Authors: Miguel Angel Mendez-Lucero, Enrique Bojorquez Gallardo, Vaishak Belle
Abstract: Issues of safety, explainability, and efficiency are of increasing concern in learning systems deployed with hard and soft constraints. Symbolic Constrained Learning and Knowledge Distillation techniques have shown promising results in this area, by embedding and extracting knowledge, as well as providing logical constraints during neural network training. Although many frameworks exist to date, through an integration of logic and information geometry, we provide a construction and theoretical framework for these tasks that generalize many approaches. We propose a loss-based method that embeds knowledge-enforces logical constraints-into a machine learning model that outputs probability distributions. This is done by constructing a distribution from the external knowledge/logic formula and constructing a loss function as a linear combination of the original loss function with the Fisher-Rao distance or Kullback-Leibler divergence to the constraint distribution. This construction includes logical constraints in the form of propositional formulas (Boolean variables), formulas of a first-order language with finite variables over a model with compact domain (categorical and continuous variables), and in general, likely applicable to any statistical model that was pretrained with semantic information. We evaluate our method on a variety of learning tasks, including classification tasks with logic constraints, transferring knowledge from logic formulas, and knowledge distillation from general distributions.
Authors: Lukas Gerlach (TU Dresden), David Carral (LIRMM, CRISAM, UM, CNRS, BOREAL), Markus Hecher (MIT)
Abstract: Answer set programming (ASP) is a logic programming formalism used in various areas of artificial intelligence like combinatorial problem solving and knowledge representation and reasoning. It is known that enhancing ASP with function symbols makes basic reasoning problems highly undecidable. However, even in simple cases, state of the art reasoners, specifically those relying on a ground-and-solve approach, fail to produce a result. Therefore, we reconsider consistency as a basic reasoning problem for ASP. We show reductions that give an intuition for the high level of undecidability. These insights allow for a more fine-grained analysis where we characterize ASP programs as "frugal" and "non-proliferous". For such programs, we are not only able to semi-decide consistency but we also propose a grounding procedure that yields finite groundings on more ASP programs with the concept of "forbidden" facts.
Authors: Robin Bloomfield, Kate Netkachova, John Rushby
Abstract: A traditional assurance case employs a positive argument in which reasoning steps, grounded on evidence and assumptions, sustain a top claim that has external significance. Human judgement is required to check the evidence, the assumptions, and the narrative justifications for the reasoning steps; if all are assessed good, then the top claim can be accepted. A valid concern about this process is that human judgement is fallible and prone to confirmation bias. The best defense against this concern is vigorous and skeptical debate and discussion in the manner of a dialectic or Socratic dialog. There is merit in recording aspects of this discussion for the benefit of subsequent developers and assessors. Defeaters are a means doing this: they express doubts about aspects of the argument and can be developed into subcases that confirm or refute the doubts, and can record them as documentation to assist future consideration. This report describes how defeaters, and multiple levels of defeaters, should be represented and assessed in Assurance 2.0 and its Clarissa/ASCE tool support. These mechanisms also support eliminative argumentation, which is a contrary approach to assurance, favored by some, that uses a negative argument to refute all reasons why the top claim could be false.
Authors: Ljubica Djurovi\'c, Maja Lakovi\'c, Nenad Stojanovi\'c
Abstract: In our work, we continue to explore the properties of interval-valued fuzzy soft sets, which are obtained by combining interval-valued fuzzy sets and soft sets. We introduce the concept of energy of an interval-valued fuzzy soft set, as well as pessimistic and optimistic energy, enabling us to construct an effective decision-making algorithm. Through examples, the paper demonstrates how the introduced algorithm is successfully applied to problems involving uncertainty. Additionally, we compare the introduced method with other methods dealing with similar or related issues.
Authors: Sarath Sreedharan, Anagha Kulkarni, Subbarao Kambhampati
Abstract: From its inception, AI has had a rather ambivalent relationship with humans -- swinging between their augmentation and replacement. Now, as AI technologies enter our everyday lives at an ever increasing pace, there is a greater need for AI systems to work synergistically with humans. One critical requirement for such synergistic human-AI interaction is that the AI systems be explainable to the humans in the loop. To do this effectively, AI agents need to go beyond planning with their own models of the world, and take into account the mental model of the human in the loop. Drawing from several years of research in our lab, we will discuss how the AI agent can use these mental models to either conform to human expectations, or change those expectations through explanatory communication. While the main focus of the book is on cooperative scenarios, we will point out how the same mental models can be used for obfuscation and deception. Although the book is primarily driven by our own research in these areas, in every chapter, we will provide ample connections to relevant research from other groups.
Authors: Edward Y. Chang
Abstract: Misdiagnosis is a significant issue in healthcare, leading to harmful consequences for patients. The propagation of mislabeled data through machine learning models into clinical practice is unacceptable. This paper proposes EVINCE, a system designed to 1) improve diagnosis accuracy and 2) rectify misdiagnoses and minimize training data errors. EVINCE stands for Entropy Variation through Information Duality with Equal Competence, leveraging this novel theory to optimize the diagnostic process using multiple Large Language Models (LLMs) in a structured debate framework. Our empirical study verifies EVINCE to be effective in achieving its design goals.
Authors: Edgar A. Du\'e\~nez-Guzm\'an, Suzanne Sadedin, Jane X. Wang, Kevin R. McKee, Joel Z. Leibo
Abstract: Traditionally, cognitive and computer scientists have viewed intelligence solipsistically, as a property of unitary agents devoid of social context. Given the success of contemporary learning algorithms, we argue that the bottleneck in artificial intelligence (AI) progress is shifting from data assimilation to novel data generation. We bring together evidence showing that natural intelligence emerges at multiple scales in networks of interacting agents via collective living, social relationships and major evolutionary transitions, which contribute to novel data generation through mechanisms such as population pressures, arms races, Machiavellian selection, social learning and cumulative culture. Many breakthroughs in AI exploit some of these processes, from multi-agent structures enabling algorithms to master complex games like Capture-The-Flag and StarCraft II, to strategic communication in Diplomacy and the shaping of AI data streams by other AIs. Moving beyond a solipsistic view of agency to integrate these mechanisms suggests a path to human-like compounding innovation through ongoing novel data generation.
Authors: Muning Wen, Ziyu Wan, Weinan Zhang, Jun Wang, Ying Wen
Abstract: Language models as intelligent agents push the boundaries of sequential decision-making agents but struggle with limited knowledge of environmental dynamics and exponentially huge action space. Recent efforts like GLAM and TWOSOME manually constrain the action space to a restricted subset and employ reinforcement learning to align agents' knowledge with specific environments. However, they overlook fine-grained credit assignments for intra-action tokens, which is essential for efficient language agent optimization, and rely on human's prior knowledge to restrict action space. This paper proposes decomposing language agent optimization from the action level to the token level, offering finer supervision for each intra-action token and manageable optimization complexity in environments with unrestricted action spaces. Beginning with the simplification of flattening all actions, we theoretically explore the discrepancies between action-level optimization and this naive token-level optimization. We then derive the Bellman backup with Action Decomposition (BAD) to integrate credit assignments for both intra-action and inter-action tokens, effectively eliminating the discrepancies. Implementing BAD within the PPO algorithm, we introduce Policy Optimization with Action Decomposition (POAD). POAD benefits from a finer-grained credit assignment process and lower optimization complexity, leading to enhanced learning efficiency and generalization abilities in aligning language agents with interactive environments. We validate POAD across diverse testbeds, with results affirming the advantages of our approach and the correctness of our theoretical analysis.
Authors: \'Alvaro Huertas-Garc\'ia, Javier Mu\~noz, Enrique De Miguel Ambite, Marcos Avil\'es Camarmas, Jos\'e F\'elix Ovejero
Abstract: The integration of predictive maintenance and cybersecurity represents a transformative advancement for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating within the Industry 4.0 paradigm. Despite their economic importance, SMEs often face significant challenges in adopting advanced technologies due to resource constraints and knowledge gaps. The DETECTA 2.0 project addresses these hurdles by developing an innovative system that harmonizes real-time anomaly detection, sophisticated analytics, and predictive forecasting capabilities. The system employs a semi-supervised methodology, combining unsupervised anomaly detection with supervised learning techniques. This approach enables more agile and cost-effective development of AI detection systems, significantly reducing the time required for manual case review. At the core lies a Digital Twin interface, providing intuitive real-time visualizations of machine states and detected anomalies. Leveraging cutting-edge AI engines, the system intelligently categorizes anomalies based on observed patterns, differentiating between technical errors and potential cybersecurity incidents. This discernment is fortified by detailed analytics, including certainty levels that enhance alert reliability and minimize false positives. The predictive engine uses advanced time series algorithms like N-HiTS to forecast future machine utilization trends. This proactive approach optimizes maintenance planning, enhances cybersecurity measures, and minimizes unplanned downtimes despite variable production processes. With its modular architecture enabling seamless integration across industrial setups and low implementation costs, DETECTA 2.0 presents an attractive solution for SMEs to strengthen their predictive maintenance and cybersecurity strategies.
Authors: Daniel Bramblett, Siddharth Srivastava
Abstract: Planning in real-world settings often entails addressing partial observability while aligning with users' preferences. We present a novel framework for expressing users' preferences about agent behavior in a partially observable setting using parameterized belief-state query (BSQ) preferences in the setting of goal-oriented partially observable Markov decision processes (gPOMDPs). We present the first formal analysis of such preferences and prove that while the expected value of a BSQ preference is not a convex function w.r.t its parameters, it is piecewise constant and yields an implicit discrete parameter search space that is finite for finite horizons. This theoretical result leads to novel algorithms that optimize gPOMDP agent behavior while guaranteeing user preference compliance. Theoretical analysis proves that our algorithms converge to the optimal preference-compliant behavior in the limit. Empirical results show that BSQ preferences provide a computationally feasible approach for planning with preferences in partially observable settings.
Authors: Yuanliang Li, Hanzheng Dai, Jun Yan
Abstract: Automated penetration testing (AutoPT) based on reinforcement learning (RL) has proven its ability to improve the efficiency of vulnerability identification in information systems. However, RL-based PT encounters several challenges, including poor sampling efficiency, intricate reward specification, and limited interpretability. To address these issues, we propose a knowledge-informed AutoPT framework called DRLRM-PT, which leverages reward machines (RMs) to encode domain knowledge as guidelines for training a PT policy. In our study, we specifically focus on lateral movement as a PT case study and formulate it as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) guided by RMs. We design two RMs based on the MITRE ATT\&CK knowledge base for lateral movement. To solve the POMDP and optimize the PT policy, we employ the deep Q-learning algorithm with RM (DQRM). The experimental results demonstrate that the DQRM agent exhibits higher training efficiency in PT compared to agents without knowledge embedding. Moreover, RMs encoding more detailed domain knowledge demonstrated better PT performance compared to RMs with simpler knowledge.
Authors: Sopam Dasgupta, Joaqu\'in Arias, Elmer Salazar, Gopal Gupta
Abstract: Machine learning models that automate decision-making are increasingly used in consequential areas such as loan approvals, pretrial bail approval, and hiring. Unfortunately, most of these models are black boxes, i.e., they are unable to reveal how they reach these prediction decisions. A need for transparency demands justification for such predictions. An affected individual might also desire explanations to understand why a decision was made. Ethical and legal considerations require informing the individual of changes in the input attribute (s) that could be made to produce a desirable outcome. Our work focuses on the latter problem of generating counterfactual explanations by considering the causal dependencies between features. In this paper, we present the framework CFGs, CounterFactual Generation with s(CASP), which utilizes the goal-directed Answer Set Programming (ASP) system s(CASP) to automatically generate counterfactual explanations from models generated by rule-based machine learning algorithms in particular. We benchmark CFGs with the FOLD-SE model. Reaching the counterfactual state from the initial state is planned and achieved using a series of interventions. To validate our proposal, we show how counterfactual explanations are computed and justified by imagining worlds where some or all factual assumptions are altered/changed. More importantly, we show how CFGs navigates between these worlds, namely, go from our initial state where we obtain an undesired outcome to the imagined goal state where we obtain the desired decision, taking into account the causal relationships among features.
Authors: Kui Xiao, Runtian Xing, Miao Zhang, Shunfeng Tan, Ziming Wang, Xiaolian Zhu
Abstract: Cognitive diagnosis is a fundamental and critical task in learning assessment, which aims to infer students' proficiency on knowledge concepts from their response logs. Current works assume each knowledge concept will certainly be tested and covered by multiple exercises. However, whether online or offline courses, it's hardly feasible to completely cover all knowledge concepts in several exercises. Restricted tests lead to undiscovered knowledge deficits, especially untested knowledge concepts(UKCs). In this paper, we propose a novel \underline{Dis}entangling Heterogeneous \underline{K}nowledge \underline{C}ognitive \underline{D}iagnosis framework on untested knowledge(DisKCD). Specifically, we leverage course grades, exercise questions, and resources to learn the potential representations of students, exercises, and knowledge concepts. In particular, knowledge concepts are disentangled into tested and untested based on the limiting actual exercises. We construct a heterogeneous relation graph network via students, exercises, tested knowledge concepts(TKCs), and UKCs. Then, through a hierarchical heterogeneous message-passing mechanism, the fine-grained relations are incorporated into the embeddings of the entities. Finally, the embeddings will be applied to multiple existing cognitive diagnosis models to infer students' proficiency on UKCs. Experimental results on real-world datasets show that the proposed model can effectively improve the performance of the task of diagnosing students' proficiency on UKCs. Our anonymous code is available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/DisKCD.
Authors: Juan Pablo Mesa, Alejandro Montoya, Raul Ramos-Poll\'an, Mauricio Toro
Abstract: The Multi-Objective Vehicle Routing Problem (MOVRP) is a complex optimization problem in the transportation and logistics industry. This paper proposes a novel approach to the MOVRP that aims to create routes that consider drivers' and operators' decisions and preferences. We evaluate two approaches to address this objective: visually attractive route planning and data mining of historical driver behavior to plan similar routes. Using a real-world dataset provided by Amazon, we demonstrate that data mining of historical patterns is more effective than visual attractiveness metrics found in the literature. Furthermore, we propose a bi-objective problem to balance the similarity of routes to historical routes and minimize routing costs. We propose a two-stage GRASP algorithm with heuristic box splitting to solve this problem. The proposed algorithm aims to approximate the Pareto front and to present routes that cover a wide range of the objective function space. The results demonstrate that our approach can generate a small number of non-dominated solutions per instance, which can help decision-makers to identify trade-offs between routing costs and drivers' preferences. Our approach has the potential to enhance the last-mile delivery operations of logistics companies by balancing these conflicting objectives.
Authors: Seyed Arash Sheikholeslam, Andre Ivanov
Abstract: In this paper, we introduce SynthAI, a pioneering method for the automated creation of High-Level Synthesis (HLS) designs. SynthAI integrates ReAct agents, Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting, web search technologies, and the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) framework within a structured decision graph. This innovative approach enables the systematic decomposition of complex hardware design tasks into multiple stages and smaller, manageable modules. As a result, SynthAI produces synthesizable designs that closely adhere to user-specified design objectives and functional requirements. We further validate the capabilities of SynthAI through several case studies, highlighting its proficiency in generating complex, multi-module logic designs from a single initial prompt. The SynthAI code is provided via the following repo: \url{https://github.com/sarashs/FPGA_AGI}
Authors: Huanbai Liu, Fanlong Zhang, Yin Tan, Lian Huang, Yan Li, Guoheng Huang, Shenghong Luo, An Zeng
Abstract: In recent years, deep learning has led to significant advances in bearing fault diagnosis (FD). Most techniques aim to achieve greater accuracy. However, they are sensitive to noise and lack robustness, resulting in insufficient domain adaptation and anti-noise ability. The comparison of studies reveals that giving equal attention to all features does not differentiate their significance. In this work, we propose a novel FD model by integrating multi-scale quaternion convolutional neural network (MQCNN), bidirectional gated recurrent unit (BiGRU), and cross self-attention feature fusion (CSAFF). We have developed innovative designs in two modules, namely MQCNN and CSAFF. Firstly, MQCNN applies quaternion convolution to multi-scale architecture for the first time, aiming to extract the rich hidden features of the original signal from multiple scales. Then, the extracted multi-scale information is input into CSAFF for feature fusion, where CSAFF innovatively incorporates cross self-attention mechanism to enhance discriminative interaction representation within features. Finally, BiGRU captures temporal dependencies while a softmax layer is employed for fault classification, achieving accurate FD. To assess the efficacy of our approach, we experiment on three public datasets (CWRU, MFPT, and Ottawa) and compare it with other excellent methods. The results confirm its state-of-the-art, which the average accuracies can achieve up to 99.99%, 100%, and 99.21% on CWRU, MFPT, and Ottawa datasets. Moreover, we perform practical tests and ablation experiments to validate the efficacy and robustness of the proposed approach. Code is available at https://github.com/mubai011/MQCCAF.
Authors: Zhaoxuan Wu, Xiaoqiang Lin, Zhongxiang Dai, Wenyang Hu, Yao Shu, See-Kiong Ng, Patrick Jaillet, Bryan Kian Hsiang Low
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have shown impressive capabilities in real-world applications. The capability of in-context learning (ICL) allows us to adapt an LLM to downstream tasks by including input-label exemplars in the prompt without model fine-tuning. However, the quality of these exemplars in the prompt greatly impacts performance, highlighting the need for an effective automated exemplar selection method. Recent studies have explored retrieval-based approaches to select exemplars tailored to individual test queries, which can be undesirable due to extra test-time computation and an increased risk of data exposure. Moreover, existing methods fail to adequately account for the impact of exemplar ordering on the performance. On the other hand, the impact of the instruction, another essential component in the prompt given to the LLM, is often overlooked in existing exemplar selection methods. To address these challenges, we propose a novel method named EASE, which leverages the hidden embedding from a pre-trained language model to represent ordered sets of exemplars and uses a neural bandit algorithm to optimize the sets of exemplars while accounting for exemplar ordering. Our EASE can efficiently find an ordered set of exemplars that performs well for all test queries from a given task, thereby eliminating test-time computation. Importantly, EASE can be readily extended to jointly optimize both the exemplars and the instruction. Through extensive empirical evaluations (including novel tasks), we demonstrate the superiority of EASE over existing methods, and reveal practical insights about the impact of exemplar selection on ICL, which may be of independent interest. Our code is available at https://github.com/ZhaoxuanWu/EASE-Prompt-Optimization.
URLs: https://github.com/ZhaoxuanWu/EASE-Prompt-Optimization.
Authors: Chengyang Tian, Yangpeng Zhang, Yang Liu
Abstract: Retrosynthesis is a fundamental but challenging task in organic chemistry, with broad applications in fields such as drug design and synthesis. Given a target molecule, the goal of retrosynthesis is to find out a series of reactions which could be assembled into a synthetic route which starts from purchasable molecules and ends at the target molecule. The uncertainty of reactions used in retrosynthetic planning, which is caused by hallucinations of backward models, has recently been noticed. In this paper we propose a succinct probabilistic model to describe such uncertainty. Based on the model, we propose a new retrosynthesis planning algorithm called retro-prob to maximize the successful synthesis probability of target molecules, which acquires high efficiency by utilizing the chain rule of derivatives. Experiments on the Paroutes benchmark show that retro-prob outperforms previous algorithms, retro* and retro-fallback, both in speed and in the quality of synthesis plans.
Authors: Siddhartha K. Vemuri, Raj Sanjay Shah, Sashank Varma
Abstract: How well do representations learned by ML models align with those of humans? Here, we consider concept representations learned by deep learning models and evaluate whether they show a fundamental behavioral signature of human concepts, the typicality effect. This is the finding that people judge some instances (e.g., robin) of a category (e.g., Bird) to be more typical than others (e.g., penguin). Recent research looking for human-like typicality effects in language and vision models has focused on models of a single modality, tested only a small number of concepts, and found only modest correlations with human typicality ratings. The current study expands this behavioral evaluation of models by considering a broader range of language (N = 8) and vision (N = 10) model architectures. It also evaluates whether the combined typicality predictions of vision + language model pairs, as well as a multimodal CLIP-based model, are better aligned with human typicality judgments than those of models of either modality alone. Finally, it evaluates the models across a broader range of concepts (N = 27) than prior studies. There were three important findings. First, language models better align with human typicality judgments than vision models. Second, combined language and vision models (e.g., AlexNet + MiniLM) better predict the human typicality data than the best-performing language model (i.e., MiniLM) or vision model (i.e., ViT-Huge) alone. Third, multimodal models (i.e., CLIP ViT) show promise for explaining human typicality judgments. These results advance the state-of-the-art in aligning the conceptual representations of ML models and humans. A methodological contribution is the creation of a new image set for testing the conceptual alignment of vision models.
Authors: Zixuan Wang, Qinkai Duan, Yu-Wing Tai, Chi-Keung Tang
Abstract: We introduce C3LLM (Conditioned-on-Three-Modalities Large Language Models), a novel framework combining three tasks of video-to-audio, audio-to-text, and text-to-audio together. C3LLM adapts the Large Language Model (LLM) structure as a bridge for aligning different modalities, synthesizing the given conditional information, and making multimodal generation in a discrete manner. Our contributions are as follows. First, we adapt a hierarchical structure for audio generation tasks with pre-trained audio codebooks. Specifically, we train the LLM to generate audio semantic tokens from the given conditions, and further use a non-autoregressive transformer to generate different levels of acoustic tokens in layers to better enhance the fidelity of the generated audio. Second, based on the intuition that LLMs were originally designed for discrete tasks with the next-word prediction method, we use the discrete representation for audio generation and compress their semantic meanings into acoustic tokens, similar to adding "acoustic vocabulary" to LLM. Third, our method combines the previous tasks of audio understanding, video-to-audio generation, and text-to-audio generation together into one unified model, providing more versatility in an end-to-end fashion. Our C3LLM achieves improved results through various automated evaluation metrics, providing better semantic alignment compared to previous methods.
Authors: Junhao Yu, Jiarun Wei
Abstract: In this project, we attempt to optimize a landing trajectory of a rocket. The goal is to minimize the total fuel consumption during the landing process using different techniques. Once the optimal and feasible trajectory is generated using batch approach, we attempt to follow the path using a Model Predictive Control (MPC) based algorithm, called Trajectory Optimizing Path following Estimation from Demonstration (TOPED), in order to generalize to similar initial states and models, where we introduce a novel cost function for the MPC to solve. We further show that TOPED can follow a demonstration trajectory well in practice under model mismatch and different initial states.
Authors: Zhizheng Wang, Qiao Jin, Chih-Hsuan Wei, Shubo Tian, Po-Ting Lai, Qingqing Zhu, Chi-Ping Day, Christina Ross, Zhiyong Lu
Abstract: Gene set knowledge discovery is essential for advancing human functional genomics. Recent studies have shown promising performance by harnessing the power of Large Language Models (LLMs) on this task. Nonetheless, their results are subject to several limitations common in LLMs such as hallucinations. In response, we present GeneAgent, a first-of-its-kind language agent featuring self-verification capability. It autonomously interacts with various biological databases and leverages relevant domain knowledge to improve accuracy and reduce hallucination occurrences. Benchmarking on 1,106 gene sets from different sources, GeneAgent consistently outperforms standard GPT-4 by a significant margin. Moreover, a detailed manual review confirms the effectiveness of the self-verification module in minimizing hallucinations and generating more reliable analytical narratives. To demonstrate its practical utility, we apply GeneAgent to seven novel gene sets derived from mouse B2905 melanoma cell lines, with expert evaluations showing that GeneAgent offers novel insights into gene functions and subsequently expedites knowledge discovery.
Authors: Minghao Chen, Yihang Li, Yanting Yang, Shiyu Yu, Binbin Lin, Xiaofei He
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLM) based agents have shown promise in autonomously completing tasks across various domains, e.g., robotics, games, and web navigation. However, these agents typically require elaborate design and expert prompts to solve tasks in specific domains, which limits their adaptability. We introduce AutoManual, a framework enabling LLM agents to autonomously build their understanding through interaction and adapt to new environments. AutoManual categorizes environmental knowledge into diverse rules and optimizes them in an online fashion by two agents: 1) The Planner codes actionable plans based on current rules for interacting with the environment. 2) The Builder updates the rules through a well-structured rule system that facilitates online rule management and essential detail retention. To mitigate hallucinations in managing rules, we introduce \textit{case-conditioned prompting} strategy for the Builder. Finally, the Formulator agent compiles these rules into a comprehensive manual. The self-generated manual can not only improve the adaptability but also guide the planning of smaller LLMs while being human-readable. Given only one simple demonstration, AutoManual significantly improves task success rates, achieving 97.4\% with GPT-4-turbo and 86.2\% with GPT-3.5-turbo on ALFWorld benchmark tasks. The source code will be available soon.
Authors: Javier Via\~na
Abstract: This paper introduces the front-propagation algorithm, a novel eXplainable AI (XAI) technique designed to elucidate the decision-making logic of deep neural networks. Unlike other popular explainability algorithms such as Integrated Gradients or Shapley Values, the proposed algorithm is able to extract an accurate and consistent linear function explanation of the network in a single forward pass of the trained model. This nuance sets apart the time complexity of the front-propagation as it could be running real-time and in parallel with deployed models. We packaged this algorithm in a software called $\texttt{front-prop}$ and we demonstrate its efficacy in providing accurate linear functions with three different neural network architectures trained on publicly available benchmark datasets.
Authors: Haoyu Wang, Tao Li, Zhiwei Deng, Dan Roth, Yang Li
Abstract: In this work, we introduce a novel approach that equips LLM agents with introspection, enhancing consistency and adaptability in solving complex tasks. Our approach prompts LLM agents to decompose a given task into manageable subtasks (i.e., to make a plan), and to continuously introspect upon the suitability and results of their actions. We implement a three-fold introspective intervention: 1) anticipatory reflection on potential failures and alternative remedy before action execution, 2) post-action alignment with subtask objectives and backtracking with remedy to ensure utmost effort in plan execution, and 3) comprehensive review upon plan completion for future strategy refinement. By deploying and experimenting with this methodology - a zero-shot approach - within WebArena for practical tasks in web environments, our agent demonstrates superior performance over existing zero-shot methods. The experimental results suggest that our introspection-driven approach not only enhances the agent's ability to navigate unanticipated challenges through a robust mechanism of plan execution, but also improves efficiency by reducing the number of trials and plan revisions needed to achieve a task.
Authors: Angelo Porrello, Lorenzo Bonicelli, Pietro Buzzega, Monica Millunzi, Simone Calderara, Rita Cucchiara
Abstract: The fine-tuning of deep pre-trained models has recently revealed compositional properties. This enables the arbitrary composition of multiple specialized modules into a single, multi-task model. However, identifying the conditions that promote compositionality remains an open issue, with recent efforts concentrating mainly on linearized networks. We conduct a theoretical study that attempts to demystify compositionality in standard non-linear networks through the second-order Taylor approximation of the loss function. The proposed formulation highlights the importance of staying within the pre-training basin for achieving composable modules. Moreover, it provides the basis for two dual incremental training algorithms: the one from the perspective of multiple models trained individually, while the other aims to optimize the composed model as a whole. We probe their application in incremental classification tasks and highlight some valuable skills. In fact, the pool of incrementally learned modules not only supports the creation of an effective multi-task model but also enables unlearning and specialization in specific tasks.
Authors: Shangding Gu, Bilgehan Sel, Yuhao Ding, Lu Wang, Qingwei Lin, Alois Knoll, Ming Jin
Abstract: In numerous reinforcement learning (RL) problems involving safety-critical systems, a key challenge lies in balancing multiple objectives while simultaneously meeting all stringent safety constraints. To tackle this issue, we propose a primal-based framework that orchestrates policy optimization between multi-objective learning and constraint adherence. Our method employs a novel natural policy gradient manipulation method to optimize multiple RL objectives and overcome conflicting gradients between different tasks, since the simple weighted average gradient direction may not be beneficial for specific tasks' performance due to misaligned gradients of different task objectives. When there is a violation of a hard constraint, our algorithm steps in to rectify the policy to minimize this violation. We establish theoretical convergence and constraint violation guarantees in a tabular setting. Empirically, our proposed method also outperforms prior state-of-the-art methods on challenging safe multi-objective reinforcement learning tasks.
Authors: Lei Zhang, Zhiqian Chen, Chang-Tien Lu, Liang Zhao
Abstract: Network interdiction problems are combinatorial optimization problems involving two players: one aims to solve an optimization problem on a network, while the other seeks to modify the network to thwart the first player's objectives. Such problems typically emerge in an attacker-defender context, encompassing areas such as military operations, disease spread analysis, and communication network management. The primary bottleneck in network interdiction arises from the high time complexity of using conventional exact solvers and the challenges associated with devising efficient heuristic solvers. GNNs, recognized as a cutting-edge methodology, have shown significant effectiveness in addressing single-level CO problems on graphs, such as the traveling salesman problem, graph matching, and graph edit distance. Nevertheless, network interdiction presents a bi-level optimization challenge, which current GNNs find difficult to manage. To address this gap, we represent network interdiction problems as Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) instances, then apply a multipartite GNN with sufficient representational capacity to learn these formulations. This approach ensures that our neural network is more compatible with the mathematical algorithms designed to solve network interdiction problems, resulting in improved generalization. Through two distinct tasks, we demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms theoretical baseline models and provides advantages over traditional exact solvers.
Authors: Jiankun Wang, Sumyeong Ahn, Taykhoom Dalal, Xiaodan Zhang, Weishen Pan, Qiannan Zhang, Bin Chen, Hiroko H. Dodge, Fei Wang, Jiayu Zhou
Abstract: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the fifth-leading cause of death among Americans aged 65 and older. Screening and early detection of AD and related dementias (ADRD) are critical for timely intervention and for identifying clinical trial participants. The widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) offers an important resource for developing ADRD screening tools such as machine learning based predictive models. Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) demonstrate their unprecedented capability of encoding knowledge and performing reasoning, which offers them strong potential for enhancing risk prediction. This paper proposes a novel pipeline that augments risk prediction by leveraging the few-shot inference power of LLMs to make predictions on cases where traditional supervised learning methods (SLs) may not excel. Specifically, we develop a collaborative pipeline that combines SLs and LLMs via a confidence-driven decision-making mechanism, leveraging the strengths of SLs in clear-cut cases and LLMs in more complex scenarios. We evaluate this pipeline using a real-world EHR data warehouse from Oregon Health \& Science University (OHSU) Hospital, encompassing EHRs from over 2.5 million patients and more than 20 million patient encounters. Our results show that our proposed approach effectively combines the power of SLs and LLMs, offering significant improvements in predictive performance. This advancement holds promise for revolutionizing ADRD screening and early detection practices, with potential implications for better strategies of patient management and thus improving healthcare.
Authors: Allen Nie, Ching-An Cheng, Andrey Kolobov, Adith Swaminathan
Abstract: We study the potential of using large language models (LLMs) as an interactive optimizer for solving maximization problems in a text space using natural language and numerical feedback. Inspired by the classical optimization literature, we classify the natural language feedback into directional and non-directional, where the former is a generalization of the first-order feedback to the natural language space. We find that LLMs are especially capable of optimization when they are provided with {directional feedback}. Based on this insight, we design a new LLM-based optimizer that synthesizes directional feedback from the historical optimization trace to achieve reliable improvement over iterations. Empirically, we show our LLM-based optimizer is more stable and efficient in solving optimization problems, from maximizing mathematical functions to optimizing prompts for writing poems, compared with existing techniques.
Authors: Moshe Shienman, Ohad Levy-Or, Michael Kaess, Vadim Indelman
Abstract: We introduce an innovative method for incremental nonparametric probabilistic inference in high-dimensional state spaces. Our approach leverages \slices from high-dimensional surfaces to efficiently approximate posterior distributions of any shape. Unlike many existing graph-based methods, our \slices perspective eliminates the need for additional intermediate reconstructions, maintaining a more accurate representation of posterior distributions. Additionally, we propose a novel heuristic to balance between accuracy and efficiency, enabling real-time operation in nonparametric scenarios. In empirical evaluations on synthetic and real-world datasets, our \slices approach consistently outperforms other state-of-the-art methods. It demonstrates superior accuracy and achieves a significant reduction in computational complexity, often by an order of magnitude.
Authors: Cong Zhang, Deik Derrick Goh Xin, Dexun Li, Hao Zhang, Yong Liu
Abstract: The rapid advancement of neural language models has sparked a new surge of intelligent agent research. Unlike traditional agents, large language model-based agents (LLM agents) have emerged as a promising paradigm for achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) due to their superior reasoning and generalization capabilities. Effective planning is crucial for the success of LLM agents in real-world tasks, making it a highly pursued topic in the community. Current planning methods typically translate tasks into executable action sequences. However, determining a feasible or optimal sequence for complex tasks at fine granularity, which often requires compositing long chains of heterogeneous actions, remains challenging. This paper introduces Meta-Task Planning (MTP), a zero-shot methodology for collaborative LLM-based multi-agent systems that simplifies complex task planning by decomposing it into a hierarchy of subordinate tasks, or meta-tasks. Each meta-task is then mapped into executable actions. MTP was assessed on two rigorous benchmarks, TravelPlanner and API-Bank. Notably, MTP achieved an average $\sim40\%$ success rate on TravelPlanner, significantly higher than the state-of-the-art (SOTA) baseline ($2.92\%$), and outperforming $LLM_{api}$-4 with ReAct on API-Bank by $\sim14\%$, showing the immense potential of integrating LLM with multi-agent systems.
