Spanning attack improves black-box attacks with unlabeled data.
problem Query inefficiency in black-box attacks due to high input space dimensionality.
method Proposes spanning attack by constraining adversarial perturbations in a low-dimensional subspace via an auxiliary unlabeled dataset.
result Significantly improves query efficiency of black-box attacks.
Unified approach for sequence design combining likelihood-free inference and black-box optimization.
problem Designing biological sequences efficiently and accurately.
method Unified probabilistic framework integrating likelihood-free inference and black-box optimization.
result Previous optimization methods can be adapted and new algorithms proposed within this framework.
Black box machine learning models are currently being used for high stakes decision-making throughout society, causing problems throughout healthcare, criminal justice, and in other domains. People have hoped that creating methods for explaining these black box models will alleviate some of these problems, but trying t…
Understanding how a learned black box works is of crucial interest for the future of Machine Learning. In this paper, we pioneer the question of the global interpretability of learned black box models that assign numerical values to symbolic sequential data. To tackle that task, we propose a spectral algorithm for the …
Black-box risk scoring models permeate our lives, yet are typically proprietary or opaque. We propose Distill-and-Compare, a model distillation and comparison approach to audit such models. To gain insight into black-box models, we treat them as teachers, training transparent student models to mimic the risk scores ass…
New research shows many recent defenses against adversarial examples are ineffective against black-box attacks.
problem The robustness of recent defenses against adversarial examples is insufficient, especially against black-box attacks.
method Evaluation of nine defenses on two black-box adversarial models and six attacks on CIFAR-10 and Fashion-MNIST datasets.
result Most recent defenses provide only marginal improvements in security (<25%) compared to undefended networks. New method optimizes black-box functions using generative models and Wasserstein distance.
problem Optimizing black-box functions with stochastic responses in high dimensions.
method Deep generative surrogate models and Wasserstein distance for uncertainty estimation.
result Method outperforms state-of-the-art methods in robustness to function shape and stochasticity.
Paper proposes a new black-box attack approach to minimize visual distortion.
problem Constructing adversarial examples that minimize visual distortion in a black-box threat model.
method Learning the noise distribution of adversarial examples to approximate the gradient of a non-differentiable loss function.
result The proposed attack results in much lower visual distortion compared to state-of-the-art black-box attacks.
Adapts model-based advice to stabilize black-box policies for nonlinear control.
problem Stabilizing machine-learned policies for nonlinear control with limited model information.
method Proposes an adaptive λ-confident policy to combine black-box and model-based advice. result Proves the stability of the adaptive λ-confident policy and its competitive ratio. Deep neural networks work well at approximating complicated functions when provided with data and trained by gradient descent methods. At the same time, there is a vast amount of existing functions that programmatically solve different tasks in a precise manner eliminating the need for training. In many cases, it is po…
NP-Attack reduces query counts for black-box adversarial attacks.
problem Efficiency of black-box adversarial attacks is low.
method Uses Neural Process to characterize image structure and find adversarial examples.
result NP-Attack significantly decreases query counts.
New approach improves black-box planning efficiency by discovering focused macros.
problem Difficulty of deterministic planning increases exponentially with depth.
method Discovering macro-actions with focused effects to improve goal-count heuristics.
result Focused macros dramatically improve black-box planning efficiency.
In recent years, deep neural networks (DNN) have become a highly active area of research, and shown remarkable achievements on a variety of computer vision tasks. DNNs, however, are known to often make overconfident yet incorrect predictions on out-of-distribution samples, which can be a major obstacle to real-world de…
New method improves black-box attacks using pre-trained models.
problem Efficiently attacking black-box models with limited information.
method EigenBA algorithm leveraging pre-trained white-box model's Jacobian matrix.
result Optimal perturbations are related to right singular vectors of Jacobian matrix.
Efficient method for generating adversarial examples with limited query budget.
problem Developing black-box adversarial attacks with limited information.
method Bayesian Optimization in a structured low-dimensional subspace.
result Significantly higher attack success rate with fewer queries.
