Authors: Paul Thagard
Abstract: Explanatory inference is the creation and evaluation of hypotheses that provide explanations, and is sometimes known as abduction or abductive inference. Generative AI is a new set of artificial intelligence models based on novel algorithms for generating text, images, and sounds. This paper proposes a set of benchmarks for assessing the ability of AI programs to perform explanatory inference, and uses them to determine the extent to which ChatGPT, a leading generative AI model, is capable of making explanatory inferences. Tests on the benchmarks reveal that ChatGPT performs creative and evaluative inferences in many domains, although it is limited to verbal and visual modalities. Claims that ChatGPT and similar models are incapable of explanation, understanding, causal reasoning, meaning, and creativity are rebutted.
Authors: Gabriel Sarch, Sahil Somani, Raghav Kapoor, Michael J. Tarr, Katerina Fragkiadaki
Abstract: Recent research on instructable agents has used memory-augmented Large Language Models (LLMs) as task planners, a technique that retrieves language-program examples relevant to the input instruction and uses them as in-context examples in the LLM prompt to improve the performance of the LLM in inferring the correct action and task plans. In this technical report, we extend the capabilities of HELPER, by expanding its memory with a wider array of examples and prompts, and by integrating additional APIs for asking questions. This simple expansion of HELPER into a shared memory enables the agent to work across the domains of executing plans from dialogue, natural language instruction following, active question asking, and commonsense room reorganization. We evaluate the agent on four diverse interactive visual-language embodied agent benchmarks: ALFRED, TEACh, DialFRED, and the Tidy Task. HELPER-X achieves few-shot, state-of-the-art performance across these benchmarks using a single agent, without requiring in-domain training, and remains competitive with agents that have undergone in-domain training.
Authors: Linyi Ding, Sizhe Zhou, Jinfeng Xiao, Jiawei Han
Abstract: Despite widespread applications of knowledge graphs (KGs) in various tasks such as question answering and intelligent conversational systems, existing KGs face two major challenges: information granularity and deficiency in timeliness. These hinder considerably the retrieval and analysis of in-context, fine-grained, and up-to-date knowledge from KGs, particularly in highly specialized themes (e.g., specialized scientific research) and rapidly evolving contexts (e.g., breaking news or disaster tracking). To tackle such challenges, we propose a theme-specific knowledge graph (i.e., ThemeKG), a KG constructed from a theme-specific corpus, and design an unsupervised framework for ThemeKG construction (named TKGCon). The framework takes raw theme-specific corpus and generates a high-quality KG that includes salient entities and relations under the theme. Specifically, we start with an entity ontology of the theme from Wikipedia, based on which we then generate candidate relations by Large Language Models (LLMs) to construct a relation ontology. To parse the documents from the theme corpus, we first map the extracted entity pairs to the ontology and retrieve the candidate relations. Finally, we incorporate the context and ontology to consolidate the relations for entity pairs. We observe that directly prompting GPT-4 for theme-specific KG leads to inaccurate entities (such as "two main types" as one entity in the query result) and unclear (such as "is", "has") or wrong relations (such as "have due to", "to start"). In contrast, by constructing the theme-specific KG step by step, our model outperforms GPT-4 and could consistently identify accurate entities and relations. Experimental results also show that our framework excels in evaluations compared with various KG construction baselines.
Authors: Abir Chakraborty
Abstract: Knowledge graphs (KGs) are large datasets with specific structures representing large knowledge bases (KB) where each node represents a key entity and relations amongst them are typed edges. Natural language queries formed to extract information from a KB entail starting from specific nodes and reasoning over multiple edges of the corresponding KG to arrive at the correct set of answer nodes. Traditional approaches of question answering on KG are based on (a) semantic parsing (SP), where a logical form (e.g., S-expression, SPARQL query, etc.) is generated using node and edge embeddings and then reasoning over these representations or tuning language models to generate the final answer directly, or (b) information-retrieval based that works by extracting entities and relations sequentially. In this work, we evaluate the capability of (LLMs) to answer questions over KG that involve multiple hops. We show that depending upon the size and nature of the KG we need different approaches to extract and feed the relevant information to an LLM since every LLM comes with a fixed context window. We evaluate our approach on six KGs with and without the availability of example-specific sub-graphs and show that both the IR and SP-based methods can be adopted by LLMs resulting in an extremely competitive performance.
Authors: Nandhini Swaminathan, David Danks
Abstract: As AI increasingly integrates with human decision-making, we must carefully consider interactions between the two. In particular, current approaches focus on optimizing individual agent actions but often overlook the nuances of collective intelligence. Group dynamics might require that one agent (e.g., the AI system) compensate for biases and errors in another agent (e.g., the human), but this compensation should be carefully developed. We provide a theoretical framework for algorithmic compensation that synthesizes game theory and reinforcement learning principles to demonstrate the natural emergence of deceptive outcomes from the continuous learning dynamics of agents. We provide simulation results involving Markov Decision Processes (MDP) learning to interact. This work then underpins our ethical analysis of the conditions in which AI agents should adapt to biases and behaviors of other agents in dynamic and complex decision-making environments. Overall, our approach addresses the nuanced role of strategic deception of humans, challenging previous assumptions about its detrimental effects. We assert that compensation for others' biases can enhance coordination and ethical alignment: strategic deception, when ethically managed, can positively shape human-AI interactions.
Authors: Shannon L. Walston, Hiroshi Seki, Hirotaka Takita, Yasuhito Mitsuyama, Shingo Sato, Akifumi Hagiwara, Rintaro Ito, Shouhei Hanaoka, Yukio Miki, Daiju Ueda
Abstract: Medicine and artificial intelligence (AI) engineering represent two distinct fields each with decades of published history. With such history comes a set of terminology that has a specific way in which it is applied. However, when two distinct fields with overlapping terminology start to collaborate, miscommunication and misunderstandings can occur. This narrative review aims to give historical context for these terms, accentuate the importance of clarity when these terms are used in medical AI contexts, and offer solutions to mitigate misunderstandings by readers from either field. Through an examination of historical documents, including articles, writing guidelines, and textbooks, this review traces the divergent evolution of terms for data sets and their impact. Initially, the discordant interpretations of the word 'validation' in medical and AI contexts are explored. Then the data sets used for AI evaluation are classified, namely random splitting, cross-validation, temporal, geographic, internal, and external sets. The accurate and standardized description of these data sets is crucial for demonstrating the robustness and generalizability of AI applications in medicine. This review clarifies existing literature to provide a comprehensive understanding of these classifications and their implications in AI evaluation. This review then identifies often misunderstood terms and proposes pragmatic solutions to mitigate terminological confusion. Among these solutions are the use of standardized terminology such as 'training set,' 'validation (or tuning) set,' and 'test set,' and explicit definition of data set splitting terminologies in each medical AI research publication. This review aspires to enhance the precision of communication in medical AI, thereby fostering more effective and transparent research methodologies in this interdisciplinary field.
Authors: Yanggyu Lee, Suchae Jeong, Jihie Kim
Abstract: LLMs trained in the understanding of programming syntax are now providing effective assistance to developers and are being used in programming education such as in generation of coding problem examples or providing code explanations. A key aspect of programming education is understanding and dealing with error message. However, 'logical errors' in which the program operates against the programmer's intentions do not receive error messages from the compiler. In this study, building on existing research on programming errors, we first define the types of logical errors that can occur in programming in general. Based on the definition, we propose an effective approach for detecting logical errors with LLMs that makes use of relations among error types in the Chain-of-Thought and Tree-of-Thought prompts. The experimental results indicate that when such logical error descriptions in the prompt are used, the average classifition performance is about 21% higher than the ones without them. We also conducted an experiment for exploiting the relations among errors in generating a new logical error dataset using LLMs. As there is very limited dataset for logical errors such benchmark dataset can be very useful for various programming related applications. We expect that our work can assist novice programmers in identifying the causes of code errors and correct them more effectively.
Authors: Kristina Levina, Nikolaos Pappas, Athanasios Karapantelakis, Aneta Vulgarakis Feljan, Jendrik Seipp
Abstract: Reward machines inform reinforcement learning agents about the reward structure of the environment and often drastically speed up the learning process. However, reward machines only accept Boolean features such as robot-reached-gold. Consequently, many inherently numeric tasks cannot profit from the guidance offered by reward machines. To address this gap, we aim to extend reward machines with numeric features such as distance-to-gold. For this, we present two types of reward machines: numeric-Boolean and numeric. In a numeric-Boolean reward machine, distance-to-gold is emulated by two Boolean features distance-to-gold-decreased and robot-reached-gold. In a numeric reward machine, distance-to-gold is used directly alongside the Boolean feature robot-reached-gold. We compare our new approaches to a baseline reward machine in the Craft domain, where the numeric feature is the agent-to-target distance. We use cross-product Q-learning, Q-learning with counter-factual experiences, and the options framework for learning. Our experimental results show that our new approaches significantly outperform the baseline approach. Extending reward machines with numeric features opens up new possibilities of using reward machines in inherently numeric tasks.
Authors: Adam D. Kypriadis, Isaac E. Lagaris, Aristidis Likas, Konstantinos E. Parsopoulos
Abstract: A critical issue in approximating solutions of ordinary differential equations using neural networks is the exact satisfaction of the boundary or initial conditions. For this purpose, neural forms have been introduced, i.e., functional expressions that depend on neural networks which, by design, satisfy the prescribed conditions exactly. Expanding upon prior progress, the present work contributes in three distinct aspects. First, it presents a novel formalism for crafting optimized neural forms. Second, it outlines a method for establishing an upper bound on the absolute deviation from the exact solution. Third, it introduces a technique for converting problems with Neumann or Robin conditions into equivalent problems with parametric Dirichlet conditions. The proposed optimized neural forms were numerically tested on a set of diverse problems, encompassing first-order and second-order ordinary differential equations, as well as first-order systems. Stiff and delay differential equations were also considered. The obtained solutions were compared against solutions obtained via Runge-Kutta methods and exact solutions wherever available. The reported results and analysis verify that in addition to the exact satisfaction of the boundary or initial conditions, optimized neural forms provide closed-form solutions of superior interpolation capability and controllable overall accuracy.
Authors: Maarten C. Stol, Alessandra Mileo
Abstract: Neurosymbolic background knowledge and the expressivity required of its logic can break Machine Learning assumptions about data Independence and Identical Distribution. In this position paper we propose to analyze IID relaxation in a hierarchy of logics that fit different use case requirements. We discuss the benefits of exploiting known data dependencies and distribution constraints for Neurosymbolic use cases and argue that the expressivity required for this knowledge has implications for the design of underlying ML routines. This opens a new research agenda with general questions about Neurosymbolic background knowledge and the expressivity required of its logic.
Authors: Steph Buongiorno, Lawrence Jake Klinkert, Tanishq Chawla, Zixin Zhuang, Corey Clark
Abstract: This research introduces Procedural Artificial Narrative using Generative AI (PANGeA), a structured approach for leveraging large language models (LLMs), guided by a game designer's high-level criteria, to generate narrative content for turn-based role-playing video games (RPGs). Distinct from prior applications of LLMs used for video game design, PANGeA innovates by not only generating game level data (which includes, but is not limited to, setting, key items, and non-playable characters (NPCs)), but by also fostering dynamic, free-form interactions between the player and the environment that align with the procedural game narrative. The NPCs generated by PANGeA are personality-biased and express traits from the Big 5 Personality Model in their generated responses. PANGeA addresses challenges behind ingesting free-form text input, which can prompt LLM responses beyond the scope of the game narrative. A novel validation system that uses the LLM's intelligence evaluates text input and aligns generated responses with the unfolding narrative. Making these interactions possible, PANGeA is supported by a server that hosts a custom memory system that supplies context for augmenting generated responses thus aligning them with the procedural narrative. For its broad application, the server has a REST interface enabling any game engine to integrate directly with PANGeA, as well as an LLM interface adaptable with local or private LLMs. PANGeA's ability to foster dynamic narrative generation by aligning responses with the procedural narrative is demonstrated through an empirical study and ablation test of two versions of a demo game. These are, a custom, browser-based GPT and a Unity demo. As the results show, PANGeA holds potential to assist game designers in using LLMs to generate narrative-consistent content even when provided varied and unpredictable, free-form text input.
Authors: Claude Draude, Dominik D\"urrschnabel, Johannes Hirth, Viktoria Horn, Jonathan Kropf, J\"orn Lamla, Gerd Stumme, Markus Uhlmann
Abstract: With our work, we contribute towards a qualitative analysis of the discourse on controversies in online news media. For this, we employ Formal Concept Analysis and the economics of conventions to derive conceptual controversy maps. In our experiments, we analyze two maps from different news journals with methods from ordinal data science. We show how these methods can be used to assess the diversity, complexity and potential bias of controversies. In addition to that, we discuss how the diagrams of concept lattices can be used to navigate between news articles.
Authors: Sarmad N. Mohammed, Semra G\"und\"u\c{c}
Abstract: One of the prime problems of computer science and machine learning is to extract information efficiently from large-scale, heterogeneous data. Text data, with its syntax, semantics, and even hidden information content, possesses an exceptional place among the data types in concern. The processing of the text data requires embedding, a method of translating the content of the text to numeric vectors. A correct embedding algorithm is the starting point for obtaining the full information content of the text data. In this work, a new embedding method based on the graph structure of the meaningful sentences is proposed. The design of the algorithm aims to construct an embedding vector that constitutes syntactic and semantic elements as well as the hidden content of the text data. The success of the proposed embedding method is tested in classification problems. Among the wide range of application areas, text classification is the best laboratory for embedding methods; the classification power of the method can be tested using dimensional reduction without any further processing. Furthermore, the method can be compared with different embedding algorithms and machine learning methods. The proposed method is tested with real-world data sets and eight well-known and successful embedding algorithms. The proposed embedding method shows significantly better classification for binary and multiclass datasets compared to well-known algorithms.
Authors: A. I. Medvedeva, M. V. Kholod
Abstract: The paper describes how various techniques for applying artificial intelligence to the study of human eyes are utilized. The first dataset was collected using computerized perimetry to investigate the visualization of the human visual field and the diagnosis of glaucoma. A method to analyze the image using software tools is proposed. The second dataset was obtained, as part of the implementation of a Russian-Swiss experiment to collect and analyze eye movement data using the Tobii Pro Glasses 3 device on VR video. Eye movements and focus on the recorded route of a virtual journey through the canton of Vaud were investigated. Methods are being developed to investigate the dependencies of eye pupil movements using mathematical modelling. VR-video users can use these studies in medicine to assess the course and deterioration of glaucoma patients and to study the mechanisms of attention to tourist attractions.
Authors: Qingyang Zhang, Yake Wei, Zongbo Han, Huazhu Fu, Xi Peng, Cheng Deng, Qinghua Hu, Cai Xu, Jie Wen, Di Hu, Changqing Zhang
Abstract: Multimodal fusion focuses on integrating information from multiple modalities with the goal of more accurate prediction, which has achieved remarkable progress in a wide range of scenarios, including autonomous driving and medical diagnosis. However, the reliability of multimodal fusion remains largely unexplored especially under low-quality data settings. This paper surveys the common challenges and recent advances of multimodal fusion in the wild and presents them in a comprehensive taxonomy. From a data-centric view, we identify four main challenges that are faced by multimodal fusion on low-quality data, namely (1) noisy multimodal data that are contaminated with heterogeneous noises, (2) incomplete multimodal data that some modalities are missing, (3) imbalanced multimodal data that the qualities or properties of different modalities are significantly different and (4) quality-varying multimodal data that the quality of each modality dynamically changes with respect to different samples. This new taxonomy will enable researchers to understand the state of the field and identify several potential directions. We also provide discussion for the open problems in this field together with interesting future research directions.
Authors: Damith Chamalke Senadeera, Xiaoyun Yang, Dimitrios Kollias, Gregory Slabaugh
Abstract: In this paper we introduce CUE-Net, a novel architecture designed for automated violence detection in video surveillance. As surveillance systems become more prevalent due to technological advances and decreasing costs, the challenge of efficiently monitoring vast amounts of video data has intensified. CUE-Net addresses this challenge by combining spatial Cropping with an enhanced version of the UniformerV2 architecture, integrating convolutional and self-attention mechanisms alongside a novel Modified Efficient Additive Attention mechanism (which reduces the quadratic time complexity of self-attention) to effectively and efficiently identify violent activities. This approach aims to overcome traditional challenges such as capturing distant or partially obscured subjects within video frames. By focusing on both local and global spatiotemporal features, CUE-Net achieves state-of-the-art performance on the RWF-2000 and RLVS datasets, surpassing existing methods.
Authors: Zhaoning Shi, Meng Xiang, Zhaoyang Hai, Xiabi Liu, Yan Pei
Abstract: Genetic algorithms have played an important role in engineering optimization. Traditional GAs treat each gene separately. However, biophysical studies of gene regulatory networks revealed direct associations between different genes. It inspires us to propose an improvement to GA in this paper, Gene Regulatory Genetic Algorithm (GRGA), which, to our best knowledge, is the first time to utilize relationships among genes for improving GA's accuracy and efficiency. We design a directed multipartite graph encapsulating the solution space, called RGGR, where each node corresponds to a gene in the solution and the edge represents the relationship between adjacent nodes. The edge's weight reflects the relationship degree and is updated based on the idea that the edges' weights in a complete chain as candidate solution with acceptable or unacceptable performance should be strengthened or reduced, respectively. The obtained RGGR is then employed to determine appropriate loci of crossover and mutation operators, thereby directing the evolutionary process toward faster and better convergence. We analyze and validate our proposed GRGA approach in a single-objective multimodal optimization problem, and further test it on three types of applications, including feature selection, text summarization, and dimensionality reduction. Results illustrate that our GARA is effective and promising.
Authors: Jun Yu, Yutong Dai, Xiaokang Liu, Jin Huang, Yishan Shen, Ke Zhang, Rong Zhou, Eashan Adhikarla, Wenxuan Ye, Yixin Liu, Zhaoming Kong, Kai Zhang, Yilong Yin, Vinod Namboodiri, Brian D. Davison, Jason H. Moore, Yong Chen
Abstract: MTL is a learning paradigm that effectively leverages both task-specific and shared information to address multiple related tasks simultaneously. In contrast to STL, MTL offers a suite of benefits that enhance both the training process and the inference efficiency. MTL's key advantages encompass streamlined model architecture, performance enhancement, and cross-domain generalizability. Over the past twenty years, MTL has become widely recognized as a flexible and effective approach in various fields, including CV, NLP, recommendation systems, disease prognosis and diagnosis, and robotics. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of MTL, encompassing the technical aspects of cutting-edge methods from traditional approaches to deep learning and the latest trend of pretrained foundation models. Our survey methodically categorizes MTL techniques into five key areas: regularization, relationship learning, feature propagation, optimization, and pre-training. This categorization not only chronologically outlines the development of MTL but also dives into various specialized strategies within each category. Furthermore, the survey reveals how the MTL evolves from handling a fixed set of tasks to embracing a more flexible approach free from task or modality constraints. It explores the concepts of task-promptable and -agnostic training, along with the capacity for ZSL, which unleashes the untapped potential of this historically coveted learning paradigm. Overall, we hope this survey provides the research community with a comprehensive overview of the advancements in MTL from its inception in 1997 to the present in 2023. We address present challenges and look ahead to future possibilities, shedding light on the opportunities and potential avenues for MTL research in a broad manner. This project is publicly available at https://github.com/junfish/Awesome-Multitask-Learning.
URLs: https://github.com/junfish/Awesome-Multitask-Learning.
