On learnability of distribution classes with adaptive adversaries

Tosca Lechner
Alex Bie
Gautam Kamath
ICML 2025

Abstract

We consider the question of learnability of distribution classes in the presence of adaptive adversaries – that is, adversaries capable of inspecting the whole sample requested by a learner and applying their manipulations before passing it on to the learner. We formulate a general notion of learnability with respect to adaptive adversaries, taking into account the budget of the adversary. We show that learnability with respect to additive adaptive adversaries is a strictly stronger condition than learnability with respect to additive oblivious adversaries.