Interpretable machine learning has become a strong competitor for traditional black-box models. However, the possible loss of the predictive performance for gaining interpretability is often inevitable, putting practitioners in a dilemma of choosing between high accuracy (black-box models) and interpretability (interpr…
Paper proposes a new black-box adversarial attack using normalizing flows.
problem Adversarial vulnerability of deep neural networks.
method Proposes a novel black-box adversarial attack using normalizing flows.
result Demonstrates competitive performance against well-known black-box adversarial attack methods.
ODS improves adversarial attacks by maximizing output diversity.
problem Efficiency and effectiveness of adversarial attacks, especially black-box attacks.
method Output Diversified Sampling (ODS) that maximizes diversity in model outputs.
result ODS reduces the number of queries needed for black-box attacks on ImageNet by a factor of two.
Develops method to assess feature importance in black-box models for unconditional distribution.
problem Lack of methods to analyze feature importance in black-box models for unconditional distribution.
method Approximation method to compute feature importance curves for unconditional distribution.
result Produces sparse and faithful results, computationally efficient.
We present an interpretable companion model for any pre-trained black-box classifiers. The idea is that for any input, a user can decide to either receive a prediction from the black-box model, with high accuracy but no explanations, or employ a companion rule to obtain an interpretable prediction with slightly lower a…
We address a non-unique parameter fitting problem in the context of material science. In particular, we propose to resolve ambiguities in parameter space by augmenting a black-box artificial neural network (ANN) model with two different levels of expert knowledge and benchmark them against a pure black-box model.
P-BO reduces black-box adversarial attacks by 10x with Bayesian optimization and function prior.
problem Efficiently generating adversarial examples against black-box models.
method Prior-guided Bayesian Optimization (P-BO) with a function prior initialized from a surrogate model.
result Significantly reduces the number of queries needed for adversarial attacks.
Many deployed learned models are black boxes: given input, returns output. Internal information about the model, such as the architecture, optimisation procedure, or training data, is not disclosed explicitly as it might contain proprietary information or make the system more vulnerable. This work shows that such attri…
Bayesian optimization outperformed random search in machine learning hyperparameter tuning challenge.
problem Optimizing hyperparameters of machine learning models using derivative-free methods.
method Bayesian optimization vs. random search on real datasets.
result Bayesian optimization significantly outperformed random search in held-out objective functions.
A new method for optimizing black-box problems with constraints.
problem Optimizing black-box systems with multiple performance criteria and constraints.
method Developed a novel constrained Bayesian optimization approach based on the knowledge gradient method.
result A new acquisition function that balances optimality and feasibility.
Paper proposes a black-box technique to generate adversarial samples.
problem Robustness of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) to adversarial samples.
method Black-box Momentum Iterative Fast Gradient Sign Method (BMI-FGSM) using Differential Evolution to approximate gradients.
result Achieves high success rates in generating adversarial samples and misclassification.
Driven by an increasing need for model interpretability, interpretable models have become strong competitors for black-box models in many real applications. In this paper, we propose a novel type of model where interpretable models compete and collaborate with black-box models. We present the Model-Agnostic Linear Comp…
We introduce overdispersed black-box variational inference, a method to reduce the variance of the Monte Carlo estimator of the gradient in black-box variational inference. Instead of taking samples from the variational distribution, we use importance sampling to take samples from an overdispersed distribution in the s…
New symmetries improve meta-reinforcement learning's generalization.
problem Black-box meta reinforcement learning struggles with generalization.
method Introduce symmetries to a black-box meta RL system.
result Incorporating symmetries improves generalization to new environments.
ALFI improves likelihood-free inference for black-box generators.
problem Limitations of likelihood-free inference on black-box generators.
method Adversarial Likelihood-Free Inference (ALFI) to estimate posterior distributions.
result ALFI achieves best parameter estimation accuracy with limited simulation.
Paper advances black-box VI using flows and Monte-Carlo methods.
problem Improving automatic posterior inference in black-box VI.
method Combines normalizing flows, Monte-Carlo methods, and optimization considerations.
result Significant improvement in state-of-the-art variational inference.
Method optimizes diffusion model generation to meet user preferences.
problem Optimizing diffusion model generation with only black-box target scores.
method Covariance-adaptive sequential optimization algorithm for black-box optimization.
result Proves superior performance in achieving better target scores.