Authors: Dimitris Bertsimas, Yu Ma
Abstract: Recent breakthroughs in AI are poised to fundamentally enhance our study and understanding of healthcare. The development of an integrated many-to-many framework that leverages multiple data modality inputs for the analytical modeling of multiple medical tasks, is critical for a unified understanding of modern medicine. In this work, we introduce M3H, an explainable Multimodal Multitask Machine Learning for Healthcare framework that consolidates learning from diverse multimodal inputs across a broad spectrum of medical task categories and machine learning problem classes. The modular design of the framework ensures its generalizable data processing, task definition, and rapid model prototyping, applicable to both clinical and operational healthcare settings. We evaluate the M3H framework by validating models trained from four modalities (tabular, time-series, language, and vision) on 41 medical tasks across 4 machine learning problem classes. Our results demonstrate that M3H consistently produces multitask models that outperform canonical single-task models (by 1.1- 37.2%) across 37 disease diagnoses from 16 medical departments, three hospital operation forecasts, and one patient phenotyping task: spanning ML problem classes of supervised binary classification, multiclass classification, regression, and clustering. Additionally, the framework introduces a novel attention mechanism to balance self-exploitation (focus on learning source task), and cross-exploration (encourage learning from other tasks). Furthermore, M3H provides explainability insights on how joint learning of additional tasks impacts the learning of source task using a proposed TIM score, shedding light into the dynamics of task interdependencies. Its adaptable architecture facilitates the customization and integration, establishing it as a robust and scalable candidate solution for future AI-driven healthcare systems.
Authors: Paul Pu Liang
Abstract: Building multisensory AI systems that learn from multiple sensory inputs such as text, speech, video, real-world sensors, wearable devices, and medical data holds great promise for impact in many scientific areas with practical benefits, such as in supporting human health and well-being, enabling multimedia content processing, and enhancing real-world autonomous agents. By synthesizing a range of theoretical frameworks and application domains, this thesis aims to advance the machine learning foundations of multisensory AI. In the first part, we present a theoretical framework formalizing how modalities interact with each other to give rise to new information for a task. These interactions are the basic building blocks in all multimodal problems, and their quantification enables users to understand their multimodal datasets, design principled approaches to learn these interactions, and analyze whether their model has succeeded in learning. In the second part, we study the design of practical multimodal foundation models that generalize over many modalities and tasks, which presents a step toward grounding large language models to real-world sensory modalities. We introduce MultiBench, a unified large-scale benchmark across a wide range of modalities, tasks, and research areas, followed by the cross-modal attention and multimodal transformer architectures that now underpin many of today's multimodal foundation models. Scaling these architectures on MultiBench enables the creation of general-purpose multisensory AI systems, and we discuss our collaborative efforts in applying these models for real-world impact in affective computing, mental health, cancer prognosis, and robotics. Finally, we conclude this thesis by discussing how future work can leverage these ideas toward more general, interactive, and safe multisensory AI.
Authors: Bahar Radmehr, Adish Singla, Tanja K\"aser
Abstract: There has been a growing interest in developing learner models to enhance learning and teaching experiences in educational environments. However, existing works have primarily focused on structured environments relying on meticulously crafted representations of tasks, thereby limiting the agent's ability to generalize skills across tasks. In this paper, we aim to enhance the generalization capabilities of agents in open-ended text-based learning environments by integrating Reinforcement Learning (RL) with Large Language Models (LLMs). We investigate three types of agents: (i) RL-based agents that utilize natural language for state and action representations to find the best interaction strategy, (ii) LLM-based agents that leverage the model's general knowledge and reasoning through prompting, and (iii) hybrid LLM-assisted RL agents that combine these two strategies to improve agents' performance and generalization. To support the development and evaluation of these agents, we introduce PharmaSimText, a novel benchmark derived from the PharmaSim virtual pharmacy environment designed for practicing diagnostic conversations. Our results show that RL-based agents excel in task completion but lack in asking quality diagnostic questions. In contrast, LLM-based agents perform better in asking diagnostic questions but fall short of completing the task. Finally, hybrid LLM-assisted RL agents enable us to overcome these limitations, highlighting the potential of combining RL and LLMs to develop high-performing agents for open-ended learning environments.
Authors: Akash Awasthi, Safwan Ahmad, Bryant Le, Hien Van Nguyen
Abstract: In the realm of chest X-ray (CXR) image analysis, radiologists meticulously examine various regions, documenting their observations in reports. The prevalence of errors in CXR diagnoses, particularly among inexperienced radiologists and hospital residents, underscores the importance of understanding radiologists' intentions and the corresponding regions of interest. This understanding is crucial for correcting mistakes by guiding radiologists to the accurate regions of interest, especially in the diagnosis of chest radiograph abnormalities. In response to this imperative, we propose a novel system designed to identify the primary intentions articulated by radiologists in their reports and the corresponding regions of interest in CXR images. This system seeks to elucidate the visual context underlying radiologists' textual findings, with the potential to rectify errors made by less experienced practitioners and direct them to precise regions of interest. Importantly, the proposed system can be instrumental in providing constructive feedback to inexperienced radiologists or junior residents in the hospital, bridging the gap in face-to-face communication. The system represents a valuable tool for enhancing diagnostic accuracy and fostering continuous learning within the medical community.
Authors: Yilun Hua, Nicholas Chernogor, Yuzhe Gu, Seoyeon Julie Jeong, Miranda Luo, Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil
Abstract: Throughout a conversation, the way participants interact with each other is in constant flux: their tones may change, they may resort to different strategies to convey their points, or they might alter their interaction patterns. An understanding of these dynamics can complement that of the actual facts and opinions discussed, offering a more holistic view of the trajectory of the conversation: how it arrived at its current state and where it is likely heading. In this work, we introduce the task of summarizing the dynamics of conversations, by constructing a dataset of human-written summaries, and exploring several automated baselines. We evaluate whether such summaries can capture the trajectory of conversations via an established downstream task: forecasting whether an ongoing conversation will eventually derail into toxic behavior. We show that they help both humans and automated systems with this forecasting task. Humans make predictions three times faster, and with greater confidence, when reading the summaries than when reading the transcripts. Furthermore, automated forecasting systems are more accurate when constructing, and then predicting based on, summaries of conversation dynamics, compared to directly predicting on the transcripts.
Authors: Lei Kang, Mohamed Ali Souibgui, Fei Yang, Lluis Gomez, Ernest Valveny, Dimosthenis Karatzas
Abstract: Document understanding models have recently demonstrated remarkable performance by leveraging extensive collections of user documents. However, since documents often contain large amounts of personal data, their usage can pose a threat to user privacy and weaken the bonds of trust between humans and AI services. In response to these concerns, legislation advocating ``the right to be forgotten" has recently been proposed, allowing users to request the removal of private information from computer systems and neural network models. A novel approach, known as machine unlearning, has emerged to make AI models forget about a particular class of data. In our research, we explore machine unlearning for document classification problems, representing, to the best of our knowledge, the first investigation into this area. Specifically, we consider a realistic scenario where a remote server houses a well-trained model and possesses only a small portion of training data. This setup is designed for efficient forgetting manipulation. This work represents a pioneering step towards the development of machine unlearning methods aimed at addressing privacy concerns in document analysis applications. Our code is publicly available at \url{https://github.com/leitro/MachineUnlearning-DocClassification}.
URLs: https://github.com/leitro/MachineUnlearning-DocClassification
Authors: Tianyong Wang, Xiangyu Liang, Wangguandong Zheng, Dan Niu, Haifeng Xia, Siyu Xia
Abstract: The talking head generation recently attracted considerable attention due to its widespread application prospects, especially for digital avatars and 3D animation design. Inspired by this practical demand, several works explored Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) to synthesize the talking heads. However, these methods based on NeRF face two challenges: (1) Difficulty in generating style-controllable talking heads. (2) Displacement artifacts around the neck in rendered images. To overcome these two challenges, we propose a novel generative paradigm \textit{Embedded Representation Learning Network} (ERLNet) with two learning stages. First, the \textit{ audio-driven FLAME} (ADF) module is constructed to produce facial expression and head pose sequences synchronized with content audio and style video. Second, given the sequence deduced by the ADF, one novel \textit{dual-branch fusion NeRF} (DBF-NeRF) explores these contents to render the final images. Extensive empirical studies demonstrate that the collaboration of these two stages effectively facilitates our method to render a more realistic talking head than the existing algorithms.
Authors: Ximing Dong, Dayi Lin, Shaowei Wang, Ahmed E. Hassan
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have significantly advanced natural language processing (NLP) tasks but also pose ethical and societal risks due to their propensity to generate harmful content. To address this, various approaches have been developed to safeguard LLMs from producing unsafe content. However, existing methods have limitations, including the need for training specific control models and proactive intervention during text generation, that lead to quality degradation and increased computational overhead. To mitigate those limitations, we propose LLMSafeGuard, a lightweight framework to safeguard LLM text generation in real-time. LLMSafeGuard integrates an external validator into the beam search algorithm during decoding, rejecting candidates that violate safety constraints while allowing valid ones to proceed. We introduce a similarity based validation approach, simplifying constraint introduction and eliminating the need for control model training. Additionally, LLMSafeGuard employs a context-wise timing selection strategy, intervening LLMs only when necessary. We evaluate LLMSafe-Guard on two tasks, detoxification and copyright safeguarding, and demonstrate its superior performance over SOTA baselines. For instance, LLMSafeGuard reduces the average toxic score of. LLM output by 29.7% compared to the best baseline meanwhile preserving similar linguistic quality as natural output in detoxification task. Similarly, in the copyright task, LLMSafeGuard decreases the Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) by 56.2% compared to baselines. Moreover, our context-wise timing selection strategy reduces inference time by at least 24% meanwhile maintaining comparable effectiveness as validating each time step. LLMSafeGuard also offers tunable parameters to balance its effectiveness and efficiency.
Authors: K. Aditya Mohan, Massimiliano Ferrucci, Chuck Divin, Garrett A. Stevenson, Hyojin Kim
Abstract: 4D time-space reconstruction of dynamic events or deforming objects using X-ray computed tomography (CT) is an extremely ill-posed inverse problem. Existing approaches assume that the object remains static for the duration of several tens or hundreds of X-ray projection measurement images (reconstruction of consecutive limited-angle CT scans). However, this is an unrealistic assumption for many in-situ experiments that causes spurious artifacts and inaccurate morphological reconstructions of the object. To solve this problem, we propose to perform a 4D time-space reconstruction using a distributed implicit neural representation (DINR) network that is trained using a novel distributed stochastic training algorithm. Our DINR network learns to reconstruct the object at its output by iterative optimization of its network parameters such that the measured projection images best match the output of the CT forward measurement model. We use a continuous time and space forward measurement model that is a function of the DINR outputs at a sparsely sampled set of continuous valued object coordinates. Unlike existing state-of-the-art neural representation architectures that forward and back propagate through dense voxel grids that sample the object's entire time-space coordinates, we only propagate through the DINR at a small subset of object coordinates in each iteration resulting in an order-of-magnitude reduction in memory and compute for training. DINR leverages distributed computation across several compute nodes and GPUs to produce high-fidelity 4D time-space reconstructions even for extremely large CT data sizes. We use both simulated parallel-beam and experimental cone-beam X-ray CT datasets to demonstrate the superior performance of our approach.
Authors: Darren Lage, Riley Pruitt, Jason Ross Arnold
Abstract: This study examines the extent to which U.S. federal agencies responded to and implemented the principles outlined in the White House's October 2022 "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights." The Blueprint provided a framework for the ethical governance of artificial intelligence systems, organized around five core principles: safety and effectiveness, protection against algorithmic discrimination, data privacy, notice and explanation about AI systems, and human alternatives and fallback. Through an analysis of publicly available records across 15 federal departments, the authors found limited evidence that the Blueprint directly influenced agency actions after its release. Only five departments explicitly mentioned the Blueprint, while 12 took steps aligned with one or more of its principles. However, much of this work appeared to have precedents predating the Blueprint or motivations disconnected from it, such as compliance with prior executive orders on trustworthy AI. Departments' activities often emphasized priorities like safety, accountability and transparency that overlapped with Blueprint principles, but did not necessarily stem from it. The authors conclude that the non-binding Blueprint seems to have had minimal impact on shaping the U.S. government's approach to ethical AI governance in its first year. Factors like public concerns after high-profile AI releases and obligations to follow direct executive orders likely carried more influence over federal agencies. More rigorous study would be needed to definitively assess the Blueprint's effects within the federal bureaucracy and broader society.
Authors: Dianwei Chen, Yaobang Gong, Xianfeng Yang
Abstract: Existing Advanced Driver Assistance Systems primarily focus on the vehicle directly ahead, often overlooking potential risks from following vehicles. This oversight can lead to ineffective handling of high risk situations, such as high speed, closely spaced, multi vehicle scenarios where emergency braking by one vehicle might trigger a pile up collision. To overcome these limitations, this study introduces a novel deep reinforcement learning based algorithm for longitudinal control and collision avoidance. This proposed algorithm effectively considers the behavior of both leading and following vehicles. Its implementation in simulated high risk scenarios, which involve emergency braking in dense traffic where traditional systems typically fail, has demonstrated the algorithm ability to prevent potential pile up collisions, including those involving heavy duty vehicles.
Authors: Ruixuan Sun, Xinyi Li, Avinash Akella, Joseph A. Konstan
Abstract: This paper explores the effectiveness of using large language models (LLMs) for personalized movie recommendations from users' perspectives in an online field experiment. Our study involves a combination of between-subject prompt and historic consumption assessments, along with within-subject recommendation scenario evaluations. By examining conversation and survey response data from 160 active users, we find that LLMs offer strong recommendation explainability but lack overall personalization, diversity, and user trust. Our results also indicate that different personalized prompting techniques do not significantly affect user-perceived recommendation quality, but the number of movies a user has watched plays a more significant role. Furthermore, LLMs show a greater ability to recommend lesser-known or niche movies. Through qualitative analysis, we identify key conversational patterns linked to positive and negative user interaction experiences and conclude that providing personal context and examples is crucial for obtaining high-quality recommendations from LLMs.
Authors: Salvador Robles Herrera, Verya Monjezi, Vladik Kreinovich, Ashutosh Trivedi, Saeid Tizpaz-Niari
Abstract: This paper investigates the relationships between hyperparameters of machine learning and fairness. Data-driven solutions are increasingly used in critical socio-technical applications where ensuring fairness is important. Rather than explicitly encoding decision logic via control and data structures, the ML developers provide input data, perform some pre-processing, choose ML algorithms, and tune hyperparameters (HPs) to infer a program that encodes the decision logic. Prior works report that the selection of HPs can significantly influence fairness. However, tuning HPs to find an ideal trade-off between accuracy, precision, and fairness has remained an expensive and tedious task. Can we predict fairness of HP configuration for a given dataset? Are the predictions robust to distribution shifts? We focus on group fairness notions and investigate the HP space of 5 training algorithms. We first find that tree regressors and XGBoots significantly outperformed deep neural networks and support vector machines in accurately predicting the fairness of HPs. When predicting the fairness of ML hyperparameters under temporal distribution shift, the tree regressors outperforms the other algorithms with reasonable accuracy. However, the precision depends on the ML training algorithm, dataset, and protected attributes. For example, the tree regressor model was robust for training data shift from 2014 to 2018 on logistic regression and discriminant analysis HPs with sex as the protected attribute; but not for race and other training algorithms. Our method provides a sound framework to efficiently perform fine-tuning of ML training algorithms and understand the relationships between HPs and fairness.
Authors: Zihao Li, Yuyi Ao, Jingrui He
Abstract: Knowledge graphs (KGs), which store an extensive number of relational facts (head, relation, tail), serve various applications. While many downstream tasks highly rely on the expressive modeling and predictive embedding of KGs, most of the current KG representation learning methods, where each entity is embedded as a vector in the Euclidean space and each relation is embedded as a transformation, follow an entity ranking protocol. On one hand, such an embedding design cannot capture many-to-many relations. On the other hand, in many retrieval cases, the users wish to get an exact set of answers without any ranking, especially when the results are expected to be precise, e.g., which genes cause an illness. Such scenarios are commonly referred to as "set retrieval". This work presents a pioneering study on the KG set retrieval problem. We show that the set retrieval highly depends on expressive modeling of many-to-many relations, and propose a new KG embedding model SpherE to address this problem. SpherE is based on rotational embedding methods, but each entity is embedded as a sphere instead of a vector. While inheriting the high interpretability of rotational-based models, our SpherE can more expressively model one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many relations. Through extensive experiments, we show that our SpherE can well address the set retrieval problem while still having a good predictive ability to infer missing facts. The code is available at https://github.com/Violet24K/SpherE.
Authors: Cai Yu, Shan Jia, Xiaomeng Fu, Jin Liu, Jiahe Tian, Jiao Dai, Xi Wang, Siwei Lyu, Jizhong Han
Abstract: With the rising prevalence of deepfakes, there is a growing interest in developing generalizable detection methods for various types of deepfakes. While effective in their specific modalities, traditional detection methods fall short in addressing the generalizability of detection across diverse cross-modal deepfakes. This paper aims to explicitly learn potential cross-modal correlation to enhance deepfake detection towards various generation scenarios. Our approach introduces a correlation distillation task, which models the inherent cross-modal correlation based on content information. This strategy helps to prevent the model from overfitting merely to audio-visual synchronization. Additionally, we present the Cross-Modal Deepfake Dataset (CMDFD), a comprehensive dataset with four generation methods to evaluate the detection of diverse cross-modal deepfakes. The experimental results on CMDFD and FakeAVCeleb datasets demonstrate the superior generalizability of our method over existing state-of-the-art methods. Our code and data can be found at \url{https://github.com/ljj898/CMDFD-Dataset-and-Deepfake-Detection}.
URLs: https://github.com/ljj898/CMDFD-Dataset-and-Deepfake-Detection
Authors: Xinwei Chen, Kun Li, Tianyou Song, Jiangjian Guo
Abstract: Named Entity Recognition (NER) is an essential steppingstone in the field of natural language processing. Although promising performance has been achieved by various distantly supervised models, we argue that distant supervision inevitably introduces incomplete and noisy annotations, which may mislead the model training process. To address this issue, we propose a robust NER model named BOND-MoE based on Mixture of Experts (MoE). Instead of relying on a single model for NER prediction, multiple models are trained and ensembled under the Expectation-Maximization (EM) framework, so that noisy supervision can be dramatically alleviated. In addition, we introduce a fair assignment module to balance the document-model assignment process. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets show that the proposed method achieves state-of-the-art performance compared with other distantly supervised NER.
Authors: Benet Oriol Sabat, Alessandro Achille, Matthew Trager, Stefano Soatto
Abstract: We propose NeRF-Insert, a NeRF editing framework that allows users to make high-quality local edits with a flexible level of control. Unlike previous work that relied on image-to-image models, we cast scene editing as an in-painting problem, which encourages the global structure of the scene to be preserved. Moreover, while most existing methods use only textual prompts to condition edits, our framework accepts a combination of inputs of different modalities as reference. More precisely, a user may provide a combination of textual and visual inputs including images, CAD models, and binary image masks for specifying a 3D region. We use generic image generation models to in-paint the scene from multiple viewpoints, and lift the local edits to a 3D-consistent NeRF edit. Compared to previous methods, our results show better visual quality and also maintain stronger consistency with the original NeRF.
Authors: Yoonsik Kim, Moonbin Yim, Ka Yeon Song
Abstract: In this paper, we establish a benchmark for table visual question answering, referred to as the TableVQA-Bench, derived from pre-existing table question-answering (QA) and table structure recognition datasets. It is important to note that existing datasets have not incorporated images or QA pairs, which are two crucial components of TableVQA. As such, the primary objective of this paper is to obtain these necessary components. Specifically, images are sourced either through the application of a \textit{stylesheet} or by employing the proposed table rendering system. QA pairs are generated by exploiting the large language model (LLM) where the input is a text-formatted table. Ultimately, the completed TableVQA-Bench comprises 1,500 QA pairs. We comprehensively compare the performance of various multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) on TableVQA-Bench. GPT-4V achieves the highest accuracy among commercial and open-sourced MLLMs from our experiments. Moreover, we discover that the number of vision queries plays a significant role in TableVQA performance. To further analyze the capabilities of MLLMs in comparison to their LLM backbones, we investigate by presenting image-formatted tables to MLLMs and text-formatted tables to LLMs, respectively. Our findings suggest that processing visual inputs is more challenging than text inputs, as evidenced by the lower performance of MLLMs, despite generally requiring higher computational costs than LLMs. The proposed TableVQA-Bench and evaluation codes are available at \href{https://github.com/naver-ai/tablevqabench}{https://github.com/naver-ai/tablevqabench}.