Authors: Yang Cao, Wei Zhang
Abstract: Knowledge tracing (KT) enhances student learning by leveraging past performance to predict future performance. Current research utilizes models based on attention mechanisms and recurrent neural network structures to capture long-term dependencies and correlations between exercises, aiming to improve model accuracy. Due to the growing amount of data in smart education scenarios, this poses a challenge in terms of time and space consumption for knowledge tracing models. However, existing research often overlooks the efficiency of model training and inference and the constraints of training resources. Recognizing the significance of prioritizing model efficiency and resource usage in knowledge tracing, we introduce Mamba4KT. This novel model is the first to explore enhanced efficiency and resource utilization in knowledge tracing. We also examine the interpretability of the Mamba structure both sequence-level and exercise-level to enhance model interpretability. Experimental findings across three public datasets demonstrate that Mamba4KT achieves comparable prediction accuracy to state-of-the-art models while significantly improving training and inference efficiency and resource utilization. As educational data continues to grow, our work suggests a promising research direction for knowledge tracing that improves model prediction accuracy, model efficiency, resource utilization, and interpretability simultaneously.
Authors: Minseon Kim, Hyomin Lee, Boqing Gong, Huishuai Zhang, Sung Ju Hwang
Abstract: Recent AI systems have shown extremely powerful performance, even surpassing human performance, on various tasks such as information retrieval, language generation, and image generation based on large language models (LLMs). At the same time, there are diverse safety risks that can cause the generation of malicious contents by circumventing the alignment in LLMs, which are often referred to as jailbreaking. However, most of the previous works only focused on the text-based jailbreaking in LLMs, and the jailbreaking of the text-to-image (T2I) generation system has been relatively overlooked. In this paper, we first evaluate the safety of the commercial T2I generation systems, such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini, on copyright infringement with naive prompts. From this empirical study, we find that Copilot and Gemini block only 12\% and 17\% of the attacks with naive prompts, respectively, while ChatGPT blocks 84\% of them. Then, we further propose a stronger automated jailbreaking pipeline for T2I generation systems, which produces prompts that bypass their safety guards. Our automated jailbreaking framework leverages an LLM optimizer to generate prompts to maximize degree of violation from the generated images without any weight updates or gradient computation. Surprisingly, our simple yet effective approach successfully jailbreaks the ChatGPT with 11.0\% block rate, making it generate copyrighted contents in 76\% of the time. Finally, we explore various defense strategies, such as post-generation filtering and machine unlearning techniques, but found that they were inadequate, which suggests the necessity of stronger defense mechanisms.
Authors: Anjie Liu, Jianhong Wang, Haoxuan Li, Xu Chen, Jun Wang, Samuel Kaski, Mengyue Yang
Abstract: In human-AI interaction, a prominent goal is to attain human`s desirable outcome with the assistance of AI agents, which can be ideally delineated as a problem of seeking the optimal Nash Equilibrium that matches the human`s desirable outcome. However, reaching the outcome is usually challenging due to the existence of multiple Nash Equilibria that are related to the assisting task but do not correspond to the human`s desirable outcome. To tackle this issue, we employ a theoretical framework called structural causal game (SCG) to formalize the human-AI interactive process. Furthermore, we introduce a strategy referred to as pre-policy intervention on the SCG to steer AI agents towards attaining the human`s desirable outcome. In more detail, a pre-policy is learned as a generalized intervention to guide the agents` policy selection, under a transparent and interpretable procedure determined by the SCG. To make the framework practical, we propose a reinforcement learning-like algorithm to search out this pre-policy. The proposed algorithm is tested in both gridworld environments and realistic dialogue scenarios with large language models, demonstrating its adaptability in a broader class of problems and potential effectiveness in real-world situations.
Authors: Henry Taylor, Leonardo Stella
Abstract: A major challenge in decision making domains with large state spaces is to effectively select actions which maximize utility. In recent years, approaches such as reinforcement learning (RL) and search algorithms have been successful to tackle this issue, despite their differences. RL defines a learning framework that an agent explores and interacts with. Search algorithms provide a formalism to search for a solution. However, it is often difficult to evaluate the performances of such approaches in a practical way. Motivated by this problem, we focus on one game domain, i.e., Connect-4, and develop a novel evolutionary framework to evaluate three classes of algorithms: RL, Minimax and Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS). The contribution of this paper is threefold: i) we implement advanced versions of these algorithms and provide a systematic comparison with their standard counterpart, ii) we develop a novel evaluation framework, which we call the Evolutionary Tournament, and iii) we conduct an extensive evaluation of the relative performance of each algorithm to compare our findings. We evaluate different metrics and show that MCTS achieves the best results in terms of win percentage, whereas Minimax and Q-Learning are ranked in second and third place, respectively, although the latter is shown to be the fastest to make a decision.
Authors: Oliver Brock
Abstract: This paper proposes a specific conceptualization of intelligence as computation. This conceptualization is intended to provide a unified view for all disciplines of intelligence research. Already, it unifies several conceptualizations currently under investigation, including physical, neural, embodied, morphological, and mechanical intelligences. To achieve this, the proposed conceptualization explains the differences among existing views by different computational paradigms, such as digital, analog, mechanical, or morphological computation. Viewing intelligence as a composition of computations from different paradigms, the challenges posed by previous conceptualizations are resolved. Intelligence is hypothesized as a multi-paradigmatic computation relying on specific computational principles. These principles distinguish intelligence from other, non-intelligent computations. The proposed conceptualization implies a multi-disciplinary research agenda that is intended to lead to unified science of intelligence.
Authors: Tianyi Bai, Hao Liang, Binwang Wan, Ling Yang, Bozhou Li, Yifan Wang, Bin Cui, Conghui He, Binhang Yuan, Wentao Zhang
Abstract: Human beings perceive the world through diverse senses such as sight, smell, hearing, and touch. Similarly, multimodal large language models (MLLMs) enhance the capabilities of traditional large language models by integrating and processing data from multiple modalities including text, vision, audio, video, and 3D environments. Data plays a pivotal role in the development and refinement of these models. In this survey, we comprehensively review the literature on MLLMs from a data-centric perspective. Specifically, we explore methods for preparing multimodal data during the pretraining and adaptation phases of MLLMs. Additionally, we analyze the evaluation methods for datasets and review benchmarks for evaluating MLLMs. Our survey also outlines potential future research directions. This work aims to provide researchers with a detailed understanding of the data-driven aspects of MLLMs, fostering further exploration and innovation in this field.
Authors: Micha{\l} Strada, Sebastian Ernst, Jacek Szybowski, Konrad Ku{\l}akowski
Abstract: Most decision-making models, including the pairwise comparison method, assume the decision-makers honesty. However, it is easy to imagine a situation where a decision-maker tries to manipulate the ranking results. This paper presents three simple manipulation methods in the pairwise comparison method. We then try to detect these methods using appropriately constructed neural networks. Experimental results accompany the proposed solutions on the generated data, showing a considerable manipulation detection level.
Authors: SeungWon Seo, Junhyeok Lee, SeongRae Noh, HyeongYeop Kang
Abstract: We address the challenge of multi-agent cooperation, where agents achieve a common goal by interacting with a 3D scene and cooperating with decentralized agents under complex partial observations. This involves managing communication costs and optimizing interaction trajectories in dynamic environments. Our research focuses on three primary limitations of existing cooperative agent systems. Firstly, current systems demonstrate inefficiency in managing acquired information through observation, resulting in declining planning performance as the environment becomes more complex with additional objects or goals. Secondly, the neglect of false plans in partially observable settings leads to suboptimal cooperative performance, as agents struggle to adapt to environmental changes influenced by the unseen actions of other agents. Lastly, the failure to incorporate spatial data into decision-making processes restricts the agent's ability to construct optimized trajectories. To overcome these limitations, we propose the RElevance and Validation-Enhanced Cooperative Language Agent (REVECA), a novel cognitive architecture powered by GPT-3.5. REVECA leverages relevance assessment, plan validation, and spatial information to enhance the efficiency and robustness of agent cooperation in dynamic and partially observable environments while minimizing continuous communication costs and effectively managing irrelevant dummy objects. Our extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of REVECA over previous approaches, including those driven by GPT-4.0. Additionally, a user study highlights REVECA's potential for achieving trustworthy human-AI cooperation. We expect that REVECA will have significant applications in gaming, XR applications, educational tools, and humanoid robots, contributing to substantial economic, commercial, and academic advancements.
Authors: Yichi Zhang, Zhuo Chen, Lingbing Guo, Yajing Xu, Binbin Hu, Ziqi Liu, Wen Zhang, Huajun Chen
Abstract: Multi-modal knowledge graph completion (MMKGC) aims to automatically discover new knowledge triples in the given multi-modal knowledge graphs (MMKGs), which is achieved by collaborative modeling the structural information concealed in massive triples and the multi-modal features of the entities. Existing methods tend to focus on crafting elegant entity-wise multi-modal fusion strategies, yet they overlook the utilization of multi-perspective features concealed within the modalities under diverse relational contexts. To address this issue, we introduce a novel MMKGC framework with Mixture of Modality Knowledge experts (MoMoK for short) to learn adaptive multi-modal embedding under intricate relational contexts. We design relation-guided modality knowledge experts to acquire relation-aware modality embeddings and integrate the predictions from multi-modalities to achieve comprehensive decisions. Additionally, we disentangle the experts by minimizing their mutual information. Experiments on four public MMKG benchmarks demonstrate the outstanding performance of MoMoK under complex scenarios.
Authors: Zhen Zhao, Dunbing Tang, Haihua Zhu, Zequn Zhang, Kai Chen, Changchun Liu, Yuchen Ji
Abstract: As productivity advances, the demand of customers for multi-variety and small-batch production is increasing, thereby putting forward higher requirements for manufacturing systems. When production tasks frequent changes due to this demand, traditional manufacturing systems often cannot response promptly. The multi-agent manufacturing system is proposed to address this problem. However, because of technical limitations, the negotiation among agents in this kind of system is realized through predefined heuristic rules, which is not intelligent enough to deal with the multi-variety and small batch production. To this end, a Large Language Model-based (LLM-based) multi-agent manufacturing system for intelligent shopfloor is proposed in the present study. This system delineates the diverse agents and defines their collaborative methods. The roles of the agents encompass Machine Server Agent (MSA), Bid Inviter Agent (BIA), Bidder Agent (BA), Thinking Agent (TA), and Decision Agent (DA). Due to the support of LLMs, TA and DA acquire the ability of analyzing the shopfloor condition and choosing the most suitable machine, as opposed to executing a predefined program artificially. The negotiation between BAs and BIA is the most crucial step in connecting manufacturing resources. With the support of TA and DA, BIA will finalize the distribution of orders, relying on the information of each machine returned by BA. MSAs bears the responsibility for connecting the agents with the physical shopfloor. This system aims to distribute and transmit workpieces through the collaboration of the agents with these distinct roles, distinguishing it from other scheduling approaches. Comparative experiments were also conducted to validate the performance of this system.
Authors: Jaewoo Lee, Sujin Yun, Taeyoung Yun, Jinkyoo Park
Abstract: Offline Reinforcement Learning (Offline RL) presents challenges of learning effective decision-making policies from static datasets without any online interactions. Data augmentation techniques, such as noise injection and data synthesizing, aim to improve Q-function approximation by smoothing the learned state-action region. However, these methods often fall short of directly improving the quality of offline datasets, leading to suboptimal results. In response, we introduce \textbf{GTA}, Generative Trajectory Augmentation, a novel generative data augmentation approach designed to enrich offline data by augmenting trajectories to be both high-rewarding and dynamically plausible. GTA applies a diffusion model within the data augmentation framework. GTA partially noises original trajectories and then denoises them with classifier-free guidance via conditioning on amplified return value. Our results show that GTA, as a general data augmentation strategy, enhances the performance of widely used offline RL algorithms in both dense and sparse reward settings. Furthermore, we conduct a quality analysis of data augmented by GTA and demonstrate that GTA improves the quality of the data. Our code is available at https://github.com/Jaewoopudding/GTA
Authors: Lucas Jarnac, Yoan Chabot, Miguel Couceiro
Abstract: Knowledge Graphs (KGs) are a major asset for companies thanks to their great flexibility in data representation and their numerous applications, e.g., vocabulary sharing, Q/A or recommendation systems. To build a KG it is a common practice to rely on automatic methods for extracting knowledge from various heterogeneous sources. But in a noisy and uncertain world, knowledge may not be reliable and conflicts between data sources may occur. Integrating unreliable data would directly impact the use of the KG, therefore such conflicts must be resolved. This could be done manually by selecting the best data to integrate. This first approach is highly accurate, but costly and time-consuming. That is why recent efforts focus on automatic approaches, which represents a challenging task since it requires handling the uncertainty of extracted knowledge throughout its integration into the KG. We survey state-of-the-art approaches in this direction and present constructions of both open and enterprise KGs and how their quality is maintained. We then describe different knowledge extraction methods, introducing additional uncertainty. We also discuss downstream tasks after knowledge acquisition, including KG completion using embedding models, knowledge alignment, and knowledge fusion in order to address the problem of knowledge uncertainty in KG construction. We conclude with a discussion on the remaining challenges and perspectives when constructing a KG taking into account uncertainty.
Authors: Wen Hanlin
Abstract: In the Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) field, agents are tasked with navigating real-world scenes guided by linguistic instructions. Enabling the agent to adhere to instructions throughout the process of navigation represents a significant challenge within the domain of VLN. To address this challenge, common approaches often rely on encoders to explicitly record past locations and actions, increasing model complexity and resource consumption. Our proposal, the Vision-and-Language Navigation Generative Pretrained Transformer (VLN-GPT), adopts a transformer decoder model (GPT2) to model trajectory sequence dependencies, bypassing the need for historical encoding modules. This method allows for direct historical information access through trajectory sequence, enhancing efficiency. Furthermore, our model separates the training process into offline pre-training with imitation learning and online fine-tuning with reinforcement learning. This distinction allows for more focused training objectives and improved performance. Performance assessments on the VLN dataset reveal that VLN-GPT surpasses complex state-of-the-art encoder-based models.
Authors: Xiaoqian Liu, Xingzhou Lou, Jianbin Jiao, Junge Zhang
Abstract: Decision making demands intricate interplay between perception, memory, and reasoning to discern optimal policies. Conventional approaches to decision making face challenges related to low sample efficiency and poor generalization. In contrast, foundation models in language and vision has showcased rapid adaptation to diverse new tasks. Therefore, we advocate for the construction of foundation agents as a transformative shift in the learning paradigm of agents. This proposal is underpinned by the formulation of foundation agents with its fundamental characteristics and challenges motivated by the success of large language models (LLMs). Moreover, we specify the roadmap of foundation agents from large interactive data collection or generation, to self-supervised pretraining and adaptation, and knowledge and value alignment with LLMs. Lastly, we pinpoint critical research questions derived from the formulation and delineate trends for foundation agents supported by real-world use cases, addressing both technical and theoretical aspects to propel the field towards a more comprehensive and impactful future.
Authors: Xuemei Gu, Mario Krenn
Abstract: Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems with access to millions of research papers could inspire new research ideas that may not be conceived by humans alone. However, how interesting are these AI-generated ideas, and how can we improve their quality? Here, we introduce SciMuse, a system that uses an evolving knowledge graph built from more than 58 million scientific papers to generate personalized research ideas via an interface to GPT-4. We conducted a large-scale human evaluation with over 100 research group leaders from the Max Planck Society, who ranked more than 4,000 personalized research ideas based on their level of interest. This evaluation allows us to understand the relationships between scientific interest and the core properties of the knowledge graph. We find that data-efficient machine learning can predict research interest with high precision, allowing us to optimize the interest-level of generated research ideas. This work represents a step towards an artificial scientific muse that could catalyze unforeseen collaborations and suggest interesting avenues for scientists.
Authors: Felix Brei, Johannes Frey, Lars-Peter Meyer
Abstract: In this work we will show that language models with less than one billion parameters can be used to translate natural language to SPARQL queries after fine-tuning. Using three different datasets ranging from academic to real world, we identify prerequisites that the training data must fulfill in order for the training to be successful. The goal is to empower users of semantic web technology to use AI assistance with affordable commodity hardware, making them more resilient against external factors.
Authors: Jinyi Deng, Xinru Tang, Zhiheng Yue, Guangyang Lu, Qize Yang, Jiahao Zhang, Jinxi Li, Chao Li, Shaojun Wei, Yang Hu, Shouyi Yin
Abstract: Given the increasing complexity of AI applications, traditional spatial architectures frequently fall short. Our analysis identifies a pattern of interconnected, multi-faceted tasks encompassing both AI and general computational processes. In response, we have conceptualized "Orchestrated AI Workflows," an approach that integrates various tasks with logic-driven decisions into dynamic, sophisticated workflows. Specifically, we find that the intrinsic Dual Dynamicity of Orchestrated AI Workflows, namely dynamic execution times and frequencies of Task Blocks, can be effectively represented using the Orchestrated Workflow Graph. Furthermore, the intrinsic Dual Dynamicity poses challenges to existing spatial architecture, namely Indiscriminate Resource Allocation, Reactive Load Rebalancing, and Contagious PEA Idleness. To overcome these challenges, we present Octopus, a scale-out spatial architecture and a suite of advanced scheduling strategies optimized for executing Orchestrated AI Workflows, such as the Discriminate Dual-Scheduling Mechanism, Adaptive TBU Scheduling Strategy, and Proactive Cluster Scheduling Strategy. Our evaluations demonstrate that Octopus significantly outperforms traditional architectures in handling the dynamic demands of Orchestrated AI Workflows, and possesses robust scalability in large scale hardware such as wafer-scale chip.
Authors: Fan Wang, Chuan Lin, Yang Cao, Yu Kang
Abstract: In-context learning (ICL) capabilities is becoming increasingly appealing towards building general intelligence. Taking this concept one step further, we draw a parallel to humans and many animals, who inherit primarily learning capabilities but refine their memory and acquire diverse skills and knowledge through extensive lifelong experiences. This parallel inspires our approach to general purpose in-context learning (GPICL). This paper introduces two lightweight but insightful benchmarks specifically crafted to train and evaluate GPICL functionalities. Each benchmark encompasses a wide range of diverse tasks characterized by generation and interaction, minimal transferable knowledge, and long-term dependency. These features present significant challenges for models that primarily rely on context or interactions to enhance their proficiency. We hope that these benchmarks will not only advance research in GPICL but also contribute significantly to the broader field of general intelligence.
Authors: Alejandro Tlaie
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have become central to advancing automation and decision-making across various sectors, raising significant ethical questions. This study proposes a comprehensive comparative analysis of the most advanced LLMs to assess their moral profiles. We subjected several state-of-the-art models to a selection of ethical dilemmas and found that all the proprietary ones are mostly utilitarian and all of the open-weights ones align mostly with values-based ethics. Furthermore, when using the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, all models we probed - except for Llama 2- displayed a strong liberal bias. Lastly, in order to causally intervene in one of the studied models, we propose a novel similarity-specific activation steering technique. Using this method, we were able to reliably steer the model's moral compass to different ethical schools. All of these results showcase that there is an ethical dimension in already deployed LLMs, an aspect that is generally overlooked.
Authors: Zikang Zhou, Haibo Hu, Xinhong Chen, Jianping Wang, Nan Guan, Kui Wu, Yung-Hui Li, Yu-Kai Huang, Chun Jason Xue
Abstract: Simulating realistic interactions among traffic agents is crucial for efficiently validating the safety of autonomous driving systems. Existing leading simulators primarily use an encoder-decoder structure to encode the historical trajectories for future simulation. However, such a paradigm complicates the model architecture, and the manual separation of history and future trajectories leads to low data utilization. To address these challenges, we propose Behavior Generative Pre-trained Transformers (BehaviorGPT), a decoder-only, autoregressive architecture designed to simulate the sequential motion of multiple agents. Crucially, our approach discards the traditional separation between "history" and "future," treating each time step as the "current" one, resulting in a simpler, more parameter- and data-efficient design that scales seamlessly with data and computation. Additionally, we introduce the Next-Patch Prediction Paradigm (NP3), which enables models to reason at the patch level of trajectories and capture long-range spatial-temporal interactions. BehaviorGPT ranks first across several metrics on the Waymo Sim Agents Benchmark, demonstrating its exceptional performance in multi-agent and agent-map interactions. We outperformed state-of-the-art models with a realism score of 0.741 and improved the minADE metric to 1.540, with an approximately 91.6% reduction in model parameters.
Authors: Georg Siedel, Weijia Shao, Silvia Vock, Andrey Morozov
Abstract: Robustness is a fundamental property of machine learning classifiers required to achieve safety and reliability. In the field of adversarial robustness of image classifiers, robustness is commonly defined as the stability of a model to all input changes within a p-norm distance. However, in the field of random corruption robustness, variations observed in the real world are used, while p-norm corruptions are rarely considered. This study investigates the use of random p-norm corruptions to augment the training and test data of image classifiers. We evaluate the model robustness against imperceptible random p-norm corruptions and propose a novel robustness metric. We empirically investigate whether robustness transfers across different p-norms and derive conclusions on which p-norm corruptions a model should be trained and evaluated. We find that training data augmentation with a combination of p-norm corruptions significantly improves corruption robustness, even on top of state-of-the-art data augmentation schemes.
Authors: Jeongwoo Park, Enrico Liscio, Pradeep K. Murukannaiah
Abstract: Recent advances in NLP show that language models retain a discernible level of knowledge in deontological ethics and moral norms. However, existing works often treat morality as binary, ranging from right to wrong. This simplistic view does not capture the nuances of moral judgment. Pluralist moral philosophers argue that human morality can be deconstructed into a finite number of elements, respecting individual differences in moral judgment. In line with this view, we build a pluralist moral sentence embedding space via a state-of-the-art contrastive learning approach. We systematically investigate the embedding space by studying the emergence of relationships among moral elements, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Our results show that a pluralist approach to morality can be captured in an embedding space. However, moral pluralism is challenging to deduce via self-supervision alone and requires a supervised approach with human labels.
Authors: Craig Innes, Subramanian Ramamoorthy
Abstract: Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are often tested in simulation to estimate the probability they will violate safety specifications. Two common issues arise when using existing techniques to produce this estimation: If violations occur rarely, simple Monte-Carlo sampling techniques can fail to produce efficient estimates; if simulation horizons are too long, importance sampling techniques (which learn proposal distributions from past simulations) can fail to converge. This paper addresses both issues by interleaving rare-event sampling techniques with online specification monitoring algorithms. We use adaptive multi-level splitting to decompose simulations into partial trajectories, then calculate the distance of those partial trajectories to failure by leveraging robustness metrics from Signal Temporal Logic (STL). By caching those partial robustness metric values, we can efficiently re-use computations across multiple sampling stages. Our experiments on an interstate lane-change scenario show our method is viable for testing simulated AV-pipelines, efficiently estimating failure probabilities for STL specifications based on real traffic rules. We produce better estimates than Monte-Carlo and importance sampling in fewer simulations.
Authors: Siyu Teng, Xuan Li, Yucheng Li, Zhe Xuanyuan, Yunfeng Ai, Long Chen
Abstract: In recent years, open-pit mining has seen significant advancement, the cooperative operation of various specialized machinery substantially enhancing the efficiency of mineral extraction. However, the harsh environment and complex conditions in open-pit mines present substantial challenges for the implementation of autonomous transportation systems. This research introduces a novel paradigm that integrates Scenario Engineering (SE) with autonomous transportation systems to significantly improve the trustworthiness, robustness, and efficiency in open-pit mines by incorporating the four key components of SE, including Scenario Feature Extractor, Intelligence and Index (I&I), Calibration and Certification (C&C), and Verification and Validation (V&V). This paradigm has been validated in two famous open-pit mines, the experiment results demonstrate marked improvements in robustness, trustworthiness, and efficiency. By enhancing the capacity, scalability, and diversity of autonomous transportation, this paradigm fosters the integration of SE and parallel driving and finally propels the achievement of the '6S' objectives.
Authors: Nikhil Churamani, Saksham Checker, Hao-Tien Lewis Chiang, Hatice Gunes
Abstract: For widespread real-world applications, it is beneficial for robots to explore Federated Learning (FL) settings where several robots, deployed in parallel, can learn independently while also sharing their learning with each other. This work explores a simulated living room environment where robots need to learn the social appropriateness of their actions. We propose Federated Root (FedRoot), a novel weight aggregation strategy which disentangles feature learning across clients from individual task-based learning. Adapting popular FL strategies to use FedRoot instead, we present a novel FL benchmark for learning the social appropriateness of different robot actions in diverse social configurations. FedRoot-based methods offer competitive performance compared to others while offering sizeable (up to 86% for CPU usage and up to 72% for GPU usage) reduction in resource consumption. Furthermore, real-world interactions require social robots to dynamically adapt to changing environmental and task settings. To facilitate this, we propose Federated Latent Generative Replay (FedLGR), a novel Federated Continual Learning (FCL) strategy that uses FedRoot-based weight aggregation and embeds each client with a generator model for pseudo-rehearsal of learnt feature embeddings to mitigate forgetting in a resource-efficient manner. Our benchmark results demonstrate that FedRoot-based FCL methods outperform other methods while also offering sizeable (up to 84% for CPU usage and up to 92% for GPU usage) reduction in resource consumption, with FedLGR providing the best results across evaluations.
Authors: Ragav V, Jesher Joshua M, Syed Ibrahim S P
Abstract: Auto manufacturers and research groups are working on autonomous driving for long period and achieved significant progress. Autonomous vehicles (AV) are expected to transform road traffic reduction from current conditions, avoiding accidents and congestion. As the implementation of an autonomous vehicle ecosystem includes complex automotive technology, ethics, passenger behaviour, traffic management policies and liability etc., the maturity of AV solutions are still evolving. The proposed model to improve AV user experience, uses a hybrid AV Network of multiple connected autonomous vehicles which communicate with each other in an environment shared by human driven vehicles. The proposed Optimal AV Network (OAVN) solution provides better coordination and optimization of autonomous vehicles, improved Transportation efficiency, improved passenger comfort and safety, real-time dynamic adaption of traffic & road conditions along with improved in-cabin assistance with inputs from various sensors. The true optimal solution for this problem, is to devise an automated guidance system for vehicles in an AV network, to reach destinations in best possible routes along with passenger comfort and safety. A custom informed search model is proposed along with other heuristic goals for better user experience. The results are analysed and compared to evaluate the effectiveness of the solution and identify gaps and future enhancements.
Authors: Yuxuan Luo, Zekun Wu, Zhouhui Lian
Abstract: Human-like planning skills and dexterous manipulation have long posed challenges in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). The task of reinterpreting calligraphy presents a formidable challenge, as it involves the decomposition of strokes and dexterous utensil control. Previous efforts have primarily focused on supervised learning of a single instrument, limiting the performance of robots in the realm of cross-domain text replication. To address these challenges, we propose CalliRewrite: a coarse-to-fine approach for robot arms to discover and recover plausible writing orders from diverse calligraphy images without requiring labeled demonstrations. Our model achieves fine-grained control of various writing utensils. Specifically, an unsupervised image-to-sequence model decomposes a given calligraphy glyph to obtain a coarse stroke sequence. Using an RL algorithm, a simulated brush is fine-tuned to generate stylized trajectories for robotic arm control. Evaluation in simulation and physical robot scenarios reveals that our method successfully replicates unseen fonts and styles while achieving integrity in unknown characters.
Authors: Szymon Mazurek, Monika Pytlarz, Sylwia Malec, Alessandro Crimi
Abstract: Artificial intelligence have contributed to advancements across various industries. However, the rapid growth of artificial intelligence technologies also raises concerns about their environmental impact, due to associated carbon footprints to train computational models. Fetal brain segmentation in medical imaging is challenging due to the small size of the fetal brain and the limited image quality of fast 2D sequences. Deep neural networks are a promising method to overcome this challenge. In this context, the construction of larger models requires extensive data and computing power, leading to high energy consumption. Our study aims to explore model architectures and compression techniques that promote energy efficiency by optimizing the trade-off between accuracy and energy consumption through various strategies such as lightweight network design, architecture search, and optimized distributed training tools. We have identified several effective strategies including optimization of data loading, modern optimizers, distributed training strategy implementation, and reduced floating point operations precision usage with light model architectures while tuning parameters according to available computer resources. Our findings demonstrate that these methods lead to satisfactory model performance with low energy consumption during deep neural network training for medical image segmentation.
Authors: Ngoc-Du Tran, Thi-Thao Tran, Quang-Huy Nguyen, Manh-Hung Vu, Van-Truong Pham
Abstract: The emergence of deep learning techniques has advanced the image segmentation task, especially for medical images. Many neural network models have been introduced in the last decade bringing the automated segmentation accuracy close to manual segmentation. However, cutting-edge models like Transformer-based architectures rely on large scale annotated training data, and are generally designed with densely consecutive layers in the encoder, decoder, and skip connections resulting in large number of parameters. Additionally, for better performance, they often be pretrained on a larger data, thus requiring large memory size and increasing resource expenses. In this study, we propose a new lightweight but efficient model, namely LiteNeXt, based on convolutions and mixing modules with simplified decoder, for medical image segmentation. The model is trained from scratch with small amount of parameters (0.71M) and Giga Floating Point Operations Per Second (0.42). To handle boundary fuzzy as well as occlusion or clutter in objects especially in medical image regions, we propose the Marginal Weight Loss that can help effectively determine the marginal boundary between object and background. Furthermore, we propose the Self-embedding Representation Parallel technique, that can help augment the data in a self-learning manner. Experiments on public datasets including Data Science Bowls, GlaS, ISIC2018, PH2, and Sunnybrook data show promising results compared to other state-of-the-art CNN-based and Transformer-based architectures. Our code will be published at: https://github.com/tranngocduvnvp/LiteNeXt.
Authors: Haoyue Bai, Le Wu, Min Hou, Miaomiao Cai, Zhuangzhuang He, Yuyang Zhou, Richang Hong, Meng Wang
Abstract: Multimedia-based recommendation provides personalized item suggestions by learning the content preferences of users. With the proliferation of digital devices and APPs, a huge number of new items are created rapidly over time. How to quickly provide recommendations for new items at the inference time is challenging. What's worse, real-world items exhibit varying degrees of modality missing(e.g., many short videos are uploaded without text descriptions). Though many efforts have been devoted to multimedia-based recommendations, they either could not deal with new multimedia items or assumed the modality completeness in the modeling process. In this paper, we highlight the necessity of tackling the modality missing issue for new item recommendation. We argue that users' inherent content preference is stable and better kept invariant to arbitrary modality missing environments. Therefore, we approach this problem from a novel perspective of invariant learning. However, how to construct environments from finite user behavior training data to generalize any modality missing is challenging. To tackle this issue, we propose a novel Multimodality Invariant Learning reCommendation(a.k.a. MILK) framework. Specifically, MILK first designs a cross-modality alignment module to keep semantic consistency from pretrained multimedia item features. After that, MILK designs multi-modal heterogeneous environments with cyclic mixup to augment training data, in order to mimic any modality missing for invariant user preference learning. Extensive experiments on three real datasets verify the superiority of our proposed framework. The code is available at https://github.com/HaoyueBai98/MILK.
Authors: Yizhou Chi, Jessy Lin, Kevin Lin, Dan Klein
Abstract: Users often make ambiguous requests that require clarification. We study the problem of asking clarification questions in an information retrieval setting, where systems often face ambiguous search queries and it is challenging to turn the uncertainty in the retrieval model into a natural language question. We present CLARINET, a system that asks informative clarification questions by choosing questions whose answers would maximize certainty in the correct candidate. Our approach works by augmenting a large language model (LLM) to condition on a retrieval distribution, finetuning end-to-end to generate the question that would have maximized the rank of the true candidate at each turn. When evaluated on a real-world retrieval dataset of users searching for books, our system outperforms traditional heuristics such as information gain on retrieval success by 17% and vanilla-prompted LLMs by 39% relative.
