Last-Iterate Convergence: Zero-Sum Games and Constrained Min-Max Optimization

Abstract

Motivated by applications in Game Theory, Optimization, and Generative Adversarial Networks, recent work of Daskalakis et al DISZ17 and follow-up work of Liang and Stokes LiangS18 have established that a variant of the widely used Gradient Descent/Ascent procedure, called "Optimistic Gradient Descent/Ascent (OGDA)", exhibits last-iterate convergence to saddle points in unconstrained convex-concave min-max optimization problems. We show that the same holds true in the more general problem of constrained min-max optimization under a variant of the no-regret Multiplicative-Weights-Update method called "Optimistic Multiplicative-Weights Update (OMWU)". This answers an open question of Syrgkanis et al SALS15. The proof of our result requires fundamentally different techniques from those that exist in no-regret learning literature and the aforementioned papers. We show that OMWU monotonically improves the Kullback-Leibler divergence of the current iterate to the (appropriately normalized) min-max solution until it enters a neighborhood of the solution. Inside that neighborhood we show that OMWU is locally (asymptotically) stable converging to the exact solution. We believe that our techniques will be useful in the analysis of the last iterate of other learning algorithms.

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