URLs: https://github.com/naver-ai/tablevqabench, https://github.com/naver-ai/tablevqabench
Authors: Odin Zhang, Haitao Lin, Hui Zhang, Huifeng Zhao, Yufei Huang, Yuansheng Huang, Dejun Jiang, Chang-yu Hsieh, Peichen Pan, Tingjun Hou
Abstract: The idea of using deep-learning-based molecular generation to accelerate discovery of drug candidates has attracted extraordinary attention, and many deep generative models have been developed for automated drug design, termed molecular generation. In general, molecular generation encompasses two main strategies: de novo design, which generates novel molecular structures from scratch, and lead optimization, which refines existing molecules into drug candidates. Among them, lead optimization plays an important role in real-world drug design. For example, it can enable the development of me-better drugs that are chemically distinct yet more effective than the original drugs. It can also facilitate fragment-based drug design, transforming virtual-screened small ligands with low affinity into first-in-class medicines. Despite its importance, automated lead optimization remains underexplored compared to the well-established de novo generative models, due to its reliance on complex biological and chemical knowledge. To bridge this gap, we conduct a systematic review of traditional computational methods for lead optimization, organizing these strategies into four principal sub-tasks with defined inputs and outputs. This review delves into the basic concepts, goals, conventional CADD techniques, and recent advancements in AIDD. Additionally, we introduce a unified perspective based on constrained subgraph generation to harmonize the methodologies of de novo design and lead optimization. Through this lens, de novo design can incorporate strategies from lead optimization to address the challenge of generating hard-to-synthesize molecules; inversely, lead optimization can benefit from the innovations in de novo design by approaching it as a task of generating molecules conditioned on certain substructures.
Authors: Xinzhe Li, Ming Liu, Shang Gao
Abstract: Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG) systems have been actively studied and deployed across various industries to query on domain-specific knowledge base. However, evaluating these systems presents unique challenges due to the scarcity of domain-specific queries and corresponding ground truths, as well as a lack of systematic approaches to diagnosing the cause of failure cases -- whether they stem from knowledge deficits or issues related to system robustness. To address these challenges, we introduce GRAMMAR (GRounded And Modular Methodology for Assessment of RAG), an evaluation framework comprising two key elements: 1) a data generation process that leverages relational databases and LLMs to efficiently produce scalable query-answer pairs. This method facilitates the separation of query logic from linguistic variations for enhanced debugging capabilities; and 2) an evaluation framework that differentiates knowledge gaps from robustness and enables the identification of defective modules. Our empirical results underscore the limitations of current reference-free evaluation approaches and the reliability of GRAMMAR to accurately identify model vulnerabilities.
Authors: Shannon Smith, Melissa Tate, Keri Freeman, Anne Walsh, Brian Ballsun-Stanton, Mark Hooper, Murray Lane
Abstract: Generative Artificial Intelligence (generative AI) poses both opportunities and risks for the integrity of research. Universities must guide researchers in using generative AI responsibly, and in navigating a complex regulatory landscape subject to rapid change. By drawing on the experiences of two Australian universities, we propose a framework to help institutions promote and facilitate the responsible use of generative AI. We provide guidance to help distil the diverse regulatory environment into a principles-based position statement. Further, we explain how a position statement can then serve as a foundation for initiatives in training, communications, infrastructure, and process change. Despite the growing body of literature about AI's impact on academic integrity for undergraduate students, there has been comparatively little attention on the impacts of generative AI for research integrity, and the vital role of institutions in helping to address those challenges. This paper underscores the urgency for research institutions to take action in this area and suggests a practical and adaptable framework for so doing.
Authors: Chunlin Tian, Zhan Shi, Zhijiang Guo, Li Li, Chengzhong Xu
Abstract: Adapting Large Language Models (LLMs) to new tasks through fine-tuning has been made more efficient by the introduction of Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) techniques, such as LoRA. However, these methods often underperform compared to full fine-tuning, particularly in scenarios involving complex datasets. This issue becomes even more pronounced in complex domains, highlighting the need for improved PEFT approaches that can achieve better performance. Through a series of experiments, we have uncovered two critical insights that shed light on the training and parameter inefficiency of LoRA. Building on these insights, we have developed HydraLoRA, a LoRA framework with an asymmetric structure that eliminates the need for domain expertise. Our experiments demonstrate that HydraLoRA outperforms other PEFT approaches, even those that rely on domain knowledge during the training and inference phases. \href{https://github.com/Clin0212/HydraLoRA}{Code}.
Authors: Liam Roy, Dana Kulic, Elizabeth Croft
Abstract: Collaborative robots must effectively communicate their internal state to humans to enable a smooth interaction. Nonverbal communication is widely used to communicate information during human-robot interaction, however, such methods may also be misunderstood, leading to communication errors. In this work, we explore modulating the acoustic parameter values (pitch bend, beats per minute, beats per loop) of nonverbal auditory expressions to convey functional robot states (accomplished, progressing, stuck). We propose a reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm based on noisy human feedback to produce accurately interpreted nonverbal auditory expressions. The proposed approach was evaluated through a user study with 24 participants. The results demonstrate that: 1. Our proposed RL-based approach is able to learn suitable acoustic parameter values which improve the users' ability to correctly identify the state of the robot. 2. Algorithm initialization informed by previous user data can be used to significantly speed up the learning process. 3. The method used for algorithm initialization strongly influences whether participants converge to similar sounds for each robot state. 4. Modulation of pitch bend has the largest influence on user association between sounds and robotic states.
Authors: Vaishak Narayanan, Prabin Raj KP, Saifudheen Nouphal
Abstract: Current evaluation benchmarks for question answering (QA) in Indic languages often rely on machine translation of existing English datasets. This approach suffers from bias and inaccuracies inherent in machine translation, leading to datasets that may not reflect the true capabilities of EQA models for Indic languages. This paper proposes a new benchmark specifically designed for evaluating Hindi EQA models and discusses the methodology to do the same for any task. This method leverages large language models (LLMs) to generate a high-quality dataset in an extractive setting, ensuring its relevance for the target language. We believe this new resource will foster advancements in Hindi NLP research by providing a more accurate and reliable evaluation tool.
Authors: Ryoma Sato
Abstract: We propose training-free graph neural networks (TFGNNs), which can be used without training and can also be improved with optional training, for transductive node classification. We first advocate labels as features (LaF), which is an admissible but not explored technique. We show that LaF provably enhances the expressive power of graph neural networks. We design TFGNNs based on this analysis. In the experiments, we confirm that TFGNNs outperform existing GNNs in the training-free setting and converge with much fewer training iterations than traditional GNNs.
Authors: Swayamjit Saha
Abstract: Wind speed is a powerful source of renewable energy, which can be used as an alternative to the non-renewable resources for production of electricity. Renewable sources are clean, infinite and do not impact the environment negatively during production of electrical energy. However, while eliciting electrical energy from renewable resources viz. solar irradiance, wind speed, hydro should require special planning failing which may result in huge loss of labour and money for setting up the system. In this paper, we discuss four deep recurrent neural networks viz. Stacked Stateless LSTM, Stacked Stateless GRU, Stacked Stateful LSTM and Statcked Stateful GRU which will be used to predict wind speed on a short-term basis for the airport sites beside two campuses of Mississippi State University. The paper does a comprehensive analysis of the performance of the models used describing their architectures and how efficiently they elicit the results with the help of RMSE values. A detailed description of the time and space complexities of the above models has also been discussed.
Authors: Zhanwei Zhang, Zishuo Hua, Minghao Chen, Wei Lu, Binbin Lin, Deng Cai, Wenxiao Wang
Abstract: Predicting future trajectories of traffic agents accurately holds substantial importance in various applications such as autonomous driving. Previous methods commonly infer all future steps of an agent either recursively or simultaneously. However, the recursive strategy suffers from the accumulated error, while the simultaneous strategy overlooks the constraints among future steps, resulting in kinematically infeasible predictions. To address these issues, in this paper, we propose G2LTraj, a plug-and-play global-to-local generation approach for trajectory prediction. Specifically, we generate a series of global key steps that uniformly cover the entire future time range. Subsequently, the local intermediate steps between the adjacent key steps are recursively filled in. In this way, we prevent the accumulated error from propagating beyond the adjacent key steps. Moreover, to boost the kinematical feasibility, we not only introduce the spatial constraints among key steps but also strengthen the temporal constraints among the intermediate steps. Finally, to ensure the optimal granularity of key steps, we design a selectable granularity strategy that caters to each predicted trajectory. Our G2LTraj significantly improves the performance of seven existing trajectory predictors across the ETH, UCY and nuScenes datasets. Experimental results demonstrate its effectiveness. Code will be available at https://github.com/Zhanwei-Z/G2LTraj.
Authors: Soham Mitra, Atri Sukul, Swalpa Kumar Roy, Pravendra Singh, Vinay Verma
Abstract: Deep learning models have achieved remarkable success across diverse domains. However, the intricate nature of these models often impedes a clear understanding of their decision-making processes. This is where Explainable AI (XAI) becomes indispensable, offering intuitive explanations for model decisions. In this work, we propose a simple yet highly effective approach, ScoreCAM++, which introduces modifications to enhance the promising ScoreCAM method for visual explainability. Our proposed approach involves altering the normalization function within the activation layer utilized in ScoreCAM, resulting in significantly improved results compared to previous efforts. Additionally, we apply an activation function to the upsampled activation layers to enhance interpretability. This improvement is achieved by selectively gating lower-priority values within the activation layer. Through extensive experiments and qualitative comparisons, we demonstrate that ScoreCAM++ consistently achieves notably superior performance and fairness in interpreting the decision-making process compared to both ScoreCAM and previous methods.
Authors: Chenjia Bai, Lingxiao Wang, Jianye Hao, Zhuoran Yang, Bin Zhao, Zhen Wang, Xuelong Li
Abstract: Offline Reinforcement Learning (RL) has shown promising results in learning a task-specific policy from a fixed dataset. However, successful offline RL often relies heavily on the coverage and quality of the given dataset. In scenarios where the dataset for a specific task is limited, a natural approach is to improve offline RL with datasets from other tasks, namely, to conduct Multi-Task Data Sharing (MTDS). Nevertheless, directly sharing datasets from other tasks exacerbates the distribution shift in offline RL. In this paper, we propose an uncertainty-based MTDS approach that shares the entire dataset without data selection. Given ensemble-based uncertainty quantification, we perform pessimistic value iteration on the shared offline dataset, which provides a unified framework for single- and multi-task offline RL. We further provide theoretical analysis, which shows that the optimality gap of our method is only related to the expected data coverage of the shared dataset, thus resolving the distribution shift issue in data sharing. Empirically, we release an MTDS benchmark and collect datasets from three challenging domains. The experimental results show our algorithm outperforms the previous state-of-the-art methods in challenging MTDS problems. See https://github.com/Baichenjia/UTDS for the datasets and code.
Authors: Benjamin Alt, Johannes Zahn, Claudius Kienle, Julia Dvorak, Marvin May, Darko Katic, Rainer J\"akel, Tobias Kopp, Michael Beetz, Gisela Lanza
Abstract: While recent advances in deep learning have demonstrated its transformative potential, its adoption for real-world manufacturing applications remains limited. We present an Explanation User Interface (XUI) for a state-of-the-art deep learning-based robot program optimizer which provides both naive and expert users with different user experiences depending on their skill level, as well as Explainable AI (XAI) features to facilitate the application of deep learning methods in real-world applications. To evaluate the impact of the XUI on task performance, user satisfaction and cognitive load, we present the results of a preliminary user survey and propose a study design for a large-scale follow-up study.
Authors: Kirill Milintsevich, Ga\"el Dias, Kairit Sirts
Abstract: This paper explores the impact of incorporating sentiment, emotion, and domain-specific lexicons into a transformer-based model for depression symptom estimation. Lexicon information is added by marking the words in the input transcripts of patient-therapist conversations as well as in social media posts. Overall results show that the introduction of external knowledge within pre-trained language models can be beneficial for prediction performance, while different lexicons show distinct behaviours depending on the targeted task. Additionally, new state-of-the-art results are obtained for the estimation of depression level over patient-therapist interviews.
Authors: Tamara C. P. Florijn, Pinar Yolum, Tim Baarslag
Abstract: Automated negotiation is a well-known mechanism for autonomous agents to reach agreements. To realize beneficial agreements quickly, it is key to employ a good bidding strategy. When a negotiating agent has a good back-up plan, i.e., a high reservation value, failing to reach an agreement is not necessarily disadvantageous. Thus, the agent can adopt a risk-seeking strategy, aiming for outcomes with a higher utilities. Accordingly, this paper develops an optimal bidding strategy called MIA-RVelous for bilateral negotiations with private reservation values. The proposed greedy algorithm finds the optimal bid sequence given the agent's beliefs about the opponent in $O(n^2D)$ time, with $D$ the maximum number of rounds and $n$ the number of outcomes. The results obtained here can pave the way to realizing effective concurrent negotiations, given that concurrent negotiations can serve as a (probabilistic) backup plan.
Authors: Zhanwei Zhang, Minghao Chen, Shuai Xiao, Liang Peng, Hengjia Li, Binbin Lin, Ping Li, Wenxiao Wang, Boxi Wu, Deng Cai
Abstract: Recent self-training techniques have shown notable improvements in unsupervised domain adaptation for 3D object detection (3D UDA). These techniques typically select pseudo labels, i.e., 3D boxes, to supervise models for the target domain. However, this selection process inevitably introduces unreliable 3D boxes, in which 3D points cannot be definitively assigned as foreground or background. Previous techniques mitigate this by reweighting these boxes as pseudo labels, but these boxes can still poison the training process. To resolve this problem, in this paper, we propose a novel pseudo label refinery framework. Specifically, in the selection process, to improve the reliability of pseudo boxes, we propose a complementary augmentation strategy. This strategy involves either removing all points within an unreliable box or replacing it with a high-confidence box. Moreover, the point numbers of instances in high-beam datasets are considerably higher than those in low-beam datasets, also degrading the quality of pseudo labels during the training process. We alleviate this issue by generating additional proposals and aligning RoI features across different domains. Experimental results demonstrate that our method effectively enhances the quality of pseudo labels and consistently surpasses the state-of-the-art methods on six autonomous driving benchmarks. Code will be available at https://github.com/Zhanwei-Z/PERE.
Authors: Lei Zhuang, Jingdong Zhao, Yuntao Li, Zichun Xu, Liangliang Zhao, Hong Liu
Abstract: Sampling-based motion planning (SBMP) algorithms are renowned for their robust global search capabilities. However, the inherent randomness in their sampling mechanisms often result in inconsistent path quality and limited search efficiency. In response to these challenges, this work proposes a novel deep learning-based motion planning framework, named Transformer-Enhanced Motion Planner (TEMP), which synergizes an Environmental Information Semantic Encoder (EISE) with a Motion Planning Transformer (MPT). EISE converts environmental data into semantic environmental information (SEI), providing MPT with an enriched environmental comprehension. MPT leverages an attention mechanism to dynamically recalibrate its focus on SEI, task objectives, and historical planning data, refining the sampling node generation. To demonstrate the capabilities of TEMP, we train our model using a dataset comprised of planning results produced by the RRT*. EISE and MPT are collaboratively trained, enabling EISE to autonomously learn and extract patterns from environmental data, thereby forming semantic representations that MPT could more effectively interpret and utilize for motion planning. Subsequently, we conducted a systematic evaluation of TEMP's efficacy across diverse task dimensions, which demonstrates that TEMP achieves exceptional performance metrics and a heightened degree of generalizability compared to state-of-the-art SBMPs.
Authors: D. Panas, S. Seth, V. Belle
Abstract: Two major areas of interest in the era of Large Language Models regard questions of what do LLMs know, and if and how they may be able to reason (or rather, approximately reason). Since to date these lines of work progressed largely in parallel (with notable exceptions), we are interested in investigating the intersection: probing for reasoning about the implicitly-held knowledge. Suspecting the performance to be lacking in this area, we use a very simple set-up of comparisons between cardinalities associated with elements of various subjects (e.g. the number of legs a bird has versus the number of wheels on a tricycle). We empirically demonstrate that although LLMs make steady progress in knowledge acquisition and (pseudo)reasoning with each new GPT release, their capabilities are limited to statistical inference only. It is difficult to argue that pure statistical learning can cope with the combinatorial explosion inherent in many commonsense reasoning tasks, especially once arithmetical notions are involved. Further, we argue that bigger is not always better and chasing purely statistical improvements is flawed at the core, since it only exacerbates the dangerous conflation of the production of correct answers with genuine reasoning ability.
Authors: Nathan Gavenski, Odinaldo Rodrigues, Michael Luck
Abstract: Imitation learning is an approach in which an agent learns how to execute a task by trying to mimic how one or more teachers perform it. This learning approach offers a compromise between the time it takes to learn a new task and the effort needed to collect teacher samples for the agent. It achieves this by balancing learning from the teacher, who has some information on how to perform the task, and deviating from their examples when necessary, such as states not present in the teacher samples. Consequently, the field of imitation learning has received much attention from researchers in recent years, resulting in many new methods and applications. However, with this increase in published work and past surveys focusing mainly on methodology, a lack of standardisation became more prominent in the field. This non-standardisation is evident in the use of environments, which appear in no more than two works, and evaluation processes, such as qualitative analysis, that have become rare in current literature. In this survey, we systematically review current imitation learning literature and present our findings by (i) classifying imitation learning techniques, environments and metrics by introducing novel taxonomies; (ii) reflecting on main problems from the literature; and (iii) presenting challenges and future directions for researchers.
Authors: Zhen Guo
Abstract: Large language model pre-training has become increasingly expensive, with most practitioners relying on scaling laws to allocate compute budgets for model size and training tokens, commonly referred to as Compute-Optimal or Chinchilla Optimal. In this paper, we hypothesize a new scaling law that suggests model performance depends mostly on the amount of compute spent for transformer-based models, independent of the specific allocation to model size and dataset size. Using this unified scaling law, we predict that (a) for inference efficiency, training should prioritize smaller model sizes and larger training datasets, and (b) assuming the exhaustion of available web datasets, scaling the model size might be the only way to further improve model performance.
Authors: Ziyan Chen, Jingwen He, Xinqi Lin, Yu Qiao, Chao Dong
Abstract: Blind face restoration (BFR) on images has significantly progressed over the last several years, while real-world video face restoration (VFR), which is more challenging for more complex face motions such as moving gaze directions and facial orientations involved, remains unsolved. Typical BFR methods are evaluated on privately synthesized datasets or self-collected real-world low-quality face images, which are limited in their coverage of real-world video frames. In this work, we introduced new real-world datasets named FOS with a taxonomy of "Full, Occluded, and Side" faces from mainly video frames to study the applicability of current methods on videos. Compared with existing test datasets, FOS datasets cover more diverse degradations and involve face samples from more complex scenarios, which helps to revisit current face restoration approaches more comprehensively. Given the established datasets, we benchmarked both the state-of-the-art BFR methods and the video super resolution (VSR) methods to comprehensively study current approaches, identifying their potential and limitations in VFR tasks. In addition, we studied the effectiveness of the commonly used image quality assessment (IQA) metrics and face IQA (FIQA) metrics by leveraging a subjective user study. With extensive experimental results and detailed analysis provided, we gained insights from the successes and failures of both current BFR and VSR methods. These results also pose challenges to current face restoration approaches, which we hope stimulate future advances in VFR research.
