Paper ID: 2411.05853

A Fundamental Accuracy--Robustness Trade-off in Regression and Classification

Sohail Bahmani

We derive a fundamental trade-off between standard and adversarial risk in a rather general situation that formalizes the following simple intuition: "If no (nearly) optimal predictor is smooth, adversarial robustness comes at the cost of accuracy." As a concrete example, we evaluate the derived trade-off in regression with polynomial ridge functions under mild regularity conditions.

Submitted: Nov 6, 2024