PILOT: Policy-Informed Learned Optimization for Adaptive Deep Network Training

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Altuuaim, Sattam, Ayash, Lama, Mubashar, Muhammad, Khan, Naeemullah
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Altuuaim, Sattam
Ayash, Lama
Mubashar, Muhammad
Khan, Naeemullah
author_facet Altuuaim, Sattam
Ayash, Lama
Mubashar, Muhammad
Khan, Naeemullah
contents Despite the central role of optimization in deep learning, most optimizers rely on update structures whose functional form is fixed before training begins. This static design can limit their ability to respond to changing gradient behavior across the loss landscape, where training may shift between stable, noisy, and inconsistent regimes. This study proposes PILOT (Policy-Informed Learned OpTimizer), an online optimizer that adapts its update behavior during training. Rather than using a fixed balance between momentum, normalization, and sign-based updates, PILOT uses gradient-direction agreement as a signal of local training stability. Conditioning the update rule on this agreement signal allows the optimizer to adjust its behavior when gradients become stable, noisy, or inconsistent. Experiments on FashionMNIST and CIFAR-10 show that PILOT consistently achieves the highest accuracy among the evaluated optimizers across convolutional settings. On the CNN architecture, PILOT reaches 94.13% on FashionMNIST and 81.94% on CIFAR-10. On ResNet-18, it further improves performance, reaching 95.71% on FashionMNIST and 93.42% on CIFAR-10. These results suggest that learning how to adapt the update structure during training can improve performance across both compact and deeper convolutional models while preserving a simple first-order optimization framework. The implementation of PILOT is publicly available at https://github.com/SattamAltwaim/PILOT.git
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_24570
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PILOT: Policy-Informed Learned Optimization for Adaptive Deep Network Training
Altuuaim, Sattam
Ayash, Lama
Mubashar, Muhammad
Khan, Naeemullah
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Despite the central role of optimization in deep learning, most optimizers rely on update structures whose functional form is fixed before training begins. This static design can limit their ability to respond to changing gradient behavior across the loss landscape, where training may shift between stable, noisy, and inconsistent regimes. This study proposes PILOT (Policy-Informed Learned OpTimizer), an online optimizer that adapts its update behavior during training. Rather than using a fixed balance between momentum, normalization, and sign-based updates, PILOT uses gradient-direction agreement as a signal of local training stability. Conditioning the update rule on this agreement signal allows the optimizer to adjust its behavior when gradients become stable, noisy, or inconsistent. Experiments on FashionMNIST and CIFAR-10 show that PILOT consistently achieves the highest accuracy among the evaluated optimizers across convolutional settings. On the CNN architecture, PILOT reaches 94.13% on FashionMNIST and 81.94% on CIFAR-10. On ResNet-18, it further improves performance, reaching 95.71% on FashionMNIST and 93.42% on CIFAR-10. These results suggest that learning how to adapt the update structure during training can improve performance across both compact and deeper convolutional models while preserving a simple first-order optimization framework. The implementation of PILOT is publicly available at https://github.com/SattamAltwaim/PILOT.git
title PILOT: Policy-Informed Learned Optimization for Adaptive Deep Network Training
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.24570