Title
On Solving Minimax Optimization Locally: A Follow-the-Ridge Approach
Abstract
Many tasks in modern machine learning can be formulated as finding equilibria in sequential games. In particular, two-player zero-sum sequential games, also known as minimax optimization, have received growing interest. It is tempting to apply gradient descent to solve minimax optimization given its popularity and success in supervised learning. However, it has been noted that naive application of gradient descent fails to find some local minimax and can converge to non-local-minimax points. In this paper, we propose Follow-the-Ridge (FR), a novel algorithm that provably converges to and only converges to local minimax. We show theoretically that the algorithm addresses the notorious rotational behaviour of gradient dynamics, and is compatible with preconditioning and positive momentum. Empirically, FR solves toy minimax problems and improves the convergence of GAN training compared to the recent minimax optimization algorithms.
Year
Venue
Keywords
2020
ICLR
minimax optimization, smooth differentiable games, local convergence, generative adversarial networks, optimization
DocType
Citations 
PageRank 
Conference
0
0.34
References 
Authors
27
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yuanhao Wang112.04
Guodong Zhang216210.75
Lei Jimmy Ba38887296.55