Multi-Objective Deep Learning with Adaptive Reference Vectors

Weiyu Chen, James Kwok

Keywords: Mutli-Task Learning, Multi-Objective Optimization

Abstract: Many deep learning models involve optimizing multiple objectives. Since objectives are often conflicting, we aim to get diverse and representative trade-off solutions among these objectives. Gradient-based multi-objective optimization (MOO) algorithms using reference vectors have shown promising performance. However, they may still produce undesirable solutions due to mismatch between the pre-specified reference vectors and the problem's underlying Pareto front. In this paper, we propose a novel gradient-based MOO algorithm with adaptive reference vectors. We formulate reference vector adaption as a bilevel optimization problem, and solve it with an efficient solver. Theoretical convergence analysis is also provided. Experiments on an extensive set of learning scenarios demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm over the state-of-the-art.