Authors: Magnus Bender, Tanya Braun, Ralf M\"oller, Marcel Gehrke
Abstract: An agent providing an information retrieval service may work with a corpus of text documents. The documents in the corpus may contain annotations such as Subjective Content Descriptions (SCD) -- additional data associated with different sentences of the documents. Each SCD is associated with multiple sentences of the corpus and has relations among each other. The agent uses the SCDs to create its answers in response to queries supplied by users. However, the SCD the agent uses might reflect the subjective perspective of another user. Hence, answers may be considered faulty by an agent's user, because the SCDs may not exactly match the perceptions of an agent's user. A naive and very costly approach would be to ask each user to completely create all the SCD themselves. To use existing knowledge, this paper presents ReFrESH, an approach for Relation-preserving Feedback-reliant Enhancement of SCDs by Humans. An agent's user can give feedback about faulty answers to the agent. This feedback is then used by ReFrESH to update the SCDs incrementally. However, human feedback is not always unambiguous. Therefore, this paper additionally presents an approach to decide how to incorporate the feedback and when to update the SCDs. Altogether, SCDs can be updated with human feedback, allowing users to create even more specific SCDs for their needs.
Authors: Sami Azirar, Hossam A. Gabbar, Chaouki Regoui
Abstract: As the amount and complexity of data grows, retrieving it has become a more difficult task that requires greater knowledge and resources. This is especially true for the logistics industry, where new technologies for data collection provide tremendous amounts of interconnected real-time data. The Intelligent Query and Learning System (IQLS) simplifies the process by allowing natural language use to simplify data retrieval . It maps structured data into a framework based on the available metadata and available data models. This framework creates an environment for an agent powered by a Large Language Model. The agent utilizes the hierarchical nature of the data to filter iteratively by making multiple small context-aware decisions instead of one-shot data retrieval. After the Data filtering, the IQLS enables the agent to fulfill tasks given by the user query through interfaces. These interfaces range from multimodal transportation information retrieval to route planning under multiple constraints. The latter lets the agent define a dynamic object, which is determined based on the query parameters. This object represents a driver capable of navigating a road network. The road network is depicted as a graph with attributes based on the data. Using a modified version of the Dijkstra algorithm, the optimal route under the given constraints can be determined. Throughout the entire process, the user maintains the ability to interact and guide the system. The IQLS is showcased in a case study on the Canadian logistics sector, allowing geospatial, visual, tabular and text data to be easily queried semantically in natural language.
Authors: John Yang, Carlos E. Jimenez, Alexander Wettig, Kilian Lieret, Shunyu Yao, Karthik Narasimhan, Ofir Press
Abstract: Software engineering is a challenging task requiring proficiency in both code generation and interacting with computers. In this paper, we introduce SWE-agent, an autonomous system that uses a language model to interact with a computer to solve software engineering tasks. We show that a custom-built agent-computer interface (ACI) greatly enhances the ability of an agent to create and edit code files, navigate entire repositories and execute programs. On SWE-bench, SWE-agent is able to solve 12.5% of issues, compared to the previous best of 3.8% achieved with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). We explore how ACI design impacts an agent's behavior and performance, and provide insights on effective design.
Authors: Adrien Basdevant, Camille Fran\c{c}ois, Victor Storchan, Kevin Bankston, Ayah Bdeir, Brian Behlendorf, Merouane Debbah, Sayash Kapoor, Yann LeCun, Mark Surman, Helen King-Turvey, Nathan Lambert, Stefano Maffulli, Nik Marda, Govind Shivkumar, Justine Tunney
Abstract: Over the past year, there has been a robust debate about the benefits and risks of open sourcing foundation models. However, this discussion has often taken place at a high level of generality or with a narrow focus on specific technical attributes. In part, this is because defining open source for foundation models has proven tricky, given its significant differences from traditional software development. In order to inform more practical and nuanced decisions about opening AI systems, including foundation models, this paper presents a framework for grappling with openness across the AI stack. It summarizes previous work on this topic, analyzes the various potential reasons to pursue openness, and outlines how openness varies in different parts of the AI stack, both at the model and at the system level. In doing so, its authors hope to provide a common descriptive framework to deepen a nuanced and rigorous understanding of openness in AI and enable further work around definitions of openness and safety in AI.
Authors: Bishal Thapaliya, Robyn Miller, Jiayu Chen, Yu-Ping Wang, Esra Akbas, Ram Sapkota, Bhaskar Ray, Pranav Suresh, Santosh Ghimire, Vince Calhoun, Jingyu Liu
Abstract: Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) is a noninvasive technique pivotal for understanding human neural mechanisms of intricate cognitive processes. Most rs-fMRI studies compute a single static functional connectivity matrix across brain regions of interest, or dynamic functional connectivity matrices with a sliding window approach. These approaches are at risk of oversimplifying brain dynamics and lack proper consideration of the goal at hand. While deep learning has gained substantial popularity for modeling complex relational data, its application to uncovering the spatiotemporal dynamics of the brain is still limited. We propose a novel interpretable deep learning framework that learns goal-specific functional connectivity matrix directly from time series and employs a specialized graph neural network for the final classification. Our model, DSAM, leverages temporal causal convolutional networks to capture the temporal dynamics in both low- and high-level feature representations, a temporal attention unit to identify important time points, a self-attention unit to construct the goal-specific connectivity matrix, and a novel variant of graph neural network to capture the spatial dynamics for downstream classification. To validate our approach, we conducted experiments on the Human Connectome Project dataset with 1075 samples to build and interpret the model for the classification of sex group, and the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Dataset with 8520 samples for independent testing. Compared our proposed framework with other state-of-art models, results suggested this novel approach goes beyond the assumption of a fixed connectivity matrix and provides evidence of goal-specific brain connectivity patterns, which opens up the potential to gain deeper insights into how the human brain adapts its functional connectivity specific to the task at hand.
Authors: Zhengqing Miao, Meirong Zhao
Abstract: Motor imagery (MI) based EEG represents a frontier in enabling direct neural control of external devices and advancing neural rehabilitation. This study introduces a novel time embedding technique, termed traveling-wave based time embedding, utilized as a pseudo channel to enhance the decoding accuracy of MI-EEG signals across various neural network architectures. Unlike traditional neural network methods that fail to account for the temporal dynamics in MI-EEG in individual difference, our approach captures time-related changes for different participants based on a priori knowledge. Through extensive experimentation with multiple participants, we demonstrate that this method not only improves classification accuracy but also exhibits greater adaptability to individual differences compared to position encoding used in Transformer architecture. Significantly, our results reveal that traveling-wave based time embedding crucially enhances decoding accuracy, particularly for participants typically considered "EEG-illiteracy". As a novel direction in EEG research, the traveling-wave based time embedding not only offers fresh insights for neural network decoding strategies but also expands new avenues for research into attention mechanisms in neuroscience and a deeper understanding of EEG signals.
Authors: Sanchayan Dutta, Xiang Cheng, Suvrit Sra
Abstract: We develop new algorithms for Riemannian bilevel optimization. We focus in particular on batch and stochastic gradient-based methods, with the explicit goal of avoiding second-order information such as Riemannian hyper-gradients. We propose and analyze $\mathrm{RF^2SA}$, a method that leverages first-order gradient information to navigate the complex geometry of Riemannian manifolds efficiently. Notably, $\mathrm{RF^2SA}$ is a single-loop algorithm, and thus easier to implement and use. Under various setups, including stochastic optimization, we provide explicit convergence rates for reaching $\epsilon$-stationary points. We also address the challenge of optimizing over Riemannian manifolds with constraints by adjusting the multiplier in the Lagrangian, ensuring convergence to the desired solution without requiring access to second-order derivatives.
Authors: Avidan Shah, Danny Tran, Yuhan Tang
Abstract: Curriculum learning has been growing in the domain of reinforcement learning as a method of improving training efficiency for various tasks. It involves modifying the difficulty (lessons) of the environment as the agent learns, in order to encourage more optimal agent behavior and higher reward states. However, most curriculum learning methods currently involve discrete transitions of the curriculum or predefined steps by the programmer or using automatic curriculum learning on only a small subset training such as only on an adversary. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to curriculum learning that uses a Setter Model to automatically generate an action space, adversary strength, initialization, and bunching strength. Transportation and traffic optimization is a well known area of study, especially for reinforcement learning based solutions. We specifically look at the bus bunching problem for the context of this study. The main idea of the problem is to minimize the delays caused by inefficient bus timings for passengers arriving and departing from a system of buses. While the heavy exploration in the area makes innovation and improvement with regards to performance marginal, it simultaneously provides an effective baseline for developing new generalized techniques. Our group is particularly interested in examining curriculum learning and its effect on training efficiency and overall performance. We decide to try a lesser known approach to curriculum learning, in which the curriculum is not fixed or discretely thresholded. Our method for automated curriculum learning involves a curriculum that is dynamically chosen and learned by an adversary network made to increase the difficulty of the agent's training, and defined by multiple forms of input. Our results are shown in the following sections of this paper.
Authors: Eamon Duede, William Dolan, Andr\'e Bauer, Ian Foster, Karim Lakhani
Abstract: This study empirically investigates claims of the increasing ubiquity of artificial intelligence (AI) within roughly 80 million research publications across 20 diverse scientific fields, by examining the change in scholarly engagement with AI from 1985 through 2022. We observe exponential growth, with AI-engaged publications increasing approximately thirteenfold (13x) across all fields, suggesting a dramatic shift from niche to mainstream. Moreover, we provide the first empirical examination of the distribution of AI-engaged publications across publication venues within individual fields, with results that reveal a broadening of AI engagement within disciplines. While this broadening engagement suggests a move toward greater disciplinary integration in every field, increased ubiquity is associated with a semantic tension between AI-engaged research and more traditional disciplinary research. Through an analysis of tens of millions of document embeddings, we observe a complex interplay between AI-engaged and non-AI-engaged research within and across fields, suggesting that increasing ubiquity is something of an oil-and-water phenomenon -- AI-engaged work is spreading out over fields, but not mixing well with non-AI-engaged work.
Authors: Jihui Nie, Dehui Du, Jiangnan Zhao
Abstract: Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS) represent a specialized form of Cyber-Physical System (CPS) that incorporates intelligent components, notably Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), to undertake multifaceted tasks encompassing perception, decision-making, and control. The utilization of DRL for decision-making facilitates dynamic interaction with the environment, generating control actions aimed at maximizing cumulative rewards. Nevertheless, the inherent uncertainty of the operational environment and the intricate nature of ICPS necessitate exploration within complex and dynamic state spaces during the learning phase. DRL confronts challenges in terms of efficiency, generalization capabilities, and data scarcity during decision-making process. In response to these challenges, we propose an innovative abstract modeling approach grounded in spatial-temporal value semantics, capturing the evolution in the distribution of semantic value across time and space. A semantics-based abstraction is introduced to construct an abstract Markov Decision Process (MDP) for the DRL learning process. Furthermore, optimization techniques for abstraction are delineated, aiming to refine the abstract model and mitigate semantic gaps between abstract and concrete states. The efficacy of the abstract modeling is assessed through the evaluation and analysis of the abstract MDP model using PRISM. A series of experiments are conducted, involving diverse scenarios such as lane-keeping, adaptive cruise control, and intersection crossroad assistance, to demonstrate the effectiveness of our abstracting approach.
Authors: Shunyu Liu, Wei Luo, Yanzhen Zhou, Kaixuan Chen, Quan Zhang, Huating Xu, Qinglai Guo, Mingli Song
Abstract: Transmission interface power flow adjustment is a critical measure to ensure the security and economy operation of power systems. However, conventional model-based adjustment schemes are limited by the increasing variations and uncertainties occur in power systems, where the adjustment problems of different transmission interfaces are often treated as several independent tasks, ignoring their coupling relationship and even leading to conflict decisions. In this paper, we introduce a novel data-driven deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approach, to handle multiple power flow adjustment tasks jointly instead of learning each task from scratch. At the heart of the proposed method is a multi-task attribution map (MAM), which enables the DRL agent to explicitly attribute each transmission interface task to different power system nodes with task-adaptive attention weights. Based on this MAM, the agent can further provide effective strategies to solve the multi-task adjustment problem with a near-optimal operation cost. Simulation results on the IEEE 118-bus system, a realistic 300-bus system in China, and a very large European system with 9241 buses demonstrate that the proposed method significantly improves the performance compared with several baseline methods, and exhibits high interpretability with the learnable MAM.
Authors: Anurag Mishra, Ronen Gold, Sanjeev Vijayakumar
Abstract: Industrial operations have grown exponentially over the last century, driving advancements in energy utilization through vehicles and machinery.This growth has significant environmental implications, necessitating the use of sophisticated technology to monitor and analyze climate data.The surge in industrial activities presents a complex challenge in forecasting its diverse environmental impacts, which vary greatly across different regions.Aim to understand these dynamics more deeply to predict and mitigate the environmental impacts of industrial activities.
Authors: Louis Foucard, Samar Khanna, Yi Shi, Chi-Kuei Liu, Quinn Z Shen, Thuyen Ngo, Zi-Xiang Xia
Abstract: In this paper, we propose SpotNet: a fast, single stage, image-centric but LiDAR anchored approach for long range 3D object detection. We demonstrate that our approach to LiDAR/image sensor fusion, combined with the joint learning of 2D and 3D detection tasks, can lead to accurate 3D object detection with very sparse LiDAR support. Unlike more recent bird's-eye-view (BEV) sensor-fusion methods which scale with range $r$ as $O(r^2)$, SpotNet scales as $O(1)$ with range. We argue that such an architecture is ideally suited to leverage each sensor's strength, i.e. semantic understanding from images and accurate range finding from LiDAR data. Finally we show that anchoring detections on LiDAR points removes the need to regress distances, and so the architecture is able to transfer from 2MP to 8MP resolution images without re-training.
Authors: Chak Fong Chong, Jielong Guo, Xu Yang, Wei Ke, Yapeng Wang
Abstract: Multi-label image classification datasets are often partially labeled where many labels are missing, posing a significant challenge to training accurate deep classifiers. However, the powerful Mixup sample-mixing data augmentation cannot be well utilized to address this challenge, as it cannot perform linear interpolation on the unknown labels to construct augmented samples. In this paper, we propose LogicMix, a Mixup variant designed for such partially labeled datasets. LogicMix mixes the sample labels by logical OR so that the unknown labels can be correctly mixed by utilizing OR's logical equivalences, including the domination and identity laws. Unlike Mixup, which mixes exactly two samples, LogicMix can mix multiple ($\geq2$) partially labeled samples, constructing visually more confused augmented samples to regularize training. LogicMix is more general and effective than other compared Mixup variants in the experiments on various partially labeled dataset scenarios. Moreover, it is plug-and-play and only requires minimal computation, hence it can be easily inserted into existing frameworks to collaborate with other methods to improve model performance with a negligible impact on training time, as demonstrated through extensive experiments. In particular, through the collaboration of LogicMix, RandAugment, Curriculum Labeling, and Category-wise Fine-Tuning, we attain state-of-the-art performance on MS-COCO, VG-200, and Pascal VOC 2007 benchmarking datasets. The remarkable generality, effectiveness, collaboration, and simplicity suggest that LogicMix promises to be a popular and vital data augmentation method.
Authors: Chang Li, Ruoyu Wang, Lijuan Liu, Jun Du, Yixuan Sun, Zilu Guo, Zhenrong Zhang, Yuan Jiang
Abstract: In recent years, diffusion-based text-to-music (TTM) generation has gained prominence, offering a novel approach to synthesizing musical content from textual descriptions. Achieving high accuracy and diversity in this generation process requires extensive, high-quality data, which often constitutes only a fraction of available datasets. Within open-source datasets, the prevalence of issues like mislabeling, weak labeling, unlabeled data, and low-quality music waveform significantly hampers the development of music generation models. To overcome these challenges, we introduce a novel quality-aware masked diffusion transformer (QA-MDT) approach that enables generative models to discern the quality of input music waveform during training. Building on the unique properties of musical signals, we have adapted and implemented a MDT model for TTM task, while further unveiling its distinct capacity for quality control. Moreover, we address the issue of low-quality captions with a caption refinement data processing approach. Our demo page is shown in https://qa-mdt.github.io/. Code on https://github.com/ivcylc/qa-mdt
URLs: https://qa-mdt.github.io/., https://github.com/ivcylc/qa-mdt
Authors: Marco Paul E. Apolinario, Arani Roy, Kaushik Roy
Abstract: Training deep neural networks (DNNs) using traditional backpropagation (BP) presents challenges in terms of computational complexity and energy consumption, particularly for on-device learning where computational resources are limited. Various alternatives to BP, including random feedback alignment, forward-forward, and local classifiers, have been explored to address these challenges. These methods have their advantages, but they can encounter difficulties when dealing with intricate visual tasks or demand considerable computational resources. In this paper, we propose a novel Local Learning rule inspired by neural activity Synchronization phenomena (LLS) observed in the brain. LLS utilizes fixed periodic basis vectors to synchronize neuron activity within each layer, enabling efficient training without the need for additional trainable parameters. We demonstrate the effectiveness of LLS and its variations, LLS-M and LLS-MxM, on multiple image classification datasets, achieving accuracy comparable to BP with reduced computational complexity and minimal additional parameters. Furthermore, the performance of LLS on the Visual Wake Word (VWW) dataset highlights its suitability for on-device learning tasks, making it a promising candidate for edge hardware implementations.
Authors: Juan Miguel Lopez Alcaraz, Nils Strodthoff
Abstract: Despite the excelling performance of machine learning models, understanding the decisions of machine learning models remains a long-standing goal. While commonly used attribution methods in explainable AI attempt to address this issue, they typically rely on associational rather than causal relationships. In this study, within the context of time series classification, we introduce a novel framework to assess the causal effect of concepts, i.e., predefined segments within a time series, on specific classification outcomes. To achieve this, we leverage state-of-the-art diffusion-based generative models to estimate counterfactual outcomes. Our approach compares these causal attributions with closely related associational attributions, both theoretically and empirically. We demonstrate the insights gained by our approach for a diverse set of qualitatively different time series classification tasks. Although causal and associational attributions might often share some similarities, in all cases they differ in important details, underscoring the risks associated with drawing causal conclusions from associational data alone. We believe that the proposed approach is widely applicable also in other domains, particularly where predefined segmentations are available, to shed some light on the limits of associational attributions.
Authors: Shraddha Barke, Emmanuel Anaya Gonzalez, Saketh Ram Kasibatla, Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick, Nadia Polikarpova
Abstract: Many structured prediction and reasoning tasks can be framed as program synthesis problems, where the goal is to generate a program in a domain-specific language (DSL) that transforms input data into the desired output. Unfortunately, purely neural approaches, such as large language models (LLMs), often fail to produce fully correct programs in unfamiliar DSLs, while purely symbolic methods based on combinatorial search scale poorly to complex problems. Motivated by these limitations, we introduce a hybrid approach, where LLM completions for a given task are used to learn a task-specific, context-free surrogate model, which is then used to guide program synthesis. We evaluate this hybrid approach on three domains, and show that it outperforms both unguided search and direct sampling from LLMs, as well as existing program synthesizers.
Authors: Shentong Mo, Yapeng Tian
Abstract: In recent developments, the Mamba architecture, known for its selective state space approach, has shown potential in the efficient modeling of long sequences. However, its application in image generation remains underexplored. Traditional diffusion transformers (DiT), which utilize self-attention blocks, are effective but their computational complexity scales quadratically with the input length, limiting their use for high-resolution images. To address this challenge, we introduce a novel diffusion architecture, Diffusion Mamba (DiM), which foregoes traditional attention mechanisms in favor of a scalable alternative. By harnessing the inherent efficiency of the Mamba architecture, DiM achieves rapid inference times and reduced computational load, maintaining linear complexity with respect to sequence length. Our architecture not only scales effectively but also outperforms existing diffusion transformers in both image and video generation tasks. The results affirm the scalability and efficiency of DiM, establishing a new benchmark for image and video generation techniques. This work advances the field of generative models and paves the way for further applications of scalable architectures.
Authors: Mikayla Calitis
Abstract: In this study, the reliability of identified risk factors associated with osteoporosis is investigated using a new clustering-based method on electronic medical records. This study proposes utilizing a new CLustering Iterations Framework (CLIF) that includes an iterative clustering framework that can adapt any of the following three components: clustering, feature selection, and principal feature identification. The study proposes using Wasserstein distance to identify principal features, borrowing concepts from the optimal transport theory. The study also suggests using a combination of ANOVA and ablation tests to select influential features from a data set. Some risk factors presented in existing works are endorsed by our identified significant clusters, while the reliability of some other risk factors is weakened.
Authors: Matheus Valentim, Jeanette Falk, Nanna Inie
Abstract: The recent leaps in complexity and fluency of Large Language Models (LLMs) mean that, for the first time in human history, people can interact with computers using natural language alone. This creates monumental possibilities of automation and accessibility of computing, but also raises severe security and safety threats: When everyone can interact with LLMs, everyone can potentially break into the systems running LLMs. All it takes is creative use of language. This paper presents Hacc-Man, a game which challenges its players to "jailbreak" an LLM: subvert the LLM to output something that it is not intended to. Jailbreaking is at the intersection between creative problem solving and LLM security. The purpose of the game is threefold: 1. To heighten awareness of the risks of deploying fragile LLMs in everyday systems, 2. To heighten people's self-efficacy in interacting with LLMs, and 3. To discover the creative problem solving strategies, people deploy in this novel context.
Authors: Dea Gogishvili, Emmanuel Minois-Genin, Jan van Eck, Sanne Abeln
Abstract: Hydrophobic patches on protein surfaces play important functional roles in protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions. Large hydrophobic surfaces are also involved in the progression of aggregation diseases. Predicting exposed hydrophobic patches from a protein sequence has been shown to be a difficult task. Fine-tuning foundation models allows for adapting a model to the specific nuances of a new task using a much smaller dataset. Additionally, multi-task deep learning offers a promising solution for addressing data gaps, simultaneously outperforming single-task methods. In this study, we harnessed a recently released leading large language model ESM-2. Efficient fine-tuning of ESM-2 was achieved by leveraging a recently developed parameter-efficient fine-tuning method. This approach enabled comprehensive training of model layers without excessive parameters and without the need to include a computationally expensive multiple sequence analysis. We explored several related tasks, at local (residue) and global (protein) levels, to improve the representation of the model. As a result, our fine-tuned ESM-2 model, PatchProt, cannot only predict hydrophobic patch areas but also outperforms existing methods at predicting primary tasks, including secondary structure and surface accessibility predictions. Importantly, our analysis shows that including related local tasks can improve predictions on more difficult global tasks. This research sets a new standard for sequence-based protein property prediction and highlights the remarkable potential of fine-tuning foundation models enriching the model representation by training over related tasks.
Authors: Sergio Rojas-Galeano
Abstract: This paper investigates the application of pre-trained large language models (LLMs) for spam email classification using zero-shot prompting. We evaluate the performance of both open-source (Flan-T5) and proprietary LLMs (ChatGPT, GPT-4) on the well-known SpamAssassin dataset. Two classification approaches are explored: (1) truncated raw content from email subject and body, and (2) classification based on summaries generated by ChatGPT. Our empirical analysis, leveraging the entire dataset for evaluation without further training, reveals promising results. Flan-T5 achieves a 90% F1-score on the truncated content approach, while GPT-4 reaches a 95% F1-score using summaries. While these initial findings on a single dataset suggest the potential for classification pipelines of LLM-based subtasks (e.g., summarisation and classification), further validation on diverse datasets is necessary. The high operational costs of proprietary models, coupled with the general inference costs of LLMs, could significantly hinder real-world deployment for spam filtering.
Authors: Carlos Toxtli
Abstract: The rapid advancement of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as Large Language Models (LLMs) and Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLM), has the potential to revolutionize the way we work and interact with digital systems across various industries. However, the current state of software automation, such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) frameworks, often requires domain expertise and lacks visibility and intuitive interfaces, making it challenging for users to fully leverage these technologies. This position paper argues for the emerging area of Human-Centered Automation (HCA), which prioritizes user needs and preferences in the design and development of automation systems. Drawing on empirical evidence from human-computer interaction research and case studies, we highlight the importance of considering user perspectives in automation and propose a framework for designing human-centric automation solutions. The paper discusses the limitations of existing automation approaches, the challenges in integrating AI and RPA, and the benefits of human-centered automation for productivity, innovation, and democratizing access to these technologies. We emphasize the importance of open-source solutions and provide examples of how HCA can empower individuals and organizations in the era of rapidly progressing AI, helping them remain competitive. The paper also explores pathways to achieve more advanced and context-aware automation solutions. We conclude with a call to action for researchers and practitioners to focus on developing automation technologies that adapt to user needs, provide intuitive interfaces, and leverage the capabilities of high-end AI to create a more accessible and user-friendly future of automation.
Authors: Xiyao Wang, Jiuhai Chen, Zhaoyang Wang, Yuhang Zhou, Yiyang Zhou, Huaxiu Yao, Tianyi Zhou, Tom Goldstein, Parminder Bhatia, Furong Huang, Cao Xiao
Abstract: Large vision-language models (LVLMs) have achieved impressive results in various visual question-answering and reasoning tasks through vision instruction tuning on specific datasets. However, there is still significant room for improvement in the alignment between visual and language modalities. Previous methods to enhance this alignment typically require external models or data, heavily depending on their capabilities and quality, which inevitably sets an upper bound on performance. In this paper, we propose SIMA, a framework that enhances visual and language modality alignment through self-improvement, eliminating the needs for external models or data. SIMA leverages prompts from existing vision instruction tuning datasets to self-generate responses and employs an in-context self-critic mechanism to select response pairs for preference tuning. The key innovation is the introduction of three vision metrics during the in-context self-critic process, which can guide the LVLM in selecting responses that enhance image comprehension. Through experiments across 14 hallucination and comprehensive benchmarks, we demonstrate that SIMA not only improves model performance across all benchmarks but also achieves superior modality alignment, outperforming previous approaches.
Authors: Simon Chi Lok Yu, Jie He, Pasquale Minervini, Jeff Z. Pan
Abstract: With the emergence of large language models, such as LLaMA and OpenAI GPT-3, In-Context Learning (ICL) gained significant attention due to its effectiveness and efficiency. However, ICL is very sensitive to the choice, order, and verbaliser used to encode the demonstrations in the prompt. Retrieval-Augmented ICL methods try to address this problem by leveraging retrievers to extract semantically related examples as demonstrations. While this approach yields more accurate results, its robustness against various types of adversarial attacks, including perturbations on test samples, demonstrations, and retrieved data, remains under-explored. Our study reveals that retrieval-augmented models can enhance robustness against test sample attacks, outperforming vanilla ICL with a 4.87% reduction in Attack Success Rate (ASR); however, they exhibit overconfidence in the demonstrations, leading to a 2% increase in ASR for demonstration attacks. Adversarial training can help improve the robustness of ICL methods to adversarial attacks; however, such a training scheme can be too costly in the context of LLMs. As an alternative, we introduce an effective training-free adversarial defence method, DARD, which enriches the example pool with those attacked samples. We show that DARD yields improvements in performance and robustness, achieving a 15% reduction in ASR over the baselines. Code and data are released to encourage further research: https://github.com/simonucl/adv-retreival-icl
Authors: Robert Wolfe, Tanushree Mitra
Abstract: Generative AI appears poised to transform white collar professions, with more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies using OpenAI's flagship GPT models, which have been characterized as "general purpose technologies" capable of effecting epochal changes in the economy. But how will such technologies impact organizations whose job is to verify and report factual information, and to ensure the health of the information ecosystem? To investigate this question, we conducted 30 interviews with N=38 participants working at 29 fact-checking organizations across six continents, asking about how they use generative AI and the opportunities and challenges they see in the technology. We found that uses of generative AI envisioned by fact-checkers differ based on organizational infrastructure, with applications for quality assurance in Editing, for trend analysis in Investigation, and for information literacy in Advocacy. We used the TOE framework to describe participant concerns ranging from the Technological (lack of transparency), to the Organizational (resource constraints), to the Environmental (uncertain and evolving policy). Building on the insights of our participants, we describe value tensions between fact-checking and generative AI, and propose a novel Verification dimension to the design space of generative models for information verification work. Finally, we outline an agenda for fairness, accountability, and transparency research to support the responsible use of generative AI in fact-checking. Throughout, we highlight the importance of human infrastructure and labor in producing verified information in collaboration with AI. We expect that this work will inform not only the scientific literature on fact-checking, but also contribute to understanding of organizational adaptation to a powerful but unreliable new technology.
Authors: David Lindsay
Abstract: The Transductive Confidence Machine Nearest Neighbours (TCMNN) algorithm and a supporting, simple user interface was developed. Different settings of the TCMNN algorithms' parameters were tested on medical data sets, in addition to the use of different Minkowski metrics and polynomial kernels. The effect of increasing the number of nearest neighbours and marking results with significance was also investigated. SVM implementation of the Transductive Confidence Machine was compared with Nearest Neighbours implementation. The application of neural networks was investigated as a useful comparison to the transductive algorithms.
Authors: Xuesong Wang, He Zhao, Edwin V. Bonilla
Abstract: Neural Processes (NPs) are variational frameworks that aim to represent stochastic processes with deep neural networks. Despite their obvious benefits in uncertainty estimation for complex distributions via data-driven priors, NPs enforce network parameter sharing between the conditional prior and posterior distributions, thereby risking introducing a misspecified prior. We hereby propose R\'enyi Neural Processes (RNP) to relax the influence of the misspecified prior and optimize a tighter bound of the marginal likelihood. More specifically, by replacing the standard KL divergence with the R\'enyi divergence between the posterior and the approximated prior, we ameliorate the impact of the misspecified prior via a parameter {\alpha} so that the resulting posterior focuses more on tail samples and reduce density on overconfident regions. Our experiments showed log-likelihood improvements on several existing NP families. We demonstrated the superior performance of our approach on various benchmarks including regression and image inpainting tasks. We also validate the effectiveness of RNPs on real-world tabular regression problems.
Authors: Junlin Wu, Huan Zhang, Yevgeniy Vorobeychik
Abstract: Learning reliably safe autonomous control is one of the core problems in trustworthy autonomy. However, training a controller that can be formally verified to be safe remains a major challenge. We introduce a novel approach for learning verified safe control policies in nonlinear neural dynamical systems while maximizing overall performance. Our approach aims to achieve safety in the sense of finite-horizon reachability proofs, and is comprised of three key parts. The first is a novel curriculum learning scheme that iteratively increases the verified safe horizon. The second leverages the iterative nature of gradient-based learning to leverage incremental verification, reusing information from prior verification runs. Finally, we learn multiple verified initial-state-dependent controllers, an idea that is especially valuable for more complex domains where learning a single universal verified safe controller is extremely challenging. Our experiments on five safe control problems demonstrate that our trained controllers can achieve verified safety over horizons that are as much as an order of magnitude longer than state-of-the-art baselines, while maintaining high reward, as well as a perfect safety record over entire episodes.
Authors: Sanjay Natesan, Homayoon Beigi
Abstract: Large scale machine learning-based Raga identification continues to be a nontrivial issue in the computational aspects behind Carnatic music. Each raga consists of many unique and intrinsic melodic patterns that can be used to easily identify them from others. These ragas can also then be used to cluster songs within the same raga, as well as identify songs in other closely related ragas. In this case, the input sound is analyzed using a combination of steps including using a Discrete Fourier transformation and using Triangular Filtering to create custom bins of possible notes, extracting features from the presence of particular notes or lack thereof. Using a combination of Neural Networks including 1D Convolutional Neural Networks conventionally known as Time-Delay Neural Networks) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), which are a form of Recurrent Neural Networks, the backbone of the classification strategy to build the model can be created. In addition, to help with variations in shruti, a long-time attention-based mechanism will be implemented to determine the relative changes in frequency rather than the absolute differences. This will provide a much more meaningful data point when training audio clips in different shrutis. To evaluate the accuracy of the classifier, a dataset of 676 recordings is used. The songs are distributed across the list of ragas. The goal of this program is to be able to effectively and efficiently label a much wider range of audio clips in more shrutis, ragas, and with more background noise.
Authors: R\'obert Csord\'as, Kazuki Irie, J\"urgen Schmidhuber, Christopher Potts, Christopher D. Manning
Abstract: Previous work on Universal Transformers (UTs) has demonstrated the importance of parameter sharing across layers. By allowing recurrence in depth, UTs have advantages over standard Transformers in learning compositional generalizations, but layer-sharing comes with a practical limitation of parameter-compute ratio: it drastically reduces the parameter count compared to the non-shared model with the same dimensionality. Naively scaling up the layer size to compensate for the loss of parameters makes its computational resource requirements prohibitive. In practice, no previous work has succeeded in proposing a shared-layer Transformer design that is competitive in parameter count-dominated tasks such as language modeling. Here we propose MoEUT (pronounced "moot"), an effective mixture-of-experts (MoE)-based shared-layer Transformer architecture, which combines several recent advances in MoEs for both feedforward and attention layers of standard Transformers together with novel layer-normalization and grouping schemes that are specific and crucial to UTs. The resulting UT model, for the first time, slightly outperforms standard Transformers on language modeling tasks such as BLiMP and PIQA, while using significantly less compute and memory.