Authors: Mingkai Tang, Yuanhang Li, Hongji Liu, Yingbing Chen, Ming Liu, Lujia Wang
Abstract: With the expansion of the scale of robotics applications, the multi-goal multi-agent pathfinding (MG-MAPF) problem began to gain widespread attention. This problem requires each agent to visit pre-assigned multiple goal points at least once without conflict. Some previous methods have been proposed to solve the MG-MAPF problem based on Decoupling the goal Vertex visiting order search and the Single-agent pathfinding (DVS). However, this paper demonstrates that the methods based on DVS cannot always obtain the optimal solution. To obtain the optimal result, we propose the Multi-Goal Conflict-Based Search (MGCBS), which is based on Decoupling the goal Safe interval visiting order search and the Single-agent pathfinding (DSS). Additionally, we present the Time-Interval-Space Forest (TIS Forest) to enhance the efficiency of MGCBS by maintaining the shortest paths from any start point at any start time step to each safe interval at the goal points. The experiment demonstrates that our method can consistently obtain optimal results and execute up to 7 times faster than the state-of-the-art method in our evaluation.
Authors: Rayan Armani, Changlin Qian, Jiaxi Jiang, Christian Holz
Abstract: While camera-based capture systems remain the gold standard for recording human motion, learning-based tracking systems based on sparse wearable sensors are gaining popularity. Most commonly, they use inertial sensors, whose propensity for drift and jitter have so far limited tracking accuracy. In this paper, we propose Ultra Inertial Poser, a novel 3D full body pose estimation method that constrains drift and jitter in inertial tracking via inter-sensor distances. We estimate these distances across sparse sensor setups using a lightweight embedded tracker that augments inexpensive off-the-shelf 6D inertial measurement units with ultra-wideband radio-based ranging$-$dynamically and without the need for stationary reference anchors. Our method then fuses these inter-sensor distances with the 3D states estimated from each sensor Our graph-based machine learning model processes the 3D states and distances to estimate a person's 3D full body pose and translation. To train our model, we synthesize inertial measurements and distance estimates from the motion capture database AMASS. For evaluation, we contribute a novel motion dataset of 10 participants who performed 25 motion types, captured by 6 wearable IMU+UWB trackers and an optical motion capture system, totaling 200 minutes of synchronized sensor data (UIP-DB). Our extensive experiments show state-of-the-art performance for our method over PIP and TIP, reducing position error from $13.62$ to $10.65cm$ ($22\%$ better) and lowering jitter from $1.56$ to $0.055km/s^3$ (a reduction of $97\%$).
Authors: Yucheng Hu, Yuxing Lu
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have catalyzed significant advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP), yet they encounter challenges such as hallucination and the need for domain-specific knowledge. To mitigate these, recent methodologies have integrated information retrieved from external resources with LLMs, substantially enhancing their performance across NLP tasks. This survey paper addresses the absence of a comprehensive overview on Retrieval-Augmented Language Models (RALMs), both Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and Retrieval-Augmented Understanding (RAU), providing an in-depth examination of their paradigm, evolution, taxonomy, and applications. The paper discusses the essential components of RALMs, including Retrievers, Language Models, and Augmentations, and how their interactions lead to diverse model structures and applications. RALMs demonstrate utility in a spectrum of tasks, from translation and dialogue systems to knowledge-intensive applications. The survey includes several evaluation methods of RALMs, emphasizing the importance of robustness, accuracy, and relevance in their assessment. It also acknowledges the limitations of RALMs, particularly in retrieval quality and computational efficiency, offering directions for future research. In conclusion, this survey aims to offer a structured insight into RALMs, their potential, and the avenues for their future development in NLP. The paper is supplemented with a Github Repository containing the surveyed works and resources for further study: https://github.com/2471023025/RALM_Survey.
Authors: Philip Feldman, Aaron Dant, Harry Dreany
Abstract: This paper explores the changes that pervasive AI is having on the nature of combat. We look beyond the substitution of AI for experts to an approach where complementary human and machine abilities are blended. Using historical and modern examples, we show how autonomous weapons systems can be effectively managed by teams of human "AI Operators" combined with AI/ML "Proxy Operators." By basing our approach on the principles of complementation, we provide for a flexible and dynamic approach to managing lethal autonomous systems. We conclude by presenting a path to achieving an integrated vision of machine-speed combat where the battlefield AI is operated by AI Operators that watch for patterns of behavior within battlefield to assess the performance of lethal autonomous systems. This approach enables the development of combat systems that are likely to be more ethical, operate at machine speed, and are capable of responding to a broader range of dynamic battlefield conditions than any purely autonomous AI system could support.
Authors: Yunzhen Feng, Tim G. J. Rudner, Nikolaos Tsilivis, Julia Kempe
Abstract: Adversarial examples have been shown to cause neural networks to fail on a wide range of vision and language tasks, but recent work has claimed that Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) are inherently robust to adversarial perturbations. In this work, we examine this claim. To study the adversarial robustness of BNNs, we investigate whether it is possible to successfully break state-of-the-art BNN inference methods and prediction pipelines using even relatively unsophisticated attacks for three tasks: (1) label prediction under the posterior predictive mean, (2) adversarial example detection with Bayesian predictive uncertainty, and (3) semantic shift detection. We find that BNNs trained with state-of-the-art approximate inference methods, and even BNNs trained with Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, are highly susceptible to adversarial attacks. We also identify various conceptual and experimental errors in previous works that claimed inherent adversarial robustness of BNNs and conclusively demonstrate that BNNs and uncertainty-aware Bayesian prediction pipelines are not inherently robust against adversarial attacks.
Authors: Ge Yan, Yaniv Romano, Tsui-Wei Weng
Abstract: Conformal prediction is a powerful tool to generate uncertainty sets with guaranteed coverage using any predictive model, under the assumption that the training and test data are i.i.d.. Recently, it has been shown that adversarial examples are able to manipulate conformal methods to construct prediction sets with invalid coverage rates, as the i.i.d. assumption is violated. To address this issue, a recent work, Randomized Smoothed Conformal Prediction (RSCP), was first proposed to certify the robustness of conformal prediction methods to adversarial noise. However, RSCP has two major limitations: (i) its robustness guarantee is flawed when used in practice and (ii) it tends to produce large uncertainty sets. To address these limitations, we first propose a novel framework called RSCP+ to provide provable robustness guarantee in evaluation, which fixes the issues in the original RSCP method. Next, we propose two novel methods, Post-Training Transformation (PTT) and Robust Conformal Training (RCT), to effectively reduce prediction set size with little computation overhead. Experimental results in CIFAR10, CIFAR100, and ImageNet suggest the baseline method only yields trivial predictions including full label set, while our methods could boost the efficiency by up to $4.36\times$, $5.46\times$, and $16.9\times$ respectively and provide practical robustness guarantee. Our codes are available at https://github.com/Trustworthy-ML-Lab/Provably-Robust-Conformal-Prediction.
URLs: https://github.com/Trustworthy-ML-Lab/Provably-Robust-Conformal-Prediction.
Authors: Yuliang Liu, Mingxin Huang, Hao Yan, Linger Deng, Weijia Wu, Hao Lu, Chunhua Shen, Lianwen Jin, Xiang Bai
Abstract: Text spotting, a task involving the extraction of textual information from image or video sequences, faces challenges in cross-domain adaption, such as image-to-image and image-to-video generalization. In this paper, we introduce a new method, termed VimTS, which enhances the generalization ability of the model by achieving better synergy among different tasks. Typically, we propose a Prompt Queries Generation Module and a Tasks-aware Adapter to effectively convert the original single-task model into a multi-task model suitable for both image and video scenarios with minimal additional parameters. The Prompt Queries Generation Module facilitates explicit interaction between different tasks, while the Tasks-aware Adapter helps the model dynamically learn suitable features for each task. Additionally, to further enable the model to learn temporal information at a lower cost, we propose a synthetic video text dataset (VTD-368k) by leveraging the Content Deformation Fields (CoDeF) algorithm. Notably, our method outperforms the state-of-the-art method by an average of 2.6% in six cross-domain benchmarks such as TT-to-IC15, CTW1500-to-TT, and TT-to-CTW1500. For video-level cross-domain adaption, our method even surpasses the previous end-to-end video spotting method in ICDAR2015 video and DSText v2 by an average of 5.5% on the MOTA metric, using only image-level data. We further demonstrate that existing Large Multimodal Models exhibit limitations in generating cross-domain scene text spotting, in contrast to our VimTS model which requires significantly fewer parameters and data. The code and datasets will be made available at the https://VimTextSpotter.github.io.
Authors: Dimitrios Karkalousos, Ivana I\v{s}gum, Henk A. Marquering, Matthan W. A. Caan
Abstract: AI is revolutionizing MRI along the acquisition and processing chain. Advanced AI frameworks have been developed to apply AI in various successive tasks, such as image reconstruction, quantitative parameter map estimation, and image segmentation. Existing frameworks are often designed to perform tasks independently or are focused on specific models or datasets, limiting generalization. We introduce ATOMMIC, an open-source toolbox that streamlines AI applications for accelerated MRI reconstruction and analysis. ATOMMIC implements several tasks using DL networks and enables MultiTask Learning (MTL) to perform related tasks integrated, targeting generalization in the MRI domain. We first review the current state of AI frameworks for MRI through a comprehensive literature search and by parsing 12,479 GitHub repositories. We benchmark 25 DL models on eight publicly available datasets to present distinct applications of ATOMMIC on accelerated MRI reconstruction, image segmentation, quantitative parameter map estimation, and joint accelerated MRI reconstruction and image segmentation utilizing MTL. Our findings demonstrate that ATOMMIC is the only MTL framework with harmonized complex-valued and real-valued data support. Evaluations on single tasks show that physics-based models, which enforce data consistency by leveraging the physical properties of MRI, outperform other models in reconstructing highly accelerated acquisitions. Physics-based models that produce high reconstruction quality can accurately estimate quantitative parameter maps. When high-performing reconstruction models are combined with robust segmentation networks utilizing MTL, performance is improved in both tasks. ATOMMIC facilitates MRI reconstruction and analysis by standardizing workflows, enhancing data interoperability, integrating unique features like MTL, and effectively benchmarking DL models.
Authors: Juan D. Pinto, Luc Paquette
Abstract: With the ever-growing presence of deep artificial neural networks in every facet of modern life, a growing body of researchers in educational data science -- a field consisting of various interrelated research communities -- have turned their attention to leveraging these powerful algorithms within the domain of education. Use cases range from advanced knowledge tracing models that can leverage open-ended student essays or snippets of code to automatic affect and behavior detectors that can identify when a student is frustrated or aimlessly trying to solve problems unproductively -- and much more. This chapter provides a brief introduction to deep learning, describes some of its advantages and limitations, presents a survey of its many uses in education, and discusses how it may further come to shape the field of educational data science.
Authors: Chun Feng, Joy Hsu, Weiyu Liu, Jiajun Wu
Abstract: 3D visual grounding is a challenging task that often requires direct and dense supervision, notably the semantic label for each object in the scene. In this paper, we instead study the naturally supervised setting that learns from only 3D scene and QA pairs, where prior works underperform. We propose the Language-Regularized Concept Learner (LARC), which uses constraints from language as regularization to significantly improve the accuracy of neuro-symbolic concept learners in the naturally supervised setting. Our approach is based on two core insights: the first is that language constraints (e.g., a word's relation to another) can serve as effective regularization for structured representations in neuro-symbolic models; the second is that we can query large language models to distill such constraints from language properties. We show that LARC improves performance of prior works in naturally supervised 3D visual grounding, and demonstrates a wide range of 3D visual reasoning capabilities-from zero-shot composition, to data efficiency and transferability. Our method represents a promising step towards regularizing structured visual reasoning frameworks with language-based priors, for learning in settings without dense supervision.
Authors: Nicholas S. Kersting, Mohammad Rahman, Suchismitha Vedala, Yang Wang
Abstract: We introduce an intuitive method to test the robustness (stability and explainability) of any black-box LLM in real-time, based upon the local deviation from harmoniticity, denoted as $\gamma$. To the best of our knowledge this is the first completely model-agnostic and unsupervised method of measuring the robustness of any given response from an LLM, based upon the model itself conforming to a purely mathematical standard. We conduct human annotation experiments to show the positive correlation of $\gamma$ with false or misleading answers, and demonstrate that following the gradient of $\gamma$ in stochastic gradient ascent efficiently exposes adversarial prompts. Measuring $\gamma$ across thousands of queries in popular LLMs (GPT-4, ChatGPT, Claude-2.1, Mixtral-8x7B, Smaug-72B, Llama2-7B, and MPT-7B) allows us to estimate the liklihood of wrong or hallucinatory answers automatically and quantitatively rank the reliability of these models in various objective domains (Web QA, TruthfulQA, and Programming QA). Across all models and domains tested, human ratings confirm that $\gamma \to 0$ indicates trustworthiness, and the low-$\gamma$ leaders among these models are GPT-4, ChatGPT, and Smaug-72B.
Authors: Roy Shaily, Sharma Harshit, Salekin Asif
Abstract: Federated learning (FL) enables collaborative model training while preserving data privacy, making it suitable for decentralized human-centered AI applications. However, a significant research gap remains in ensuring fairness in these systems. Current fairness strategies in FL require knowledge of bias-creating/sensitive attributes, clashing with FL's privacy principles. Moreover, in human-centered datasets, sensitive attributes may remain latent. To tackle these challenges, we present a novel bias mitigation approach inspired by "Fairness without Demographics" in machine learning. The presented approach achieves fairness without needing knowledge of sensitive attributes by minimizing the top eigenvalue of the Hessian matrix during training, ensuring equitable loss landscapes across FL participants. Notably, we introduce a novel FL aggregation scheme that promotes participating models based on error rates and loss landscape curvature attributes, fostering fairness across the FL system. This work represents the first approach to attaining "Fairness without Demographics" in human-centered FL. Through comprehensive evaluation, our approach demonstrates effectiveness in balancing fairness and efficacy across various real-world applications, FL setups, and scenarios involving single and multiple bias-inducing factors, representing a significant advancement in human-centered FL.
Authors: Steph Buongiorno, Corey Clark
Abstract: External knowledge graphs (KGs) can be used to augment large language models (LLMs), while simultaneously providing an explainable knowledge base of facts that can be inspected by a human. This approach may be particularly valuable in domains where explainability is critical, like human trafficking data analysis. However, creating KGs can pose challenges. KGs parsed from documents may comprise explicit connections (those directly stated by a document) but miss implicit connections (those obvious to a human although not directly stated). To address these challenges, this preliminary research introduces the GAME-KG framework, standing for "Gaming for Augmenting Metadata and Enhancing Knowledge Graphs." GAME-KG is a federated approach to modifying explicit as well as implicit connections in KGs by using crowdsourced feedback collected through video games. GAME-KG is shown through two demonstrations: a Unity test scenario from Dark Shadows, a video game that collects feedback on KGs parsed from US Department of Justice (DOJ) Press Releases on human trafficking, and a following experiment where OpenAI's GPT-4 is prompted to answer questions based on a modified and unmodified KG. Initial results suggest that GAME-KG can be an effective framework for enhancing KGs, while simultaneously providing an explainable set of structured facts verified by humans.
Authors: Richard Yuanzhe Pang, Weizhe Yuan, Kyunghyun Cho, He He, Sainbayar Sukhbaatar, Jason Weston
Abstract: Iterative preference optimization methods have recently been shown to perform well for general instruction tuning tasks, but typically make little improvement on reasoning tasks (Yuan et al., 2024, Chen et al., 2024). In this work we develop an iterative approach that optimizes the preference between competing generated Chain-of-Thought (CoT) candidates by optimizing for winning vs. losing reasoning steps that lead to the correct answer. We train using a modified DPO loss (Rafailov et al., 2023) with an additional negative log-likelihood term, which we find to be crucial. We show reasoning improves across repeated iterations of this scheme. While only relying on examples in the training set, our approach results in increasing accuracy for Llama-2-70B-Chat from 55.6% to 81.6% on GSM8K (and 88.7% with majority voting out of 32 samples), from 12.5% to 20.8% on MATH, and from 77.8% to 86.7% on ARC-Challenge, which outperforms other Llama-2-based models not relying on additionally sourced datasets.
Authors: Leon Garza, Lavanya Elluri, Anantaa Kotal, Aritran Piplai, Deepti Gupta, Anupam Joshi
Abstract: Data protection and privacy is becoming increasingly crucial in the digital era. Numerous companies depend on third-party vendors and service providers to carry out critical functions within their operations, encompassing tasks such as data handling and storage. However, this reliance introduces potential vulnerabilities, as these vendors' security measures and practices may not always align with the standards expected by regulatory bodies. Businesses are required, often under the penalty of law, to ensure compliance with the evolving regulatory rules. Interpreting and implementing these regulations pose challenges due to their complexity. Regulatory documents are extensive, demanding significant effort for interpretation, while vendor-drafted privacy policies often lack the detail required for full legal compliance, leading to ambiguity. To ensure a concise interpretation of the regulatory requirements and compliance of organizational privacy policy with said regulations, we propose a Large Language Model (LLM) and Semantic Web based approach for privacy compliance. In this paper, we develop the novel Privacy Policy Compliance Verification Knowledge Graph, PrivComp-KG. It is designed to efficiently store and retrieve comprehensive information concerning privacy policies, regulatory frameworks, and domain-specific knowledge pertaining to the legal landscape of privacy. Using Retrieval Augmented Generation, we identify the relevant sections in a privacy policy with corresponding regulatory rules. This information about individual privacy policies is populated into the PrivComp-KG. Combining this with the domain context and rules, the PrivComp-KG can be queried to check for compliance with privacy policies by each vendor against relevant policy regulations. We demonstrate the relevance of the PrivComp-KG, by verifying compliance of privacy policy documents for various organizations.
Authors: Zhipeng Yuan, Nasamu Musa, Katarzyna Dybal, Matthew Back, Daniel Leybourne, Po Yang
Abstract: Every year, plant parasitic nematodes, one of the major groups of plant pathogens, cause a significant loss of crops worldwide. To mitigate crop yield losses caused by nematodes, an efficient nematode monitoring method is essential for plant and crop disease management. In other respects, efficient nematode detection contributes to medical research and drug discovery, as nematodes are model organisms. With the rapid development of computer technology, computer vision techniques provide a feasible solution for quantifying nematodes or nematode infections. In this paper, we survey and categorise the studies and available datasets on nematode detection through deep-learning models. To stimulate progress in related research, this survey presents the potential state-of-the-art object detection models, training techniques, optimisation techniques, and evaluation metrics for deep learning beginners. Moreover, seven state-of-the-art object detection models are validated on three public datasets and the AgriNema dataset for plant parasitic nematodes to construct a baseline for nematode detection.
Authors: Yasumasa Onoe, Sunayana Rane, Zachary Berger, Yonatan Bitton, Jaemin Cho, Roopal Garg, Alexander Ku, Zarana Parekh, Jordi Pont-Tuset, Garrett Tanzer, Su Wang, Jason Baldridge
Abstract: Vision-language datasets are vital for both text-to-image (T2I) and image-to-text (I2T) research. However, current datasets lack descriptions with fine-grained detail that would allow for richer associations to be learned by models. To fill the gap, we introduce Descriptions of Connected and Contrasting Images (DOCCI), a dataset with long, human-annotated English descriptions for 15k images that were taken, curated and donated by a single researcher intent on capturing key challenges such as spatial relations, counting, text rendering, world knowledge, and more. We instruct human annotators to create comprehensive descriptions for each image; these average 136 words in length and are crafted to clearly distinguish each image from those that are related or similar. Each description is highly compositional and typically encompasses multiple challenges. Through both quantitative and qualitative analyses, we demonstrate that DOCCI serves as an effective training resource for image-to-text generation -- a PaLI 5B model finetuned on DOCCI shows equal or superior results compared to highly-performant larger models like LLaVA-1.5 7B and InstructBLIP 7B. Furthermore, we show that DOCCI is a useful testbed for text-to-image generation, highlighting the limitations of current text-to-image models in capturing long descriptions and fine details.
