Bayesian Optimization with Preference Exploration using a Monotonic Neural Network Ensemble

Hanyang Wang, Juergen Branke, Matthias Poloczek

Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 38 (NeurIPS 2025) Main Conference Track

Many real-world black-box optimization problems have multiple conflicting objectives. Rather than attempting to approximate the entire set of Pareto-optimal solutions, interactive preference learning, i.e., optimization with a decision maker in the loop, allows to focus the search on the most relevant subset. However, few previous studies have exploited the fact that utility functions are usually monotonic. In this paper, we address the Bayesian Optimization with Preference Exploration (BOPE) problem and propose using a neural network ensemble as a utility surrogate model. This approach naturally integrates monotonicity and allows to learn the decision maker's preferences from pairwise comparisons. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art approaches and exhibits robustness to noise in utility evaluations. An ablation study highlights the critical role of monotonicity in enhancing performance.