Authors: Zhenzhong Wang, Zehui Lin, Wanyu Lin, Ming Yang, Minggang Zeng, Kay Chen Tan
Abstract: Providing explainable molecule property predictions is critical for many scientific domains, such as drug discovery and material science. Though transformer-based language models have shown great potential in accurate molecular property prediction, they neither provide chemically meaningful explanations nor faithfully reveal the molecular structure-property relationships. In this work, we develop a new framework for explainable molecular property prediction based on language models, dubbed as Lamole, which can provide chemical concepts-aligned explanations. We first leverage a designated molecular representation -- the Group SELFIES -- as it can provide chemically meaningful semantics. Because attention mechanisms in Transformers can inherently capture relationships within the input, we further incorporate the attention weights and gradients together to generate explanations for capturing the functional group interactions. We then carefully craft a marginal loss to explicitly optimize the explanations to be able to align with the chemists' annotations. We bridge the manifold hypothesis with the elaborated marginal loss to prove that the loss can align the explanations with the tangent space of the data manifold, leading to concept-aligned explanations. Experimental results over six mutagenicity datasets and one hepatotoxicity dataset demonstrate Lamole can achieve comparable classification accuracy and boost the explanation accuracy by up to 14.8%, being the state-of-the-art in explainable molecular property prediction.
Authors: Zekun Cai, Guangji Bai, Renhe Jiang, Xuan Song, Liang Zhao
Abstract: Temporal Domain Generalization (TDG) addresses the challenge of training predictive models under temporally varying data distributions. Traditional TDG approaches typically focus on domain data collected at fixed, discrete time intervals, which limits their capability to capture the inherent dynamics within continuous-evolving and irregularly-observed temporal domains. To overcome this, this work formalizes the concept of Continuous Temporal Domain Generalization (CTDG), where domain data are derived from continuous times and are collected at arbitrary times. CTDG tackles critical challenges including: 1) Characterizing the continuous dynamics of both data and models, 2) Learning complex high-dimensional nonlinear dynamics, and 3) Optimizing and controlling the generalization across continuous temporal domains. To address them, we propose a Koopman operator-driven continuous temporal domain generalization (Koodos) framework. We formulate the problem within a continuous dynamic system and leverage the Koopman theory to learn the underlying dynamics; the framework is further enhanced with a comprehensive optimization strategy equipped with analysis and control driven by prior knowledge of the dynamics patterns. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach.
Authors: Hyekyoung Hwang, Jitae Shin
Abstract: Deep Learning (DL) has made remarkable achievements in computer vision and adopted in safety critical domains such as medical imaging or autonomous drive. Thus, it is necessary to understand the uncertainty of the model to effectively reduce accidents and losses due to misjudgment of the Deep Neural Networks (DNN). This can start by efficiently selecting data that could potentially malfunction to the model. Traditionally, data collection and labeling have been done manually, but recently test data selection methods have emerged that focus on capturing samples that are not relevant to what the model had been learned. They're selected based on the activation pattern of neurons in DNN, entropy minimization based on softmax output of the DL. However, these methods cannot quantitatively analyze the extent to which unseen samples are extrapolated from the training data. Therefore, we propose To-hull Uncertainty and Closure Ratio, which measures an uncertainty of trained model based on the convex hull of training data. It can observe the positional relation between the convex hull of the learned data and an unseen sample and infer how extrapolate the sample is from the convex hull. To evaluate the proposed method, we conduct empirical studies on popular datasets and DNN models, compared to state-of-the art test selection metrics. As a result of the experiment, the proposed To-hull Uncertainty is effective in finding samples with unusual patterns (e.g. adversarial attack) compared to the existing test selection metric.
Authors: Jiangwei Weng, Zhiqiang Yan, Ying Tai, Jianjun Qian, Jian Yang, Jun Li
Abstract: Recent advances in low light image enhancement have been dominated by Retinex-based learning framework, leveraging convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and Transformers. However, the vanilla Retinex theory primarily addresses global illumination degradation and neglects local issues such as noise and blur in dark conditions. Moreover, CNNs and Transformers struggle to capture global degradation due to their limited receptive fields. While state space models (SSMs) have shown promise in the long-sequence modeling, they face challenges in combining local invariants and global context in visual data. In this paper, we introduce MambaLLIE, an implicit Retinex-aware low light enhancer featuring a global-then-local state space design. We first propose a Local-Enhanced State Space Module (LESSM) that incorporates an augmented local bias within a 2D selective scan mechanism, enhancing the original SSMs by preserving local 2D dependency. Additionally, an Implicit Retinex-aware Selective Kernel module (IRSK) dynamically selects features using spatially-varying operations, adapting to varying inputs through an adaptive kernel selection process. Our Global-then-Local State Space Block (GLSSB) integrates LESSM and IRSK with LayerNorm as its core. This design enables MambaLLIE to achieve comprehensive global long-range modeling and flexible local feature aggregation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that MambaLLIE significantly outperforms state-of-the-art CNN and Transformer-based methods. Project Page: https://mamballie.github.io/anon/
Authors: Tong Ye, Yangkai Du, Tengfei Ma, Lingfei Wu, Xuhong Zhang, Shouling Ji, Wenhai Wang
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have exhibited remarkable proficiency in generating code. However, the misuse of LLM-generated (Synthetic) code has prompted concerns within both educational and industrial domains, highlighting the imperative need for the development of synthetic code detectors. Existing methods for detecting LLM-generated content are primarily tailored for general text and often struggle with code content due to the distinct grammatical structure of programming languages and massive "low-entropy" tokens. Building upon this, our work proposes a novel zero-shot synthetic code detector based on the similarity between the code and its rewritten variants. Our method relies on the intuition that the differences between the LLM-rewritten and original codes tend to be smaller when the original code is synthetic. We utilize self-supervised contrastive learning to train a code similarity model and assess our approach on two synthetic code detection benchmarks. Our results demonstrate a notable enhancement over existing synthetic content detectors designed for general texts, with an improvement of 20.5% in the APPS benchmark and 29.1% in the MBPP benchmark.
Authors: Jiayan Guo, Yusen Huo, Zhilin Zhang, Tianyu Wang, Chuan Yu, Jian Xu, Yan Zhang, Bo Zheng
Abstract: Auto-bidding plays a crucial role in facilitating online advertising by automatically providing bids for advertisers. Reinforcement learning (RL) has gained popularity for auto-bidding. However, most current RL auto-bidding methods are modeled through the Markovian Decision Process (MDP), which assumes the Markovian state transition. This assumption restricts the ability to perform in long horizon scenarios and makes the model unstable when dealing with highly random online advertising environments. To tackle this issue, this paper introduces AI-Generated Bidding (AIGB), a novel paradigm for auto-bidding through generative modeling. In this paradigm, we propose DiffBid, a conditional diffusion modeling approach for bid generation. DiffBid directly models the correlation between the return and the entire trajectory, effectively avoiding error propagation across time steps in long horizons. Additionally, DiffBid offers a versatile approach for generating trajectories that maximize given targets while adhering to specific constraints. Extensive experiments conducted on the real-world dataset and online A/B test on Alibaba advertising platform demonstrate the effectiveness of DiffBid, achieving 2.81% increase in GMV and 3.36% increase in ROI.
Authors: Hong-Shuo Chen, Yao Zhu, Suya You, Azad M. Madni, C. -C. Jay Kuo
Abstract: We introduce GreenCOD, a green method for detecting camouflaged objects, distinct in its avoidance of backpropagation techniques. GreenCOD leverages gradient boosting and deep features extracted from pre-trained Deep Neural Networks (DNNs). Traditional camouflaged object detection (COD) approaches often rely on complex deep neural network architectures, seeking performance improvements through backpropagation-based fine-tuning. However, such methods are typically computationally demanding and exhibit only marginal performance variations across different models. This raises the question of whether effective training can be achieved without backpropagation. Addressing this, our work proposes a new paradigm that utilizes gradient boosting for COD. This approach significantly simplifies the model design, resulting in a system that requires fewer parameters and operations and maintains high performance compared to state-of-the-art deep learning models. Remarkably, our models are trained without backpropagation and achieve the best performance with fewer than 20G Multiply-Accumulate Operations (MACs). This new, more efficient paradigm opens avenues for further exploration in green, backpropagation-free model training.
Authors: Roel Bouman, Linda Schmeitz, Luco Buise, Jacco Heres, Yuliya Shapovalova, Tom heskes
Abstract: In this paper we present novel methodology for automatic anomaly and switch event filtering to improve load estimation in power grid systems. By leveraging unsupervised methods with supervised optimization, our approach prioritizes interpretability while ensuring robust and generalizable performance on unseen data. Through experimentation, a combination of binary segmentation for change point detection and statistical process control for anomaly detection emerges as the most effective strategy, specifically when ensembled in a novel sequential manner. Results indicate the clear wasted potential when filtering is not applied. The automatic load estimation is also fairly accurate, with approximately 90% of estimates falling within a 10% error margin, with only a single significant failure in both the minimum and maximum load estimates across 60 measurements in the test set. Our methodology's interpretability makes it particularly suitable for critical infrastructure planning, thereby enhancing decision-making processes.
Authors: Masanobu Horie, Naoto Mitsume
Abstract: Utilizing machine learning to address partial differential equations (PDEs) presents significant challenges due to the diversity of spatial domains and their corresponding state configurations, which complicates the task of encompassing all potential scenarios through data-driven methodologies alone. Moreover, there are legitimate concerns regarding the generalization and reliability of such approaches, as they often overlook inherent physical constraints. In response to these challenges, this study introduces a novel machine-learning architecture that is highly generalizable and adheres to conservation laws and physical symmetries, thereby ensuring greater reliability. The foundation of this architecture is graph neural networks (GNNs), which are adept at accommodating a variety of shapes and forms. Additionally, we explore the parallels between GNNs and traditional numerical solvers, facilitating a seamless integration of conservative principles and symmetries into machine learning models. Our findings from experiments demonstrate that the model's inclusion of physical laws significantly enhances its generalizability, i.e., no significant accuracy degradation for unseen spatial domains while other models degrade. The code is available at https://github.com/yellowshippo/fluxgnn-icml2024.
Authors: Harry Zhang
Abstract: Model-based Reinforcement Learning (MBRL) has shown many desirable properties for intelligent control tasks. However, satisfying safety and stability constraints during training and rollout remains an open question. We propose a new Model-based RL framework to enable efficient policy learning with unknown dynamics based on learning model predictive control (LMPC) framework with mathematically provable guarantees of stability. We introduce and explore a novel method for adding safety constraints for model-based RL during training and policy learning. The new stability-augmented framework consists of a neural-network-based learner that learns to construct a Lyapunov function, and a model-based RL agent to consistently complete the tasks while satisfying user-specified constraints given only sub-optimal demonstrations and sparse-cost feedback. We demonstrate the capability of the proposed framework through simulated experiments.
Authors: Yanfei Dong, Mohammed Haroon Dupty, Lambert Deng, Zhuanghua Liu, Yong Liang Goh, Wee Sun Lee
Abstract: Graph Neural Networks often struggle with long-range information propagation and in the presence of heterophilous neighborhoods. We address both challenges with a unified framework that incorporates a clustering inductive bias into the message passing mechanism, using additional cluster-nodes. Central to our approach is the formulation of an optimal transport based implicit clustering objective function. However, the algorithm for solving the implicit objective function needs to be differentiable to enable end-to-end learning of the GNN. To facilitate this, we adopt an entropy regularized objective function and propose an iterative optimization process, alternating between solving for the cluster assignments and updating the node/cluster-node embeddings. Notably, our derived closed-form optimization steps are themselves simple yet elegant message passing steps operating seamlessly on a bipartite graph of nodes and cluster-nodes. Our clustering-based approach can effectively capture both local and global information, demonstrated by extensive experiments on both heterophilous and homophilous datasets.
Authors: Chun-Mao Lai, Hsiang-Chun Wang, Ping-Chun Hsieh, Yu-Chiang Frank Wang, Min-Hung Chen, Shao-Hua Sun
Abstract: Imitation learning aims to learn a policy from observing expert demonstrations without access to reward signals from environments. Generative adversarial imitation learning (GAIL) formulates imitation learning as adversarial learning, employing a generator policy learning to imitate expert behaviors and discriminator learning to distinguish the expert demonstrations from agent trajectories. Despite its encouraging results, GAIL training is often brittle and unstable. Inspired by the recent dominance of diffusion models in generative modeling, this work proposes Diffusion-Reward Adversarial Imitation Learning (DRAIL), which integrates a diffusion model into GAIL, aiming to yield more precise and smoother rewards for policy learning. Specifically, we propose a diffusion discriminative classifier to construct an enhanced discriminator; then, we design diffusion rewards based on the classifier's output for policy learning. We conduct extensive experiments in navigation, manipulation, and locomotion, verifying DRAIL's effectiveness compared to prior imitation learning methods. Moreover, additional experimental results demonstrate the generalizability and data efficiency of DRAIL. Visualized learned reward functions of GAIL and DRAIL suggest that DRAIL can produce more precise and smoother rewards.
Authors: Th\'eo Vincent, Fabian Wahren, Jan Peters, Boris Belousov, Carlo D'Eramo
Abstract: Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) is well known for being highly sensitive to hyperparameters, requiring practitioners substantial efforts to optimize them for the problem at hand. In recent years, the field of automated Reinforcement Learning (AutoRL) has grown in popularity by trying to address this issue. However, these approaches typically hinge on additional samples to select well-performing hyperparameters, hindering sample-efficiency and practicality in RL. Furthermore, most AutoRL methods are heavily based on already existing AutoML methods, which were originally developed neglecting the additional challenges inherent to RL due to its non-stationarities. In this work, we propose a new approach for AutoRL, called Adaptive $Q$-Network (AdaQN), that is tailored to RL to take into account the non-stationarity of the optimization procedure without requiring additional samples. AdaQN learns several $Q$-functions, each one trained with different hyperparameters, which are updated online using the $Q$-function with the smallest approximation error as a shared target. Our selection scheme simultaneously handles different hyperparameters while coping with the non-stationarity induced by the RL optimization procedure and being orthogonal to any critic-based RL algorithm. We demonstrate that AdaQN is theoretically sound and empirically validate it in MuJoCo control problems, showing benefits in sample-efficiency, overall performance, training stability, and robustness to stochasticity.
Authors: Phong Tran, Egor Zakharov, Long-Nhat Ho, Liwen Hu, Adilbek Karmanov, Aviral Agarwal, McLean Goldwhite, Ariana Bermudez Venegas, Anh Tuan Tran, Hao Li
Abstract: We introduce VOODOO XP: a 3D-aware one-shot head reenactment method that can generate highly expressive facial expressions from any input driver video and a single 2D portrait. Our solution is real-time, view-consistent, and can be instantly used without calibration or fine-tuning. We demonstrate our solution on a monocular video setting and an end-to-end VR telepresence system for two-way communication. Compared to 2D head reenactment methods, 3D-aware approaches aim to preserve the identity of the subject and ensure view-consistent facial geometry for novel camera poses, which makes them suitable for immersive applications. While various facial disentanglement techniques have been introduced, cutting-edge 3D-aware neural reenactment techniques still lack expressiveness and fail to reproduce complex and fine-scale facial expressions. We present a novel cross-reenactment architecture that directly transfers the driver's facial expressions to transformer blocks of the input source's 3D lifting module. We show that highly effective disentanglement is possible using an innovative multi-stage self-supervision approach, which is based on a coarse-to-fine strategy, combined with an explicit face neutralization and 3D lifted frontalization during its initial training stage. We further integrate our novel head reenactment solution into an accessible high-fidelity VR telepresence system, where any person can instantly build a personalized neural head avatar from any photo and bring it to life using the headset. We demonstrate state-of-the-art performance in terms of expressiveness and likeness preservation on a large set of diverse subjects and capture conditions.
Authors: Zixu Wang, Bingbing Xu, Yige Yuan, Huawei Shen, Xueqi Cheng
Abstract: Graph contrastive learning (GCL), standing as the dominant paradigm in the realm of graph pre-training, has yielded considerable progress. Nonetheless, its capacity for out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization has been relatively underexplored. In this work, we point out that the traditional optimization of InfoNCE in GCL restricts the cross-domain pairs only to be negative samples, which inevitably enlarges the distribution gap between different domains. This violates the requirement of domain invariance under OOD scenario and consequently impairs the model's OOD generalization performance. To address this issue, we propose a novel strategy "Negative as Positive", where the most semantically similar cross-domain negative pairs are treated as positive during GCL. Our experimental results, spanning a wide array of datasets, confirm that this method substantially improves the OOD generalization performance of GCL.
Authors: Feng Xie, Zheng Li, Peng Wu, Yan Zeng, Chunchen Liu, Zhi Geng
Abstract: Discovering causal relationships from observational data, particularly in the presence of latent variables, poses a challenging problem. While current local structure learning methods have proven effective and efficient when the focus lies solely on the local relationships of a target variable, they operate under the assumption of causal sufficiency. This assumption implies that all the common causes of the measured variables are observed, leaving no room for latent variables. Such a premise can be easily violated in various real-world applications, resulting in inaccurate structures that may adversely impact downstream tasks. In light of this, our paper delves into the primary investigation of locally identifying potential parents and children of a target from observational data that may include latent variables. Specifically, we harness the causal information from m-separation and V-structures to derive theoretical consistency results, effectively bridging the gap between global and local structure learning. Together with the newly developed stop rules, we present a principled method for determining whether a variable is a direct cause or effect of a target. Further, we theoretically demonstrate the correctness of our approach under the standard causal Markov and faithfulness conditions, with infinite samples. Experimental results on both synthetic and real-world data validate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach.
Authors: Philippe Weier, Alexander Rath, \'Elie Michel, Iliyan Georgiev, Philipp Slusallek, Tamy Boubekeur
Abstract: Neural representations have shown spectacular ability to compress complex signals in a fraction of the raw data size. In 3D computer graphics, the bulk of a scene's memory usage is due to polygons and textures, making them ideal candidates for neural compression. Here, the main challenge lies in finding good trade-offs between efficient compression and cheap inference while minimizing training time. In the context of rendering, we adopt a ray-centric approach to this problem and devise N-BVH, a neural compression architecture designed to answer arbitrary ray queries in 3D. Our compact model is learned from the input geometry and substituted for it whenever a ray intersection is queried by a path-tracing engine. While prior neural compression methods have focused on point queries, ours proposes neural ray queries that integrate seamlessly into standard ray-tracing pipelines. At the core of our method, we employ an adaptive BVH-driven probing scheme to optimize the parameters of a multi-resolution hash grid, focusing its neural capacity on the sparse 3D occupancy swept by the original surfaces. As a result, our N-BVH can serve accurate ray queries from a representation that is more than an order of magnitude more compact, providing faithful approximations of visibility, depth, and appearance attributes. The flexibility of our method allows us to combine and overlap neural and non-neural entities within the same 3D scene and extends to appearance level of detail.
Authors: Chenqi Lin, Tianshi Xu, Zebin Yang, Runsheng Wang, Ru Huang, Meng Li
Abstract: With the fast evolution of large language models (LLMs), privacy concerns with user queries arise as they may contain sensitive information. Private inference based on homomorphic encryption (HE) has been proposed to protect user query privacy. However, a private embedding table query has to be formulated as a HE-based matrix-vector multiplication problem and suffers from enormous computation and communication overhead. We observe the overhead mainly comes from the neglect of 1) the one-hot nature of user queries and 2) the robustness of the embedding table to low bit-width quantization noise. Hence, in this paper, we propose a private embedding table query optimization framework, dubbed FastQuery. FastQuery features a communication-aware embedding table quantization algorithm and a one-hot-aware dense packing algorithm to simultaneously reduce both the computation and communication costs. Compared to prior-art HE-based frameworks, e.g., Cheetah, Iron, and Bumblebee, FastQuery achieves more than $4.3\times$, $2.7\times$, $1.3\times$ latency reduction, respectively and more than $75.7\times$, $60.2\times$, $20.2\times$ communication reduction, respectively, on both LLAMA-7B and LLAMA-30B.
Authors: Si Xu, Zixiao Huang, Yan Zeng, Shengen Yan, Xuefei Ning, Haolin Ye, Sipei Gu, Chunsheng Shui, Zhezheng Lin, Hao Zhang, Sheng Wang, Guohao Dai, Yu Wang
Abstract: The development of large-scale models relies on a vast number of computing resources. For example, the GPT-4 model (1.8 trillion parameters) requires 25000 A100 GPUs for its training. It is a challenge to build a large-scale cluster with a type of GPU-accelerator. Using multiple types of GPU-accelerators to construct a cluster is an effective way to solve the problem of insufficient homogeneous GPU-accelerators. However, the existing distributed training systems for large-scale models only support homogeneous GPU-accelerators, not heterogeneous GPU-accelerators. To address the problem, this paper proposes a distributed training system with hybrid parallelism support on heterogeneous GPU-accelerators for large-scale models. It introduces a distributed unified communicator to realize the communication between heterogeneous GPU-accelerators, a distributed performance predictor, and an automatic hybrid parallel module to develop and train models efficiently with heterogeneous GPU-accelerators. Compared to the distributed training system with homogeneous GPU-accelerators, our system can support six different combinations of heterogeneous GPU-accelerators and the optimal performance of heterogeneous GPU-accelerators has achieved at least 90% of the theoretical upper bound performance of homogeneous GPU-accelerators.
Authors: Hong Liu, Xiuxiu Qiu, Yiming Shi, Zelin Zang
Abstract: Unsupervised fault detection in multivariate time series is critical for maintaining the integrity and efficiency of complex systems, with current methodologies largely focusing on statistical and machine learning techniques. However, these approaches often rest on the assumption that data distributions conform to Gaussian models, overlooking the diversity of patterns that can manifest in both normal and abnormal states, thereby diminishing discriminative performance. Our innovation addresses this limitation by introducing a combination of data augmentation and soft contrastive learning, specifically designed to capture the multifaceted nature of state behaviors more accurately. The data augmentation process enriches the dataset with varied representations of normal states, while soft contrastive learning fine-tunes the model's sensitivity to the subtle differences between normal and abnormal patterns, enabling it to recognize a broader spectrum of anomalies. This dual strategy significantly boosts the model's ability to distinguish between normal and abnormal states, leading to a marked improvement in fault detection performance across multiple datasets and settings, thereby setting a new benchmark for unsupervised fault detection in complex systems. The code of our method is available at \url{https://github.com/zangzelin/code_USD.git}.
Authors: Tianyi Chen, Jianfu Zhang, Yan Hong, Yiyi Zhang, Liqing Zhang
Abstract: Image inpainting, the task of reconstructing missing segments in corrupted images using available data, faces challenges in ensuring consistency and fidelity, especially under information-scarce conditions. Traditional evaluation methods, heavily dependent on the existence of unmasked reference images, inherently favor certain inpainting outcomes, introducing biases. Addressing this issue, we introduce an innovative evaluation paradigm that utilizes a self-supervised metric based on multiple re-inpainting passes. This approach, diverging from conventional reliance on direct comparisons in pixel or feature space with original images, emphasizes the principle of self-consistency to enable the exploration of various viable inpainting solutions, effectively reducing biases. Our extensive experiments across numerous benchmarks validate the alignment of our evaluation method with human judgment.
Authors: Brendan Park, Madeline Janecek, Naser Ezzati-Jivan, Yifeng Li, Ali Emami
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable success in tasks like the Winograd Schema Challenge (WSC), showcasing advanced textual common-sense reasoning. However, applying this reasoning to multimodal domains, where understanding text and images together is essential, remains a substantial challenge. To address this, we introduce WinoVis, a novel dataset specifically designed to probe text-to-image models on pronoun disambiguation within multimodal contexts. Utilizing GPT-4 for prompt generation and Diffusion Attentive Attribution Maps (DAAM) for heatmap analysis, we propose a novel evaluation framework that isolates the models' ability in pronoun disambiguation from other visual processing challenges. Evaluation of successive model versions reveals that, despite incremental advancements, Stable Diffusion 2.0 achieves a precision of 56.7% on WinoVis, only marginally surpassing random guessing. Further error analysis identifies important areas for future research aimed at advancing text-to-image models in their ability to interpret and interact with the complex visual world.
Authors: M. Diefenthaler (AID), C. Fanelli (AID), L. O. Gerlach (AID), W. Guan (AID), T. Horn (AID), A. Jentsch (AID), M. Lin (AID), K. Nagai (AID), H. Nayak (AID), C. Pecar (AID), K. Suresh (AID), A. Vossen (AID), T. Wang (AID), T. Wenaus (AID)
Abstract: Artificial Intelligence is poised to transform the design of complex, large-scale detectors like the ePIC at the future Electron Ion Collider. Featuring a central detector with additional detecting systems in the far forward and far backward regions, the ePIC experiment incorporates numerous design parameters and objectives, including performance, physics reach, and cost, constrained by mechanical and geometric limits. This project aims to develop a scalable, distributed AI-assisted detector design for the EIC (AID(2)E), employing state-of-the-art multiobjective optimization to tackle complex designs. Supported by the ePIC software stack and using Geant4 simulations, our approach benefits from transparent parameterization and advanced AI features. The workflow leverages the PanDA and iDDS systems, used in major experiments such as ATLAS at CERN LHC, the Rubin Observatory, and sPHENIX at RHIC, to manage the compute intensive demands of ePIC detector simulations. Tailored enhancements to the PanDA system focus on usability, scalability, automation, and monitoring. Ultimately, this project aims to establish a robust design capability, apply a distributed AI-assisted workflow to the ePIC detector, and extend its applications to the design of the second detector (Detector-2) in the EIC, as well as to calibration and alignment tasks. Additionally, we are developing advanced data science tools to efficiently navigate the complex, multidimensional trade-offs identified through this optimization process.
Authors: Abhishek Kumar, Robert Morabito, Sanzhar Umbet, Jad Kabbara, Ali Emami
Abstract: As the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) becomes more widespread, understanding their self-evaluation of confidence in generated responses becomes increasingly important as it is integral to the reliability of the output of these models. We introduce the concept of Confidence-Probability Alignment, that connects an LLM's internal confidence, quantified by token probabilities, to the confidence conveyed in the model's response when explicitly asked about its certainty. Using various datasets and prompting techniques that encourage model introspection, we probe the alignment between models' internal and expressed confidence. These techniques encompass using structured evaluation scales to rate confidence, including answer options when prompting, and eliciting the model's confidence level for outputs it does not recognize as its own. Notably, among the models analyzed, OpenAI's GPT-4 showed the strongest confidence-probability alignment, with an average Spearman's $\hat{\rho}$ of 0.42, across a wide range of tasks. Our work contributes to the ongoing efforts to facilitate risk assessment in the application of LLMs and to further our understanding of model trustworthiness.
Authors: Farhad Pourpanah, Mahdiyar Molahasani, Milad Soltany, Michael Greenspan, Ali Etemad
Abstract: We address the problem of federated domain generalization in an unsupervised setting for the first time. We first theoretically establish a connection between domain shift and alignment of gradients in unsupervised federated learning and show that aligning the gradients at both client and server levels can facilitate the generalization of the model to new (target) domains. Building on this insight, we propose a novel method named FedGaLA, which performs gradient alignment at the client level to encourage clients to learn domain-invariant features, as well as global gradient alignment at the server to obtain a more generalized aggregated model. To empirically evaluate our method, we perform various experiments on four commonly used multi-domain datasets, PACS, OfficeHome, DomainNet, and TerraInc. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method which outperforms comparable baselines. Ablation and sensitivity studies demonstrate the impact of different components and parameters in our approach. The source code will be available online upon publication.
Authors: Agathe Balayn, Mireia Yurrita, Fanny Rancourt, Fabio Casati, Ujwal Gadiraju
Abstract: With the widespread proliferation of AI systems, trust in AI is an important and timely topic to navigate. Researchers so far have largely employed a myopic view of this relationship. In particular, a limited number of relevant trustors (e.g., end-users) and trustees (i.e., AI systems) have been considered, and empirical explorations have remained in laboratory settings, potentially overlooking factors that impact human-AI relationships in the real world. In this paper, we argue for broadening the scope of studies addressing `trust in AI' by accounting for the complex and dynamic supply chains that AI systems result from. AI supply chains entail various technical artifacts that diverse individuals, organizations, and stakeholders interact with, in a variety of ways. We present insights from an in-situ, empirical study of LLM supply chains. Our work reveals additional types of trustors and trustees and new factors impacting their trust relationships. These relationships were found to be central to the development and adoption of LLMs, but they can also be the terrain for uncalibrated trust and reliance on untrustworthy LLMs. Based on these findings, we discuss the implications for research on `trust in AI'. We highlight new research opportunities and challenges concerning the appropriate study of inter-actor relationships across the supply chain and the development of calibrated trust and meaningful reliance behaviors. We also question the meaning of building trust in the LLM supply chain.
Authors: Jiaxi Hu, Disen Lan, Ziyu Zhou, Qingsong Wen, Yuxuan Liang
Abstract: State Space Models (SSMs) have emerged as a potent tool in sequence modeling tasks in recent years. These models approximate continuous systems using a set of basis functions and discretize them to handle input data, making them well-suited for modeling time series data collected at specific frequencies from continuous systems. Despite its potential, the application of SSMs in time series forecasting remains underexplored, with most existing models treating SSMs as a black box for capturing temporal or channel dependencies. To address this gap, this paper proposes a novel theoretical framework termed Dynamic Spectral Operator, offering more intuitive and general guidance on applying SSMs to time series data. Building upon our theory, we introduce Time-SSM, a novel SSM-based foundation model with only one-seventh of the parameters compared to Mamba. Various experiments validate both our theoretical framework and the superior performance of Time-SSM.
Authors: Mohammad Mozaffari, Amir Yazdanbakhsh, Zhao Zhang, Maryam Mehri Dehnavi
Abstract: We propose SLoPe, a Double-Pruned Sparse Plus Lazy Low-rank Adapter Pretraining method for LLMs that improves the accuracy of sparse LLMs while accelerating their pretraining and inference and reducing their memory footprint. Sparse pretraining of LLMs reduces the accuracy of the model, to overcome this, prior work uses dense models during fine-tuning. SLoPe improves the accuracy of sparsely pretrained models by adding low-rank adapters in the final 1% iterations of pretraining without adding significant overheads to the model pretraining and inference. In addition, SLoPe uses a double-pruned backward pass formulation that prunes the transposed weight matrix using N:M sparsity structures to enable an accelerated sparse backward pass. SLoPe accelerates the training and inference of models with billions of parameters up to $1.14\times$ and $1.34\times$ respectively (OPT-33B and OPT-66B) while reducing their memory usage by up to $0.77\times$ and $0.51\times$ for training and inference respectively.
Authors: Nathaniel Weir, Muhammad Khalifa, Linlu Qiu, Orion Weller, Peter Clark
Abstract: Program synthesis with language models (LMs) has unlocked a large set of reasoning abilities; code-tuned LMs have proven adept at generating programs that solve a wide variety of algorithmic symbolic manipulation tasks (e.g. word concatenation). However, not all reasoning tasks are easily expressible as code, e.g. tasks involving commonsense reasoning, moral decision-making, and sarcasm understanding. Our goal is to extend an LM's program synthesis skills to such tasks and evaluate the results via pseudo-programs, namely Python programs where some leaf function calls are left undefined. To that end, we propose, Code Generation and Emulated EXecution (CoGEX). CoGEX works by (1) training LMs to generate their own pseudo-programs, (2) teaching them to emulate their generated program's execution, including those leaf functions, allowing the LM's knowledge to fill in the execution gaps; and (3) using them to search over many programs to find an optimal one. To adapt the CoGEX model to a new task, we introduce a method for performing program search to find a single program whose pseudo-execution yields optimal performance when applied to all the instances of a given dataset. We show that our approach yields large improvements compared to standard in-context learning approaches on a battery of tasks, both algorithmic and soft reasoning. This result thus demonstrates that code synthesis can be applied to a much broader class of problems than previously considered. Our released dataset, fine-tuned models, and implementation can be found at \url{https://github.com/nweir127/CoGEX}.
Authors: Qiaosi Wang (Georgia Institute of Technology), Chidimma L. Anyi (Georgia Institute of Technology), Vedant Das Swain (Northeastern University), Ashok K. Goel (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Abstract: Many hyper-personalized AI systems profile people's characteristics (e.g., personality traits) to provide personalized recommendations. These systems are increasingly used to facilitate interactions among people, such as providing teammate recommendations. Despite improved accuracy, such systems are not immune to errors when making inferences about people's most personal traits. These errors manifested as AI misrepresentations. However, the repercussions of such AI misrepresentations are unclear, especially on people's reactions and perceptions of the AI. We present two studies to examine how people react and perceive the AI after encountering personality misrepresentations in AI-facilitated team matching in a higher education context. Through semi-structured interviews (n=20) and a survey experiment (n=198), we pinpoint how people's existing and newly acquired AI knowledge could shape their perceptions and reactions of the AI after encountering AI misrepresentations. Specifically, we identified three rationales that people adopted through knowledge acquired from AI (mis)representations: AI works like a machine, human, and/or magic. These rationales are highly connected to people's reactions of over-trusting, rationalizing, and forgiving of AI misrepresentations. Finally, we found that people's existing AI knowledge, i.e., AI literacy, could moderate people's changes in their trust in AI after encountering AI misrepresentations, but not changes in people's social perceptions of AI. We discuss the role of people's AI knowledge when facing AI fallibility and implications for designing responsible mitigation and repair strategies.
