Bayesian Optimization using Pseudo-Points

Bayesian Optimization using Pseudo-Points

Chao Qian, Hang Xiong, Ke Xue

Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Main track. Pages 3044-3050. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2020/421

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a popular approach for expensive black-box optimization, with applications including parameter tuning, experimental design, and robotics. BO usually models the objective function by a Gaussian process (GP), and iteratively samples the next data point by maximizing an acquisition function. In this paper, we propose a new general framework for BO by generating pseudo-points (i.e., data points whose objective values are not evaluated) to improve the GP model. With the classic acquisition function, i.e., upper confidence bound (UCB), we prove that the cumulative regret can be generally upper bounded. Experiments using UCB and other acquisition functions, i.e., probability of improvement (PI) and expectation of improvement (EI), on synthetic as well as real-world problems clearly show the advantage of generating pseudo-points.
Keywords:
Machine Learning: Bayesian Optimization
Heuristic Search and Game Playing: Heuristic Search
Heuristic Search and Game Playing: Heuristic Search and Machine Learning