Authors: Ziming Liu, Yixuan Wang, Sachin Vaidya, Fabian Ruehle, James Halverson, Marin Solja\v{c}i\'c, Thomas Y. Hou, Max Tegmark
Abstract: Inspired by the Kolmogorov-Arnold representation theorem, we propose Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs) as promising alternatives to Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs). While MLPs have fixed activation functions on nodes ("neurons"), KANs have learnable activation functions on edges ("weights"). KANs have no linear weights at all -- every weight parameter is replaced by a univariate function parametrized as a spline. We show that this seemingly simple change makes KANs outperform MLPs in terms of accuracy and interpretability. For accuracy, much smaller KANs can achieve comparable or better accuracy than much larger MLPs in data fitting and PDE solving. Theoretically and empirically, KANs possess faster neural scaling laws than MLPs. For interpretability, KANs can be intuitively visualized and can easily interact with human users. Through two examples in mathematics and physics, KANs are shown to be useful collaborators helping scientists (re)discover mathematical and physical laws. In summary, KANs are promising alternatives for MLPs, opening opportunities for further improving today's deep learning models which rely heavily on MLPs.
Authors: Tim Franzmeyer, Stephen McAleer, Jo\~ao F. Henriques, Jakob N. Foerster, Philip H. S. Torr, Adel Bibi, Christian Schroeder de Witt
Abstract: Autonomous agents deployed in the real world need to be robust against adversarial attacks on sensory inputs. Robustifying agent policies requires anticipating the strongest attacks possible. We demonstrate that existing observation-space attacks on reinforcement learning agents have a common weakness: while effective, their lack of information-theoretic detectability constraints makes them detectable using automated means or human inspection. Detectability is undesirable to adversaries as it may trigger security escalations. We introduce \eattacks{}, a novel form of adversarial attack on sequential decision-makers that is both effective and of $\epsilon$-bounded statistical detectability. We propose a novel dual ascent algorithm to learn such attacks end-to-end. Compared to existing attacks, we empirically find \eattacks{} to be significantly harder to detect with automated methods, and a small study with human participants (IRB approval under reference R84123/RE001) suggests they are similarly harder to detect for humans. Our findings suggest the need for better anomaly detectors, as well as effective hardware- and system-level defenses. The project website can be found at https://tinyurl.com/illusory-attacks.
Authors: Daria Bystrova, Charles K. Assaad, Julyan Arbel, Emilie Devijver, Eric Gaussier, Wilfried Thuiller
Abstract: Constraint-based methods and noise-based methods are two distinct families of methods proposed for uncovering causal graphs from observational data. However, both operate under strong assumptions that may be challenging to validate or could be violated in real-world scenarios. In response to these challenges, there is a growing interest in hybrid methods that amalgamate principles from both methods, showing robustness to assumption violations. This paper introduces a novel comprehensive framework for hybridizing constraint-based and noise-based methods designed to uncover causal graphs from observational time series. The framework is structured into two classes. The first class employs a noise-based strategy to identify a super graph, containing the true graph, followed by a constraint-based strategy to eliminate unnecessary edges. In the second class, a constraint-based strategy is applied to identify a skeleton, which is then oriented using a noise-based strategy. The paper provides theoretical guarantees for each class under the condition that all assumptions are satisfied, and it outlines some properties when assumptions are violated. To validate the efficacy of the framework, two algorithms from each class are experimentally tested on simulated data, realistic ecological data, and real datasets sourced from diverse applications. Notably, two novel datasets related to Information Technology monitoring are introduced within the set of considered real datasets. The experimental results underscore the robustness and effectiveness of the hybrid approaches across a broad spectrum of datasets.
Authors: Guangyao Chen, Siwei Dong, Yu Shu, Ge Zhang, Jaward Sesay, B\"orje F. Karlsson, Jie Fu, Yemin Shi
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have enabled remarkable advances in automated task-solving with multi-agent systems. However, most existing LLM-based multi-agent approaches rely on predefined agents to handle simple tasks, limiting the adaptability of multi-agent collaboration to different scenarios. Therefore, we introduce AutoAgents, an innovative framework that adaptively generates and coordinates multiple specialized agents to build an AI team according to different tasks. Specifically, AutoAgents couples the relationship between tasks and roles by dynamically generating multiple required agents based on task content and planning solutions for the current task based on the generated expert agents. Multiple specialized agents collaborate with each other to efficiently accomplish tasks. Concurrently, an observer role is incorporated into the framework to reflect on the designated plans and agents' responses and improve upon them. Our experiments on various benchmarks demonstrate that AutoAgents generates more coherent and accurate solutions than the existing multi-agent methods. This underscores the significance of assigning different roles to different tasks and of team cooperation, offering new perspectives for tackling complex tasks. The repository of this project is available at https://github.com/Link-AGI/AutoAgents.
Authors: Krishnendu Chatterjee, Ehsan Kafshdar Goharshady, Mehrdad Karrabi, Petr Novotn\'y, {\DJ}or{\dj}e \v{Z}ikeli\'c
Abstract: Markov decision processes (MDPs) provide a standard framework for sequential decision making under uncertainty. However, MDPs do not take uncertainty in transition probabilities into account. Robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs) address this shortcoming of MDPs by assigning to each transition an uncertainty set rather than a single probability value. In this work, we consider polytopic RMDPs in which all uncertainty sets are polytopes and study the problem of solving long-run average reward polytopic RMDPs. We present a novel perspective on this problem and show that it can be reduced to solving long-run average reward turn-based stochastic games with finite state and action spaces. This reduction allows us to derive several important consequences that were hitherto not known to hold for polytopic RMDPs. First, we derive new computational complexity bounds for solving long-run average reward polytopic RMDPs, showing for the first time that the threshold decision problem for them is in $NP \cap coNP$ and that they admit a randomized algorithm with sub-exponential expected runtime. Second, we present Robust Polytopic Policy Iteration (RPPI), a novel policy iteration algorithm for solving long-run average reward polytopic RMDPs. Our experimental evaluation shows that RPPI is much more efficient in solving long-run average reward polytopic RMDPs compared to state-of-the-art methods based on value iteration.
Authors: Zhengyang Lu, Stefan Siemer, Piyush Jha, Joel Day, Florin Manea, Vijay Ganesh
Abstract: Modern SMT solvers, such as Z3, offer user-controllable strategies, enabling users to tailor solving strategies for their unique set of instances, thus dramatically enhancing solver performance for their use case. However, this approach of strategy customization presents a significant challenge: handcrafting an optimized strategy for a class of SMT instances remains a complex and demanding task for both solver developers and users alike. In this paper, we address this problem of automatic SMT strategy synthesis via a novel Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) based method. Our method treats strategy synthesis as a sequential decision-making process, whose search tree corresponds to the strategy space, and employs MCTS to navigate this vast search space. The key innovations that enable our method to identify effective strategies, while keeping costs low, are the ideas of layered and staged MCTS search. These novel heuristics allow for a deeper and more efficient exploration of the strategy space, enabling us to synthesize more effective strategies than the default ones in state-of-the-art (SOTA) SMT solvers. We implement our method, dubbed Z3alpha, as part of the Z3 SMT solver. Through extensive evaluations across six important SMT logics, Z3alpha demonstrates superior performance compared to the SOTA synthesis tool FastSMT, the default Z3 solver, and the CVC5 solver on most benchmarks. Remarkably, on a challenging QF_BV benchmark set, Z3alpha solves 42.7% more instances than the default strategy in the Z3 SMT solver.
Authors: Tarun Gupta, Wenbo Gong, Chao Ma, Nick Pawlowski, Agrin Hilmkil, Meyer Scetbon, Marc Rigter, Ade Famoti, Ashley Juan Llorens, Jianfeng Gao, Stefan Bauer, Danica Kragic, Bernhard Sch\"olkopf, Cheng Zhang
Abstract: Recent advances in foundation models, especially in large multi-modal models and conversational agents, have ignited interest in the potential of generally capable embodied agents. Such agents will require the ability to perform new tasks in many different real-world environments. However, current foundation models fail to accurately model physical interactions and are therefore insufficient for Embodied AI. The study of causality lends itself to the construction of veridical world models, which are crucial for accurately predicting the outcomes of possible interactions. This paper focuses on the prospects of building foundation world models for the upcoming generation of embodied agents and presents a novel viewpoint on the significance of causality within these. We posit that integrating causal considerations is vital to facilitating meaningful physical interactions with the world. Finally, we demystify misconceptions about causality in this context and present our outlook for future research.
Authors: Jianzong Wang, Pengcheng Li, Xulong Zhang, Ning Cheng, Jing Xiao
Abstract: Intent is defined for understanding spoken language in existing works. Both textual features and acoustic features involved in medical speech contain intent, which is important for symptomatic diagnosis. In this paper, we propose a medical speech classification model named DRSC that automatically learns to disentangle intent and content representations from textual-acoustic data for classification. The intent representations of the text domain and the Mel-spectrogram domain are extracted via intent encoders, and then the reconstructed text feature and the Mel-spectrogram feature are obtained through two exchanges. After combining the intent from two domains into a joint representation, the integrated intent representation is fed into a decision layer for classification. Experimental results show that our model obtains an average accuracy rate of 95% in detecting 25 different medical symptoms.
Authors: Meng Li, Haoran Jin, Ruixuan Huang, Zhihao Xu, Defu Lian, Zijia Lin, Di Zhang, Xiting Wang
Abstract: Despite the surprisingly high intelligence exhibited by Large Language Models (LLMs), we are somehow intimidated to fully deploy them into real-life applications considering their black-box nature. Concept-based explanations arise as a promising avenue for explaining what the LLMs have learned, making them more transparent to humans. However, current evaluations for concepts tend to be heuristic and non-deterministic, e.g. case study or human evaluation, hindering the development of the field. To bridge the gap, we approach concept-based explanation evaluation via faithfulness and readability. We first introduce a formal definition of concept generalizable to diverse concept-based explanations. Based on this, we quantify faithfulness via the difference in the output upon perturbation. We then provide an automatic measure for readability, by measuring the coherence of patterns that maximally activate a concept. This measure serves as a cost-effective and reliable substitute for human evaluation. Finally, based on measurement theory, we describe a meta-evaluation method for evaluating the above measures via reliability and validity, which can be generalized to other tasks as well. Extensive experimental analysis has been conducted to validate and inform the selection of concept evaluation measures.
Authors: Corinna Cortes, Mehryar Mohri, Afshin Rostamizadeh
Abstract: This paper presents new and effective algorithms for learning kernels. In particular, as shown by our empirical results, these algorithms consistently outperform the so-called uniform combination solution that has proven to be difficult to improve upon in the past, as well as other algorithms for learning kernels based on convex combinations of base kernels in both classification and regression. Our algorithms are based on the notion of centered alignment which is used as a similarity measure between kernels or kernel matrices. We present a number of novel algorithmic, theoretical, and empirical results for learning kernels based on our notion of centered alignment. In particular, we describe efficient algorithms for learning a maximum alignment kernel by showing that the problem can be reduced to a simple QP and discuss a one-stage algorithm for learning both a kernel and a hypothesis based on that kernel using an alignment-based regularization. Our theoretical results include a novel concentration bound for centered alignment between kernel matrices, the proof of the existence of effective predictors for kernels with high alignment, both for classification and for regression, and the proof of stability-based generalization bounds for a broad family of algorithms for learning kernels based on centered alignment. We also report the results of experiments with our centered alignment-based algorithms in both classification and regression.
Authors: Fabio A. Gonz\'alez, Alejandro Gallego, Santiago Toledo-Cort\'es, Vladimir Vargas-Calder\'on
Abstract: A density matrix describes the statistical state of a quantum system. It is a powerful formalism to represent both the quantum and classical uncertainty of quantum systems and to express different statistical operations such as measurement, system combination and expectations as linear algebra operations. This paper explores how density matrices can be used as a building block for machine learning models exploiting their ability to straightforwardly combine linear algebra and probability. One of the main results of the paper is to show that density matrices coupled with random Fourier features could approximate arbitrary probability distributions over $\mathbb{R}^n$. Based on this finding the paper builds different models for density estimation, classification and regression. These models are differentiable, so it is possible to integrate them with other differentiable components, such as deep learning architectures and to learn their parameters using gradient-based optimization. In addition, the paper presents optimization-less training strategies based on estimation and model averaging. The models are evaluated in benchmark tasks and the results are reported and discussed.
Authors: Emil Carlsson, Devdatt Dubhashi, Fredrik D. Johansson
Abstract: Recent work (Xu et al., 2020) has suggested that numeral systems in different languages are shaped by a functional need for efficient communication in an information-theoretic sense. Here we take a learning-theoretic approach and show how efficient communication emerges via reinforcement learning. In our framework, two artificial agents play a Lewis signaling game where the goal is to convey a numeral concept. The agents gradually learn to communicate using reinforcement learning and the resulting numeral systems are shown to be efficient in the information-theoretic framework of Regier et al. (2015); Gibson et al. (2017). They are also shown to be similar to human numeral systems of same type. Our results thus provide a mechanistic explanation via reinforcement learning of the recent results in Xu et al. (2020) and can potentially be generalized to other semantic domains.
Authors: Joshua Ott, Sung-Kyun Kim, Amanda Bouman, Oriana Peltzer, Mamoru Sobue, Harrison Delecki, Mykel J. Kochenderfer, Joel Burdick, Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi
Abstract: Robotic exploration of unknown environments is fundamentally a problem of decision making under uncertainty where the robot must account for uncertainty in sensor measurements, localization, action execution, as well as many other factors. For large-scale exploration applications, autonomous systems must overcome the challenges of sequentially deciding which areas of the environment are valuable to explore while safely evaluating the risks associated with obstacles and hazardous terrain. In this work, we propose a risk-aware meta-level decision making framework to balance the tradeoffs associated with local and global exploration. Meta-level decision making builds upon classical hierarchical coverage planners by switching between local and global policies with the overall objective of selecting the policy that is most likely to maximize reward in a stochastic environment. We use information about the environment history, traversability risk, and kinodynamic constraints to reason about the probability of successful policy execution to switch between local and global policies. We have validated our solution in both simulation and on a variety of large-scale real world hardware tests. Our results show that by balancing local and global exploration we are able to significantly explore large-scale environments more efficiently.
Authors: Yidong Zhao, Changchun Yang, Artur Schweidtmann, Qian Tao
Abstract: The self-configuring nnU-Net has achieved leading performance in a large range of medical image segmentation challenges. It is widely considered as the model of choice and a strong baseline for medical image segmentation. However, despite its extraordinary performance, nnU-Net does not supply a measure of uncertainty to indicate its possible failure. This can be problematic for large-scale image segmentation applications, where data are heterogeneous and nnU-Net may fail without notice. In this work, we introduce a novel method to estimate nnU-Net uncertainty for medical image segmentation. We propose a highly effective scheme for posterior sampling of weight space for Bayesian uncertainty estimation. Different from previous baseline methods such as Monte Carlo Dropout and mean-field Bayesian Neural Networks, our proposed method does not require a variational architecture and keeps the original nnU-Net architecture intact, thereby preserving its excellent performance and ease of use. Additionally, we boost the segmentation performance over the original nnU-Net via marginalizing multi-modal posterior models. We applied our method on the public ACDC and M&M datasets of cardiac MRI and demonstrated improved uncertainty estimation over a range of baseline methods. The proposed method further strengthens nnU-Net for medical image segmentation in terms of both segmentation accuracy and quality control.
Authors: Dianzhao Li, Ostap Okhrin
Abstract: Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has shown remarkable success in solving complex tasks across various research fields. However, transferring DRL agents to the real world is still challenging due to the significant discrepancies between simulation and reality. To address this issue, we propose a robust DRL framework that leverages platform-dependent perception modules to extract task-relevant information and train a lane-following and overtaking agent in simulation. This framework facilitates the seamless transfer of the DRL agent to new simulated environments and the real world with minimal effort. We evaluate the performance of the agent in various driving scenarios in both simulation and the real world, and compare it to human players and the PID baseline in simulation. Our proposed framework significantly reduces the gaps between different platforms and the Sim2Real gap, enabling the trained agent to achieve similar performance in both simulation and the real world, driving the vehicle effectively.
Authors: Dongyue Guo, Zheng Zhang, Zhen Yan, Jianwei Zhang, Yi Lin
Abstract: Flight Trajectory Prediction (FTP) is an essential task in Air Traffic Control (ATC), which can assist air traffic controllers in managing airspace more safely and efficiently. Existing approaches generally perform multi-horizon FTP tasks in an autoregressive manner, thereby suffering from error accumulation and low-efficiency problems. In this paper, a novel framework, called FlightBERT++, is proposed to i) forecast multi-horizon flight trajectories directly in a non-autoregressive way, and ii) improve the limitation of the binary encoding (BE) representation in the FlightBERT framework. Specifically, the proposed framework is implemented by a generalized encoder-decoder architecture, in which the encoder learns the temporal-spatial patterns from historical observations and the decoder predicts the flight status for the future horizons. Compared to conventional architecture, an innovative horizon-aware contexts generator is dedicatedly designed to consider the prior horizon information, which further enables non-autoregressive multi-horizon prediction. Additionally, the Gray code representation and the differential prediction paradigm are designed to cope with the high-bit misclassifications of the BE representation, which significantly reduces the outliers in the predictions. Moreover, a differential prompted decoder is proposed to enhance the capability of the differential predictions by leveraging the stationarity of the differential sequence. Extensive experiments are conducted to validate the proposed framework on a real-world flight trajectory dataset. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed framework outperformed the competitive baselines in both FTP performance and computational efficiency.
Authors: Yingjie Tian, Yiqi Wang, Xianda Guo, Zheng Zhu, Long Chen
Abstract: In recent years, soft prompt learning methods have been proposed to fine-tune large-scale vision-language pre-trained models for various downstream tasks. These methods typically combine learnable textual tokens with class tokens as input for models with frozen parameters. However, they often employ a single prompt to describe class contexts, failing to capture categories' diverse attributes adequately. This study introduces the Partitioned Multi-modal Prompt (PMPO), a multi-modal prompting technique that extends the soft prompt from a single learnable prompt to multiple prompts. Our method divides the visual encoder depths and connects learnable prompts to the separated visual depths, enabling different prompts to capture the hierarchical contextual depths of visual representations. Furthermore, to maximize the advantages of multi-prompt learning, we incorporate prior information from manually designed templates and learnable multi-prompts, thus improving the generalization capabilities of our approach. We evaluate the effectiveness of our approach on three challenging tasks: new class generalization, cross-dataset evaluation, and domain generalization. For instance, our method achieves a $79.28$ harmonic mean, averaged over 11 diverse image recognition datasets ($+7.62$ compared to CoOp), demonstrating significant competitiveness compared to state-of-the-art prompting methods.
Authors: Longkang Peng, Tao Wei, Xuehong Chen, Xiaobei Chen, Rui Sun, Luoma Wan, Jin Chen, Xiaolin Zhu
Abstract: Convolutional neural networks (ConvNets) have been successfully applied to satellite image scene classification. Human-labeled training datasets are essential for ConvNets to perform accurate classification. Errors in human-annotated training datasets are unavoidable due to the complexity of satellite images. However, the distribution of real-world human-annotated label noises on remote sensing images and their impact on ConvNets have not been investigated. To fill this research gap, this study, for the first time, collected real-world labels from 32 participants and explored how their annotated label noise affect three representative ConvNets (VGG16, GoogleNet, and ResNet-50) for remote sensing image scene classification. We found that: (1) human-annotated label noise exhibits significant class and instance dependence; (2) an additional 1% of human-annotated label noise in training data leads to 0.5% reduction in the overall accuracy of ConvNets classification; (3) the error pattern of ConvNet predictions was strongly correlated with that of participant's labels. To uncover the mechanism underlying the impact of human labeling errors on ConvNets, we further compared it with three types of simulated label noise: uniform noise, class-dependent noise and instance-dependent noise. Our results show that the impact of human-annotated label noise on ConvNets significantly differs from all three types of simulated label noise, while both class dependence and instance dependence contribute to the impact of human-annotated label noise on ConvNets. These observations necessitate a reevaluation of the handling of noisy labels, and we anticipate that our real-world label noise dataset would facilitate the future development and assessment of label-noise learning algorithms.