Authors: Jianling Wang (Peter), Haokai Lu (Peter), Yifan Liu (Peter), He Ma (Peter), Yueqi Wang (Peter), Yang Gu (Peter), Shuzhou Zhang (Peter), Ningren (Peter), Han, Shuchao Bi, Lexi Baugher, Ed Chi, Minmin Chen
Abstract: Traditional recommendation systems are subject to a strong feedback loop by learning from and reinforcing past user-item interactions, which in turn limits the discovery of novel user interests. To address this, we introduce a hybrid hierarchical framework combining Large Language Models (LLMs) and classic recommendation models for user interest exploration. The framework controls the interfacing between the LLMs and the classic recommendation models through "interest clusters", the granularity of which can be explicitly determined by algorithm designers. It recommends the next novel interests by first representing "interest clusters" using language, and employs a fine-tuned LLM to generate novel interest descriptions that are strictly within these predefined clusters. At the low level, it grounds these generated interests to an item-level policy by restricting classic recommendation models, in this case a transformer-based sequence recommender to return items that fall within the novel clusters generated at the high level. We showcase the efficacy of this approach on an industrial-scale commercial platform serving billions of users. Live experiments show a significant increase in both exploration of novel interests and overall user enjoyment of the platform.
Authors: Yuchen Zhu, Tianrong Chen, Lingkai Kong, Evangelos A. Theodorou, Molei Tao
Abstract: The generative modeling of data on manifold is an important task, for which diffusion models in flat spaces typically need nontrivial adaptations. This article demonstrates how a technique called `trivialization' can transfer the effectiveness of diffusion models in Euclidean spaces to Lie groups. In particular, an auxiliary momentum variable was algorithmically introduced to help transport the position variable between data distribution and a fixed, easy-to-sample distribution. Normally, this would incur further difficulty for manifold data because momentum lives in a space that changes with the position. However, our trivialization technique creates to a new momentum variable that stays in a simple $\textbf{fixed vector space}$. This design, together with a manifold preserving integrator, simplifies implementation and avoids inaccuracies created by approximations such as projections to tangent space and manifold, which were typically used in prior work, hence facilitating generation with high-fidelity and efficiency. The resulting method achieves state-of-the-art performance on protein and RNA torsion angle generation and sophisticated torus datasets. We also, arguably for the first time, tackle the generation of data on high-dimensional Special Orthogonal and Unitary groups, the latter essential for quantum problems.
Authors: Jiayu Chen, Bhargav Ganguly, Tian Lan, Vaneet Aggarwal
Abstract: Skills are effective temporal abstractions established for sequential decision making tasks, which enable efficient hierarchical learning for long-horizon tasks and facilitate multi-task learning through their transferability. Despite extensive research, research gaps remain in multi-agent scenarios, particularly for automatically extracting subgroup coordination patterns in a multi-agent task. In this case, we propose two novel auto-encoder schemes: VO-MASD-3D and VO-MASD-Hier, to simultaneously capture subgroup- and temporal-level abstractions and form multi-agent skills, which firstly solves the aforementioned challenge. An essential algorithm component of these schemes is a dynamic grouping function that can automatically detect latent subgroups based on agent interactions in a task. Notably, our method can be applied to offline multi-task data, and the discovered subgroup skills can be transferred across relevant tasks without retraining. Empirical evaluations on StarCraft tasks indicate that our approach significantly outperforms existing methods regarding applying skills in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). Moreover, skills discovered using our method can effectively reduce the learning difficulty in MARL scenarios with delayed and sparse reward signals.
Authors: Jinlin Liu, Kai Yu, Mengyang Feng, Xiefang Guo, Miaomiao Cui
Abstract: Recent advancements in human video synthesis have enabled the generation of high-quality videos through the application of stable diffusion models. However, existing methods predominantly concentrate on animating solely the human element (the foreground) guided by pose information, while leaving the background entirely static. Contrary to this, in authentic, high-quality videos, backgrounds often dynamically adjust in harmony with foreground movements, eschewing stagnancy. We introduce a technique that concurrently learns both foreground and background dynamics by segregating their movements using distinct motion representations. Human figures are animated leveraging pose-based motion, capturing intricate actions. Conversely, for backgrounds, we employ sparse tracking points to model motion, thereby reflecting the natural interaction between foreground activity and environmental changes. Training on real-world videos enhanced with this innovative motion depiction approach, our model generates videos exhibiting coherent movement in both foreground subjects and their surrounding contexts. To further extend video generation to longer sequences without accumulating errors, we adopt a clip-by-clip generation strategy, introducing global features at each step. To ensure seamless continuity across these segments, we ingeniously link the final frame of a produced clip with input noise to spawn the succeeding one, maintaining narrative flow. Throughout the sequential generation process, we infuse the feature representation of the initial reference image into the network, effectively curtailing any cumulative color inconsistencies that may otherwise arise. Empirical evaluations attest to the superiority of our method in producing videos that exhibit harmonious interplay between foreground actions and responsive background dynamics, surpassing prior methodologies in this regard.
Authors: Man Luo, Christopher J. Warren, Lu Cheng, Haidar M. Abdul-Muhsin, Imon Banerjee
Abstract: The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into the healthcare domain has the potential to significantly enhance patient care and support through the development of empathetic, patient-facing chatbots. This study investigates an intriguing question Can ChatGPT respond with a greater degree of empathy than those typically offered by physicians? To answer this question, we collect a de-identified dataset of patient messages and physician responses from Mayo Clinic and generate alternative replies using ChatGPT. Our analyses incorporate novel empathy ranking evaluation (EMRank) involving both automated metrics and human assessments to gauge the empathy level of responses. Our findings indicate that LLM-powered chatbots have the potential to surpass human physicians in delivering empathetic communication, suggesting a promising avenue for enhancing patient care and reducing professional burnout. The study not only highlights the importance of empathy in patient interactions but also proposes a set of effective automatic empathy ranking metrics, paving the way for the broader adoption of LLMs in healthcare.
Authors: Runlin Lei, Yuwei Hu, Yuchen Ren, Zhewei Wei
Abstract: Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) excel across various applications but remain vulnerable to adversarial attacks, particularly Graph Injection Attacks (GIAs), which inject malicious nodes into the original graph and pose realistic threats. Text-attributed graphs (TAGs), where nodes are associated with textual features, are crucial due to their prevalence in real-world applications and are commonly used to evaluate these vulnerabilities. However, existing research only focuses on embedding-level GIAs, which inject node embeddings rather than actual textual content, limiting their applicability and simplifying detection. In this paper, we pioneer the exploration of GIAs at the text level, presenting three novel attack designs that inject textual content into the graph. Through theoretical and empirical analysis, we demonstrate that text interpretability, a factor previously overlooked at the embedding level, plays a crucial role in attack strength. Among the designs we investigate, the Word-frequency-based Text-level GIA (WTGIA) is particularly notable for its balance between performance and interpretability. Despite the success of WTGIA, we discover that defenders can easily enhance their defenses with customized text embedding methods or large language model (LLM)--based predictors. These insights underscore the necessity for further research into the potential and practical significance of text-level GIAs.
Authors: Zechun Liu, Changsheng Zhao, Igor Fedorov, Bilge Soran, Dhruv Choudhary, Raghuraman Krishnamoorthi, Vikas Chandra, Yuandong Tian, Tijmen Blankevoort
Abstract: Post-training quantization (PTQ) techniques applied to weights, activations, and the KV cache greatly reduce memory usage, latency, and power consumption of Large Language Models (LLMs), but may lead to large quantization errors when outliers are present. Recent findings suggest that rotating activation or weight matrices helps remove outliers and benefits quantization. In this work, we identify a collection of applicable rotation parameterizations that lead to identical outputs in full-precision Transformer architectures, and find that some random rotations lead to much better quantization than others, with an up to 13 points difference in downstream zero-shot reasoning performance. As a result, we propose SpinQuant that optimizes (or learns) the rotation matrices with Cayley optimization on a small validation set. With 4-bit quantization of weight, activation, and KV-cache, SpinQuant narrows the accuracy gap on zero-shot reasoning tasks with full precision to merely 2.9 points on the LLaMA-2 7B model, surpassing LLM-QAT by 19.1 points and SmoothQuant by 25.0 points. SpinQuant also outperforms concurrent work QuaRot, which applies random rotations to remove outliers. In particular, for LLaMA-2 7B/LLaMA-3 8B models that are hard to quantize, SpinQuant reduces the gap to full precision by 30.2%/34.1% relative to QuaRot.
Authors: Jiuxiang Gu, Yingyu Liang, Zhenmei Shi, Zhao Song, Yufa Zhou
Abstract: Tensor Attention, a multi-view attention that is able to capture high-order correlations among multiple modalities, can overcome the representational limitations of classical matrix attention. However, the $\Omega(n^3)$ time complexity of tensor attention poses a significant obstacle to its practical implementation in transformers, where $n$ is the input sequence length. In this work, we prove that the backward gradient of tensor attention training can be computed in almost linear $n^{1+o(1)}$ time, the same complexity as its forward computation under a bounded entries assumption. We provide a closed-form solution for the gradient and propose a fast computation method utilizing polynomial approximation methods and tensor algebraic tricks. Furthermore, we prove the necessity and tightness of our assumption through hardness analysis, showing that slightly weakening it renders the gradient problem unsolvable in truly subcubic time. Our theoretical results establish the feasibility of efficient higher-order transformer training and may facilitate practical applications of tensor attention architectures.
Authors: Jiuxiang Gu, Yingyu Liang, Zhenmei Shi, Zhao Song, Yufa Zhou
Abstract: Diffusion models have made rapid progress in generating high-quality samples across various domains. However, a theoretical understanding of the Lipschitz continuity and second momentum properties of the diffusion process is still lacking. In this paper, we bridge this gap by providing a detailed examination of these smoothness properties for the case where the target data distribution is a mixture of Gaussians, which serves as a universal approximator for smooth densities such as image data. We prove that if the target distribution is a $k$-mixture of Gaussians, the density of the entire diffusion process will also be a $k$-mixture of Gaussians. We then derive tight upper bounds on the Lipschitz constant and second momentum that are independent of the number of mixture components $k$. Finally, we apply our analysis to various diffusion solvers, both SDE and ODE based, to establish concrete error guarantees in terms of the total variation distance and KL divergence between the target and learned distributions. Our results provide deeper theoretical insights into the dynamics of the diffusion process under common data distributions.
Authors: Chau Pham, Bryan A. Plummer
Abstract: Multi-Channel Imaging (MCI) contains an array of challenges for encoding useful feature representations not present in traditional images. For example, images from two different satellites may both contain RGB channels, but the remaining channels can be different for each imaging source. Thus, MCI models must support a variety of channel configurations at test time. Recent work has extended traditional visual encoders for MCI, such as Vision Transformers (ViT), by supplementing pixel information with an encoding representing the channel configuration. However, these methods treat each channel equally, i.e., they do not consider the unique properties of each channel type, which can result in needless and potentially harmful redundancies in the learned features. For example, if RGB channels are always present, the other channels can focus on extracting information that cannot be captured by the RGB channels. To this end, we propose DiChaViT, which aims to enhance the diversity in the learned features of MCI-ViT models. This is achieved through a novel channel sampling strategy that encourages the selection of more distinct channel sets for training. Additionally, we employ regularization and initialization techniques to increase the likelihood that new information is learned from each channel. Many of our improvements are architecture agnostic and could be incorporated into new architectures as they are developed. Experiments on both satellite and cell microscopy datasets, CHAMMI, JUMP-CP, and So2Sat, report DiChaViT yields a 1.5-5.0% gain over the state-of-the-art.
Authors: Ghazaleh Shirvani, Saeid Ghasemshirazi
Abstract: In an era dominated by the Internet of Things, ensuring the longevity and sustainability of IoT devices has emerged as a pressing concern. This study explores the various complex difficulties which contributed to the early decommissioning of IoT devices and suggests methods to improve their lifespan management. By examining factors such as security vulnerabilities, user awareness gaps, and the influence of fashion-driven technology trends, the paper underscores the need for legislative interventions, consumer education, and industry accountability. Additionally, it explores innovative approaches to improving IoT longevity, including the integration of sustainability considerations into architectural design through requirements engineering methodologies. Furthermore, the paper discusses the potential of distributed ledger technology, or blockchain, to promote transparent and decentralized processes for device provisioning and tracking. This study promotes a sustainable IoT ecosystem by integrating technology innovation, legal change, and social awareness to reduce environmental impact and enhance resilience for the digital future
Authors: Hao Wang, Jianwei Li, Zhengyu Li
Abstract: AI-generated text detection plays an increasingly important role in various fields. In this study, we developed an efficient AI-generated text detection model based on the BERT algorithm, which provides new ideas and methods for solving related problems. In the data preprocessing stage, a series of steps were taken to process the text, including operations such as converting to lowercase, word splitting, removing stop words, stemming extraction, removing digits, and eliminating redundant spaces, to ensure data quality and accuracy. By dividing the dataset into a training set and a test set in the ratio of 60% and 40%, and observing the changes in the accuracy and loss values during the training process, we found that the model performed well during the training process. The accuracy increases steadily from the initial 94.78% to 99.72%, while the loss value decreases from 0.261 to 0.021 and converges gradually, which indicates that the BERT model is able to detect AI-generated text with high accuracy and the prediction results are gradually approaching the real classification results. Further analysis of the results of the training and test sets reveals that in terms of loss value, the average loss of the training set is 0.0565, while the average loss of the test set is 0.0917, showing a slightly higher loss value. As for the accuracy, the average accuracy of the training set reaches 98.1%, while the average accuracy of the test set is 97.71%, which is not much different from each other, indicating that the model has good generalisation ability. In conclusion, the AI-generated text detection model based on the BERT algorithm proposed in this study shows high accuracy and stability in experiments, providing an effective solution for related fields.
Authors: Min Hun Lee, Silvana Xin Yi Choo, Shamala D/O Thilarajah
Abstract: With advanced AI/ML, there has been growing research on explainable AI (XAI) and studies on how humans interact with AI and XAI for effective human-AI collaborative decision-making. However, we still have a lack of understanding of how AI systems and XAI should be first presented to users without technical backgrounds. In this paper, we present the findings of semi-structured interviews with health professionals (n=12) and students (n=4) majoring in medicine and health to study how to improve onboarding with AI and XAI. For the interviews, we built upon human-AI interaction guidelines to create onboarding materials of an AI system for stroke rehabilitation assessment and AI explanations and introduce them to the participants. Our findings reveal that beyond presenting traditional performance metrics on AI, participants desired benchmark information, the practical benefits of AI, and interaction trials to better contextualize AI performance, and refine the objectives and performance of AI. Based on these findings, we highlight directions for improving onboarding with AI and XAI and human-AI collaborative decision-making.
Authors: Chenhao Zhang, Renhao Li, Minghuan Tan, Min Yang, Jingwei Zhu, Di Yang, Jiahao Zhao, Guancheng Ye, Chengming Li, Xiping Hu, Derek F. Wong
Abstract: Using large language models (LLMs) to assist psychological counseling is a significant but challenging task at present. Attempts have been made on improving empathetic conversations or acting as effective assistants in the treatment with LLMs. However, the existing datasets lack consulting knowledge, resulting in LLMs lacking professional consulting competence. Moreover, how to automatically evaluate multi-turn dialogues within the counseling process remains an understudied area. To bridge the gap, we propose CPsyCoun, a report-based multi-turn dialogue reconstruction and evaluation framework for Chinese psychological counseling. To fully exploit psychological counseling reports, a two-phase approach is devised to construct high-quality dialogues while a comprehensive evaluation benchmark is developed for the effective automatic evaluation of multi-turn psychological consultations. Competitive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed framework in psychological counseling. We open-source the datasets and model for future research at https://github.com/CAS-SIAT-XinHai/CPsyCoun
Authors: Zhihan Liu, Miao Lu, Shenao Zhang, Boyi Liu, Hongyi Guo, Yingxiang Yang, Jose Blanchet, Zhaoran Wang
Abstract: Aligning generative models with human preference via RLHF typically suffers from overoptimization, where an imperfectly learned reward model can misguide the generative model to output undesired responses. We investigate this problem in a principled manner by identifying the source of the misalignment as a form of distributional shift and uncertainty in learning human preferences. To mitigate overoptimization, we first propose a theoretical algorithm that chooses the best policy for an adversarially chosen reward model; one that simultaneously minimizes the maximum likelihood estimation of the loss and a reward penalty term. Here, the reward penalty term is introduced to prevent the policy from choosing actions with spurious high proxy rewards, resulting in provable sample efficiency of the algorithm under a partial coverage style condition. Moving from theory to practice, the proposed algorithm further enjoys an equivalent but surprisingly easy-to-implement reformulation. Using the equivalence between reward models and the corresponding optimal policy, the algorithm features a simple objective that combines: (i) a preference optimization loss that directly aligns the policy with human preference, and (ii) a supervised learning loss that explicitly imitates the policy with a (suitable) baseline distribution. In the context of aligning large language models (LLM), this objective fuses the direct preference optimization (DPO) loss with the supervised fune-tuning (SFT) loss to help mitigate the overoptimization towards undesired responses, for which we name the algorithm Regularized Preference Optimization (RPO). Experiments of aligning LLMs demonstrate the improved performance of RPO compared with DPO baselines. Our work sheds light on the interplay between preference optimization and SFT in tuning LLMs with both theoretical guarantees and empirical evidence.
Authors: Rohan Chandra, Haresh Karnan, Negar Mehr, Peter Stone, Joydeep Biswas
Abstract: Imitation Learning (IL) strategies are used to generate policies for robot motion planning and navigation by learning from human trajectories. Recently, there has been a lot of excitement in applying IL in social interactions arising in urban environments such as university campuses, restaurants, grocery stores, and hospitals. However, obtaining numerous expert demonstrations in social settings might be expensive, risky, or even impossible. Current approaches therefore, focus only on simulated social interaction scenarios. This raises the question: \textit{How can a robot learn to imitate an expert demonstrator from real world multi-agent social interaction scenarios}? It remains unknown which, if any, IL methods perform well and what assumptions they require. We benchmark representative IL methods in real world social interaction scenarios on a motion planning task, using a novel pedestrian intersection dataset collected at the University of Texas at Austin campus. Our evaluation reveals two key findings: first, learning multi-agent cost functions is required for learning the diverse behavior modes of agents in tightly coupled interactions and second, conditioning the training of IL methods on partial state information or providing global information in simulation can improve imitation learning, especially in real world social interaction scenarios.
Authors: Xiuding Cai, Yaoyao Zhu, Xueyao Wang, Yu Yao
Abstract: In recent years, Transformers have become the de-facto architecture for long-term sequence forecasting (LTSF), but faces challenges such as quadratic complexity and permutation invariant bias. A recent model, Mamba, based on selective state space models (SSMs), has emerged as a competitive alternative to Transformer, offering comparable performance with higher throughput and linear complexity related to sequence length. In this study, we analyze the limitations of current Mamba in LTSF and propose four targeted improvements, leading to MambaTS. We first introduce variable scan along time to arrange the historical information of all the variables together. We suggest that causal convolution in Mamba is not necessary for LTSF and propose the Temporal Mamba Block (TMB). We further incorporate a dropout mechanism for selective parameters of TMB to mitigate model overfitting. Moreover, we tackle the issue of variable scan order sensitivity by introducing variable permutation training. We further propose variable-aware scan along time to dynamically discover variable relationships during training and decode the optimal variable scan order by solving the shortest path visiting all nodes problem during inference. Extensive experiments conducted on eight public datasets demonstrate that MambaTS achieves new state-of-the-art performance.
Authors: Max Liu, Chan-Hung Yu, Wei-Hsu Lee, Cheng-Wei Hung, Yen-Chun Chen, Shao-Hua Sun
Abstract: Programmatic reinforcement learning (PRL) has been explored for representing policies through programs as a means to achieve interpretability and generalization. Despite promising outcomes, current state-of-the-art PRL methods are hindered by sample inefficiency, necessitating tens of millions of program-environment interactions. To tackle this challenge, we introduce a novel LLM-guided search framework (LLM-GS). Our key insight is to leverage the programming expertise and common sense reasoning of LLMs to enhance the efficiency of assumption-free, random-guessing search methods. We address the challenge of LLMs' inability to generate precise and grammatically correct programs in domain-specific languages (DSLs) by proposing a Pythonic-DSL strategy - an LLM is instructed to initially generate Python codes and then convert them into DSL programs. To further optimize the LLM-generated programs, we develop a search algorithm named Scheduled Hill Climbing, designed to efficiently explore the programmatic search space to consistently improve the programs. Experimental results in the Karel domain demonstrate the superior effectiveness and efficiency of our LLM-GS framework. Extensive ablation studies further verify the critical role of our Pythonic-DSL strategy and Scheduled Hill Climbing algorithm.
Authors: Kai Zhao, Zuojie He, Alex Hung, Dan Zeng
Abstract: Recent studies have suggested frequency-domain Data augmentation (DA) is effec tive for time series prediction. Existing frequency-domain augmentations disturb the original data with various full-spectrum noises, leading to excess domain gap between augmented and original data. Although impressive performance has been achieved in certain cases, frequency-domain DA has yet to be generalized to time series prediction datasets. In this paper, we found that frequency-domain augmentations can be significantly improved by two modifications that limit the perturbations. First, we found that limiting the perturbation to only dominant frequencies significantly outperforms full-spectrum perturbations. Dominant fre quencies represent the main periodicity and trends of the signal and are more important than other frequencies. Second, we found that simply shuffling the dominant frequency components is superior over sophisticated designed random perturbations. Shuffle rearranges the original components (magnitudes and phases) and limits the external noise. With these two modifications, we proposed dominant shuffle, a simple yet effective data augmentation for time series prediction. Our method is very simple yet powerful and can be implemented with just a few lines of code. Extensive experiments with eight datasets and six popular time series models demonstrate that our method consistently improves the baseline performance under various settings and significantly outperforms other DA methods. Code can be accessed at https://kaizhao.net/time-series.
Authors: Hongwei Bran Li, Cheng Ouyang, Tamaz Amiranashvili, Matthew S. Rosen, Bjoern Menze, Juan Eugenio Iglesias
Abstract: Self-supervised contrastive learning has predominantly adopted deterministic methods, which are not suited for environments characterized by uncertainty and noise. This paper introduces a new perspective on incorporating uncertainty into contrastive learning by embedding representations within a spherical space, inspired by the von Mises-Fisher distribution (vMF). We introduce an unnormalized form of vMF and leverage the concentration parameter, kappa, as a direct, interpretable measure to quantify uncertainty explicitly. This approach not only provides a probabilistic interpretation of the embedding space but also offers a method to calibrate model confidence against varying levels of data corruption and characteristics. Our empirical results demonstrate that the estimated concentration parameter correlates strongly with the degree of unforeseen data corruption encountered at test time, enables failure analysis, and enhances existing out-of-distribution detection methods.
Authors: Qiguang Chen, Libo Qin, Jin Zhang, Zhi Chen, Xiao Xu, Wanxiang Che
Abstract: Multi-modal Chain-of-Thought (MCoT) requires models to leverage knowledge from both textual and visual modalities for step-by-step reasoning, which gains increasing attention. Nevertheless, the current MCoT benchmark still faces some challenges: (1) absence of visual modal reasoning, (2) single-step visual modal reasoning, and (3) Domain missing, thereby hindering the development of MCoT. Motivated by this, we introduce a novel benchmark (M$^3$CoT) to address the above challenges, advancing the multi-domain, multi-step, and multi-modal CoT. Additionally, we conduct a thorough evaluation involving abundant MCoT approaches on Vision Large Language Models (VLLMs). In addition, we highlight that the current VLLMs still struggle to correctly reason in M$^3$CoT and there remains a large gap between existing VLLMs and human performance in M$^3$CoT, despite their superior results on previous MCoT benchmarks. To our knowledge, we take the first meaningful step toward the multi-domain, multi-step, and multi-modal scenario in MCoT. We hope that M$^3$CoT can serve as a valuable resource, providing a pioneering foundation in multi-domain, multi-step, multi-modal chain-of-thought research.
Authors: Regev Cohen, Idan Kligvasser, Ehud Rivlin, Daniel Freedman
Abstract: The pursuit of high perceptual quality in image restoration has driven the development of revolutionary generative models, capable of producing results often visually indistinguishable from real data. However, as their perceptual quality continues to improve, these models also exhibit a growing tendency to generate hallucinations - realistic-looking details that do not exist in the ground truth images. The presence of hallucinations introduces uncertainty regarding the reliability of the models' predictions, raising major concerns about their practical application. In this paper, we employ information-theory tools to investigate this phenomenon, revealing a fundamental tradeoff between uncertainty and perception. We rigorously analyze the relationship between these two factors, proving that the global minimal uncertainty in generative models grows in tandem with perception. In particular, we define the inherent uncertainty of the restoration problem and show that attaining perfect perceptual quality entails at least twice this uncertainty. Additionally, we establish a relation between mean squared-error distortion, uncertainty and perception, through which we prove the aforementioned uncertainly-perception tradeoff induces the well-known perception-distortion tradeoff. This work uncovers fundamental limitations of generative models in achieving both high perceptual quality and reliable predictions for image restoration. We demonstrate our theoretical findings through an analysis of single image super-resolution algorithms. Our work aims to raise awareness among practitioners about this inherent tradeoff, empowering them to make informed decisions and potentially prioritize safety over perceptual performance.
Authors: Chathura Wimalasiri, Prasan Kumar Sahoo
Abstract: In response to the increasing demand for efficient and non-invasive methods to estimate food weight, this paper presents a vision-based approach utilizing 2D images. The study employs a dataset of 2380 images comprising fourteen different food types in various portions, orientations, and containers. The proposed methodology integrates deep learning and computer vision techniques, specifically employing Faster R-CNN for food detection and MobileNetV3 for weight estimation. The detection model achieved a mean average precision (mAP) of 83.41\%, an average Intersection over Union (IoU) of 91.82\%, and a classification accuracy of 100\%. For weight estimation, the model demonstrated a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 6.3204, a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 0.0640\%, and an R-squared value of 98.65\%. The study underscores the potential applications of this technology in healthcare for nutrition counseling, fitness and wellness for dietary intake assessment, and smart food storage solutions to reduce waste. The results indicate that the combination of Faster R-CNN and MobileNetV3 provides a robust framework for accurate food weight estimation from 2D images, showcasing the synergy of computer vision and deep learning in practical applications.
Authors: Rongyu Zhang, Aosong Cheng, Yulin Luo, Gaole Dai, Huanrui Yang, Jiaming Liu, Ran Xu, Li Du, Yuan Du, Yanbing Jiang, Shanghang Zhang
Abstract: Continual Test-Time Adaptation (CTTA), which aims to adapt the pre-trained model to ever-evolving target domains, emerges as an important task for vision models. As current vision models appear to be heavily biased towards texture, continuously adapting the model from one domain distribution to another can result in serious catastrophic forgetting. Drawing inspiration from the human visual system's adeptness at processing both shape and texture according to the famous Trichromatic Theory, we explore the integration of a Mixture-of-Activation-Sparsity-Experts (MoASE) as an adapter for the CTTA task. Given the distinct reaction of neurons with low/high activation to domain-specific/agnostic features, MoASE decomposes the neural activation into high-activation and low-activation components with a non-differentiable Spatial Differentiate Dropout (SDD). Based on the decomposition, we devise a multi-gate structure comprising a Domain-Aware Gate (DAG) that utilizes domain information to adaptive combine experts that process the post-SDD sparse activations of different strengths, and the Activation Sparsity Gate (ASG) that adaptively assigned feature selection threshold of the SDD for different experts for more precise feature decomposition. Finally, we introduce a Homeostatic-Proximal (HP) loss to bypass the error accumulation problem when continuously adapting the model. Extensive experiments on four prominent benchmarks substantiate that our methodology achieves state-of-the-art performance in both classification and segmentation CTTA tasks. Our code is now available at https://github.com/RoyZry98/MoASE-Pytorch.
Authors: Peiwen Li, Xin Wang, Zeyang Zhang, Yijian Qin, Ziwei Zhang, Jialong Wang, Yang Li, Wenwu Zhu
Abstract: Graph NAS has emerged as a promising approach for autonomously designing GNN architectures by leveraging the correlations between graphs and architectures. Existing methods fail to generalize under distribution shifts that are ubiquitous in real-world graph scenarios, mainly because the graph-architecture correlations they exploit might be spurious and varying across distributions. We propose to handle the distribution shifts in the graph architecture search process by discovering and exploiting the causal relationship between graphs and architectures to search for the optimal architectures that can generalize under distribution shifts. The problem remains unexplored with following challenges: how to discover the causal graph-architecture relationship that has stable predictive abilities across distributions, and how to handle distribution shifts with the discovered causal graph-architecture relationship to search the generalized graph architectures. To address these challenges, we propose Causal-aware Graph Neural Architecture Search (CARNAS), which is able to capture the causal graph-architecture relationship during the architecture search process and discover the generalized graph architecture under distribution shifts. Specifically, we propose Disentangled Causal Subgraph Identification to capture the causal subgraphs that have stable prediction abilities across distributions. Then, we propose Graph Embedding Intervention to intervene on causal subgraphs within the latent space, ensuring that these subgraphs encapsulate essential features for prediction while excluding non-causal elements. Additionally, we propose Invariant Architecture Customization to reinforce the causal invariant nature of the causal subgraphs, which are utilized to tailor generalized graph architectures. Extensive experiments demonstrate that CARNAS achieves advanced out-of-distribution generalization ability.
Authors: Nicole Heng Yim Oo, Min Hun Lee, Jeong Hoon Lim
Abstract: Algorithmic detection of facial palsy offers the potential to improve current practices, which usually involve labor-intensive and subjective assessment by clinicians. In this paper, we present a multimodal fusion-based deep learning model that utilizes unstructured data (i.e. an image frame with facial line segments) and structured data (i.e. features of facial expressions) to detect facial palsy. We then contribute to a study to analyze the effect of different data modalities and the benefits of a multimodal fusion-based approach using videos of 21 facial palsy patients. Our experimental results show that among various data modalities (i.e. unstructured data - RGB images and images of facial line segments and structured data - coordinates of facial landmarks and features of facial expressions), the feed-forward neural network using features of facial expression achieved the highest precision of 76.22 while the ResNet-based model using images of facial line segments achieved the highest recall of 83.47. When we leveraged both images of facial line segments and features of facial expressions, our multimodal fusion-based deep learning model slightly improved the precision score to 77.05 at the expense of a decrease in the recall score.
Authors: Gabriele Dominici, Pietro Barbiero, Mateo Espinosa Zarlenga, Alberto Termine, Martin Gjoreski, Marc Langheinrich
Abstract: Causal opacity denotes the difficulty in understanding the "hidden" causal structure underlying a deep neural network's (DNN) reasoning. This leads to the inability to rely on and verify state-of-the-art DNN-based systems especially in high-stakes scenarios. For this reason, causal opacity represents a key open challenge at the intersection of deep learning, interpretability, and causality. This work addresses this gap by introducing Causal Concept Embedding Models (Causal CEMs), a class of interpretable models whose decision-making process is causally transparent by design. The results of our experiments show that Causal CEMs can: (i) match the generalization performance of causally-opaque models, (ii) support the analysis of interventional and counterfactual scenarios, thereby improving the model's causal interpretability and supporting the effective verification of its reliability and fairness, and (iii) enable human-in-the-loop corrections to mispredicted intermediate reasoning steps, boosting not just downstream accuracy after corrections but also accuracy of the explanation provided for a specific instance.
Authors: Hongfei Wu, Lijun Wu, Guoqing Liu, Zhirong Liu, Bin Shao, Zun Wang
Abstract: In this paper, we develop SE3Set, an SE(3) equivariant hypergraph neural network architecture tailored for advanced molecular representation learning. Hypergraphs are not merely an extension of traditional graphs; they are pivotal for modeling high-order relationships, a capability that conventional equivariant graph-based methods lack due to their inherent limitations in representing intricate many-body interactions. To achieve this, we first construct hypergraphs via proposing a new fragmentation method that considers both chemical and three-dimensional spatial information of molecular system. We then design SE3Set, which incorporates equivariance into the hypergragh neural network. This ensures that the learned molecular representations are invariant to spatial transformations, thereby providing robustness essential for accurate prediction of molecular properties. SE3Set has shown performance on par with state-of-the-art (SOTA) models for small molecule datasets like QM9 and MD17. It excels on the MD22 dataset, achieving a notable improvement of approximately 20% in accuracy across all molecules, which highlights the prevalence of complex many-body interactions in larger molecules. This exceptional performance of SE3Set across diverse molecular structures underscores its transformative potential in computational chemistry, offering a route to more accurate and physically nuanced modeling.