New guarantees for black-box variational inference methods.
problem Insufficient theoretical guarantees for black-box variational inference.
method Novel convergence guarantees for stochastic optimization of variational inference.
result Provable convergence of proximal and projected stochastic gradient descent for variational inference.
DiBO uses diffusion models to optimize high-dimensional black-box functions efficiently.
problem Optimizing high-dimensional and complex black-box functions efficiently.
method DiBO iterates two stages: training a diffusion model and casting candidate selection as posterior inference.
result DiBO outperforms state-of-the-art baselines across synthetic and real-world tasks.
Stabilizing black-box algorithms through task-oriented randomization
problem Ensuring stability of black-box models
method Task-oriented randomization
result Established rigorous theoretical foundations and demonstrated effectiveness through simulations and real-world applications
Efficiently controls unknown linear systems with black-box interactions.
problem Controlling an unknown linear dynamical system from black-box interactions.
method First efficient algorithm with sublinear regret, using robust system identification.
result Resolves open problem on stochastic LQR and black-box LQR control.
We address challenges in collaborative black-box optimization through three frameworks.
problem Challenges in distributed experimentation, heterogeneity, and privacy in black-box optimization.
method Three unifying frameworks: global, local, and predictive.
result Shift from descriptive/predictive to prescriptive federated learning in black-box optimization.
IReEn reveals functionality of black-box agents via iterative neural synthesis.
problem Revealing the functionality of a black-box agent without privileged information.
method Iterative refinement of candidate programs using neural program synthesis.
result The approach finds a functional equivalent program in 78% of cases, outperforming state-of-the-art.
LA-MCTS learns search space partition for black-box optimization using Monte Carlo Tree Search.
problem High-dimensional black-box optimization challenges.
method LA-MCTS recursively splits search space into regions with high/low function values, learns nonlinear partition and local models online.
result LA-MCTS achieves strong performance in black-box optimization and reinforcement learning benchmarks, especially for high-dimensional problems.
This work addresses the situation where a black-box model with good predictive performance is chosen over its interpretable competitors, and we show interpretability is still achievable in this case. Our solution is to find an interpretable substitute on a subset of data where the black-box model is overkill or nearly …
Note that this paper is superceded by "Black-Box Adversarial Attacks with Limited Queries and Information." Current neural network-based image classifiers are susceptible to adversarial examples, even in the black-box setting, where the attacker is limited to query access without access to gradients. Previous methods -…
Improves model classification accuracy in black-box settings.
problem Difficulty in inferring model properties due to limited query access.
method Introduces discriminative factorization to distinguish high-quality queries.
result Probability of chance-level classification decreases exponentially with query budget.
Adapts example weights to optimize black-box metrics.
problem Optimizing metrics defined by black-box functions.
method Adaptive example weighting and iterative post-shifting.
result Improves classification performance compared to baselines.
New analysis improves black-box k-PCA algorithms, reducing parameter loss.
problem Designing efficient k-PCA algorithms with black-box access to a 1-PCA oracle. method Black-box deflation methods, analyzing ePCA and cPCA approximations.
result Deflation methods suffer no asymptotic parameter loss for k-cPCA in feasible regimes. Breiman discusses two statistical cultures, advocating for more research on 'before' and 'after' the black box.
problem Statistical modeling lacks exploration of processes before and after the 'black box'.
method Analyzes Breiman's visual metaphor of two statistical cultures.
result Promotes the importance of studying the 'before' and 'after' of data transformations.
Bayesian model explains and improves black-box estimators for class distribution.
problem Calibrating probabilistic classifiers and uncertainty quantification for unlabeled data.
method Introduced a Bayesian model approximating the ground-truth generative process, using efficient MCMC sampling.
result The Bayesian model is competitive and sometimes superior to established point estimators.
The paper extends statistical inference methods for black-box generative models.
problem Understanding and validating black-box generative models without access to their internal data.
method Develops model-level statistical inference tasks using generative model representations.
result Model-level representations are effective for multiple inference tasks.
AdvMind detects adversary intent in black-box attacks with high accuracy.
problem Detecting adversary intent in black-box adversarial attacks is challenging.
method AdvMind accounts for adversary adaptiveness and synthesizes queries to expose intent.
result AdvMind detects adversary intent with over 75% accuracy after observing less than 3 query batches.