can enhance model performance without increasing the number of trainable parameters. Our findings highlight the potential of leveraging fixed transformations to expand model capacity, pointing to hybrid analogue - digital devices as a path to scaling networks, and provides insights into the dynamics of adaptive optimizers.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_25074
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle BOND: License to Train with Black-Box Functions
Clark, Andrew
Moursounidis, Jack
Rasouli, Osmaan
Gan, William
Doyle, Cooper
Leontjeva, Anna
Machine Learning
I.2.6
We introduce Bounded Numerical Differentiation (BOND), a perturbative method for estimating the gradients of black-box functions. BOND is distinguished by its formulation, which adaptively bounds perturbations to ensure accurate sign estimation, and by its implementation, which operates at black-box interfaces. This enables BOND to be more accurate and scalable compared to existing methods, facilitating end-to-end training of architectures that incorporate non-autodifferentiable modules. We observe that these modules, implemented in our experiments as frozen networks, can enhance model performance without increasing the number of trainable parameters. Our findings highlight the potential of leveraging fixed transformations to expand model capacity, pointing to hybrid analogue - digital devices as a path to scaling networks, and provides insights into the dynamics of adaptive optimizers.
title BOND: License to Train with Black-Box Functions
topic Machine Learning
I.2.6
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.25074