Authors: Wuhao Wang, Zhiyong Chen, Lepeng Zhang
Abstract: Temporal difference (TD) learning is a fundamental technique in reinforcement learning that updates value estimates for states or state-action pairs using a TD target. This target represents an improved estimate of the true value by incorporating both immediate rewards and the estimated value of subsequent states. Traditionally, TD learning relies on the value of a single subsequent state. We propose an enhanced multi-state TD (MSTD) target that utilizes the estimated values of multiple subsequent states. Building on this new MSTD concept, we develop complete actor-critic algorithms that include management of replay buffers in two modes, and integrate with deep deterministic policy optimization (DDPG) and soft actor-critic (SAC). Experimental results demonstrate that algorithms employing the MSTD target significantly improve learning performance compared to traditional methods.
Authors: Paramita Kundu Maji, Soubhik Acharya, Priti Paul, Sanjay Chakraborty, Saikat Basu
Abstract: This paper aims to develop a new deep learning-inspired gaming approach for early detection of dementia. This research integrates a robust convolutional neural network (CNN)-based model for early dementia detection using health metrics data as well as facial image data through a cognitive assessment-based gaming application. We have collected 1000 data samples of health metrics dataset from Apollo Diagnostic Center Kolkata that is labeled as either demented or non-demented for the training of MOD-1D-CNN for the game level 1 and another dataset of facial images containing 1800 facial data that are labeled as either demented or non-demented is collected by our research team for the training of MOD-2D-CNN model in-game level 2. In our work, the loss for the proposed MOD-1D-CNN model is 0.2692 and the highest accuracy is 70.50% for identifying the dementia traits using real-life health metrics data. Similarly, the proposed MOD-2D-CNN model loss is 0.1755 and the highest accuracy is obtained here 95.72% for recognizing the dementia status using real-life face-based image data. Therefore, a rule-based weightage method is applied to combine both the proposed methods to achieve the final decision. The MOD-1D-CNN and MOD-2D-CNN models are more lightweight and computationally efficient alternatives because they have a significantly lower number of parameters when compared to the other state-of-the-art models. We have compared their accuracies and parameters with the other state-of-the-art deep learning models.
Authors: Sunhao Dai, Changle Qu, Sirui Chen, Xiao Zhang, Jun Xu
Abstract: In real-world recommender systems, such as in the music domain, repeat consumption is a common phenomenon where users frequently listen to a small set of preferred songs or artists repeatedly. The key point of modeling repeat consumption is capturing the temporal patterns between a user's repeated consumption of the items. Existing studies often rely on heuristic assumptions, such as assuming an exponential distribution for the temporal gaps. However, due to the high complexity of real-world recommender systems, these pre-defined distributions may fail to capture the intricate dynamic user consumption patterns, leading to sub-optimal performance. Drawing inspiration from the flexibility of neural ordinary differential equations (ODE) in capturing the dynamics of complex systems, we propose ReCODE, a novel model-agnostic framework that utilizes neural ODE to model repeat consumption. ReCODE comprises two essential components: a user's static preference prediction module and the modeling of user dynamic repeat intention. By considering both immediate choices and historical consumption patterns, ReCODE offers comprehensive modeling of user preferences in the target context. Moreover, ReCODE seamlessly integrates with various existing recommendation models, including collaborative-based and sequential-based models, making it easily applicable in different scenarios. Experimental results on two real-world datasets consistently demonstrate that ReCODE significantly improves the performance of base models and outperforms other baseline methods.
Authors: Ziqin Luo, Haixia Han, Haokun Zhao, Guochao Jiang, Chengyu Du, Tingyun Li, Jiaqing Liang, Deqing Yang, Yanghua Xiao
Abstract: Existing Large Language Models (LLMs) generate text through unidirectional autoregressive decoding methods to respond to various user queries. These methods tend to consider token selection in a simple sequential manner, making it easy to fall into suboptimal options when encountering uncertain tokens, referred to as chaotic points in our work. Many chaotic points exist in texts generated by LLMs, and they often significantly affect the quality of subsequently generated tokens, which can interfere with LLMs' generation. This paper proposes Self-Evaluation Decoding, SED, a decoding method for enhancing model generation. Analogous to the human decision-making process, SED integrates speculation and evaluation steps into the decoding process, allowing LLMs to make more careful decisions and thus optimize token selection at chaotic points. Experimental results across various tasks using different LLMs demonstrate SED's effectiveness.
Authors: Chun-Kai Huang, Yi-Hsien Hsieh, Ta-Jung Chien, Li-Cheng Chien, Shao-Hua Sun, Tung-Hung Su, Jia-Horng Kao, Che Lin
Abstract: Multivariate time series (MTS) data, when sampled irregularly and asynchronously, often present extensive missing values. Conventional methodologies for MTS analysis tend to rely on temporal embeddings based on timestamps that necessitate subsequent imputations, yet these imputed values frequently deviate substantially from their actual counterparts, thereby compromising prediction accuracy. Furthermore, these methods typically fail to provide robust initial embeddings for values infrequently observed or even absent within the training set, posing significant challenges to model generalizability. In response to these challenges, we propose SCAlable Numerical Embedding (SCANE), a novel framework that treats each feature value as an independent token, effectively bypassing the need for imputation. SCANE regularizes the traits of distinct feature embeddings and enhances representational learning through a scalable embedding mechanism. Coupling SCANE with the Transformer Encoder architecture, we develop the Scalable nUMerical eMbeddIng Transformer (SUMMIT), which is engineered to deliver precise predictive outputs for MTS characterized by prevalent missing entries. Our experimental validation, conducted across three disparate electronic health record (EHR) datasets marked by elevated missing value frequencies, confirms the superior performance of SUMMIT over contemporary state-of-the-art approaches addressing similar challenges. These results substantiate the efficacy of SCANE and SUMMIT, underscoring their potential applicability across a broad spectrum of MTS data analytical tasks.
Authors: Francesca Babiloni, Alexandros Lattas, Jiankang Deng, Stefanos Zafeiriou
Abstract: We propose ID-to-3D, a method to generate identity- and text-guided 3D human heads with disentangled expressions, starting from even a single casually captured in-the-wild image of a subject. The foundation of our approach is anchored in compositionality, alongside the use of task-specific 2D diffusion models as priors for optimization. First, we extend a foundational model with a lightweight expression-aware and ID-aware architecture, and create 2D priors for geometry and texture generation, via fine-tuning only 0.2% of its available training parameters. Then, we jointly leverage a neural parametric representation for the expressions of each subject and a multi-stage generation of highly detailed geometry and albedo texture. This combination of strong face identity embeddings and our neural representation enables accurate reconstruction of not only facial features but also accessories and hair and can be meshed to provide render-ready assets for gaming and telepresence. Our results achieve an unprecedented level of identity-consistent and high-quality texture and geometry generation, generalizing to a ``world'' of unseen 3D identities, without relying on large 3D captured datasets of human assets. Explore our 3D results at: https://https://idto3d.github.io.
Authors: Yuhang Chen, Wenke Huang, Mang Ye
Abstract: Federated learning (FL) has emerged as a new paradigm for privacy-preserving collaborative training. Under domain skew, the current FL approaches are biased and face two fairness problems. 1) Parameter Update Conflict: data disparity among clients leads to varying parameter importance and inconsistent update directions. These two disparities cause important parameters to potentially be overwhelmed by unimportant ones of dominant updates. It consequently results in significant performance decreases for lower-performing clients. 2) Model Aggregation Bias: existing FL approaches introduce unfair weight allocation and neglect domain diversity. It leads to biased model convergence objective and distinct performance among domains. We discover a pronounced directional update consistency in Federated Learning and propose a novel framework to tackle above issues. First, leveraging the discovered characteristic, we selectively discard unimportant parameter updates to prevent updates from clients with lower performance overwhelmed by unimportant parameters, resulting in fairer generalization performance. Second, we propose a fair aggregation objective to prevent global model bias towards some domains, ensuring that the global model continuously aligns with an unbiased model. The proposed method is generic and can be combined with other existing FL methods to enhance fairness. Comprehensive experiments on Digits and Office-Caltech demonstrate the high fairness and performance of our method.
Authors: Xiangxiang Dai, Jin Li, Xutong Liu, Anqi Yu, John C. S. Lui
Abstract: With the rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs), the diversity of multi-LLM tasks and the variability in their pricing structures have become increasingly important, as costs can vary greatly between different LLMs. To tackle these challenges, we introduce the \textit{C2MAB-V}, a \underline{C}ost-effective \underline{C}ombinatorial \underline{M}ulti-armed \underline{B}andit with \underline{V}ersatile reward models for optimal LLM selection and usage. This online model differs from traditional static approaches or those reliant on a single LLM without cost consideration. With multiple LLMs deployed on a scheduling cloud and a local server dedicated to handling user queries, \textit{C2MAB-V} facilitates the selection of multiple LLMs over a combinatorial search space, specifically tailored for various collaborative task types with different reward models. Based on our designed online feedback mechanism and confidence bound technique, \textit{C2MAB-V} can effectively address the multi-LLM selection challenge by managing the exploration-exploitation trade-off across different models, while also balancing cost and reward for diverse tasks. The NP-hard integer linear programming problem for selecting multiple LLMs with trade-off dilemmas is addressed by: i) decomposing the integer problem into a relaxed form by the local server, ii) utilizing a discretization rounding scheme that provides optimal LLM combinations by the scheduling cloud, and iii) continual online updates based on feedback. Theoretically, we prove that \textit{C2MAB-V} offers strict guarantees over versatile reward models, matching state-of-the-art results for regret and violations in some degenerate cases. Empirically, we show that \textit{C2MAB-V} effectively balances performance and cost-efficiency with nine LLMs for three application scenarios.
Authors: Konstanty Subbotko, Wojciech Jablonski, Piotr Bilinski
Abstract: Neural Architecture Search (NAS) has been widely adopted to design neural networks for various computer vision tasks. One of its most promising subdomains is differentiable NAS (DNAS), where the optimal architecture is found in a differentiable manner. However, gradient-based methods suffer from the discretization error, which can severely damage the process of obtaining the final architecture. In our work, we first study the risk of discretization error and show how it affects an unregularized supernet. Then, we present that penalizing high entropy, a common technique of architecture regularization, can hinder the supernet's performance. Therefore, to robustify the DNAS framework, we introduce a novel single-stage searching protocol, which is not reliant on decoding a continuous architecture. Our results demonstrate that this approach outperforms other DNAS methods by achieving 75.3% in the searching stage on the Cityscapes validation dataset and attains performance 1.1% higher than the optimal network of DCNAS on the non-dense search space comprising short connections. The entire training process takes only 5.5 GPU days due to the weight reuse, and yields a computationally efficient architecture. Additionally, we propose a new dataset split procedure, which substantially improves results and prevents architecture degeneration in DARTS.
Authors: Boris Hanin, Alexander Zlokapa
Abstract: We show at a physics level of rigor that Bayesian inference with a fully connected neural network and a shaped nonlinearity of the form $\phi(t) = t + \psi t^3/L$ is (perturbatively) solvable in the regime where the number of training datapoints $P$ , the input dimension $N_0$, the network layer widths $N$, and the network depth $L$ are simultaneously large. Our results hold with weak assumptions on the data; the main constraint is that $P < N_0$. We provide techniques to compute the model evidence and posterior to arbitrary order in $1/N$ and at arbitrary temperature. We report the following results from the first-order computation: 1. When the width $N$ is much larger than the depth $L$ and training set size $P$, neural network Bayesian inference coincides with Bayesian inference using a kernel. The value of $\psi$ determines the curvature of a sphere, hyperbola, or plane into which the training data is implicitly embedded under the feature map. 2. When $LP/N$ is a small constant, neural network Bayesian inference departs from the kernel regime. At zero temperature, neural network Bayesian inference is equivalent to Bayesian inference using a data-dependent kernel, and $LP/N$ serves as an effective depth that controls the extent of feature learning. 3. In the restricted case of deep linear networks ($\psi=0$) and noisy data, we show a simple data model for which evidence and generalization error are optimal at zero temperature. As $LP/N$ increases, both evidence and generalization further improve, demonstrating the benefit of depth in benign overfitting.
Authors: Aneesh Muppidi, Zhiyu Zhang, Heng Yang
Abstract: A key challenge in lifelong reinforcement learning (RL) is the loss of plasticity, where previous learning progress hinders an agent's adaptation to new tasks. While regularization and resetting can help, they require precise hyperparameter selection at the outset and environment-dependent adjustments. Building on the principled theory of online convex optimization, we present a parameter-free optimizer for lifelong RL, called PACE, which requires no tuning or prior knowledge about the distribution shifts. Extensive experiments on Procgen, Atari, and Gym Control environments show that PACE works surprisingly well$\unicode{x2013}$mitigating loss of plasticity and rapidly adapting to challenging distribution shifts$\unicode{x2013}$despite the underlying optimization problem being nonconvex and nonstationary.
Authors: Keun Soo Yim
Abstract: This paper presents a framework that selectively triggers security reviews for incoming source code changes. Functioning as a review bot within a code review service, the framework can automatically request additional security reviews at pre-submit time before the code changes are submitted to a source code repository. Because performing such secure code reviews add cost, the framework employs a classifier trained to identify code changes with a high likelihood of vulnerabilities. The online classifier leverages various types of input features to analyze the review patterns, track the software engineering process, and mine specific text patterns within given code changes. The classifier and its features are meticulously chosen and optimized using data from the submitted code changes and reported vulnerabilities in Android Open Source Project (AOSP). The evaluation results demonstrate that our Vulnerability Prevention (VP) framework identifies approximately 80% of the vulnerability-inducing code changes in the dataset with a precision ratio of around 98% and a false positive rate of around 1.7%. We discuss the implications of deploying the VP framework in multi-project settings and future directions for Android security research. This paper explores and validates our approach to code change-granularity vulnerability prediction, offering a preventive technique for software security by preemptively detecting vulnerable code changes before submission.
Authors: Yeachan Park, Minseok Kim, Yeoneung Kim
Abstract: We propose novel methodologies aimed at accelerating the grokking phenomenon, which refers to the rapid increment of test accuracy after a long period of overfitting as reported in~\cite{power2022grokking}. Focusing on the grokking phenomenon that arises in learning arithmetic binary operations via the transformer model, we begin with a discussion on data augmentation in the case of commutative binary operations. To further accelerate, we elucidate arithmetic operations through the lens of the Kolmogorov-Arnold (KA) representation theorem, revealing its correspondence to the transformer architecture: embedding, decoder block, and classifier. Observing the shared structure between KA representations associated with binary operations, we suggest various transfer learning mechanisms that expedite grokking. This interpretation is substantiated through a series of rigorous experiments. In addition, our approach is successful in learning two nonstandard arithmetic tasks: composition of operations and a system of equations. Furthermore, we reveal that the model is capable of learning arithmetic operations using a limited number of tokens under embedding transfer, which is supported by a set of experiments as well.
Authors: Piyush Jha, Prithwish Jana, Arnav Arora, Vijay Ganesh
Abstract: In recent years, large language models (LLMs) have had a dramatic impact on various sub-fields of AI, most notably on natural language understanding tasks. However, there is widespread agreement that the logical reasoning capabilities of contemporary LLMs are, at best, fragmentary (i.e., may work well on some problem instances but fail dramatically on others). While traditional LLM fine-tuning approaches (e.g., those that use human feedback) do address this problem to some degree, they suffer from many issues, including unsound black-box reward models, difficulties in collecting preference data, and sparse scalar reward values. To address these challenges, we propose a new training/fine-tuning paradigm we refer to as Reinforcement Learning via Symbolic Feedback (RLSF), which is aimed at enhancing the reasoning capabilities of LLMs. In the RLSF setting, the LLM that is being trained/fine-tuned is considered as the RL agent, while the environment is allowed access to reasoning or domain knowledge tools (e.g., solvers, algebra systems). Crucially, in RLSF, these reasoning tools can provide feedback to the LLMs via poly-sized certificates (e.g., proofs), that characterize errors in the LLM-generated object with respect to some correctness specification. The ability of RLSF-based training/fine-tuning to leverage certificate-generating symbolic tools enables sound fine-grained (token-level) reward signals to LLMs, and thus addresses the limitations of traditional reward models mentioned above. Via extensive evaluations, we show that our RLSF-based fine-tuning of LLMs outperforms traditional approaches on two different applications, namely, program synthesis from natural language pseudo-code to programming language (C++) and solving the Game of 24.
Authors: Zhan Su, Fengran Mo, Prayag Tiwari, Benyou Wang, Jian-Yun Nie, Jakob Grue Simonsen
Abstract: In multi-task learning, the conventional approach involves training a model on multiple tasks simultaneously. However, the training signals from different tasks can interfere with one another, potentially leading to \textit{negative transfer}. To mitigate this, we investigate if modular language models can facilitate positive transfer and systematic generalization. Specifically, we propose a novel modular language model (\texttt{TensorPoly}), that balances parameter efficiency with nuanced routing methods. For \textit{modules}, we reparameterize Low-Rank Adaptation (\texttt{LoRA}) by employing an entangled tensor through the use of tensor product operations and name the resulting approach \texttt{TLoRA}. For \textit{routing function}, we tailor two innovative routing functions according to the granularity: \texttt{TensorPoly-I} which directs to each rank within the entangled tensor while \texttt{TensorPoly-II} offers a finer-grained routing approach targeting each order of the entangled tensor. The experimental results from the multi-task T0-benchmark demonstrate that: 1) all modular LMs surpass the corresponding dense approaches, highlighting the potential of modular language models to mitigate negative inference in multi-task learning and deliver superior outcomes. 2) \texttt{TensorPoly-I} achieves higher parameter efficiency in adaptation and outperforms other modular LMs, which shows the potential of our approach in multi-task transfer learning.
Authors: Christine P Lee, Min Kyung Lee, Bilge Mutlu
Abstract: Increasing evidence suggests that many deployed AI systems do not sufficiently support end-user interaction and information needs. Engaging end-users in the design of these systems can reveal user needs and expectations, yet effective ways of engaging end-users in the AI explanation design remain under-explored. To address this gap, we developed a design method, called AI-DEC, that defines four dimensions of AI explanations that are critical for the integration of AI systems -- communication content, modality, frequency, and direction -- and offers design examples for end-users to design AI explanations that meet their needs. We evaluated this method through co-design sessions with workers in healthcare, finance, and management industries who regularly use AI systems in their daily work. Findings indicate that the AI-DEC effectively supported workers in designing explanations that accommodated diverse levels of performance and autonomy needs, which varied depending on the AI system's workplace role and worker values. We discuss the implications of using the AI-DEC for the user-centered design of AI explanations in real-world systems.
Authors: Paolo Glorioso, Quentin Anthony, Yury Tokpanov, James Whittington, Jonathan Pilault, Adam Ibrahim, Beren Millidge
Abstract: In this technical report, we present Zamba, a novel 7B SSM-transformer hybrid model which achieves competitive performance against leading open-weight models at a comparable scale. Zamba is trained on 1T tokens from openly available datasets and is the best non-transformer model at this scale. Zamba pioneers a unique architecture combining a Mamba backbone with a single shared attention module, thus obtaining the benefits of attention at minimal parameter cost. Due to its architecture, Zamba is significantly faster at inference than comparable transformer models and requires substantially less memory for generation of long sequences. Zamba is pretrained in two phases: the first phase is based on existing web datasets, while the second one consists of annealing the model over high-quality instruct and synthetic datasets, and is characterized by a rapid learning rate decay. We open-source the weights and all checkpoints for Zamba, through both phase 1 and annealing phases.
Authors: Vinamra Benara, Chandan Singh, John X. Morris, Richard Antonello, Ion Stoica, Alexander G. Huth, Jianfeng Gao
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have rapidly improved text embeddings for a growing array of natural-language processing tasks. However, their opaqueness and proliferation into scientific domains such as neuroscience have created a growing need for interpretability. Here, we ask whether we can obtain interpretable embeddings through LLM prompting. We introduce question-answering embeddings (QA-Emb), embeddings where each feature represents an answer to a yes/no question asked to an LLM. Training QA-Emb reduces to selecting a set of underlying questions rather than learning model weights. We use QA-Emb to flexibly generate interpretable models for predicting fMRI voxel responses to language stimuli. QA-Emb significantly outperforms an established interpretable baseline, and does so while requiring very few questions. This paves the way towards building flexible feature spaces that can concretize and evaluate our understanding of semantic brain representations. We additionally find that QA-Emb can be effectively approximated with an efficient model, and we explore broader applications in simple NLP tasks.
Authors: Yashas Annadani, Panagiotis Tigas, Stefan Bauer, Adam Foster
Abstract: We present Causal Amortized Active Structure Learning (CAASL), an active intervention design policy that can select interventions that are adaptive, real-time and that does not require access to the likelihood. This policy, an amortized network based on the transformer, is trained with reinforcement learning on a simulator of the design environment, and a reward function that measures how close the true causal graph is to a causal graph posterior inferred from the gathered data. On synthetic data and a single-cell gene expression simulator, we demonstrate empirically that the data acquired through our policy results in a better estimate of the underlying causal graph than alternative strategies. Our design policy successfully achieves amortized intervention design on the distribution of the training environment while also generalizing well to distribution shifts in test-time design environments. Further, our policy also demonstrates excellent zero-shot generalization to design environments with dimensionality higher than that during training, and to intervention types that it has not been trained on.
Authors: Lijun Yu
Abstract: Advancements in language foundation models have primarily fueled the recent surge in artificial intelligence. In contrast, generative learning of non-textual modalities, especially videos, significantly trails behind language modeling. This thesis chronicles our endeavor to build multi-task models for generating videos and other modalities under diverse conditions, as well as for understanding and compression applications. Given the high dimensionality of visual data, we pursue concise and accurate latent representations. Our video-native spatial-temporal tokenizers preserve high fidelity. We unveil a novel approach to mapping bidirectionally between visual observation and interpretable lexical terms. Furthermore, our scalable visual token representation proves beneficial across generation, compression, and understanding tasks. This achievement marks the first instances of language models surpassing diffusion models in visual synthesis and a video tokenizer outperforming industry-standard codecs. Within these multi-modal latent spaces, we study the design of multi-task generative models. Our masked multi-task transformer excels at the quality, efficiency, and flexibility of video generation. We enable a frozen language model, trained solely on text, to generate visual content. Finally, we build a scalable generative multi-modal transformer trained from scratch, enabling the generation of videos containing high-fidelity motion with the corresponding audio given diverse conditions. Throughout the course, we have shown the effectiveness of integrating multiple tasks, crafting high-fidelity latent representation, and generating multiple modalities. This work suggests intriguing potential for future exploration in generating non-textual data and enabling real-time, interactive experiences across various media forms.
Authors: Peiyu Yu, Dinghuai Zhang, Hengzhi He, Xiaojian Ma, Ruiyao Miao, Yifan Lu, Yasi Zhang, Deqian Kong, Ruiqi Gao, Jianwen Xie, Guang Cheng, Ying Nian Wu
Abstract: Offline Black-Box Optimization (BBO) aims at optimizing a black-box function using the knowledge from a pre-collected offline dataset of function values and corresponding input designs. However, the high-dimensional and highly-multimodal input design space of black-box function pose inherent challenges for most existing methods that model and operate directly upon input designs. These issues include but are not limited to high sample complexity, which relates to inaccurate approximation of black-box function; and insufficient coverage and exploration of input design modes, which leads to suboptimal proposal of new input designs. In this work, we consider finding a latent space that serves as a compressed yet accurate representation of the design-value joint space, enabling effective latent exploration of high-value input design modes. To this end, we formulate an learnable energy-based latent space, and propose Noise-intensified Telescoping density-Ratio Estimation (NTRE) scheme for variational learning of an accurate latent space model without costly Markov Chain Monte Carlo. The optimization process is then exploration of high-value designs guided by the learned energy-based model in the latent space, formulated as gradient-based sampling from a latent-variable-parameterized inverse model. We show that our particular parameterization encourages expanded exploration around high-value design modes, motivated by inversion thinking of a fundamental result of conditional covariance matrix typically used for variance reduction. We observe that our method, backed by an accurately learned informative latent space and an expanding-exploration model design, yields significant improvements over strong previous methods on both synthetic and real world datasets such as the design-bench suite.
Authors: Marcel Hussing, Michael Kearns, Aaron Roth, Sikata Bela Sengupta, Jessica Sorrell
Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) in large or infinite state spaces is notoriously challenging, both theoretically (where worst-case sample and computational complexities must scale with state space cardinality) and experimentally (where function approximation and policy gradient techniques often scale poorly and suffer from instability and high variance). One line of research attempting to address these difficulties makes the natural assumption that we are given a collection of heuristic base or $\textit{constituent}$ policies upon which we would like to improve in a scalable manner. In this work we aim to compete with the $\textit{max-following policy}$, which at each state follows the action of whichever constituent policy has the highest value. The max-following policy is always at least as good as the best constituent policy, and may be considerably better. Our main result is an efficient algorithm that learns to compete with the max-following policy, given only access to the constituent policies (but not their value functions). In contrast to prior work in similar settings, our theoretical results require only the minimal assumption of an ERM oracle for value function approximation for the constituent policies (and not the global optimal policy or the max-following policy itself) on samplable distributions. We illustrate our algorithm's experimental effectiveness and behavior on several robotic simulation testbeds.
Authors: Ira Globus-Harris, Varun Gupta, Michael Kearns, Aaron Roth
Abstract: There is a long history in machine learning of model ensembling, beginning with boosting and bagging and continuing to the present day. Much of this history has focused on combining models for classification and regression, but recently there is interest in more complex settings such as ensembling policies in reinforcement learning. Strong connections have also emerged between ensembling and multicalibration techniques. In this work, we further investigate these themes by considering a setting in which we wish to ensemble models for multidimensional output predictions that are in turn used for downstream optimization. More precisely, we imagine we are given a number of models mapping a state space to multidimensional real-valued predictions. These predictions form the coefficients of a linear objective that we would like to optimize under specified constraints. The fundamental question we address is how to improve and combine such models in a way that outperforms the best of them in the downstream optimization problem. We apply multicalibration techniques that lead to two provably efficient and convergent algorithms. The first of these (the white box approach) requires being given models that map states to output predictions, while the second (the \emph{black box} approach) requires only policies (mappings from states to solutions to the optimization problem). For both, we provide convergence and utility guarantees. We conclude by investigating the performance and behavior of the two algorithms in a controlled experimental setting.
Authors: Shayan Talaei, Mohammadreza Pourreza, Yu-Chen Chang, Azalia Mirhoseini, Amin Saberi
Abstract: Utilizing large language models (LLMs) for transforming natural language questions into SQL queries (text-to-SQL) is a promising yet challenging approach, particularly when applied to real-world databases with complex and extensive schemas. In particular, effectively incorporating data catalogs and database values for SQL generation remains an obstacle, leading to suboptimal solutions. We address this problem by proposing a new pipeline that effectively retrieves relevant data and context, selects an efficient schema, and synthesizes correct and efficient SQL queries. To increase retrieval precision, our pipeline introduces a hierarchical retrieval method leveraging model-generated keywords, locality-sensitive hashing indexing, and vector databases. Additionally, we have developed an adaptive schema pruning technique that adjusts based on the complexity of the problem and the model's context size. Our approach generalizes to both frontier proprietary models like GPT-4 and open-source models such as Llama-3-70B. Through a series of ablation studies, we demonstrate the effectiveness of each component of our pipeline and its impact on the end-to-end performance. Our method achieves new state-of-the-art performance on the cross-domain challenging BIRD dataset.
Authors: Shiming Ge, Weijia Guo, Chenyu Li, Junzheng Zhang, Yong Li, Dan Zeng
Abstract: Masked face recognition is important for social good but challenged by diverse occlusions that cause insufficient or inaccurate representations. In this work, we propose a unified deep network to learn generative-to-discriminative representations for facilitating masked face recognition. To this end, we split the network into three modules and learn them on synthetic masked faces in a greedy module-wise pretraining manner. First, we leverage a generative encoder pretrained for face inpainting and finetune it to represent masked faces into category-aware descriptors. Attribute to the generative encoder's ability in recovering context information, the resulting descriptors can provide occlusion-robust representations for masked faces, mitigating the effect of diverse masks. Then, we incorporate a multi-layer convolutional network as a discriminative reformer and learn it to convert the category-aware descriptors into identity-aware vectors, where the learning is effectively supervised by distilling relation knowledge from off-the-shelf face recognition model. In this way, the discriminative reformer together with the generative encoder serves as the pretrained backbone, providing general and discriminative representations towards masked faces. Finally, we cascade one fully-connected layer following by one softmax layer into a feature classifier and finetune it to identify the reformed identity-aware vectors. Extensive experiments on synthetic and realistic datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in recognizing masked faces.
Authors: YuXiao Lee, Xiaofeng Cao
Abstract: The remarkable achievements of Large Language Models (LLMs) have captivated the attention of both academia and industry, transcending their initial role in dialogue generation. The utilization of LLMs as intermediary agents in various tasks has yielded promising results, sparking a wave of innovation in artificial intelligence. Building on these breakthroughs, we introduce a novel approach that integrates the agent paradigm into the Out-of-distribution (OOD) detection task, aiming to enhance its robustness and adaptability. Our proposed method, Concept Matching with Agent (CMA), employs neutral prompts as agents to augment the CLIP-based OOD detection process. These agents function as dynamic observers and communication hubs, interacting with both In-distribution (ID) labels and data inputs to form vector triangle relationships. This triangular framework offers a more nuanced approach than the traditional binary relationship, allowing for better separation and identification of ID and OOD inputs. Our extensive experimental results showcase the superior performance of CMA over both zero-shot and training-required methods in a diverse array of real-world scenarios.
Authors: Yuzhou. Nie, Yanting. Wang, Jinyuan. Jia, Michael J. De Lucia, Nathaniel D. Bastian, Wenbo. Guo, Dawn. Song
Abstract: One key challenge in backdoor attacks against large foundation models is the resource limits. Backdoor attacks usually require retraining the target model, which is impractical for very large foundation models. Existing backdoor attacks are mainly designed for supervised classifiers or small foundation models (e.g., BERT). None of these attacks has successfully compromised a very large foundation model, such as Llama-3-70B, especially with limited computational resources. In this paper, we propose TrojFM, a novel backdoor attack tailored for very large foundation models. Our primary technical contribution is the development of a novel backdoor injection method. This method forces a backdoored model to generate similar hidden representations for poisoned inputs regardless of their actual semantics. Our approach injects such backdoors by fine-tuning only a very small proportion of model parameters. This enables TrojFM to efficiently launch downstream task-agnostic backdoor attacks against very large foundation models under limited computational resources. Moreover, we optimize the fine-tuning process with our customized QLoRA technique, enabling launching our attack via only~\textit{one A100 GPU}. Furthermore, we design a new trigger injection method to ensure our attack stealthiness. Through extensive experiments, we first demonstrate that TrojFM can launch effective backdoor attacks against widely used large GPT-style models without jeopardizing their normal functionalities (and outperforming existing attacks on BERT-style models). Furthermore, we show that TrojFM is resilient to SOTA defenses and is insensitive to changes in key hyper-parameters. Finally, we conduct a resource analysis to quantify that our method can significantly save computational and memory costs compared to existing backdoor attacks.
Authors: Eric Mugnier, Emmanuel Anaya Gonzalez, Ranjit Jhala, Nadia Polikarpova, Yuanyuan Zhou
Abstract: Dafny is a popular verification language, which automates proofs by outsourcing them to an SMT solver. This automation is not perfect, however, and the solver often requires guidance in the form of helper assertions creating a burden for the proof engineer. In this paper, we propose Laurel, a tool that uses large language models (LLMs) to automatically generate helper assertions for Dafny programs. To improve the success rate of LLMs in this task, we design two domain-specific prompting techniques. First, we help the LLM determine the location of the missing assertion by analyzing the verifier's error message and inserting an assertion placeholder at that location. Second, we provide the LLM with example assertions from the same codebase, which we select based on a new lemma similarity metric. We evaluate our techniques on a dataset of helper assertions we extracted from three real-world Dafny codebases. Our evaluation shows that Laurel is able to generate over 50% of the required helper assertions given only a few attempts, making LLMs a usable and affordable tool to further automate practical program verification.
Authors: Jidong Jia, Pei Zhao, Di Wang
Abstract: Voice activity detection (VAD) is the task of detecting speech in an audio stream, which is challenging due to numerous unseen noises and low signal-to-noise ratios in real environments. Recently, neural network-based VADs have alleviated the degradation of performance to some extent. However, the majority of existing studies have employed excessively large models and incorporated future context, while neglecting to evaluate the operational efficiency and latency of the models. In this paper, we propose a lightweight and real-time neural network called MagicNet, which utilizes casual and depth separable 1-D convolutions and GRU. Without relying on future features as input, our proposed model is compared with two state-of-the-art algorithms on synthesized in-domain and out-domain test datasets. The evaluation results demonstrate that MagicNet can achieve improved performance and robustness with fewer parameter costs.
