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Yunchuan Guan

Publications and source records attributed to Yunchuan Guan.

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Learning an Efficient Optimizer via Hybrid-Policy Sub-Trajectory Balance

Recent advances in generative modeling enable neural networks to generate weights without relying on gradient-based optimization. However, current methods are limited by issues of over-coupling and long-horizon. The former tightly binds weight generation with task-specific objectives, thereby limiting the flexibility of the learned optimizer. The latter leads to inefficiency and low accuracy during inference, caused by the lack of local constraints. In this paper, we propose Lo-Hp, a decoupled two-stage weight generation framework that enhances flexibility through learning various optimization policies. It adopts a hybrid-policy sub-trajectory balance objective, which integrates on-policy and off-policy learning to capture local optimization policies. Theoretically, we demonstrate that learning solely local optimization policies can address the long-horizon issue while enhancing the generation of global optimal weights. In addition, we validate Lo-Hp's superior accuracy and inference efficiency in tasks that require frequent weight updates, such as transfer learning, few-shot learning, domain generalization, and large language model adaptation.

cs.LG

Is Meta-Learning Out? Rethinking Unsupervised Few-Shot Classification with Limited Entropy

Meta-learning is a powerful paradigm for tackling few-shot tasks. However, recent studies indicate that models trained with the whole-class training strategy can achieve comparable performance to those trained with meta-learning in few-shot classification tasks. To demonstrate the value of meta-learning, we establish an entropy-limited supervised setting for fair comparisons. Through both theoretical analysis and experimental validation, we establish that meta-learning has a tighter generalization bound compared to whole-class training. We unravel that meta-learning is more efficient with limited entropy and is more robust to label noise and heterogeneous tasks, making it well-suited for unsupervised tasks. Based on these insights, We propose MINO, a meta-learning framework designed to enhance unsupervised performance. MINO utilizes the adaptive clustering algorithm DBSCAN with a dynamic head for unsupervised task construction and a stability-based meta-scaler for robustness against label noise. Extensive experiments confirm its effectiveness in multiple unsupervised few-shot and zero-shot tasks.

cs.LG

Learning to Learn Weight Generation via Local Consistency Diffusion

Diffusion-based algorithms have emerged as promising techniques for weight generation. However, existing solutions are limited by two challenges: generalizability and local target assignment. The former arises from the inherent lack of cross-task transferability in existing single-level optimization methods, limiting the model's performance on new tasks. The latter lies in existing research modeling only global optimal weights, neglecting the supervision signals in local target weights. Moreover, naively assigning local target weights causes local-global inconsistency. To address these issues, we propose Mc-Di, which integrates the diffusion algorithm with meta-learning for better generalizability. Furthermore, we extend the vanilla diffusion into a local consistency diffusion algorithm. Our theory and experiments demonstrate that it can learn from local targets while maintaining consistency with the global optima. We validate Mc-Di's superior accuracy and inference efficiency in tasks that require frequent weight updates, including transfer learning, few-shot learning, domain generalization, and large language model adaptation.

cs.LG

Unsupervised Meta-Learning via Dynamic Head and Heterogeneous Task Construction for Few-Shot Classification

Meta-learning has been widely used in recent years in areas such as few-shot learning and reinforcement learning. However, the questions of why and when it is better than other algorithms in few-shot classification remain to be explored. In this paper, we perform pre-experiments by adjusting the proportion of label noise and the degree of task heterogeneity in the dataset. We use the metric of Singular Vector Canonical Correlation Analysis to quantify the representation stability of the neural network and thus to compare the behavior of meta-learning and classical learning algorithms. We find that benefiting from the bi-level optimization strategy, the meta-learning algorithm has better robustness to label noise and heterogeneous tasks. Based on the above conclusion, we argue a promising future for meta-learning in the unsupervised area, and thus propose DHM-UHT, a dynamic head meta-learning algorithm with unsupervised heterogeneous task construction. The core idea of DHM-UHT is to use DBSCAN and dynamic head to achieve heterogeneous task construction and meta-learn the whole process of unsupervised heterogeneous task construction. On several unsupervised zero-shot and few-shot datasets, DHM-UHT obtains state-of-the-art performance. The code is released at https://github.com/tuantuange/DHM-UHT.

cs.LG