Active Preference Learning over Latent Preference Archetypes for Many-Objective Bayesian Optimization

Abstract:Preference-based many-objective Bayesian optimization typically assumes that all pairwise comparisons arise from a single latent utility function, despite real decision makers often exhibiting multiple latent preference archetypes across contexts. We propose an active preference learning framework for many-objective Bayesian optimization that infers latent preference archetypes from pairwise comparisons, enabling both the identification of the active trade-off strategy and the refinement of its associated preferences. Our framework represents preferences as a Dirichlet-process mixture of latent archetypes and introduces mixture-aware information-theoretic query strategies that separately target archetype identification and within-archetype refinement through a hybrid acquisition policy. Experiments on synthetic benchmarks and real-world chemical process design case-study consistently outperforms state-of-the-art preference-based Bayesian optimization methods while recovering interpretable latent preference structure beyond conventional single-utility models. The proposed mixture-aware diagnostics further quantify archetype recovery and preference calibration, providing insights that are not captured by optimization performance alone.

Machine Learning (cs.LG); Machine Learning (stat.ML)

arXiv:2603.28410 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2603.28410v2 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.28410 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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