Authors: Zheng Zhang, Yuntong Hu, Bo Pan, Chen Ling, Liang Zhao
Abstract: Text-Attributed Graphs (TAGs) enhance graph structures with natural language descriptions, enabling detailed representation of data and their relationships across a broad spectrum of real-world scenarios. Despite the potential for deeper insights, existing TAG representation learning primarily relies on supervised methods, necessitating extensive labeled data and limiting applicability across diverse contexts. This paper introduces a new self-supervised learning framework, Text-And-Graph Multi-View Alignment (TAGA), which overcomes these constraints by integrating TAGs' structural and semantic dimensions. TAGA constructs two complementary views: Text-of-Graph view, which organizes node texts into structured documents based on graph topology, and the Graph-of-Text view, which converts textual nodes and connections into graph data. By aligning representations from both views, TAGA captures joint textual and structural information. In addition, a novel structure-preserving random walk algorithm is proposed for efficient training on large-sized TAGs. Our framework demonstrates strong performance in zero-shot and few-shot scenarios across eight real-world datasets.
Authors: Shengyuan Chen, Qinggang Zhang, Junnan Dong, Wen Hua, Qing Li, Xiao Huang
Abstract: Entity alignment (EA) aims to merge two knowledge graphs (KGs) by identifying equivalent entity pairs. While existing methods heavily rely on human-generated labels, it is prohibitively expensive to incorporate cross-domain experts for annotation in real-world scenarios. The advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) presents new avenues for automating EA with annotations, inspired by their comprehensive capability to process semantic information. However, it is nontrivial to directly apply LLMs for EA since the annotation space in real-world KGs is large. LLMs could also generate noisy labels that may mislead the alignment. To this end, we propose a unified framework, LLM4EA, to effectively leverage LLMs for EA. Specifically, we design a novel active learning policy to significantly reduce the annotation space by prioritizing the most valuable entities based on the entire inter-KG and intra-KG structure. Moreover, we introduce an unsupervised label refiner to continuously enhance label accuracy through in-depth probabilistic reasoning. We iteratively optimize the policy based on the feedback from a base EA model. Extensive experiments demonstrate the advantages of LLM4EA on four benchmark datasets in terms of effectiveness, robustness, and efficiency.
Authors: Leo Hoshikawa, Marcos V. Conde, Takeshi Ohashi, Atsushi Irie
Abstract: Implicit Neural Representations (INRs) and Neural Fields are a novel paradigm for signal representation, from images and audio to 3D scenes and videos. The fundamental idea is to represent a signal as a continuous and differentiable neural network. This idea offers unprecedented benefits such as continuous resolution and memory efficiency, enabling new compression techniques. However, representing data as neural networks poses new challenges. For instance, given a 2D image as a neural network, how can we further compress such a neural image?. In this work, we present a novel analysis on compressing neural fields, with the focus on images. We also introduce Adaptive Neural Images (ANI), an efficient neural representation that enables adaptation to different inference or transmission requirements. Our proposed method allows to reduce the bits-per-pixel (bpp) of the neural image by 4x, without losing sensitive details or harming fidelity. We achieve this thanks to our successful implementation of 4-bit neural representations. Our work offers a new framework for developing compressed neural fields.
Authors: Robert Wolfe, Isaac Slaughter, Bin Han, Bingbing Wen, Yiwei Yang, Lucas Rosenblatt, Bernease Herman, Eva Brown, Zening Qu, Nic Weber, Bill Howe
Abstract: The rapid proliferation of generative AI has raised questions about the competitiveness of lower-parameter, locally tunable, open-weight models relative to high-parameter, API-guarded, closed-weight models in terms of performance, domain adaptation, cost, and generalization. Centering under-resourced yet risk-intolerant settings in government, research, and healthcare, we see for-profit closed-weight models as incompatible with requirements for transparency, privacy, adaptability, and standards of evidence. Yet the performance penalty in using open-weight models, especially in low-data and low-resource settings, is unclear. We assess the feasibility of using smaller, open-weight models to replace GPT-4-Turbo in zero-shot, few-shot, and fine-tuned regimes, assuming access to only a single, low-cost GPU. We assess value-sensitive issues around bias, privacy, and abstention on three additional tasks relevant to those topics. We find that with relatively low effort, very low absolute monetary cost, and relatively little data for fine-tuning, small open-weight models can achieve competitive performance in domain-adapted tasks without sacrificing generality. We then run experiments considering practical issues in bias, privacy, and hallucination risk, finding that open models offer several benefits over closed models. We intend this work as a case study in understanding the opportunity cost of reproducibility and transparency over for-profit state-of-the-art zero shot performance, finding this cost to be marginal under realistic settings.
Authors: Gihyun Kwon, Jangho Park, Jong Chul Ye
Abstract: While text-to-image models have achieved impressive capabilities in image generation and editing, their application across various modalities often necessitates training separate models. Inspired by existing method of single image editing with self attention injection and video editing with shared attention, we propose a novel unified editing framework that combines the strengths of both approaches by utilizing only a basic 2D image text-to-image (T2I) diffusion model. Specifically, we design a sampling method that facilitates editing consecutive images while maintaining semantic consistency utilizing shared self-attention features during both reference and consecutive image sampling processes. Experimental results confirm that our method enables editing across diverse modalities including 3D scenes, videos, and panorama images.
Authors: Shuijing Liu, Kaiwen Hong, Neeloy Chakraborty, Katherine Driggs-Campbell
Abstract: We investigate the feasibility of deploying reinforcement learning (RL) policies for constrained crowd navigation using a low-fidelity simulator. We introduce a representation of the dynamic environment, separating human and obstacle representations. Humans are represented through detected states, while obstacles are represented as computed point clouds based on maps and robot localization. This representation enables RL policies trained in a low-fidelity simulator to deploy in real world with a reduced sim2real gap. Additionally, we propose a spatio-temporal graph to model the interactions between agents and obstacles. Based on the graph, we use attention mechanisms to capture the robot-human, human-human, and human-obstacle interactions. Our method significantly improves navigation performance in both simulated and real-world environments. Video demonstrations can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/constrained-crowdnav/home.
URLs: https://sites.google.com/view/constrained-crowdnav/home.
Authors: Andreas Charalampopoulos, Nikolas Chatzis, Foivos Ntoulas-Panagiotopoulos, Charilaos Papaioannou, Alexandros Potamianos
Abstract: Fast feedforward networks (FFFs) are a class of neural networks that exploit the observation that different regions of the input space activate distinct subsets of neurons in wide networks. FFFs partition the input space into separate sections using a differentiable binary tree of neurons and during inference descend the binary tree in order to improve computational efficiency. Inspired by Mixture of Experts (MoE) research, we propose the incorporation of load balancing and Master Leaf techniques into the FFF architecture to improve performance and simplify the training process. We reproduce experiments found in literature and present results on FFF models enhanced using these techniques. The proposed architecture and training recipe achieves up to 16.3% and 3% absolute classification accuracy increase in training and test accuracy, respectively, compared to the original FFF architecture. Additionally, we observe a smaller variance in the results compared to those reported in prior research. These findings demonstrate the potential of integrating MoE-inspired techniques into FFFs for developing more accurate and efficient models.
Authors: Yinda Chen, Haoyuan Shi, Xiaoyu Liu, Te Shi, Ruobing Zhang, Dong Liu, Zhiwei Xiong, Feng Wu
Abstract: Autoregressive next-token prediction is a standard pretraining method for large-scale language models, but its application to vision tasks is hindered by the non-sequential nature of image data, leading to cumulative errors. Most vision models employ masked autoencoder (MAE) based pretraining, which faces scalability issues. To address these challenges, we introduce \textbf{TokenUnify}, a novel pretraining method that integrates random token prediction, next-token prediction, and next-all token prediction. We provide theoretical evidence demonstrating that TokenUnify mitigates cumulative errors in visual autoregression. Cooperated with TokenUnify, we have assembled a large-scale electron microscopy (EM) image dataset with ultra-high resolution, ideal for creating spatially correlated long sequences. This dataset includes over 120 million annotated voxels, making it the largest neuron segmentation dataset to date and providing a unified benchmark for experimental validation. Leveraging the Mamba network inherently suited for long-sequence modeling on this dataset, TokenUnify not only reduces the computational complexity but also leads to a significant 45\% improvement in segmentation performance on downstream EM neuron segmentation tasks compared to existing methods. Furthermore, TokenUnify demonstrates superior scalability over MAE and traditional autoregressive methods, effectively bridging the gap between pretraining strategies for language and vision models. Code is available at \url{https://github.com/ydchen0806/TokenUnify}.
Authors: Mingqing Xiao, Yixin Zhu, Di He, Zhouchen Lin
Abstract: Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are investigated as biologically inspired models of neural computation, distinguished by their computational capability and energy efficiency due to precise spiking times and sparse spikes with event-driven computation. A significant question is how SNNs can emulate human-like graph-based reasoning of concepts and relations, especially leveraging the temporal domain optimally. This paper reveals that SNNs, when amalgamated with synaptic delay and temporal coding, are proficient in executing (knowledge) graph reasoning. It is elucidated that spiking time can function as an additional dimension to encode relation properties via a neural-generalized path formulation. Empirical results highlight the efficacy of temporal delay in relation processing and showcase exemplary performance in diverse graph reasoning tasks. The spiking model is theoretically estimated to achieve $20\times$ energy savings compared to non-spiking counterparts, deepening insights into the capabilities and potential of biologically inspired SNNs for efficient reasoning. The code is available at https://github.com/pkuxmq/GRSNN.
Authors: Sirui Xie, Zhisheng Xiao, Diederik P Kingma, Tingbo Hou, Ying Nian Wu, Kevin Patrick Murphy, Tim Salimans, Ben Poole, Ruiqi Gao
Abstract: While diffusion models can learn complex distributions, sampling requires a computationally expensive iterative process. Existing distillation methods enable efficient sampling, but have notable limitations, such as performance degradation with very few sampling steps, reliance on training data access, or mode-seeking optimization that may fail to capture the full distribution. We propose EM Distillation (EMD), a maximum likelihood-based approach that distills a diffusion model to a one-step generator model with minimal loss of perceptual quality. Our approach is derived through the lens of Expectation-Maximization (EM), where the generator parameters are updated using samples from the joint distribution of the diffusion teacher prior and inferred generator latents. We develop a reparametrized sampling scheme and a noise cancellation technique that together stabilizes the distillation process. We further reveal an interesting connection of our method with existing methods that minimize mode-seeking KL. EMD outperforms existing one-step generative methods in terms of FID scores on ImageNet-64 and ImageNet-128, and compares favorably with prior work on distilling text-to-image diffusion models.
Authors: Yunqi Zhang, Songda Li, Chunyuan Deng, Luyi Wang, Hui Zhao
Abstract: Gender bias in vision-language models (VLMs) can reinforce harmful stereotypes and discrimination. In this paper, we focus on mitigating gender bias towards vision-language tasks. We identify object hallucination as the essence of gender bias in VLMs. Existing VLMs tend to focus on salient or familiar attributes in images but ignore contextualized nuances. Moreover, most VLMs rely on the co-occurrence between specific objects and gender attributes to infer the ignored features, ultimately resulting in gender bias. We propose GAMA, a task-agnostic generation framework to mitigate gender bias. GAMA consists of two stages: narrative generation and answer inference. During narrative generation, GAMA yields all-sided but gender-obfuscated narratives, which prevents premature concentration on localized image features, especially gender attributes. During answer inference, GAMA integrates the image, generated narrative, and a task-specific question prompt to infer answers for different vision-language tasks. This approach allows the model to rethink gender attributes and answers. We conduct extensive experiments on GAMA, demonstrating its debiasing and generalization ability.
Authors: Jiaping Xiao, Phumrapee Pisutsin, Cheng Wen Tsao, Mir Feroskhan
Abstract: UAV tracking and pose estimation plays an imperative role in various UAV-related missions, such as formation control and anti-UAV measures. Accurately detecting and tracking UAVs in a 3D space remains a particularly challenging problem, as it requires extracting sparse features of micro UAVs from different flight environments and continuously matching correspondences, especially during agile flight. Generally, cameras and LiDARs are the two main types of sensors used to capture UAV trajectories in flight. However, both sensors have limitations in UAV classification and pose estimation. This technical report briefly introduces the method proposed by our team "NTU-ICG" for the CVPR 2024 UG2+ Challenge Track 5. This work develops a clustering-based learning detection approach, CL-Det, for UAV tracking and pose estimation using two types of LiDARs, namely Livox Avia and LiDAR 360. We combine the information from the two data sources to locate drones in 3D. We first align the timestamps of Livox Avia data and LiDAR 360 data and then separate the point cloud of objects of interest (OOIs) from the environment. The point cloud of OOIs is clustered using the DBSCAN method, with the midpoint of the largest cluster assumed to be the UAV position. Furthermore, we utilize historical estimations to fill in missing data. The proposed method shows competitive pose estimation performance and ranks 5th on the final leaderboard of the CVPR 2024 UG2+ Challenge.
Authors: Yidong Ouyang, Liyan Xie, Hongyuan Zha, Guang Cheng
Abstract: Diffusion models, a specific type of generative model, have achieved unprecedented performance in recent years and consistently produce high-quality synthetic samples. A critical prerequisite for their notable success lies in the presence of a substantial number of training samples, which can be impractical in real-world applications due to high collection costs or associated risks. Consequently, various finetuning and regularization approaches have been proposed to transfer knowledge from existing pre-trained models to specific target domains with limited data. This paper introduces the Transfer Guided Diffusion Process (TGDP), a novel approach distinct from conventional finetuning and regularization methods. We prove that the optimal diffusion model for the target domain integrates pre-trained diffusion models on the source domain with additional guidance from a domain classifier. We further extend TGDP to a conditional version for modeling the joint distribution of data and its corresponding labels, together with two additional regularization terms to enhance the model performance. We validate the effectiveness of TGDP on Gaussian mixture simulations and on real electrocardiogram (ECG) datasets.
Authors: Dongbin Kim, Jinseong Park, Jaewook Lee, Hoki Kim
Abstract: Time series forecasting is crucial for applications across multiple domains and various scenarios. Although Transformer models have dramatically shifted the landscape of forecasting, their effectiveness remains debated. Recent findings have indicated that simpler linear models might outperform complex Transformer-based approaches, highlighting the potential for more streamlined architectures. In this paper, we shift focus from the overall architecture of the Transformer to the effectiveness of self-attentions for time series forecasting. To this end, we introduce a new architecture, Cross-Attention-only Time Series transformer (CATS), that rethinks the traditional Transformer framework by eliminating self-attention and leveraging cross-attention mechanisms instead. By establishing future horizon-dependent parameters as queries and enhanced parameter sharing, our model not only improves long-term forecasting accuracy but also reduces the number of parameters and memory usage. Extensive experiment across various datasets demonstrates that our model achieves superior performance with the lowest mean squared error and uses fewer parameters compared to existing models.
Authors: Wangyang Ying, Dongjie Wang, Xuanming Hu, Yuanchun Zhou, Charu C. Aggarwal, Yanjie Fu
Abstract: Feature transformation is to derive a new feature set from original features to augment the AI power of data. In many science domains such as material performance screening, while feature transformation can model material formula interactions and compositions and discover performance drivers, supervised labels are collected from expensive and lengthy experiments. This issue motivates an Unsupervised Feature Transformation Learning (UFTL) problem. Prior literature, such as manual transformation, supervised feedback guided search, and PCA, either relies on domain knowledge or expensive supervised feedback, or suffers from large search space, or overlooks non-linear feature-feature interactions. UFTL imposes a major challenge on existing methods: how to design a new unsupervised paradigm that captures complex feature interactions and avoids large search space? To fill this gap, we connect graph, contrastive, and generative learning to develop a measurement-pretrain-finetune paradigm for UFTL. For unsupervised feature set utility measurement, we propose a feature value consistency preservation perspective and develop a mean discounted cumulative gain like unsupervised metric to evaluate feature set utility. For unsupervised feature set representation pretraining, we regard a feature set as a feature-feature interaction graph, and develop an unsupervised graph contrastive learning encoder to embed feature sets into vectors. For generative transformation finetuning, we regard a feature set as a feature cross sequence and feature transformation as sequential generation. We develop a deep generative feature transformation model that coordinates the pretrained feature set encoder and the gradient information extracted from a feature set utility evaluator to optimize a transformed feature generator.
Authors: Bobby Yan, Alexander J. Root, Trevor Gale, David Broman, Fredrik Kjolstad
Abstract: The rapid growth in the size of deep learning models strains the capabilities of traditional dense computation paradigms. Leveraging sparse computation has become increasingly popular for training and deploying large-scale models, but existing deep learning frameworks lack extensive support for sparse operations. To bridge this gap, we introduce Scorch, a library that seamlessly integrates efficient sparse tensor computation into the PyTorch ecosystem, with an initial focus on inference workloads on CPUs. Scorch provides a flexible and intuitive interface for sparse tensors, supporting diverse sparse data structures. Scorch introduces a compiler stack that automates key optimizations, including automatic loop ordering, tiling, and format inference. Combined with a runtime that adapts its execution to both dense and sparse data, Scorch delivers substantial speedups over hand-written PyTorch Sparse (torch.sparse) operations without sacrificing usability. More importantly, Scorch enables efficient computation of complex sparse operations that lack hand-optimized PyTorch implementations. This flexibility is crucial for exploring novel sparse architectures. We demonstrate Scorch's ease of use and performance gains on diverse deep learning models across multiple domains. With only minimal code changes, Scorch achieves 1.05-5.78x speedups over PyTorch Sparse on end-to-end tasks. Scorch's seamless integration and performance gains make it a valuable addition to the PyTorch ecosystem. We believe Scorch will enable wider exploration of sparsity as a tool for scaling deep learning and inform the development of other sparse libraries.
Authors: Safa Alver, Ali Rahimi-Kalahroudi, Doina Precup
Abstract: In neuroscience, one of the key behavioral tests for determining whether a subject of study exhibits model-based behavior is to study its adaptiveness to local changes in the environment. In reinforcement learning, however, recent studies have shown that modern model-based agents display poor adaptivity to such changes. The main reason for this is that modern agents are typically designed to improve sample efficiency in single task settings and thus do not take into account the challenges that can arise in other settings. In local adaptation settings, one particularly important challenge is in quickly building and maintaining a sufficiently accurate model after a local change. This is challenging for deep model-based agents as their models and replay buffers are monolithic structures lacking distribution shift handling capabilities. In this study, we show that the conceptually simple idea of partial models can allow deep model-based agents to overcome this challenge and thus allow for building locally adaptive model-based agents. By modeling the different parts of the state space through different models, the agent can not only maintain a model that is accurate across the state space, but it can also quickly adapt it in the presence of a local change in the environment. We demonstrate this by showing that the use of partial models in agents such as deep Dyna-Q, PlaNet and Dreamer can allow for them to effectively adapt to the local changes in their environments.
Authors: Zejun Li, Ruipu Luo, Jiwen Zhang, Minghui Qiu, Zhongyu Wei
Abstract: While large multi-modal models (LMMs) have exhibited impressive capabilities across diverse tasks, their effectiveness in handling complex tasks has been limited by the prevailing single-step reasoning paradigm. To this end, this paper proposes VoCoT, a multi-step Visually grounded object-centric Chain-of-Thought reasoning framework tailored for inference with LMMs. VoCoT is characterized by two key features: (1) object-centric reasoning paths that revolve around cross-modal shared object-level information, and (2) visually grounded representation of object concepts in a multi-modal interleaved and aligned manner, which effectively bridges the modality gap within LMMs during long-term generation. Additionally, we construct an instruction dataset to facilitate LMMs in adapting to reasoning with VoCoT. By introducing VoCoT into the prevalent open-source LMM architecture, we introduce VolCano. With only 7B parameters and limited input resolution, VolCano demonstrates excellent performance across various scenarios, surpassing SOTA models, including GPT-4V, in tasks requiring complex reasoning. Our code, data and model will be available at https://github.com/RupertLuo/VoCoT.
Authors: Friedemann Zenke, Axel Laborieux
Abstract: Humans and animals learn throughout life. Such continual learning is crucial for intelligence. In this chapter, we examine the pivotal role plasticity mechanisms with complex internal synaptic dynamics could play in enabling this ability in neural networks. By surveying theoretical research, we highlight two fundamental enablers for continual learning. First, synaptic plasticity mechanisms must maintain and evolve an internal state over several behaviorally relevant timescales. Second, plasticity algorithms must leverage the internal state to intelligently regulate plasticity at individual synapses to facilitate the seamless integration of new memories while avoiding detrimental interference with existing ones. Our chapter covers successful applications of these principles to deep neural networks and underscores the significance of synaptic metaplasticity in sustaining continual learning capabilities. Finally, we outline avenues for further research to understand the brain's superb continual learning abilities and harness similar mechanisms for artificial intelligence systems.
Authors: Moein Khajehnejad, Forough Habibollahi, Aswin Paul, Adeel Razi, Brett J. Kagan
Abstract: How do biological systems and machine learning algorithms compare in the number of samples required to show significant improvements in completing a task? We compared the learning efficiency of in vitro biological neural networks to the state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms in a simplified simulation of the game `Pong'. Using DishBrain, a system that embodies in vitro neural networks with in silico computation using a high-density multi-electrode array, we contrasted the learning rate and the performance of these biological systems against time-matched learning from three state-of-the-art deep RL algorithms (i.e., DQN, A2C, and PPO) in the same game environment. This allowed a meaningful comparison between biological neural systems and deep RL. We find that when samples are limited to a real-world time course, even these very simple biological cultures outperformed deep RL algorithms across various game performance characteristics, implying a higher sample efficiency. Ultimately, even when tested across multiple types of information input to assess the impact of higher dimensional data input, biological neurons showcased faster learning than all deep reinforcement learning agents.
Authors: Chen Zhang, Lecheng Jia, Wei Zhang, Ning Wen
Abstract: The advent of modern data processing has led to an increasing tendency towards interdisciplinarity, which frequently involves the importation of different technical approaches. Consequently, there is an urgent need for a unified data control system to facilitate the integration of varying libraries. This integration is of profound significance in accelerating prototype verification, optimising algorithm performance and minimising maintenance costs. This paper presents a novel functional programming (FP) paradigm based on the Python architecture and associated suites in programming practice, designed for the integration of pipelines of different data mapping operations. In particular, the solution is intended for the integration of scientific computation flows, which affords a robust yet flexible solution for the aforementioned challenges.
Authors: Rony Abecidan (CRIStAL), Vincent Itier (IMT Nord Europe, CRIStAL), J\'er\'emie Boulanger (CRIStAL), Patrick Bas (CRIStAL), Tom\'a\v{s} Pevn\'y (CTU)
Abstract: The proliferation of image manipulation for unethical purposes poses significant challenges in social networks. One particularly concerning method is Image Steganography, allowing individuals to hide illegal information in digital images without arousing suspicions. Such a technique pose severe security risks, making it crucial to develop effective steganalysis methods enabling to detect manipulated images for clandestine communications. Although significant advancements have been achieved with machine learning models, a critical issue remains: the disparity between the controlled datasets used to train steganalysis models against real-world datasets of forensic practitioners, undermining severely the practical effectiveness of standardized steganalysis models. In this paper, we address this issue focusing on a realistic scenario where practitioners lack crucial information about the limited target set of images under analysis, including details about their development process and even whereas it contains manipulated images or not. By leveraging geometric alignment and distribution matching of source and target residuals, we develop TADA (Target Alignment through Data Adaptation), a novel methodology enabling to emulate sources aligned with specific targets in steganalysis, which is also relevant for highly unbalanced targets. The emulator is represented by a light convolutional network trained to align distributions of image residuals. Experimental validation demonstrates the potential of our strategy over traditional methods fighting covariate shift in steganalysis.
Authors: Yuzi Yan, Jialian Li, Yipin Zhang, Dong Yan
Abstract: This paper presents an in-depth examination of the evolution and interplay of cognitive and expressive capabilities in large language models (LLMs), with a specific focus on Baichuan-7B and Baichuan-33B, an advanced bilingual (Chinese and English) LLM series. We define and explore the model's cognitive and expressive capabilities through linear representations across three critical phases: Pretraining, Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), and Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). Cognitive capability is defined as the quantity and quality of information conveyed by the neuron output vectors within the network, similar to the neural signal processing in human cognition. Expressive capability is defined as the model's capability to produce word-level output. Our findings unveil a sequential development pattern, where cognitive abilities are largely established during Pretraining, whereas expressive abilities predominantly advance during SFT and RLHF. Statistical analyses confirm a significant correlation between the two capabilities, suggesting that cognitive capacity may limit expressive potential. The paper also explores the theoretical underpinnings of these divergent developmental trajectories and their connection to the LLMs' architectural design. Moreover, we evaluate various optimization-independent strategies, such as few-shot learning and repeated sampling, which bridge the gap between cognitive and expressive capabilities. This research reveals the potential connection between the hidden space and the output space, contributing valuable insights into the interpretability and controllability of their training processes.
Authors: Yixiong Zou, Shanghang Zhang, Haichen Zhou, Yuhua Li, Ruixuan Li
Abstract: Few-shot class-incremental learning (FSCIL) is proposed to continually learn from novel classes with only a few samples after the (pre-)training on base classes with sufficient data. However, this remains a challenge. In contrast, humans can easily recognize novel classes with a few samples. Cognitive science demonstrates that an important component of such human capability is compositional learning. This involves identifying visual primitives from learned knowledge and then composing new concepts using these transferred primitives, making incremental learning both effective and interpretable. To imitate human compositional learning, we propose a cognitive-inspired method for the FSCIL task. We define and build a compositional model based on set similarities, and then equip it with a primitive composition module and a primitive reuse module. In the primitive composition module, we propose to utilize the Centered Kernel Alignment (CKA) similarity to approximate the similarity between primitive sets, allowing the training and evaluation based on primitive compositions. In the primitive reuse module, we enhance primitive reusability by classifying inputs based on primitives replaced with the closest primitives from other classes. Experiments on three datasets validate our method, showing it outperforms current state-of-the-art methods with improved interpretability. Our code is available at https://github.com/Zoilsen/Comp-FSCIL.
Authors: Zhenyu Bai, Pranav Dangi, Huize Li, Tulika Mitra
Abstract: Efficiently supporting long context length is crucial for Transformer models. The quadratic complexity of the self-attention computation plagues traditional Transformers. Sliding window-based static sparse attention mitigates the problem by limiting the attention scope of the input tokens, reducing the theoretical complexity from quadratic to linear. Although the sparsity induced by window attention is highly structured, it does not align perfectly with the microarchitecture of the conventional accelerators, leading to suboptimal implementation. In response, we propose a dataflow-aware FPGA-based accelerator design, SWAT, that efficiently leverages the sparsity to achieve scalable performance for long input. The proposed microarchitecture is based on a design that maximizes data reuse by using a combination of row-wise dataflow, kernel fusion optimization, and an input-stationary design considering the distributed memory and computation resources of FPGA. Consequently, it achieves up to 22$\times$ and 5.7$\times$ improvement in latency and energy efficiency compared to the baseline FPGA-based accelerator and 15$\times$ energy efficiency compared to GPU-based solution.
Authors: Renqiang Luo, Huafei Huang, Shuo Yu, Zhuoyang Han, Estrid He, Xiuzhen Zhang, Feng Xia
Abstract: Fairness-aware Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) often face a challenging trade-off, where prioritizing fairness may require compromising utility. In this work, we re-examine fairness through the lens of spectral graph theory, aiming to reconcile fairness and utility within the framework of spectral graph learning. We explore the correlation between sensitive features and spectrum in GNNs, using theoretical analysis to delineate the similarity between original sensitive features and those after convolution under different spectrum. Our analysis reveals a reduction in the impact of similarity when the eigenvectors associated with the largest magnitude eigenvalue exhibit directional similarity. Based on these theoretical insights, we propose FUGNN, a novel spectral graph learning approach that harmonizes the conflict between fairness and utility. FUGNN ensures algorithmic fairness and utility by truncating the spectrum and optimizing eigenvector distribution during the encoding process. The fairness-aware eigenvector selection reduces the impact of convolution on sensitive features while concurrently minimizing the sacrifice of utility. FUGNN further optimizes the distribution of eigenvectors through a transformer architecture. By incorporating the optimized spectrum into the graph convolution network, FUGNN effectively learns node representations. Experiments on six real-world datasets demonstrate the superiority of FUGNN over baseline methods. The codes are available at https://github.com/yushuowiki/FUGNN.
Authors: Chiara Fumelli, Anirvan Dutta, Mohsen Kaboli
Abstract: Motivated by the growing interest in enhancing intuitive physical Human-Machine Interaction (HRI/HVI), this study aims to propose a robust tactile hand gesture recognition system. We performed a comprehensive evaluation of different hand gesture recognition approaches for a large area tactile sensing interface (touch interface) constructed from conductive textiles. Our evaluation encompassed traditional feature engineering methods, as well as contemporary deep learning techniques capable of real-time interpretation of a range of hand gestures, accommodating variations in hand sizes, movement velocities, applied pressure levels, and interaction points. Our extensive analysis of the various methods makes a significant contribution to tactile-based gesture recognition in the field of human-machine interaction.
Authors: Hao Wu, Xingjian Shi, Ziyue Huang, Penghao Zhao, Wei Xiong, Jinbao Xue, Yangyu Tao, Xiaomeng Huang, Weiyan Wang
Abstract: Data-driven deep learning has emerged as the new paradigm to model complex physical space-time systems. These data-driven methods learn patterns by optimizing statistical metrics and tend to overlook the adherence to physical laws, unlike traditional model-driven numerical methods. Thus, they often generate predictions that are not physically realistic. On the other hand, by sampling a large amount of high quality predictions from a data-driven model, some predictions will be more physically plausible than the others and closer to what will happen in the future. Based on this observation, we propose \emph{Beam search by Vector Quantization} (BeamVQ) to enhance the physical alignment of data-driven space-time forecasting models. The key of BeamVQ is to train model on self-generated samples filtered with physics-aware metrics. To be flexibly support different backbone architectures, BeamVQ leverages a code bank to transform any encoder-decoder model to the continuous state space into discrete codes. Afterwards, it iteratively employs beam search to sample high-quality sequences, retains those with the highest physics-aware scores, and trains model on the new dataset. Comprehensive experiments show that BeamVQ not only gave an average statistical skill score boost for more than 32% for ten backbones on five datasets, but also significantly enhances physics-aware metrics.
Authors: Jiawei Shao, Jingwen Tong, Qiong Wu, Wei Guo, Zijian Li, Zehong Lin, Jun Zhang
Abstract: The rapid evolution of wireless technologies and the growing complexity of network infrastructures necessitate a paradigm shift in how communication networks are designed, configured, and managed. Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have sparked interest in their potential to revolutionize wireless communication systems. However, existing studies on LLMs for wireless systems are limited to a direct application for telecom language understanding. To empower LLMs with knowledge and expertise in the wireless domain, this paper proposes WirelessLLM, a comprehensive framework for adapting and enhancing LLMs to address the unique challenges and requirements of wireless communication networks. We first identify three foundational principles that underpin WirelessLLM: knowledge alignment, knowledge fusion, and knowledge evolution. Then, we investigate the enabling technologies to build WirelessLLM, including prompt engineering, retrieval augmented generation, tool usage, multi-modal pre-training, and domain-specific fine-tuning. Moreover, we present three case studies to demonstrate the practical applicability and benefits of WirelessLLM for solving typical problems in wireless networks. Finally, we conclude this paper by highlighting key challenges and outlining potential avenues for future research.
Authors: Houxing Ren, Mingjie Zhan, Zhongyuan Wu, Aojun Zhou, Junting Pan, Hongsheng Li
Abstract: Code generation plays a crucial role in various tasks, such as code auto-completion and mathematical reasoning. Previous work has proposed numerous methods to enhance code generation performance, including integrating feedback from the compiler. Inspired by this, we present ReflectionCoder, a novel approach that effectively leverages reflection sequences constructed by integrating compiler feedback to improve one-off code generation performance. Furthermore, we propose reflection self-distillation and dynamically masked distillation to effectively utilize these reflection sequences. Extensive experiments on three benchmarks, i.e., HumanEval (+), MBPP (+), and MultiPl-E, demonstrate that models fine-tuned with our method achieve state-of-the-art performance. Notably, ReflectionCoder-DeepSeek-Coder-33B reaches pass@1 of 82.9 (76.8) on HumanEval (+) and 84.1 (72.0) on MBPP (+), on par with GPT-3.5-Turbo and Claude-3-opus, and surpasses early GPT-4. Beyond the code domain, we believe this approach can benefit other domains that focus on final results and require long reasoning paths. Code and data are available at https://github.com/SenseLLM/ReflectionCoder.
