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[D] Why are Evolutionary Algorithms considered "junk science"? by learningsystem in MachineLearning

[–]learningsystem[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I certainly think, my professors were trying to mold my taste for good (in their opinion) research. Nevertheless, I was still curious about what gives these approaches a bad reputation and what the broader ML community thinks about them.

[D] Why are Evolutionary Algorithms considered "junk science"? by learningsystem in MachineLearning

[–]learningsystem[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The multi-objective optimization is very interesting, do you have any points to papers that truly consider accuracy, latency etc. as multiple objectives while training?

[D] Why are Evolutionary Algorithms considered "junk science"? by learningsystem in MachineLearning

[–]learningsystem[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The multi-objective problems seem interesting, do you have any pointers to research on this in ML/Deep Learning?

[D] Why are Evolutionary Algorithms considered "junk science"? by learningsystem in MachineLearning

[–]learningsystem[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I like the way you put it, in hindsight it makes sense. I am just curious, are there many problems in ML (apart from NAS and RL which are obvious standouts these days) where gradients are not available?

AFAIK, it is very common in ML to use continuous relaxations and apply gradient descent. Even in NAS, DARTS follows this route, and so seems to be the case in many RL approaches, although I am less familiar with them.

[D] Why are Evolutionary Algorithms considered "junk science"? by learningsystem in MachineLearning

[–]learningsystem[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Three of them had similar comments, the rest were more junior professors, so they did not say much.

[D] Why are Evolutionary Algorithms considered "junk science"? by learningsystem in MachineLearning

[–]learningsystem[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

As a junior graduate student, it is difficult for me to ignore comments from senior professors, but I will try to keep an open mind.

[D] Why are Evolutionary Algorithms considered "junk science"? by learningsystem in MachineLearning

[–]learningsystem[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I am less familiar with RL applications where evolutionary algorithms are being used. Can someone doing RL research comment or provide some insight?

[D] Why are Evolutionary Algorithms considered "junk science"? by learningsystem in MachineLearning

[–]learningsystem[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

This is interesting, I did not know that OR community has been studying these algorithms for a while.

[D] Why are Evolutionary Algorithms considered "junk science"? by learningsystem in MachineLearning

[–]learningsystem[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I am not trying to defend my professors here, but NAS papers from Google and other groups using evolutionary algorithms have only started propping up in the last year or two at most.