AutoML MOOC Beat the AutoML System
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IJCAI 2026 Special

Beat the AutoML System!

Welcome! You are entering a 3-level optimization challenge. Beat the automated algorithm tuning baseline at each stage to advance. Can you outperform state-of-the-art AutoML?

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Top 10 prizes are only awarded in person at our IJCAI 2026 booth, "Northern AI Research Alliance," on Wednesday at 1:00 pm. If you're not there, the prize cannot be handed out. See the Conditions of Participation for details.
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Level 1: Hyperparameter Optimization

Tune Learning Rate and Batch Size. Find the peak of the accuracy landscape in at most 10 evaluations.

What is log10(LR)? Learning rate is searched on a power-of-10 scale: -5 = 10-5 (0.00001) • -3 = 10-3 (0.001) • -1 = 10-1 (0.1).

Tap inside the grid to evaluate the hyperparameters

10-3.0 (0.001)
64
Evaluations Used 0/10

Stage Leaderboard

Your Best Accuracy: -
AutoML Baseline Best: -
Outperform the baseline accuracy to unlock Level 2.
# LR BS Acc
No evaluations yet. Click the grid to start.

About Level 1: Logarithmic Hyperparameter Search & Bayesian Optimization

Why log10 for Learning Rate? In machine learning, learning rates span several orders of magnitude (from 0.00001 up to 0.1). Searching on a log10 scale ($10^{-5}$ to $10^{-1}$) allows equal search resolution across each power of ten (e.g. $10^{-5}$, $10^{-4}$, $10^{-3}$, $10^{-2}$, $10^{-1}$) rather than clustering only at high values.

AutoML Baseline (GP-UCB): You are competing against a Bayesian Optimization agent. It models the unknown accuracy landscape with a Gaussian Process (GP) surrogate model and uses the Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) acquisition function to balance exploration (high uncertainty) and exploitation (refining near the current best candidate).