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Poster

Adapting to function difficulty and growth conditions in private optimization

Hilal Asi · Daniel Levy · John Duchi

Keywords: [ Privacy ] [ Optimization ]


Abstract: We develop algorithms for private stochastic convex optimization that adapt to the hardness of the specific function we wish to optimize. While previous work provide worst-case bounds for arbitrary convex functions, it is often the case that the function at hand belongs to a smaller class that enjoys faster rates. Concretely, we show that for functions exhibiting κ-growth around the optimum, i.e., f(x)f(x)+λκ1xx2κ for κ>1, our algorithms improve upon the standard d/nε privacy rate to the faster (d/nε)κκ1. Crucially, they achieve these rates without knowledge of the growth constant κ of the function. Our algorithms build upon the inverse sensitivity mechanism, which adapts to instance difficulty [2], and recent localization techniques in private optimization [25]. We complement our algorithms with matching lower bounds for these function classes and demonstrate that our adaptive algorithm is simultaneously (minimax) optimal over all κ1+c whenever c=Θ(1).

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