Dear colleagues,

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) kindly invites you to a lecture afternoon focused on theory of machine learning, with two distinguished speakers that will focus on philosophical and technical challenges in learning to model and explore the unknown environment.

The program on 12 April: 14.00 Jonas Peters http://web.math.ku.dk/~peters/ (University of Copenhagen): /Recent Advances in Causal Inference/ 15.00  Break 15.30 Tor Lattimore https://tor-lattimore.com/ (DeepMind): /The Curse and Blessing of Curvature for Zeroth-order Convex Optimisation/ 16.30  Reception

The first talk will be delivered remotely, the second live. For further details, please check the abstracts below and the website https://www.cwi.nl/en/events/cwi-research-semester-programs/mid-semester-lecture-machine-learning-theory-semester-programme/.

These research-level lectures are intended for a non-specialist audience, and are freely accessible.

The event takes place in the Amsterdam Science Park Congress Centre.

This "Mid Semester Lecture", marks the half-way point of the Machine Learning Theory Semester Programme https://www.cwi.nl/en/events/cwi-research-semester-programs/research-programmes-in-2023/overview-research-semester-programme-machine-learning-theory/, which runs in Spring 2023. Researchers in Machine Learning Theory may also be interested in the ongoing Seminar++ meetings https://www.cwi.nl/en/events/cwi-research-semester-programs/seminar-part-4-machine-learning-theory-semester-programme/ every other Wednesday.

Best regards on behalf of CWI from the program committee,

Wouter Koolen

Tor Lattimore

/The Curse and Blessing of Curvature for Zeroth-order Convex Optimisation/

*Abstract:* Zeroth-order convex optimisation is still quite poorly understood. I will tell a story about how to use gradient-based methods without access to gradients and explain how curvature of the loss function plays the roles of both devil and angel. The main result is a near-optimal sample-complexity analysis of a simple and computationally efficient second-order method applied to a quadratic surrogate loss.

The talk is based on a recent paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.05371 with András György.

Jonas Peters/ Recent Advances in Causal Inference/

*Abstract:* see website https://www.cwi.nl/en/events/cwi-research-semester-programs/mid-semester-lecture-machine-learning-theory-semester-programme/