Authors: Bowen Xi, Kevin Scaria, Paulo Shakarian
Abstract: Classification of movement trajectories has many applications in transportation. Supervised neural models represent the current state-of-the-art. Recent security applications require this task to be rapidly employed in environments that may differ from the data used to train such models for which there is little training data. We provide a neuro-symbolic rule-based framework to conduct error correction and detection of these models to support eventual deployment in security applications. We provide a suite of experiments on several recent and state-of-the-art models and show an accuracy improvement of 1.7% over the SOTA model in the case where all classes are present in training and when 40% of classes are omitted from training, we obtain a 5.2% improvement (zero-shot) and 23.9% (few-shot) improvement over the SOTA model without resorting to retraining of the base model.
Authors: Yihang Yao, Zuxin Liu, Zhepeng Cen, Jiacheng Zhu, Wenhao Yu, Tingnan Zhang, Ding Zhao
Abstract: Safe reinforcement learning (RL) focuses on training reward-maximizing agents subject to pre-defined safety constraints. Yet, learning versatile safe policies that can adapt to varying safety constraint requirements during deployment without retraining remains a largely unexplored and challenging area. In this work, we formulate the versatile safe RL problem and consider two primary requirements: training efficiency and zero-shot adaptation capability. To address them, we introduce the Conditioned Constrained Policy Optimization (CCPO) framework, consisting of two key modules: (1) Versatile Value Estimation (VVE) for approximating value functions under unseen threshold conditions, and (2) Conditioned Variational Inference (CVI) for encoding arbitrary constraint thresholds during policy optimization. Our extensive experiments demonstrate that CCPO outperforms the baselines in terms of safety and task performance while preserving zero-shot adaptation capabilities to different constraint thresholds data-efficiently. This makes our approach suitable for real-world dynamic applications.
Authors: Songtao Luo, Shuang Yang, Shiguang Shan, Xilin Chen
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a novel method for speaker adaptation in lip reading, motivated by two observations. Firstly, a speaker's own characteristics can always be portrayed well by his/her few facial images or even a single image with shallow networks, while the fine-grained dynamic features associated with speech content expressed by the talking face always need deep sequential networks to represent accurately. Therefore, we treat the shallow and deep layers differently for speaker adaptive lip reading. Secondly, we observe that a speaker's unique characteristics ( e.g. prominent oral cavity and mandible) have varied effects on lip reading performance for different words and pronunciations, necessitating adaptive enhancement or suppression of the features for robust lip reading. Based on these two observations, we propose to take advantage of the speaker's own characteristics to automatically learn separable hidden unit contributions with different targets for shallow layers and deep layers respectively. For shallow layers where features related to the speaker's characteristics are stronger than the speech content related features, we introduce speaker-adaptive features to learn for enhancing the speech content features. For deep layers where both the speaker's features and the speech content features are all expressed well, we introduce the speaker-adaptive features to learn for suppressing the speech content irrelevant noise for robust lip reading. Our approach consistently outperforms existing methods, as confirmed by comprehensive analysis and comparison across different settings. Besides the evaluation on the popular LRW-ID and GRID datasets, we also release a new dataset for evaluation, CAS-VSR-S68h, to further assess the performance in an extreme setting where just a few speakers are available but the speech content covers a large and diversified range.
Authors: Joey Hejna, Rafael Rafailov, Harshit Sikchi, Chelsea Finn, Scott Niekum, W. Bradley Knox, Dorsa Sadigh
Abstract: Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a popular paradigm for aligning models with human intent. Typically RLHF algorithms operate in two phases: first, use human preferences to learn a reward function and second, align the model by optimizing the learned reward via reinforcement learning (RL). This paradigm assumes that human preferences are distributed according to reward, but recent work suggests that they instead follow the regret under the user's optimal policy. Thus, learning a reward function from feedback is not only based on a flawed assumption of human preference, but also leads to unwieldy optimization challenges that stem from policy gradients or bootstrapping in the RL phase. Because of these optimization challenges, contemporary RLHF methods restrict themselves to contextual bandit settings (e.g., as in large language models) or limit observation dimensionality (e.g., state-based robotics). We overcome these limitations by introducing a new family of algorithms for optimizing behavior from human feedback using the regret-based model of human preferences. Using the principle of maximum entropy, we derive Contrastive Preference Learning (CPL), an algorithm for learning optimal policies from preferences without learning reward functions, circumventing the need for RL. CPL is fully off-policy, uses only a simple contrastive objective, and can be applied to arbitrary MDPs. This enables CPL to elegantly scale to high-dimensional and sequential RLHF problems while being simpler than prior methods.
Authors: Giacomo Balloccu, Ludovico Boratto, Christian Cancedda, Gianni Fenu, Mirko Marras
Abstract: The integration of path reasoning with language modeling in recommender systems has shown promise for enhancing explainability but often struggles with the authenticity of the explanations provided. Traditional models modify their architecture to produce entities and relations alternately--for example, employing separate heads for each in the model--which does not ensure the authenticity of paths reflective of actual Knowledge Graph (KG) connections. This misalignment can lead to user distrust due to the generation of corrupted paths. Addressing this, we introduce PEARLM (Path-based Explainable-Accurate Recommender based on Language Modelling), which innovates with a Knowledge Graph Constraint Decoding (KGCD) mechanism. This mechanism ensures zero incidence of corrupted paths by enforcing adherence to valid KG connections at the decoding level, agnostic of the underlying model architecture. By integrating direct token embedding learning from KG paths, PEARLM not only guarantees the generation of plausible and verifiable explanations but also highly enhances recommendation accuracy. We validate the effectiveness of our approach through a rigorous empirical assessment, employing a newly proposed metric that quantifies the integrity of explanation paths. Our results demonstrate a significant improvement over existing methods, effectively eliminating the generation of inaccurate paths and advancing the state-of-the-art in explainable recommender systems.
Authors: Jessica Ojo, Kelechi Ogueji, Pontus Stenetorp, David Ifeoluwa Adelani
Abstract: Recent advancements in natural language processing have led to the proliferation of large language models (LLMs). These models have been shown to yield good performance, using in-context learning, even on tasks and languages they are not trained on. However, their performance on African languages is largely understudied relative to high-resource languages. We present an analysis of four popular large language models (mT0, Aya, LLaMa 2, and GPT-4) on six tasks (topic classification, sentiment classification, machine translation, summarization, question answering, and named entity recognition) across 60 African languages, spanning different language families and geographical regions. Our results suggest that all LLMs produce lower performance for African languages, and there is a large gap in performance compared to high-resource languages (such as English) for most tasks. We find that GPT-4 has an average to good performance on classification tasks, yet its performance on generative tasks such as machine translation and summarization is significantly lacking. Surprisingly, we find that mT0 had the best overall performance for cross-lingual QA, better than the state-of-the-art supervised model (i.e. fine-tuned mT5) and GPT-4 on African languages. Similarly, we find the recent Aya model to have comparable result to mT0 in almost all tasks except for topic classification where it outperform mT0. Overall, LLaMa 2 showed the worst performance, which we believe is due to its English and code-centric~(around 98%) pre-training corpus. Our findings confirms that performance on African languages continues to remain a hurdle for the current LLMs, underscoring the need for additional efforts to close this gap.
Authors: Minghan Li, Honglei Zhuang, Kai Hui, Zhen Qin, Jimmy Lin, Rolf Jagerman, Xuanhui Wang, Michael Bendersky
Abstract: Query expansion has been widely used to improve the search results of first-stage retrievers, yet its influence on second-stage, cross-encoder rankers remains under-explored. A recent work of Weller et al. [44] shows that current expansion techniques benefit weaker models such as DPR and BM25 but harm stronger rankers such as MonoT5. In this paper, we re-examine this conclusion and raise the following question: Can query expansion improve generalization of strong cross-encoder rankers? To answer this question, we first apply popular query expansion methods to state-of-the-art cross-encoder rankers and verify the deteriorated zero-shot performance. We identify two vital steps for cross-encoders in the experiment: high-quality keyword generation and minimal-disruptive query modification. We show that it is possible to improve the generalization of a strong neural ranker, by prompt engineering and aggregating the ranking results of each expanded query via fusion. Specifically, we first call an instruction-following language model to generate keywords through a reasoning chain. Leveraging self-consistency and reciprocal rank weighting, we further combine the ranking results of each expanded query dynamically. Experiments on BEIR and TREC Deep Learning 2019/2020 show that the nDCG@10 scores of both MonoT5 and RankT5 following these steps are improved, which points out a direction for applying query expansion to strong cross-encoder rankers.
Authors: Micha Livne, Zulfat Miftahutdinov, Elena Tutubalina, Maksim Kuznetsov, Daniil Polykovskiy, Annika Brundyn, Aastha Jhunjhunwala, Anthony Costa, Alex Aliper, Al\'an Aspuru-Guzik, Alex Zhavoronkov
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have substantially driven scientific progress in various domains, and many papers have demonstrated their ability to tackle complex problems with creative solutions. Our paper introduces a new foundation model, nach0, capable of solving various chemical and biological tasks: biomedical question answering, named entity recognition, molecular generation, molecular synthesis, attributes prediction, and others. nach0 is a multi-domain and multi-task encoder-decoder LLM pre-trained on unlabeled text from scientific literature, patents, and molecule strings to incorporate a range of chemical and linguistic knowledge. We employed instruction tuning, where specific task-related instructions are utilized to fine-tune nach0 for the final set of tasks. To train nach0 effectively, we leverage the NeMo framework, enabling efficient parallel optimization of both base and large model versions. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our model outperforms state-of-the-art baselines on single-domain and cross-domain tasks. Furthermore, it can generate high-quality outputs in molecular and textual formats, showcasing its effectiveness in multi-domain setups.
Authors: Hyenkyun Woo
Abstract: This article presents a new polynomial parameterized sigmoid called SIGTRON, which is an extended asymmetric sigmoid with Perceptron, and its companion convex model called SIGTRON-imbalanced classification (SIC) model that employs a virtual SIGTRON-induced convex loss function. In contrast to the conventional $\pi$-weighted cost-sensitive learning model, the SIC model does not have an external $\pi$-weight on the loss function but has internal parameters in the virtual SIGTRON-induced loss function. As a consequence, when the given training dataset is close to the well-balanced condition considering the (scale-)class-imbalance ratio, we show that the proposed SIC model is more adaptive to variations of the dataset, such as the inconsistency of the (scale-)class-imbalance ratio between the training and test datasets. This adaptation is justified by a skewed hyperplane equation, created via linearization of the gradient satisfying $\epsilon$-optimal condition. Additionally, we present a quasi-Newton optimization(L-BFGS) framework for the virtual convex loss by developing an interval-based bisection line search. Empirically, we have observed that the proposed approach outperforms (or is comparable to) $\pi$-weighted convex focal loss and balanced classifier LIBLINEAR(logistic regression, SVM, and L2SVM) in terms of test classification accuracy with $51$ two-class and $67$ multi-class datasets. In binary classification problems, where the scale-class-imbalance ratio of the training dataset is not significant but the inconsistency exists, a group of SIC models with the best test accuracy for each dataset (TOP$1$) outperforms LIBSVM(C-SVC with RBF kernel), a well-known kernel-based classifier.
Authors: Gregory Hyde, Eugene Santos Jr
Abstract: Many Reinforcement Learning algorithms assume a Markov reward function to guarantee optimality. However, not all reward functions are known to be Markov. In this paper, we propose a framework for mapping non-Markov reward functions into equivalent Markov ones by learning a Reward Machine - a specialized reward automaton. Unlike the general practice of learning Reward Machines, we do not require a set of high-level propositional symbols from which to learn. Rather, we learn \emph{hidden triggers} directly from data that encode them. We demonstrate the importance of learning Reward Machines versus their Deterministic Finite-State Automata counterparts, for this task, given their ability to model reward dependencies in a single automaton. We formalize this distinction in our learning objective. Our mapping process is constructed as an Integer Linear Programming problem. We prove that our mappings provide consistent expectations for the underlying process. We empirically validate our approach by learning black-box non-Markov Reward functions in the Officeworld Domain. Additionally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of learning dependencies between rewards in a new domain, Breakfastworld.
Authors: Ye Lin Tun, Chu Myaet Thwal, Le Quang Huy, Minh N. H. Nguyen, Choong Seon Hong
Abstract: Many studies integrate federated learning (FL) with self-supervised learning (SSL) to take advantage of raw training data distributed across edge devices. However, edge devices often struggle with high computation and communication costs imposed by SSL and FL algorithms. To tackle this hindrance, we propose LW-FedSSL, a layer-wise federated self-supervised learning approach that allows edge devices to incrementally train a single layer of the model at a time. Our LW-FedSSL comprises server-side calibration and representation alignment mechanisms to maintain comparable performance with end-to-end federated self-supervised learning (FedSSL) while significantly lowering clients' resource requirements. In a pure layer-wise training scheme, training one layer at a time may limit effective interaction between different layers of the model. The server-side calibration mechanism takes advantage of the resource-rich server in an FL environment to ensure smooth collaboration between different layers of the global model. During the local training process, the representation alignment mechanism encourages closeness between representations of FL local models and those of the global model, thereby preserving the layer cohesion established by server-side calibration. Our experiments show that LW-FedSSL has a $3.3 \times$ lower memory requirement and a $3.2 \times$ cheaper communication cost than its end-to-end counterpart. We also explore a progressive training strategy called Prog-FedSSL that outperforms end-to-end training with a similar memory requirement and a $1.8 \times$ cheaper communication cost.
Authors: Mike Laszkiewicz, Imant Daunhawer, Julia E. Vogt, Asja Fischer, Johannes Lederer
Abstract: Recent years have witnessed a rapid development of deep generative models for creating synthetic media, such as images and videos. While the practical applications of these models in everyday tasks are enticing, it is crucial to assess the inherent risks regarding their fairness. In this work, we introduce a comprehensive framework for benchmarking the performance and fairness of conditional generative models. We develop a set of metrics$\unicode{x2013}$inspired by their supervised fairness counterparts$\unicode{x2013}$to evaluate the models on their fairness and diversity. Focusing on the specific application of image upsampling, we create a benchmark covering a wide variety of modern upsampling methods. As part of the benchmark, we introduce UnfairFace, a subset of FairFace that replicates the racial distribution of common large-scale face datasets. Our empirical study highlights the importance of using an unbiased training set and reveals variations in how the algorithms respond to dataset imbalances. Alarmingly, we find that none of the considered methods produces statistically fair and diverse results. All experiments can be reproduced using our provided repository.
Authors: Hubert Padusinski, Christian Steinhauser, Thilo Braun, Lennart Ries, Eric Sax
Abstract: Machine Vision (MV) is essential for solving driving automation. This paper examines potential shortcomings in current MV testing strategies for highly automated driving (HAD) systems. We argue for a more comprehensive understanding of the performance factors that must be considered during the MV evaluation process, noting that neglecting these factors can lead to significant risks. This is not only relevant to MV component testing, but also to integration testing. To illustrate this point, we draw an analogy to a ship navigating towards an iceberg to show potential hidden challenges in current MV testing strategies. The main contribution is a novel framework for black-box testing which observes environmental relations. This means it is designed to enhance MV assessments by considering the attributes and surroundings of relevant individual objects. The framework provides the identification of seven general concerns about the object recognition of MV, which are not addressed adequately in established test processes. To detect these deficits based on their performance factors, we propose the use of a taxonomy called "granularity orders" along with a graphical representation. This allows an identification of MV uncertainties across a range of driving scenarios. This approach aims to advance the precision, efficiency, and completeness of testing procedures for MV.
Authors: Qiyao Liang, Ziming Liu, Ila Fiete
Abstract: Diffusion models are capable of impressive feats of image generation with uncommon juxtapositions such as astronauts riding horses on the moon with properly placed shadows. These outputs indicate the ability to perform compositional generalization, but how do the models do so? We perform controlled experiments on conditional DDPMs learning to generate 2D spherical Gaussian bumps centered at specified $x$- and $y$-positions. Our results show that the emergence of semantically meaningful latent representations is key to achieving high performance. En route to successful performance over learning, the model traverses three distinct phases of latent representations: (phase A) no latent structure, (phase B) a 2D manifold of disordered states, and (phase C) a 2D ordered manifold. Corresponding to each of these phases, we identify qualitatively different generation behaviors: 1) multiple bumps are generated, 2) one bump is generated but at inaccurate $x$ and $y$ locations, 3) a bump is generated at the correct $x$ and y location. Furthermore, we show that even under imbalanced datasets where features ($x$- versus $y$-positions) are represented with skewed frequencies, the learning process for $x$ and $y$ is coupled rather than factorized, demonstrating that simple vanilla-flavored diffusion models cannot learn efficient representations in which localization in $x$ and $y$ are factorized into separate 1D tasks. These findings suggest the need for future work to find inductive biases that will push generative models to discover and exploit factorizable independent structures in their inputs, which will be required to vault these models into more data-efficient regimes.
Authors: Philip Koopman
Abstract: An October 2023 crash between a GM Cruise robotaxi and a pedestrian in San Francisco resulted not only in a severe injury, but also dramatic upheaval at that company that will likely have lasting effects throughout the industry. Is-sues stem not just from the loss events themselves, but also from how Cruise mishandled dealing with their robotaxi dragging a pedestrian under the vehicle after the initial post-crash stop. External investigation reports provide raw material describing the incident and critique the company's response from a regulatory point of view, but exclude safety engineering recommendations from scope. We highlight specific facts and relationships among events by tying together different pieces of the external report material. We then explore safety lessons that might be learned related to: recognizing and responding to nearby mishaps, building an accurate world model of a post-collision scenario, the in-adequacy of a so-called "minimal risk condition" strategy in complex situations, poor organizational discipline in responding to a mishap, overly aggressive post-collision automation choices that made a bad situation worse, and a reluctance to admit to a mishap causing much worse organizational harm down-stream.
Authors: Omid Madani
Abstract: Consider a predictor, a learner, whose input is a stream of discrete items. The predictor's task, at every time point, is probabilistic multiclass prediction, i.e., to predict which item may occur next by outputting zero or more candidate items, each with a probability, after which the actual item is revealed and the predictor learns from this observation. To output probabilities, the predictor keeps track of the proportions of the items it has seen. The stream is unbounded and the predictor has finite limited space and we seek efficient prediction and update techniques: the set of items is unknown to the predictor and their totality can also grow unbounded. Moreover, there is non-stationarity: the underlying frequencies of items may change, substantially, from time to time. For instance, new items may start appearing and a few recently frequent items may cease to occur again. The predictor, being space-bounded, need only provide probabilities for those items with (currently) sufficiently high frequency, i.e., the salient items. This problem is motivated in the setting of prediction games, a self-supervised learning regime where concepts serve as both the predictors and the predictands, and the set of concepts grows over time, resulting in non-stationarities as new concepts are generated and used. We develop sparse multiclass moving average techniques designed to respond to such non-stationarities in a timely manner. One technique is based on the exponentiated moving average (EMA) and another is based on queuing a few count snapshots. We show that the combination, and in particular supporting dynamic predictand-specific learning rates, offers advantages in terms of faster change detection and convergence.
Authors: Vinay Setty
Abstract: In this paper, we explore the challenges associated with establishing an end-to-end fact-checking pipeline in a real-world context, covering over 90 languages. Our real-world experimental benchmarks demonstrate that fine-tuning Transformer models specifically for fact-checking tasks, such as claim detection and veracity prediction, provide superior performance over large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, GPT-3.5-Turbo, and Mistral-7b. However, we illustrate that LLMs excel in generative tasks such as question decomposition for evidence retrieval. Through extensive evaluation, we show the efficacy of fine-tuned models for fact-checking in a multilingual setting and complex claims that include numerical quantities.
Authors: Benedikt Alkin, Andreas F\"urst, Simon Schmid, Lukas Gruber, Markus Holzleitner, Johannes Brandstetter
Abstract: Neural operators, serving as physics surrogate models, have recently gained increased interest. With ever increasing problem complexity, the natural question arises: what is an efficient way to scale neural operators to larger and more complex simulations - most importantly by taking into account different types of simulation datasets. This is of special interest since, akin to their numerical counterparts, different techniques are used across applications, even if the underlying dynamics of the systems are similar. Whereas the flexibility of transformers has enabled unified architectures across domains, neural operators mostly follow a problem specific design, where GNNs are commonly used for Lagrangian simulations and grid-based models predominate Eulerian simulations. We introduce Universal Physics Transformers (UPTs), an efficient and unified learning paradigm for a wide range of spatio-temporal problems. UPTs operate without grid- or particle-based latent structures, enabling flexibility and scalability across meshes and particles. UPTs efficiently propagate dynamics in the latent space, emphasized by inverse encoding and decoding techniques. Finally, UPTs allow for queries of the latent space representation at any point in space-time. We demonstrate diverse applicability and efficacy of UPTs in mesh-based fluid simulations, and steady-state Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes simulations, and Lagrangian-based dynamics.
Authors: Grgur Kova\v{c}, R\'emy Portelas, Masataka Sawayama, Peter Ford Dominey, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer
Abstract: The standard way to study Large Language Models (LLMs) with benchmarks or psychology questionnaires is to provide many different queries from similar minimal contexts (e.g. multiple choice questions). However, due to LLMs' highly context-dependent nature, conclusions from such minimal-context evaluations may be little informative about the model's behavior in deployment (where it will be exposed to many new contexts). We argue that context-dependence (specifically, value stability) should be studied a specific property of LLMs and used as another dimension of LLM comparison (alongside others such as cognitive abilities, knowledge, or model size). We present a case-study on the stability of value expression over different contexts (simulated conversations on different topics) as measured using a standard psychology questionnaire (PVQ) and on behavioral downstream tasks. Reusing methods from psychology, we study Rank-order stability on the population (interpersonal) level, and Ipsative stability on the individual (intrapersonal) level. We consider two settings (with and without instructing LLMs to simulate particular personas), two simulated populations, and three downstream tasks. We observe consistent trends in the stability of models and model families - Mixtral, Mistral, GPT-3.5 and Qwen families are more stable than LLaMa-2 and Phi. The consistency of these trends implies that some models exhibit higher value-stability than others, and that value stability can be estimated with the set of introduced methodological tools. When instructed to simulate particular personas, LLMs exhibit low Rank-Order stability, which further diminishes with conversation length. This highlights the need for future research on LLMs that coherently simulate different personas. This paper provides a foundational step in that direction, and, to our knowledge, it is the first study of value stability in LLMs.
Authors: Tyler L. Hayes, C\'esar R. de Souza, Namil Kim, Jiwon Kim, Riccardo Volpi, Diane Larlus
Abstract: Object detectors are typically trained once and for all on a fixed set of classes. However, this closed-world assumption is unrealistic in practice, as new classes will inevitably emerge after the detector is deployed in the wild. In this work, we look at ways to extend a detector trained for a set of base classes so it can i) spot the presence of novel classes, and ii) automatically enrich its repertoire to be able to detect those newly discovered classes together with the base ones. We propose PANDAS, a method for novel class discovery and detection. It discovers clusters representing novel classes from unlabeled data, and represents old and new classes with prototypes. During inference, a distance-based classifier uses these prototypes to assign a label to each detected object instance. The simplicity of our method makes it widely applicable. We experimentally demonstrate the effectiveness of PANDAS on the VOC 2012 and COCO-to-LVIS benchmarks. It performs favorably against the state of the art for this task while being computationally more affordable.
Authors: Jamie Duell, Monika Seisenberger, Hsuan Fu, Xiuyi Fan
Abstract: Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) stand out as one of the most prominent approaches within the Machine Learning (ML) domain. The efficacy of DNNs has surged alongside recent increases in computational capacity, allowing these approaches to scale to significant complexities for addressing predictive challenges in big data. However, as the complexity of DNN models rises, interpretability diminishes. In response to this challenge, explainable models such as Adversarial Gradient Integration (AGI) leverage path-based gradients provided by DNNs to elucidate their decisions. Yet the performance of path-based explainers can be compromised when gradients exhibit irregularities during out-of-distribution path traversal. In this context, we introduce Quantified Uncertainty Counterfactual Explanations (QUCE), a method designed to mitigate out-of-distribution traversal by minimizing path uncertainty. QUCE not only quantifies uncertainty when presenting explanations but also generates more certain counterfactual examples. We showcase the performance of the QUCE method by comparing it with competing methods for both path-based explanations and generative counterfactual examples.
Authors: Hai Nguyen, Tadashi Kozuno, Cristian C. Beltran-Hernandez, Masashi Hamaya
Abstract: This study tackles the representative yet challenging contact-rich peg-in-hole task of robotic assembly, using a soft wrist that can operate more safely and tolerate lower-frequency control signals than a rigid one. Previous studies often use a fully observable formulation, requiring external setups or estimators for the peg-to-hole pose. In contrast, we use a partially observable formulation and deep reinforcement learning from demonstrations to learn a memory-based agent that acts purely on haptic and proprioceptive signals. Moreover, previous works do not incorporate potential domain symmetry and thus must search for solutions in a bigger space. Instead, we propose to leverage the symmetry for sample efficiency by augmenting the training data and constructing auxiliary losses to force the agent to adhere to the symmetry. Results in simulation with five different symmetric peg shapes show that our proposed agent can be comparable to or even outperform a state-based agent. In particular, the sample efficiency also allows us to learn directly on the real robot within 3 hours.
Authors: Lingkai Kong, Yuanqi Du, Wenhao Mu, Kirill Neklyudov, Valentin De Bortoli, Haorui Wang, Dongxia Wu, Aaron Ferber, Yi-An Ma, Carla P. Gomes, Chao Zhang
Abstract: Addressing real-world optimization problems becomes particularly challenging when analytic objective functions or constraints are unavailable. While numerous studies have addressed the issue of unknown objectives, limited research has focused on scenarios where feasibility constraints are not given explicitly. Overlooking these constraints can lead to spurious solutions that are unrealistic in practice. To deal with such unknown constraints, we propose to perform optimization within the data manifold using diffusion models. To constrain the optimization process to the data manifold, we reformulate the original optimization problem as a sampling problem from the product of the Boltzmann distribution defined by the objective function and the data distribution learned by the diffusion model. To enhance sampling efficiency, we propose a two-stage framework that begins with a guided diffusion process for warm-up, followed by a Langevin dynamics stage for further correction. Theoretical analysis shows that the initial stage results in a distribution focused on feasible solutions, thereby providing a better initialization for the later stage. Comprehensive experiments on a synthetic dataset, six real-world black-box optimization datasets, and a multi-objective optimization dataset show that our method achieves better or comparable performance with previous state-of-the-art baselines.
Authors: Yasuko Kawahata
Abstract: This note explores the innovative application of soliton theory and plasmonic phenomena in modeling user behavior and engagement within digital health platforms. By introducing the concept of soliton solutions, we present a novel approach to understanding stable patterns of health improvement behaviors over time. Additionally, we delve into the role of tellurium nanoparticles and their plasmonic properties in adsorbing fake news, thereby influencing user interactions and engagement levels. Through a theoretical framework that combines nonlinear dynamics with the unique characteristics of tellurium nanoparticles, we aim to provide new insights into the dynamics of user engagement in digital health environments. Our analysis highlights the potential of soliton theory in capturing the complex, nonlinear dynamics of user behavior, while the application of plasmonic phenomena offers a promising avenue for enhancing the sensitivity and effectiveness of digital health platforms. This research ventures into an uncharted territory where optical phenomena such as Brewster's Angle and Snell's Law, along with the concept of spin solitons, are metaphorically applied to address the challenge of fake news dissemination. By exploring the analogy between light refraction, reflection, and the propagation of information in digital platforms, we unveil a novel perspective on how the 'angle' at which information is presented can significantly affect its acceptance and spread. Additionally, we propose the use of tellurium nanoparticles to manage 'information waves' through mechanisms akin to plasmonic resonance and soliton dynamics. This theoretical exploration aims to bridge the gap between physical sciences and digital communication, offering insights into the development of strategies for mitigating misinformation.
Authors: Yasuko Kawahata
Abstract: In this research note, we propose a new approach to model the fake news diffusion process within the framework of incomplete information games. In particular, we use nonlinear partial differential equations to represent the phenomenon of plasmon resonance, in which the diffusion of fake news is rapidly amplified within a particular social group or communication network, and analyze its dynamics through a soliton solution approach. In addition, we consider how first mover, second mover, and third mover strategies interact within this nonlinear system and contribute to the amplification or suppression of fake news diffusion. The model aims to understand the mechanisms of fake news proliferation and provide insights into how to prevent or combat it. By combining concepts from the social sciences and the physical sciences, this study attempts to develop a new theoretical framework for the contemporary problem of fake news.This paper is partially an attempt to utilize "Generative AI" and was written with educational intent. There are currently no plans for it to become a peer-reviewed paper.
Authors: Yasuko Kawahata
Abstract: This note considers an innovative interdisciplinary methodology that bridges the gap between the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics applied to the study of materials such as tellurium nanoparticles (TeNPs) and graphene and the complex dynamics of social systems. The basis for this approach lies in the metaphorical parallels drawn between the structural features of TeNPs and graphene and the behavioral patterns of social groups in the face of misinformation. TeNPs exhibit unique properties such as the strengthening of covalent bonds within telluric chains and the disruption of secondary structure leading to the separation of these chains. This is analogous to increased cohesion within social groups and disruption of information flow between different subgroups, respectively. . Similarly, the outstanding properties of graphene, such as high electrical conductivity, strength, and flexibility, provide additional aspects for understanding the resilience and adaptability of social structures in response to external stimuli such as fake news. This research note proposes a novel metaphorical framework for analyzing the spread of fake news within social groups, analogous to the structural features of telluric nanoparticles (TeNPs). We investigate how the strengthening of covalent bonds within TeNPs reflects the strengthening of social cohesion in groups that share common beliefs and values. This paper is partially an attempt to utilize "Generative AI" and was written with educational intent. There are currently no plans for it to become a peer-reviewed paper.
Authors: Balint Gyevnar, Stephanie Droop, Tadeg Quillien, Shay B. Cohen, Neil R. Bramley, Christopher G. Lucas, Stefano V. Albrecht
Abstract: Cognitive science can help us understand which explanations people might expect, and in which format they frame these explanations, whether causal, counterfactual, or teleological (i.e., purpose-oriented). Understanding the relevance of these concepts is crucial for building good explainable AI (XAI) which offers recourse and actionability. Focusing on autonomous driving, a complex decision-making domain, we report empirical data from two surveys on (i) how people explain the behavior of autonomous vehicles in 14 unique scenarios (N1=54), and (ii) how they perceive these explanations in terms of complexity, quality, and trustworthiness (N2=356). Participants deemed teleological explanations significantly better quality than counterfactual ones, with perceived teleology being the best predictor of perceived quality and trustworthiness. Neither the perceived teleology nor the quality were affected by whether the car was an autonomous vehicle or driven by a person. This indicates that people use teleology to evaluate information about not just other people but also autonomous vehicles. Taken together, our findings highlight the importance of explanations that are framed in terms of purpose rather than just, as is standard in XAI, the causal mechanisms involved. We release the 14 scenarios and more than 1,300 elicited explanations publicly as the Human Explanations for Autonomous Driving Decisions (HEADD) dataset.
Authors: Minhyuk Seo, Diganta Misra, Seongwon Cho, Minjae Lee, Jonghyun Choi
Abstract: In real-world scenarios, extensive manual annotation for continual learning is impractical due to prohibitive costs. Although prior arts, influenced by large-scale webly supervised training, suggest leveraging web-scraped data in continual learning, this poses challenges such as data imbalance, usage restrictions, and privacy concerns. Addressing the risks of continual webly supervised training, we present an online continual learning framework - Generative Name only Continual Learning (G-NoCL). The proposed G-NoCL uses a set of generators G along with the learner. When encountering new concepts (i.e., classes), G-NoCL employs the novel sample complexity-guided data ensembling technique DIverSity and COmplexity enhancing ensemBlER (DISCOBER) to optimally sample training data from generated data. Through extensive experimentation, we demonstrate superior performance of DISCOBER in G-NoCL online CL benchmarks, covering both In-Distribution (ID) and Out-of-Distribution (OOD) generalization evaluations, compared to naive generator-ensembling, web-supervised, and manually annotated data.
Authors: Ekaterina Trofimova, Emil Sataev, Andrey E. Ustyuzhanin
Abstract: In the ever-evolving landscape of machine learning, seamless translation of natural language descriptions into executable code remains a formidable challenge. This paper introduces Linguacodus, an innovative framework designed to tackle this challenge by deploying a dynamic pipeline that iteratively transforms natural language task descriptions into code through high-level data-shaping instructions. The core of Linguacodus is a fine-tuned large language model (LLM), empowered to evaluate diverse solutions for various problems and select the most fitting one for a given task. This paper details the fine-tuning process, and sheds light on how natural language descriptions can be translated into functional code. Linguacodus represents a substantial leap towards automated code generation, effectively bridging the gap between task descriptions and executable code. It holds great promise for advancing machine learning applications across diverse domains. Additionally, we propose an algorithm capable of transforming a natural description of an ML task into code with minimal human interaction. In extensive experiments on a vast machine learning code dataset originating from Kaggle, we showcase the effectiveness of Linguacodus. The investigations highlight its potential applications across diverse domains, emphasizing its impact on applied machine learning in various scientific fields.
Authors: Venktesh V, Abhijit Anand, Avishek Anand, Vinay Setty
Abstract: Automated fact checking has gained immense interest to tackle the growing misinformation in the digital era. Existing systems primarily focus on synthetic claims on Wikipedia, and noteworthy progress has also been made on real-world claims. In this work, we release Numtemp, a diverse, multi-domain dataset focused exclusively on numerical claims, encompassing temporal, statistical and diverse aspects with fine-grained metadata and an evidence collection without leakage. This addresses the challenge of verifying real-world numerical claims, which are complex and often lack precise information, not addressed by existing works that mainly focus on synthetic claims. We evaluate and quantify the limitations of existing solutions for the task of verifying numerical claims. We also evaluate claim decomposition based methods, numerical understanding based models and our best baselines achieves a macro-F1 of 58.32. This demonstrates that Numtemp serves as a challenging evaluation set for numerical claim verification.
Authors: Matthias Gerstgrasser, Rylan Schaeffer, Apratim Dey, Rafael Rafailov, Henry Sleight, John Hughes, Tomasz Korbak, Rajashree Agrawal, Dhruv Pai, Andrey Gromov, Daniel A. Roberts, Diyi Yang, David L. Donoho, Sanmi Koyejo
Abstract: The proliferation of generative models, combined with pretraining on web-scale data, raises a timely question: what happens when these models are trained on their own generated outputs? Recent investigations into model-data feedback loops proposed that such loops would lead to a phenomenon termed model collapse, under which performance progressively degrades with each model-data feedback iteration until fitted models become useless. However, those studies largely assumed that new data replace old data over time, where an arguably more realistic assumption is that data accumulate over time. In this paper, we ask: what effect does accumulating data have on model collapse? We empirically study this question by pretraining sequences of language models on text corpora. We confirm that replacing the original real data by each generation's synthetic data does indeed tend towards model collapse, then demonstrate that accumulating the successive generations of synthetic data alongside the original real data avoids model collapse; these results hold across a range of model sizes, architectures, and hyperparameters. We obtain similar results for deep generative models on other types of real data: diffusion models for molecule conformation generation and variational autoencoders for image generation. To understand why accumulating data can avoid model collapse, we use an analytically tractable framework introduced by prior work in which a sequence of linear models are fit to the previous models' outputs. Previous work used this framework to show that if data are replaced, the test error increases with the number of model-fitting iterations; we extend this argument to prove that if data instead accumulate, the test error has a finite upper bound independent of the number of iterations, meaning model collapse no longer occurs.
Authors: Tom\'as Vergara-Browne, \'Alvaro Soto, Akiko Aizawa
Abstract: We introduce eigenpruning, a method that removes singular values from weight matrices in an LLM to improve its performance in a particular task. This method is inspired by interpretability methods designed to automatically find subnetworks of a model which solve a specific task. In our tests, the pruned model outperforms the original model by a large margin, while only requiring minimal computation to prune the weight matrices. In the case of a small synthetic task in integer multiplication, the Phi-2 model can improve its accuracy in the test set from 13.75% to 97.50%. Interestingly, these results seem to indicate the existence of a computation path that can solve the task very effectively, but it was not being used by the original model. Finally, we publicly release our implementation.
Authors: Yi Zhang, Jitao Sang
Abstract: Machine learning models often make predictions based on biased features such as gender, race, and other social attributes, posing significant fairness risks, especially in societal applications, such as hiring, banking, and criminal justice. Traditional approaches to addressing this issue involve retraining or fine-tuning neural networks with fairness-aware optimization objectives. However, these methods can be impractical due to significant computational resources, complex industrial tests, and the associated CO2 footprint. Additionally, regular users aiming to use fair models often lack access to model parameters. In this paper, we introduce Inference-Time Rule Eraser (Eraser), a novel method focused on removing biased decision-making rules during inference to address fairness concerns without modifying model weights. We begin by establishing a theoretical foundation for modifying model outputs to eliminate biased rules through Bayesian analysis. Next, we present a specific implementation of Eraser that involves two stages: (1) querying the model to distill biased rules into a patched model, and (2) excluding these biased rules during inference. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of our approach, showcasing its superior performance in addressing fairness concerns in AI systems.
Authors: Sidra Aleem, Fangyijie Wang, Mayug Maniparambil, Eric Arazo, Julia Dietlmeier, Guenole Silvestre, Kathleen Curran, Noel E. O'Connor, Suzanne Little
Abstract: The Segment Anything Model (SAM) and CLIP are remarkable vision foundation models (VFMs). SAM, a prompt driven segmentation model, excels in segmentation tasks across diverse domains, while CLIP is renowned for its zero shot recognition capabilities. However, their unified potential has not yet been explored in medical image segmentation. To adapt SAM to medical imaging, existing methods primarily rely on tuning strategies that require extensive data or prior prompts tailored to the specific task, making it particularly challenging when only a limited number of data samples are available. This work presents an in depth exploration of integrating SAM and CLIP into a unified framework for medical image segmentation. Specifically, we propose a simple unified framework, SaLIP, for organ segmentation. Initially, SAM is used for part based segmentation within the image, followed by CLIP to retrieve the mask corresponding to the region of interest (ROI) from the pool of SAM generated masks. Finally, SAM is prompted by the retrieved ROI to segment a specific organ. Thus, SaLIP is training and fine tuning free and does not rely on domain expertise or labeled data for prompt engineering. Our method shows substantial enhancements in zero shot segmentation, showcasing notable improvements in DICE scores across diverse segmentation tasks like brain (63.46%), lung (50.11%), and fetal head (30.82%), when compared to un prompted SAM. Code and text prompts are available at: https://github.com/aleemsidra/SaLIP.
Authors: Yunlong Feng, Yang Xu, Libo Qin, Yasheng Wang, Wanxiang Che
Abstract: Large-scale high-quality training data is important for improving the performance of models. After trained with data that has rationales (reasoning steps), models gain reasoning capability. However, the dataset with high-quality rationales is relatively scarce due to the high annotation cost. To address this issue, we propose \textit{Self-motivated Learning} framework. The framework motivates the model itself to automatically generate rationales on existing datasets. Based on the inherent rank from correctness across multiple rationales, the model learns to generate better rationales, leading to higher reasoning capability. Specifically, we train a reward model with the rank to evaluate the quality of rationales, and improve the performance of reasoning through reinforcement learning. Experiment results of Llama2 7B on multiple reasoning datasets show that our method significantly improves the reasoning ability of models, even outperforming text-davinci-002 in some datasets.
Authors: Robert Vacareanu, Vlad-Andrei Negru, Vasile Suciu, Mihai Surdeanu
Abstract: We analyze how well pre-trained large language models (e.g., Llama2, GPT-4, Claude 3, etc) can do linear and non-linear regression when given in-context examples, without any additional training or gradient updates. Our findings reveal that several large language models (e.g., GPT-4, Claude 3) are able to perform regression tasks with a performance rivaling (or even outperforming) that of traditional supervised methods such as Random Forest, Bagging, or Gradient Boosting. For example, on the challenging Friedman #2 regression dataset, Claude 3 outperforms many supervised methods such as AdaBoost, SVM, Random Forest, KNN, or Gradient Boosting. We then investigate how well the performance of large language models scales with the number of in-context exemplars. We borrow from the notion of regret from online learning and empirically show that LLMs are capable of obtaining a sub-linear regret.
Authors: Ye Wang, Yaxiong Wang, Yujiao Wu, Bingchen Zhao, Xueming Qian
Abstract: Generalized Class Discovery (GCD) aims to dynamically assign labels to unlabelled data partially based on knowledge learned from labelled data, where the unlabelled data may come from known or novel classes. The prevailing approach generally involves clustering across all data and learning conceptions by prototypical contrastive learning. However, existing methods largely hinge on the performance of clustering algorithms and are thus subject to their inherent limitations. Firstly, the estimated cluster number is often smaller than the ground truth, making the existing methods suffer from the lack of prototypes for comprehensive conception learning. To address this issue, we propose an adaptive probing mechanism that introduces learnable potential prototypes to expand cluster prototypes (centers). As there is no ground truth for the potential prototype, we develop a self-supervised prototype learning framework to optimize the potential prototype in an end-to-end fashion. Secondly, clustering is computationally intensive, and the conventional strategy of clustering both labelled and unlabelled instances exacerbates this issue. To counteract this inefficiency, we opt to cluster only the unlabelled instances and subsequently expand the cluster prototypes with our introduced potential prototypes to fast explore novel classes. Despite the simplicity of our proposed method, extensive empirical analysis on a wide range of datasets confirms that our method consistently delivers state-of-the-art results. Specifically, our method surpasses the nearest competitor by a significant margin of 9.7% within the Stanford Cars dataset and 12x clustering efficiency within the Herbarium 19 dataset. We will make the code and checkpoints publicly available at https://github.com/xjtuYW/PNP.git.
Authors: Zishuo Zhao, Zhixuan Fang, Xuechao Wang, Xi Chen, Yuan Zhou
Abstract: Most concurrent blockchain systems rely heavily on the Proof-of-Work (PoW) or Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanisms for decentralized consensus and security assurance. However, the substantial energy expenditure stemming from computationally intensive yet meaningless tasks has raised considerable concerns surrounding traditional PoW approaches, The PoS mechanism, while free of energy consumption, is subject to security and economic issues. Addressing these issues, the paradigm of Proof-of-Useful-Work (PoUW) seeks to employ challenges of practical significance as PoW, thereby imbuing energy consumption with tangible value. While previous efforts in Proof of Learning (PoL) explored the utilization of deep learning model training SGD tasks as PoUW challenges, recent research has revealed its vulnerabilities to adversarial attacks and the theoretical hardness in crafting a byzantine-secure PoL mechanism. In this paper, we introduce the concept of incentive-security that incentivizes rational provers to behave honestly for their best interest, bypassing the existing hardness to design a PoL mechanism with computational efficiency, a provable incentive-security guarantee and controllable difficulty. Particularly, our work is secure against two attacks to the recent work of Jia et al. [2021], and also improves the computational overhead from $\Theta(1)$ to $O(\frac{\log E}{E})$. Furthermore, while most recent research assumes trusted problem providers and verifiers, our design also guarantees frontend incentive-security even when problem providers are untrusted, and verifier incentive-security that bypasses the Verifier's Dilemma. By incorporating ML training into blockchain consensus mechanisms with provable guarantees, our research not only proposes an eco-friendly solution to blockchain systems, but also provides a proposal for a completely decentralized computing power market in the new AI age.
Authors: Taylor Webb, Keith J. Holyoak, Hongjing Lu
Abstract: We recently reported evidence that large language models are capable of solving a wide range of text-based analogy problems in a zero-shot manner, indicating the presence of an emergent capacity for analogical reasoning. Two recent commentaries have challenged these results, citing evidence from so-called `counterfactual' tasks in which the standard sequence of the alphabet is arbitrarily permuted so as to decrease similarity with materials that may have been present in the language model's training data. Here, we reply to these critiques, clarifying some misunderstandings about the test materials used in our original work, and presenting evidence that language models are also capable of generalizing to these new counterfactual task variants.
Authors: Bingwen Zhu, Fanyi Wang, Tianyi Lu, Peng Liu, Jingwen Su, Jinxiu Liu, Yanhao Zhang, Zuxuan Wu, Yu-Gang Jiang, Guo-Jun Qi
Abstract: Image-to-video(I2V) generation aims to create a video sequence from a single image, which requires high temporal coherence and visual fidelity with the source image.However, existing approaches suffer from character appearance inconsistency and poor preservation of fine details. Moreover, they require a large amount of video data for training, which can be computationally demanding.To address these limitations,we propose PoseAnimate, a novel zero-shot I2V framework for character animation.PoseAnimate contains three key components: 1) Pose-Aware Control Module (PACM) incorporates diverse pose signals into conditional embeddings, to preserve character-independent content and maintain precise alignment of actions.2) Dual Consistency Attention Module (DCAM) enhances temporal consistency, and retains character identity and intricate background details.3) Mask-Guided Decoupling Module (MGDM) refines distinct feature perception, improving animation fidelity by decoupling the character and background.We also propose a Pose Alignment Transition Algorithm (PATA) to ensure smooth action transition.Extensive experiment results demonstrate that our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art training-based methods in terms of character consistency and detail fidelity. Moreover, it maintains a high level of temporal coherence throughout the generated animations.
Authors: Armando Zhu, Keqin Li, Tong Wu, Peng Zhao, Bo Hong
Abstract: With wearing masks becoming a new cultural norm, facial expression recognition (FER) while taking masks into account has become a significant challenge. In this paper, we propose a unified multi-branch vision transformer for facial expression recognition and mask wearing classification tasks. Our approach extracts shared features for both tasks using a dual-branch architecture that obtains multi-scale feature representations. Furthermore, we propose a cross-task fusion phase that processes tokens for each task with separate branches, while exchanging information using a cross attention module. Our proposed framework reduces the overall complexity compared with using separate networks for both tasks by the simple yet effective cross-task fusion phase. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed model performs better than or on par with different state-of-the-art methods on both facial expression recognition and facial mask wearing classification task.
Authors: Nur Aizaan Anwar, Cosmin Badea
Abstract: As artificially intelligent systems become more anthropomorphic and pervasive, and their potential impact on humanity more urgent, discussions about the possibility of machine consciousness have significantly intensified, and it is sometimes seen as 'the holy grail'. Many concerns have been voiced about the ramifications of creating an artificial conscious entity. This is compounded by a marked lack of consensus around what constitutes consciousness and by an absence of a universal set of criteria for determining consciousness. By going into depth on the foundations and characteristics of consciousness, we propose five criteria for determining whether a machine is conscious, which can also be applied more generally to any entity. This paper aims to serve as a primer and stepping stone for researchers of consciousness, be they in philosophy, computer science, medicine, or any other field, to further pursue this holy grail of philosophy, neuroscience and artificial intelligence.
Authors: Senthooran Rajamanoharan, Arthur Conmy, Lewis Smith, Tom Lieberum, Vikrant Varma, J\'anos Kram\'ar, Rohin Shah, Neel Nanda
Abstract: Recent work has found that sparse autoencoders (SAEs) are an effective technique for unsupervised discovery of interpretable features in language models' (LMs) activations, by finding sparse, linear reconstructions of LM activations. We introduce the Gated Sparse Autoencoder (Gated SAE), which achieves a Pareto improvement over training with prevailing methods. In SAEs, the L1 penalty used to encourage sparsity introduces many undesirable biases, such as shrinkage -- systematic underestimation of feature activations. The key insight of Gated SAEs is to separate the functionality of (a) determining which directions to use and (b) estimating the magnitudes of those directions: this enables us to apply the L1 penalty only to the former, limiting the scope of undesirable side effects. Through training SAEs on LMs of up to 7B parameters we find that, in typical hyper-parameter ranges, Gated SAEs solve shrinkage, are similarly interpretable, and require half as many firing features to achieve comparable reconstruction fidelity.
Authors: Fatemeh Dehrouyeh, Li Yang, Firouz Badrkhani Ajaei, Abdallah Shami
Abstract: As technology advances, the use of Machine Learning (ML) in cybersecurity is becoming increasingly crucial to tackle the growing complexity of cyber threats. While traditional ML models can enhance cybersecurity, their high energy and resource demands limit their applications, leading to the emergence of Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML) as a more suitable solution for resource-constrained environments. TinyML is widely applied in areas such as smart homes, healthcare, and industrial automation. TinyML focuses on optimizing ML algorithms for small, low-power devices, enabling intelligent data processing directly on edge devices. This paper provides a comprehensive review of common challenges of TinyML techniques, such as power consumption, limited memory, and computational constraints; it also explores potential solutions to these challenges, such as energy harvesting, computational optimization techniques, and transfer learning for privacy preservation. On the other hand, this paper discusses TinyML's applications in advancing cybersecurity for Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructures (EVCIs) as a representative use case. It presents an experimental case study that enhances cybersecurity in EVCI using TinyML, evaluated against traditional ML in terms of reduced delay and memory usage, with a slight trade-off in accuracy. Additionally, the study includes a practical setup using the ESP32 microcontroller in the PlatformIO environment, which provides a hands-on assessment of TinyML's application in cybersecurity for EVCI.
Authors: Kaichen Xu, Yueyang Ding, Suyang Hou, Weiqiang Zhan, Nisang Chen, Jun Wang, Xiaobo Sun
Abstract: Fined-grained anomalous cell detection from affected tissues is critical for clinical diagnosis and pathological research. Single-cell sequencing data provide unprecedented opportunities for this task. However, current anomaly detection methods struggle to handle domain shifts prevalent in multi-sample and multi-domain single-cell sequencing data, leading to suboptimal performance. Moreover, these methods fall short of distinguishing anomalous cells into pathologically distinct subtypes. In response, we propose ACSleuth, a novel, reconstruction deviation-guided generative framework that integrates the detection, domain adaptation, and fine-grained annotating of anomalous cells into a methodologically cohesive workflow. Notably, we present the first theoretical analysis of using reconstruction deviations output by generative models for anomaly detection in lieu of domain shifts. This analysis informs us to develop a novel and superior maximum mean discrepancy-based anomaly scorer in ACSleuth. Extensive benchmarks over various single-cell data and other types of tabular data demonstrate ACSleuth's superiority over the state-of-the-art methods in identifying and subtyping anomalies in multi-sample and multi-domain contexts. Our code is available at https://github.com/Catchxu/ACsleuth.
Authors: Wei Cui, Rasa Hosseinzadeh, Junwei Ma, Tongzi Wu, Yi Sui, Keyvan Golestan
Abstract: Contrastive learning is a model pre-training technique by first creating similar views of the original data, and then encouraging the data and its corresponding views to be close in the embedding space. Contrastive learning has witnessed success in image and natural language data, thanks to the domain-specific augmentation techniques that are both intuitive and effective. Nonetheless, in tabular domain, the predominant augmentation technique for creating views is through corrupting tabular entries via swapping values, which is not as sound or effective. We propose a simple yet powerful improvement to this augmentation technique: corrupting tabular data conditioned on class identity. Specifically, when corrupting a specific tabular entry from an anchor row, instead of randomly sampling a value in the same feature column from the entire table uniformly, we only sample from rows that are identified to be within the same class as the anchor row. We assume the semi-supervised learning setting, and adopt the pseudo labeling technique for obtaining class identities over all table rows. We also explore the novel idea of selecting features to be corrupted based on feature correlation structures. Extensive experiments show that the proposed approach consistently outperforms the conventional corruption method for tabular data classification tasks. Our code is available at https://github.com/willtop/Tabular-Class-Conditioned-SSL.
URLs: https://github.com/willtop/Tabular-Class-Conditioned-SSL.
Authors: Qixin Deng, Qikai Yang, Ruibin Yuan, Yipeng Huang, Yi Wang, Xubo Liu, Zeyue Tian, Jiahao Pan, Ge Zhang, Hanfeng Lin, Yizhi Li, Yinghao Ma, Jie Fu, Chenghua Lin, Emmanouil Benetos, Wenwu Wang, Guangyu Xia, Wei Xue, Yike Guo
Abstract: Music composition represents the creative side of humanity, and itself is a complex task that requires abilities to understand and generate information with long dependency and harmony constraints. While demonstrating impressive capabilities in STEM subjects, current LLMs easily fail in this task, generating ill-written music even when equipped with modern techniques like In-Context-Learning and Chain-of-Thoughts. To further explore and enhance LLMs' potential in music composition by leveraging their reasoning ability and the large knowledge base in music history and theory, we propose ComposerX, an agent-based symbolic music generation framework. We find that applying a multi-agent approach significantly improves the music composition quality of GPT-4. The results demonstrate that ComposerX is capable of producing coherent polyphonic music compositions with captivating melodies, while adhering to user instructions.
Authors: Zilong Bai, Ruiji Zhang, Linqing Chen, Qijun Cai, Yuan Zhong, Cong Wang, Yan Fang, Jie Fang, Jing Sun, Weikuan Wang, Lizhi Zhou, Haoran Hua, Tian Qiu, Chaochao Wang, Cheng Sun, Jianping Lu, Yixin Wang, Yubin Xia, Meng Hu, Haowen Liu, Peng Xu, Licong Xu, Fu Bian, Xiaolong Gu, Lisha Zhang, Weilei Wang, Changyang Tu
Abstract: In recent years, large language models have attracted significant attention due to their exceptional performance across a multitude of natural language process tasks, and have been widely applied in various fields. However, the application of large language models in the Intellectual Property (IP) space is challenging due to the strong need for specialized knowledge, privacy protection, processing of extremely long text in this field. In this technical report, we present for the first time a low-cost, standardized procedure for training IP-oriented LLMs, meeting the unique requirements of the IP domain. Using this standard process, we have trained the PatentGPT series models based on open-source pretrained models. By evaluating them on the open-source IP-oriented benchmark MOZIP, our domain-specific LLMs outperforms GPT-4, indicating the effectiveness of the proposed training procedure and the expertise of the PatentGPT models in the IP demain. What is impressive is that our model significantly outperformed GPT-4 on the 2019 China Patent Agent Qualification Examination by achieving a score of 65, reaching the level of human experts. Additionally, the PatentGPT model, which utilizes the SMoE architecture, achieves performance comparable to that of GPT-4 in the IP domain and demonstrates a better cost-performance ratio on long-text tasks, potentially serving as an alternative to GPT-4 within the IP domain.
Authors: Mladjan Jovanovic, Peter Voss
Abstract: Real-time learning concerns the ability of learning systems to acquire knowledge over time, enabling their adaptation and generalization to novel tasks. It is a critical ability for intelligent, real-world systems, especially when data may be insufficient or difficult to obtain. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of real-time learning in Large Language Models. It synthesizes the state-of-the-art real-time learning paradigms, including continual learning, meta-learning, parameter-efficient learning, and mixture-of-experts learning. We demonstrate their utility for real-time learning by describing specific achievements from these related topics and their critical factors. Finally, the paper highlights current problems and challenges for future research in the field. By consolidating the latest relevant research developments, this review offers a comprehensive understanding of real-time learning and its implications for designing and developing LLM-based learning systems addressing real-world problems.
Authors: Yixuan Li, Dan C. Baciu, Marcos Novak, George Legrady
Abstract: Over the past year, the emergence of advanced text-to-image Generative AI models has significantly impacted the art world, challenging traditional notions of creativity and the role of artists. This study explores how artists interact with these technologies, using a 5P model (Purpose, People, Process, Product, and Press) based on Rhodes' creativity framework to compare the artistic processes behind Conceptual Art and Image Generative AI. To exemplify this framework, a practical case study titled "Equivalence", a multi-screen interactive installation that converts users' speech input into continuously evolving paintings developed based on Stable Diffusion and NLP algorithms, was developed. Through comprehensive analysis and the case study, this work aims to broaden our understanding of artists' roles and foster a deeper appreciation for the creative aspects inherent in artwork created with Image Generative AI.
Authors: Luca Deck, Astrid Schom\"acker, Timo Speith, Jakob Sch\"offer, Lena K\"astner, Niklas K\"uhl
Abstract: The widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems across various domains is increasingly highlighting issues related to algorithmic fairness, especially in high-stakes scenarios. Thus, critical considerations of how fairness in AI systems might be improved, and what measures are available to aid this process, are overdue. Many researchers and policymakers see explainable AI (XAI) as a promising way to increase fairness in AI systems. However, there is a wide variety of XAI methods and fairness conceptions expressing different desiderata, and the precise connections between XAI and fairness remain largely nebulous. Besides, different measures to increase algorithmic fairness might be applicable at different points throughout an AI system's lifecycle. Yet, there currently is no coherent mapping of fairness desiderata along the AI lifecycle. In this paper, we set out to bridge both these gaps: We distill eight fairness desiderata, map them along the AI lifecycle, and discuss how XAI could help address each of them. We hope to provide orientation for practical applications and to inspire XAI research specifically focused on these fairness desiderata.
Authors: Seyed Soroush Karimi Madahi, Gargya Gokhale, Marie-Sophie Verwee, Bert Claessens, Chris Develder
Abstract: A continuous rise in the penetration of renewable energy sources, along with the use of the single imbalance pricing, provides a new opportunity for balance responsible parties to reduce their cost through energy arbitrage in the imbalance settlement mechanism. Model-free reinforcement learning (RL) methods are an appropriate choice for solving the energy arbitrage problem due to their outstanding performance in solving complex stochastic sequential problems. However, RL is rarely deployed in real-world applications since its learned policy does not necessarily guarantee safety during the execution phase. In this paper, we propose a new RL-based control framework for batteries to obtain a safe energy arbitrage strategy in the imbalance settlement mechanism. In our proposed control framework, the agent initially aims to optimize the arbitrage revenue. Subsequently, in the post-processing step, we correct (constrain) the learned policy following a knowledge distillation process based on properties that follow human intuition. Our post-processing step is a generic method and is not restricted to the energy arbitrage domain. We use the Belgian imbalance price of 2023 to evaluate the performance of our proposed framework. Furthermore, we deploy our proposed control framework on a real battery to show its capability in the real world.
Authors: Yuxuan Yan, Shunpu Tang, Zhiguo Shi, Qianqian Yang
Abstract: Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs) have shown excellent performance on various downstream tasks after fine-tuning. Nevertheless, the escalating concerns surrounding user privacy have posed significant challenges to centralized training reliant on extensive data collection. Federated learning, which only requires training on the clients and aggregates weights on the server without sharing data, has emerged as a solution. However, the substantial parameter size of PLMs places a significant burden on the computational resources of client devices, while also leading to costly communication expenses. Introducing Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning(PEFT) into federated learning can effectively address this problem. However, we observe that the non-IID data in federated learning leads to a gap in performance between the PEFT method and full parameter fine-tuning(FFT). To overcome this, we propose FeDeRA, an improvement over the Low-Rank Adaption(LoRA) method in federated learning. FeDeRA uses the same adapter module as LoRA. However, the difference lies in FeDeRA's initialization of the adapter module by performing Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) on the pre-trained matrix and selecting its principal components. We conducted extensive experiments, using RoBERTa and DeBERTaV3, on six datasets, comparing the methods including FFT and the other three different PEFT methods. FeDeRA outperforms all other PEFT methods and is comparable to or even surpasses the performance of FFT method. We also deployed federated learning on Jetson AGX Orin and compared the time required by different methods to achieve the target accuracy on specific tasks. Compared to FFT, FeDeRA reduces the training time by 95.9\%, 97.9\%, 96.9\% and 97.3\%, 96.5\%, 96.5\% respectively on three tasks using RoBERTa and DeBERTaV3. The overall experiments indicate that FeDeRA achieves good performance while also maintaining efficiency.