Authors: Yidong Liao, Xiao-Ming Zhang, Chris Ferrie
Abstract: Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are powerful machine learning models that excel at analyzing structured data represented as graphs, demonstrating remarkable performance in applications like social network analysis and recommendation systems. However, classical GNNs face scalability challenges when dealing with large-scale graphs. This paper proposes frameworks for implementing GNNs on quantum computers to potentially address the challenges. We devise quantum algorithms corresponding to the three fundamental types of classical GNNs: Graph Convolutional Networks, Graph Attention Networks, and Message-Passing GNNs. A complexity analysis of our quantum implementation of the Simplified Graph Convolutional (SGC) Network shows potential quantum advantages over its classical counterpart, with significant improvements in time and space complexities. Our complexities can have trade-offs between the two: when optimizing for minimal circuit depth, our quantum SGC achieves logarithmic time complexity in the input sizes (albeit at the cost of linear space complexity). When optimizing for minimal qubit usage, the quantum SGC exhibits space complexity logarithmic in the input sizes, offering an exponential reduction compared to classical SGCs, while still maintaining better time complexity. These results suggest our Quantum GNN frameworks could efficiently process large-scale graphs. This work paves the way for implementing more advanced Graph Neural Network models on quantum computers, opening new possibilities in quantum machine learning for analyzing graph-structured data.
Authors: Dixuan Wang, Yanda Li, Junyuan Jiang, Zepeng Ding, Guochao Jiang, Jiaqing Liang, Deqing Yang
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown remarkable capabilities in language understanding and generation. Nonetheless, it was also witnessed that LLMs tend to produce inaccurate responses to specific queries. This deficiency can be traced to the tokenization step LLMs must undergo, which is an inevitable limitation inherent to all LLMs. In fact, incorrect tokenization is the critical point that hinders LLMs in understanding the input precisely, thus leading to unsatisfactory output. To demonstrate this flaw of LLMs, we construct an adversarial dataset, named as $\textbf{ADT (Adversarial Dataset for Tokenizer)}$, which draws upon the vocabularies of various open-source LLMs to challenge LLMs' tokenization. ADT consists of two subsets: the manually constructed ADT-Human and the automatically generated ADT-Auto. Our empirical results reveal that our ADT is highly effective on challenging the tokenization of leading LLMs, including GPT-4o, Llama-3, Qwen2.5-max and so on, thus degrading these LLMs' capabilities. Moreover, our method of automatic data generation has been proven efficient and robust, which can be applied to any open-source LLMs. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to investigating LLMs' vulnerability in terms of challenging their token segmentation, which will shed light on the subsequent research of improving LLMs' capabilities through optimizing their tokenization process and algorithms.
Authors: Jordina Franc\`es de Mas, Juliana Bowles
Abstract: This paper presents a novel simplification calculus for propositional logic derived from Peirce's existential graphs' rules of inference and implication graphs. Our rules can be applied to propositional logic formulae in nested form, are equivalence-preserving, guarantee a monotonically decreasing number of variables, clauses and literals, and maximise the preservation of structural problem information. Our techniques can also be seen as higher-level SAT preprocessing, and we show how one of our rules (TWSR) generalises and streamlines most of the known equivalence-preserving SAT preprocessing methods. In addition, we propose a simplification procedure based on the systematic application of two of our rules (EPR and TWSR) which is solver-agnostic and can be used to simplify large Boolean satisfiability problems and propositional formulae in arbitrary form, and we provide a formal analysis of its algorithmic complexity in terms of space and time. Finally, we show how our rules can be further extended with a novel n-ary implication graph to capture all known equivalence-preserving preprocessing procedures.
Authors: Julian Arnold, Flemming Holtorf, Frank Sch\"afer, Niels L\"orch
Abstract: In a physical system, changing parameters such as temperature can induce a phase transition: an abrupt change from one state of matter to another. Analogous phenomena have recently been observed in large language models. Typically, the task of identifying phase transitions requires human analysis and some prior understanding of the system to narrow down which low-dimensional properties to monitor and analyze. Statistical methods for the automated detection of phase transitions from data have recently been proposed within the physics community. These methods are largely system agnostic and, as shown here, can be adapted to study the behavior of large language models. In particular, we quantify distributional changes in the generated output via statistical distances, which can be efficiently estimated with access to the probability distribution over next-tokens. This versatile approach is capable of discovering new phases of behavior and unexplored transitions -- an ability that is particularly exciting in light of the rapid development of language models and their emergent capabilities.
Authors: Steven Landgraf, Markus Hillemann, Theodor Kapler, Markus Ulrich
Abstract: While a number of promising uncertainty quantification methods have been proposed to address the prevailing shortcomings of deep neural networks like overconfidence and lack of explainability, quantifying predictive uncertainties in the context of joint semantic segmentation and monocular depth estimation has not been explored yet. Since many real-world applications are multi-modal in nature and, hence, have the potential to benefit from multi-task learning, this is a substantial gap in current literature. To this end, we conduct a comprehensive series of experiments to study how multi-task learning influences the quality of uncertainty estimates in comparison to solving both tasks separately.
Authors: Houxing Ren, Mingjie Zhan, Zhongyuan Wu, Hongsheng Li
Abstract: In infilling tasks, sub-tokens, representing instances where a complete token is segmented into two parts, often emerge at the boundaries of prefixes, middles, and suffixes. Traditional methods focused on training models at the token level, leading to sub-optimal performance in character-level infilling tasks during the inference stage. Alternately, some approaches considered character-level infilling, but they relied on predicting sub-tokens in inference, yet this strategy diminished ability in character-level infilling tasks due to the large perplexity of the model on sub-tokens. In this paper, we introduce FIM-SE, which stands for Fill-In-the-Middle with both Starting and Ending character constraints. The proposed method addresses character-level infilling tasks by utilizing a line-level format to avoid predicting any sub-token in inference. In addition, we incorporate two special tokens to signify the rest of the incomplete lines, thereby enhancing generation guidance. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed approach surpasses previous methods, offering a significant advantage. Code is available at https://github.com/SenseLLM/FIM-SE.
Authors: Haoyu Zhao, Wenhang Ge, Ying-cong Chen
Abstract: Visual grounding is an essential tool that links user-provided text queries with query-specific regions within an image. Despite advancements in visual grounding models, their ability to comprehend complex queries remains limited. To overcome this limitation, we introduce LLM-Optic, an innovative method that utilizes Large Language Models (LLMs) as an optical lens to enhance existing visual grounding models in comprehending complex text queries involving intricate text structures, multiple objects, or object spatial relationships, situations that current models struggle with. LLM-Optic first employs an LLM as a Text Grounder to interpret complex text queries and accurately identify objects the user intends to locate. Then a pre-trained visual grounding model is used to generate candidate bounding boxes given the refined query by the Text Grounder. After that, LLM-Optic annotates the candidate bounding boxes with numerical marks to establish a connection between text and specific image regions, thereby linking two distinct modalities. Finally, it employs a Large Multimodal Model (LMM) as a Visual Grounder to select the marked candidate objects that best correspond to the original text query. Through LLM-Optic, we have achieved universal visual grounding, which allows for the detection of arbitrary objects specified by arbitrary human language input. Importantly, our method achieves this enhancement without requiring additional training or fine-tuning. Extensive experiments across various challenging benchmarks demonstrate that LLM-Optic achieves state-of-the-art zero-shot visual grounding capabilities.
Authors: Shujun Yang, Yu Zhang, Yao Ding, Danfeng Hong
Abstract: Insufficient prior knowledge of a captured hyperspectral image (HSI) scene may lead the experts or the automatic labeling systems to offer incorrect labels or ambiguous labels (i.e., assigning each training sample to a group of candidate labels, among which only one of them is valid; this is also known as partial label learning) during the labeling process. Accordingly, how to learn from such data with ambiguous labels is a problem of great practical importance. In this paper, we propose a novel superpixelwise low-rank approximation (LRA)-based partial label learning method, namely SLAP, which is the first to take into account partial label learning in HSI classification. SLAP is mainly composed of two phases: disambiguating the training labels and acquiring the predictive model. Specifically, in the first phase, we propose a superpixelwise LRA-based model, preparing the affinity graph for the subsequent label propagation process while extracting the discriminative representation to enhance the following classification task of the second phase. Then to disambiguate the training labels, label propagation propagates the labeling information via the affinity graph of training pixels. In the second phase, we take advantage of the resulting disambiguated training labels and the discriminative representations to enhance the classification performance. The extensive experiments validate the advantage of the proposed SLAP method over state-of-the-art methods.
Authors: Peratham Wiriyathammabhum
Abstract: This paper presents a mixture version of the method-of-moment unsupervised lexicon classification by an incorporation of a Dirichlet process.
Authors: Long Cheng, Qihao Shao, Christine Zhao, Sheng Bi, Gina-Anne Levow
Abstract: Cross-lingual emotion detection allows us to analyze global trends, public opinion, and social phenomena at scale. We participated in the Explainability of Cross-lingual Emotion Detection (EXALT) shared task, achieving an F1-score of 0.6046 on the evaluation set for the emotion detection sub-task. Our system outperformed the baseline by more than 0.16 F1-score absolute, and ranked second amongst competing systems. We conducted experiments using fine-tuning, zero-shot learning, and few-shot learning for Large Language Model (LLM)-based models as well as embedding-based BiLSTM and KNN for non-LLM-based techniques. Additionally, we introduced two novel methods: the Multi-Iteration Agentic Workflow and the Multi-Binary-Classifier Agentic Workflow. We found that LLM-based approaches provided good performance on multilingual emotion detection. Furthermore, ensembles combining all our experimented models yielded higher F1-scores than any single approach alone.
Authors: Cristian Rodriguez-Opazo, Ehsan Abbasnejad, Damien Teney, Edison Marrese-Taylor, Hamed Damirchi, Anton van den Hengel
Abstract: Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining (CLIP) stands out as a prominent method for image representation learning. Various architectures, from vision transformers (ViTs) to convolutional networks (ResNets) have been trained with CLIP to serve as general solutions to diverse vision tasks. This paper explores the differences across various CLIP-trained vision backbones. Despite using the same data and training objective, we find that these architectures have notably different representations, different classification performance across datasets, and different robustness properties to certain types of image perturbations. Our findings indicate a remarkable possible synergy across backbones by leveraging their respective strengths. In principle, classification accuracy could be improved by over 40 percentage with an informed selection of the optimal backbone per test example.Using this insight, we develop a straightforward yet powerful approach to adaptively ensemble multiple backbones. The approach uses as few as one labeled example per class to tune the adaptive combination of backbones. On a large collection of datasets, the method achieves a remarkable increase in accuracy of up to 39.1% over the best single backbone, well beyond traditional ensembles
Authors: Jingqing Ruan, Ziyue Li, Hua Wei, Haoyuan Jiang, Jiaming Lu, Xuantang Xiong, Hangyu Mao, Rui Zhao
Abstract: Effective multi-intersection collaboration is pivotal for reinforcement-learning-based traffic signal control to alleviate congestion. Existing work mainly chooses neighboring intersections as collaborators. However, quite an amount of congestion, even some wide-range congestion, is caused by non-neighbors failing to collaborate. To address these issues, we propose to separate the collaborator selection as a second policy to be learned, concurrently being updated with the original signal-controlling policy. Specifically, the selection policy in real-time adaptively selects the best teammates according to phase- and intersection-level features. Empirical results on both synthetic and real-world datasets provide robust validation for the superiority of our approach, offering significant improvements over existing state-of-the-art methods. The code is available at https://github.com/AnonymousAccountss/CoSLight.
Authors: Yuqing Zhang, Yuan Liu, Zhiyu Xie, Lei Yang, Zhongyuan Liu, Mengzhou Yang, Runze Zhang, Qilong Kou, Cheng Lin, Wenping Wang, Xiaogang Jin
Abstract: 2D diffusion model, which often contains unwanted baked-in shading effects and results in unrealistic rendering effects in the downstream applications. Generating Physically Based Rendering (PBR) materials instead of just RGB textures would be a promising solution. However, directly distilling the PBR material parameters from 2D diffusion models still suffers from incorrect material decomposition, such as baked-in shading effects in albedo. We introduce DreamMat, an innovative approach to resolve the aforementioned problem, to generate high-quality PBR materials from text descriptions. We find out that the main reason for the incorrect material distillation is that large-scale 2D diffusion models are only trained to generate final shading colors, resulting in insufficient constraints on material decomposition during distillation. To tackle this problem, we first finetune a new light-aware 2D diffusion model to condition on a given lighting environment and generate the shading results on this specific lighting condition. Then, by applying the same environment lights in the material distillation, DreamMat can generate high-quality PBR materials that are not only consistent with the given geometry but also free from any baked-in shading effects in albedo. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the materials produced through our methods exhibit greater visual appeal to users and achieve significantly superior rendering quality compared to baseline methods, which are preferable for downstream tasks such as game and film production.
Authors: Rapha\"el Romero, Maarten Buyl, Tijl De Bie, Jefrey Lijffijt
Abstract: Dynamic Link Prediction (DLP) addresses the prediction of future links in evolving networks. However, accurately portraying the performance of DLP algorithms poses challenges that might impede progress in the field. Importantly, common evaluation pipelines usually calculate ranking or binary classification metrics, where the scores of observed interactions (positives) are compared with those of randomly generated ones (negatives). However, a single metric is not sufficient to fully capture the differences between DLP algorithms, and is prone to overly optimistic performance evaluation. Instead, an in-depth evaluation should reflect performance variations across different nodes, edges, and time segments. In this work, we contribute tools to perform such a comprehensive evaluation. (1) We propose Birth-Death diagrams, a simple but powerful visualization technique that illustrates the effect of time-based train-test splitting on the difficulty of DLP on a given dataset. (2) We describe an exhaustive taxonomy of negative sampling methods that can be used at evaluation time. (3) We carry out an empirical study of the effect of the different negative sampling strategies. Our comparison between heuristics and state-of-the-art memory-based methods on various real-world datasets confirms a strong effect of using different negative sampling strategies on the test Area Under the Curve (AUC). Moreover, we conduct a visual exploration of the prediction, with additional insights on which different types of errors are prominent over time.
Authors: Yiming Li, Zehong Wang, Yue Wang, Zhiding Yu, Zan Gojcic, Marco Pavone, Chen Feng, Jose M. Alvarez
Abstract: Humans naturally retain memories of permanent elements, while ephemeral moments often slip through the cracks of memory. This selective retention is crucial for robotic perception, localization, and mapping. To endow robots with this capability, we introduce 3D Gaussian Mapping (3DGM), a self-supervised, camera-only offline mapping framework grounded in 3D Gaussian Splatting. 3DGM converts multitraverse RGB videos from the same region into a Gaussian-based environmental map while concurrently performing 2D ephemeral object segmentation. Our key observation is that the environment remains consistent across traversals, while objects frequently change. This allows us to exploit self-supervision from repeated traversals to achieve environment-object decomposition. More specifically, 3DGM formulates multitraverse environmental mapping as a robust differentiable rendering problem, treating pixels of the environment and objects as inliers and outliers, respectively. Using robust feature distillation, feature residuals mining, and robust optimization, 3DGM jointly performs 3D mapping and 2D segmentation without human intervention. We build the Mapverse benchmark, sourced from the Ithaca365 and nuPlan datasets, to evaluate our method in unsupervised 2D segmentation, 3D reconstruction, and neural rendering. Extensive results verify the effectiveness and potential of our method for self-driving and robotics.
Authors: Felipe Maia Polo, Ronald Xu, Lucas Weber, M\'irian Silva, Onkar Bhardwaj, Leshem Choshen, Allysson Flavio Melo de Oliveira, Yuekai Sun, Mikhail Yurochkin
Abstract: Most popular benchmarks for comparing LLMs rely on a limited set of prompt templates, which may not fully capture the LLMs' abilities and can affect the reproducibility of results on leaderboards. Many recent works empirically verify prompt sensitivity and advocate for changes in LLM evaluation. In this paper, we consider the problem of estimating the performance distribution across many prompt variants instead of finding a single prompt to evaluate with. We introduce PromptEval, a method for estimating performance across a large set of prompts borrowing strength across prompts and examples to produce accurate estimates under practical evaluation budgets. The resulting distribution can be used to obtain performance quantiles to construct various robust performance metrics (e.g., top 95% quantile or median). We prove that PromptEval consistently estimates the performance distribution and demonstrate its efficacy empirically on three prominent LLM benchmarks: MMLU, BIG-bench Hard, and LMentry. For example, PromptEval can accurately estimate performance quantiles across 100 prompt templates on MMLU with a budget equivalent to two single-prompt evaluations. Our code and data can be found at https://github.com/felipemaiapolo/prompt-eval.
Authors: Subhash Kantamneni, Ziming Liu, Max Tegmark
Abstract: How do transformers model physics? Do transformers model systems with interpretable analytical solutions, or do they create "alien physics" that are difficult for humans to decipher? We take a step in demystifying this larger puzzle by investigating the simple harmonic oscillator (SHO), $\ddot{x}+2\gamma \dot{x}+\omega_0^2x=0$, one of the most fundamental systems in physics. Our goal is to identify the methods transformers use to model the SHO, and to do so we hypothesize and evaluate possible methods by analyzing the encoding of these methods' intermediates. We develop four criteria for the use of a method within the simple testbed of linear regression, where our method is $y = wx$ and our intermediate is $w$: (1) Can the intermediate be predicted from hidden states? (2) Is the intermediate's encoding quality correlated with model performance? (3) Can the majority of variance in hidden states be explained by the intermediate? (4) Can we intervene on hidden states to produce predictable outcomes? Armed with these two correlational (1,2), weak causal (3) and strong causal (4) criteria, we determine that transformers use known numerical methods to model trajectories of the simple harmonic oscillator, specifically the matrix exponential method. Our analysis framework can conveniently extend to high-dimensional linear systems and nonlinear systems, which we hope will help reveal the "world model" hidden in transformers.
Authors: Logan Murphy, Kaiyu Yang, Jialiang Sun, Zhaoyu Li, Anima Anandkumar, Xujie Si
Abstract: Autoformalization involves automatically translating informal math into formal theorems and proofs that are machine-verifiable. Euclidean geometry provides an interesting and controllable domain for studying autoformalization. In this paper, we introduce a neuro-symbolic framework for autoformalizing Euclidean geometry, which combines domain knowledge, SMT solvers, and large language models (LLMs). One challenge in Euclidean geometry is that informal proofs rely on diagrams, leaving gaps in texts that are hard to formalize. To address this issue, we use theorem provers to fill in such diagrammatic information automatically, so that the LLM only needs to autoformalize the explicit textual steps, making it easier for the model. We also provide automatic semantic evaluation for autoformalized theorem statements. We construct LeanEuclid, an autoformalization benchmark consisting of problems from Euclid's Elements and the UniGeo dataset formalized in the Lean proof assistant. Experiments with GPT-4 and GPT-4V show the capability and limitations of state-of-the-art LLMs on autoformalizing geometry problems. The data and code are available at https://github.com/loganrjmurphy/LeanEuclid.
Authors: Adriana Hugessen, Roger Creus Castanyer, Faisal Mohamed, Glen Berseth
Abstract: Both entropy-minimizing and entropy-maximizing (curiosity) objectives for unsupervised reinforcement learning (RL) have been shown to be effective in different environments, depending on the environment's level of natural entropy. However, neither method alone results in an agent that will consistently learn intelligent behavior across environments. In an effort to find a single entropy-based method that will encourage emergent behaviors in any environment, we propose an agent that can adapt its objective online, depending on the entropy conditions by framing the choice as a multi-armed bandit problem. We devise a novel intrinsic feedback signal for the bandit, which captures the agent's ability to control the entropy in its environment. We demonstrate that such agents can learn to control entropy and exhibit emergent behaviors in both high- and low-entropy regimes and can learn skillful behaviors in benchmark tasks. Videos of the trained agents and summarized findings can be found on our project page https://sites.google.com/view/surprise-adaptive-agents
URLs: https://sites.google.com/view/surprise-adaptive-agents
Authors: Shengyuan Ye, Jiangsu Du, Liekang Zeng, Wenzhong Ou, Xiaowen Chu, Yutong Lu, Xu Chen
Abstract: Transformer-based models have unlocked a plethora of powerful intelligent applications at the edge, such as voice assistant in smart home. Traditional deployment approaches offload the inference workloads to the remote cloud server, which would induce substantial pressure on the backbone network as well as raise users' privacy concerns. To address that, in-situ inference has been recently recognized for edge intelligence, but it still confronts significant challenges stemming from the conflict between intensive workloads and limited on-device computing resources. In this paper, we leverage our observation that many edge environments usually comprise a rich set of accompanying trusted edge devices with idle resources and propose Galaxy, a collaborative edge AI system that breaks the resource walls across heterogeneous edge devices for efficient Transformer inference acceleration. Galaxy introduces a novel hybrid model parallelism to orchestrate collaborative inference, along with a heterogeneity-aware parallelism planning for fully exploiting the resource potential. Furthermore, Galaxy devises a tile-based fine-grained overlapping of communication and computation to mitigate the impact of tensor synchronizations on inference latency under bandwidth-constrained edge environments. Extensive evaluation based on prototype implementation demonstrates that Galaxy remarkably outperforms state-of-the-art approaches under various edge environment setups, achieving up to 2.5x end-to-end latency reduction.
Authors: Vasile Ionut Remus Iga, Gheorghe Cosmin Silaghi
Abstract: Recent work shown the capability of Large Language Models (LLMs) to solve tasks related to Knowledge Graphs, such as Knowledge Graph Completion, even in Zero- or Few-Shot paradigms. However, they are known to hallucinate answers, or output results in a non-deterministic manner, thus leading to wrongly reasoned responses, even if they satisfy the user's demands. To highlight opportunities and challenges in knowledge graphs-related tasks, we experiment with two distinguished LLMs, namely Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1, and gpt-3.5-turbo-0125, on Knowledge Graph Completion for static knowledge graphs, using prompts constructed following the TELeR taxonomy, in Zero- and One-Shot contexts, on a Task-Oriented Dialogue system use case. When evaluated using both strict and flexible metrics measurement manners, our results show that LLMs could be fit for such a task if prompts encapsulate sufficient information and relevant examples.
Authors: Rapha\"el Romero, Jefrey Lijffijt, Riccardo Rastelli, Marco Corneli, Tijl De Bie
Abstract: Representing the nodes of continuous-time temporal graphs in a low-dimensional latent space has wide-ranging applications, from prediction to visualization. Yet, analyzing continuous-time relational data with timestamped interactions introduces unique challenges due to its sparsity. Merely embedding nodes as trajectories in the latent space overlooks this sparsity, emphasizing the need to quantify uncertainty around the latent positions. In this paper, we propose TGNE (\textbf{T}emporal \textbf{G}aussian \textbf{N}etwork \textbf{E}mbedding), an innovative method that bridges two distinct strands of literature: the statistical analysis of networks via Latent Space Models (LSM)\cite{Hoff2002} and temporal graph machine learning. TGNE embeds nodes as piece-wise linear trajectories of Gaussian distributions in the latent space, capturing both structural information and uncertainty around the trajectories. We evaluate TGNE's effectiveness in reconstructing the original graph and modelling uncertainty. The results demonstrate that TGNE generates competitive time-varying embedding locations compared to common baselines for reconstructing unobserved edge interactions based on observed edges. Furthermore, the uncertainty estimates align with the time-varying degree distribution in the network, providing valuable insights into the temporal dynamics of the graph. To facilitate reproducibility, we provide an open-source implementation of TGNE at \url{https://github.com/aida-ugent/tgne}.
Authors: Runqian Wang, Soumya Ghosh, David Cox, Diego Antognini, Aude Oliva, Rogerio Feris, Leonid Karlinsky
Abstract: Low-rank adapters (LoRA) and their variants are popular parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) techniques that closely match full model fine-tune performance while requiring only a small number of additional parameters. These additional LoRA parameters are specific to the base model being adapted. When the base model needs to be deprecated and replaced with a new one, all the associated LoRA modules need to be re-trained. Such re-training requires access to the data used to train the LoRA for the original base model. This is especially problematic for commercial cloud applications where the LoRA modules and the base models are hosted by service providers who may not be allowed to host proprietary client task data. To address this challenge, we propose $\textit{Trans-LoRA}$ -- a novel method for lossless, nearly data-free transfer of LoRAs across base models. Our approach relies on synthetic data to transfer LoRA modules. Using large language models, we design a synthetic data generator to approximate the data-generating process of the $\textit{observed}$ task data subset. Training on the resulting synthetic dataset transfers LoRA modules to new models. We show the effectiveness of our approach using both LLama and Gemma model families. Our approach achieves lossless (mostly improved) LoRA transfer between models within and across different base model families, and even between different PEFT methods, on a wide variety of tasks.
Authors: Zhi Zheng, Shunyu Yao, Zhenkun Wang, Xialiang Tong, Mingxuan Yuan, Ke Tang
Abstract: The min-max vehicle routing problem (min-max VRP) traverses all given customers by assigning several routes and aims to minimize the length of the longest route. Recently, reinforcement learning (RL)-based sequential planning methods have exhibited advantages in solving efficiency and optimality. However, these methods fail to exploit the problem-specific properties in learning representations, resulting in less effective features for decoding optimal routes. This paper considers the sequential planning process of min-max VRPs as two coupled optimization tasks: customer partition for different routes and customer navigation in each route (i.e., partition and navigation). To effectively process min-max VRP instances, we present a novel attention-based Partition-and-Navigation encoder (P&N Encoder) that learns distinct embeddings for partition and navigation. Furthermore, we utilize an inherent symmetry in decoding routes and develop an effective agent-permutation-symmetric (APS) loss function. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed Decoupling-Partition-Navigation (DPN) method significantly surpasses existing learning-based methods in both single-depot and multi-depot min-max VRPs. Our code is available at
Authors: Yifan Xu, Qianwei Wang, Vineet Kamat, Carol Menassa
Abstract: As the number of Persons with Disabilities (PWD), particularly those with one or more physical impairments, increases, there is an increasing demand for assistive robotic technologies that can support independent mobility in the built environment and reduce the burden on caregivers. Current assistive mobility platforms (e.g., robotic wheelchairs) often fail to incorporate user preferences and control, leading to reduced trust and efficiency. Existing shared control algorithms do not allow the incorporation of the user control preferences inside the navigation framework or the path planning algorithm. In addition, existing dynamic local planner algorithms for robotic wheelchairs do not take into account the social spaces of people, potentially leading such platforms to infringe upon these areas and cause discomfort. To address these concerns, this work introduces a novel socially-aware shared autonomy-based navigation system for assistive mobile robotic platforms. Our navigation framework comprises a Global Planner and a Local Planner. To implement the Global Planner, the proposed approach introduces a novel User Preference Field (UPF) theory within its global planning framework, explicitly acknowledging user preferences to adeptly navigate away from congested areas. For the Local Planner, we propose a Socially-aware Shared Control-based Model Predictive Control with Dynamic Control Barrier Function (SS-MPC-DCBF) to adjust movements in real-time, integrating user preferences for safer, more autonomous navigation. Evaluation results show that our Global Planner aligns closely with user preferences compared to baselines, and our Local Planner demonstrates enhanced safety and efficiency in dynamic and static scenarios. This integrated approach fosters trust and autonomy, crucial for the acceptance of assistive mobility technologies in the built environment.
Authors: Gregory Camilli
Abstract: Natural language processing (NLP) is rapidly developing for applications in educational assessment. In this paper, I describe an NLP-based procedure that can be used to support subject matter experts in establishing a crosswalk between item specifications and content standards. This paper extends recent work by proposing and demonstrating the use of multivariate similarity based on embedding vectors for sentences or texts. In particular, a hybrid regression procedure is demonstrated for establishing the match of each content standard to multiple item specifications. The procedure is used to evaluate the match of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for mathematics at grade 4 to the corresponding item specifications for the 2026 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Authors: Kyanna Dagenais, Istvan David
Abstract: Human guidance is often desired in reinforcement learning to improve the performance of the learning agent. However, human insights are often mere opinions and educated guesses rather than well-formulated arguments. While opinions are subject to uncertainty, e.g., due to partial informedness or ignorance about a problem, they also emerge earlier than hard evidence could be produced. Thus, guiding reinforcement learning agents through opinions offers the potential for more performant learning processes, but comes with the challenge of modeling and managing opinions in a formal way. In this article, we present a method to guide reinforcement learning agents through opinions. To this end, we provide an end-to-end method to model and manage advisors' opinions. To assess the utility of the approach, we evaluate it with synthetic and human advisors, at different levels of uncertainty, and under multiple advise strategies. Our results indicate that opinions, even if uncertain, improve the performance of reinforcement learning agents, resulting in higher rewards, more efficient exploration, and a better reinforced policy. Although we demonstrate our approach in a simplified topological running example, our approach is applicable to complex problems with higher dimensions as well.
Authors: Junwei Deng, Ting-Wei Li, Shichang Zhang, Jiaqi Ma
Abstract: Training data attribution (TDA) methods aim to quantify the influence of individual training data points on the model predictions, with broad applications in data-centric AI, such as mislabel detection, data selection, and copyright compensation. However, existing methods in this field, which can be categorized as retraining-based and gradient-based, have struggled with the trade-off between computational efficiency and attribution efficacy. Retraining-based methods can accurately attribute complex non-convex models but are computationally prohibitive, while gradient-based methods are efficient but often fail for non-convex models. Recent research has shown that augmenting gradient-based methods with ensembles of multiple independently trained models can achieve significantly better attribution efficacy. However, this approach remains impractical for very large-scale applications. In this work, we discover that expensive, fully independent training is unnecessary for ensembling the gradient-based methods, and we propose two efficient ensemble strategies, DROPOUT ENSEMBLE and LORA ENSEMBLE, alternative to naive independent ensemble. These strategies significantly reduce training time (up to 80%), serving time (up to 60%), and space cost (up to 80%) while maintaining similar attribution efficacy to the naive independent ensemble. Our extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed strategies are effective across multiple TDA methods on diverse datasets and models, including generative settings, significantly advancing the Pareto frontier of TDA methods with better computational efficiency and attribution efficacy.
Authors: Chinmaya Kausik, Kevin Tan, Ambuj Tewari
Abstract: Sequential decision-making domains such as recommender systems, healthcare and education often have unobserved heterogeneity in the population that can be modeled using latent bandits $-$ a framework where an unobserved latent state determines the model for a trajectory. While the latent bandit framework is compelling, the extent of its generality is unclear. We first address this by establishing a de Finetti theorem for decision processes, and show that $\textit{every}$ exchangeable and coherent stateless decision process is a latent bandit. The latent bandit framework lends itself particularly well to online learning with offline datasets, a problem of growing interest in sequential decision-making. One can leverage offline latent bandit data to learn a complex model for each latent state, so that an agent can simply learn the latent state online to act optimally. We focus on a linear model for a latent bandit with $d_A$-dimensional actions, where the latent states lie in an unknown $d_K$-dimensional subspace for $d_K \ll d_A$. We present SOLD, a novel principled method to learn this subspace from short offline trajectories with guarantees. We then provide two methods to leverage this subspace online: LOCAL-UCB and ProBALL-UCB. We demonstrate that LOCAL-UCB enjoys $\tilde O(\min(d_A\sqrt{T}, d_K\sqrt{T}(1+\sqrt{d_AT/d_KN})))$ regret guarantees, where the effective dimension is lower when the size $N$ of the offline dataset is larger. ProBALL-UCB enjoys a slightly weaker guarantee, but is more practical and computationally efficient. Finally, we establish the efficacy of our methods using experiments on both synthetic data and real-life movie recommendation data from MovieLens.
Authors: Junnan Dong, Qinggang Zhang, Chuang Zhou, Hao Chen, Daochen Zha, Xiao Huang
Abstract: Knowledge-based question answering (KBQA) is widely used in many scenarios that necessitate domain knowledge. Large language models (LLMs) bring opportunities to KBQA, while their costs are significantly higher and absence of domain-specific knowledge during pre-training. We are motivated to combine LLMs and prior small models on knowledge graphs (KGMs) for both inferential accuracy and cost saving. However, it remains challenging since accuracy and cost are not readily combined in the optimization as two distinct metrics. It is also laborious for model selection since different models excel in diverse knowledge. To this end, we propose Coke, a novel cost-efficient strategy for KBQA with LLMs, modeled as a tailored multi-armed bandit problem to minimize calls to LLMs within limited budgets. We first formulate the accuracy expectation with a cluster-level Thompson Sampling for either KGMs or LLMs. A context-aware policy is optimized to further distinguish the expert model subject to the question semantics. The overall decision is bounded by the cost regret according to historical expenditure on failures. Extensive experiments showcase the superior performance of Coke, which moves the Pareto frontier with up to 20.89% saving of GPT-4 fees while achieving a 2.74% higher accuracy on the benchmark datasets.
Authors: Xiaoqiang Lin, Zhongxiang Dai, Arun Verma, See-Kiong Ng, Patrick Jaillet, Bryan Kian Hsiang Low
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable performances in various tasks. However, the performance of LLMs heavily depends on the input prompt, which has given rise to a number of recent works on prompt optimization. However, previous works often require the availability of a numeric score to assess the quality of every prompt. Unfortunately, when a human user interacts with a black-box LLM, attaining such a score is often infeasible and unreliable. Instead, it is usually significantly easier and more reliable to obtain preference feedback from a human user, i.e., showing the user the responses generated from a pair of prompts and asking the user which one is preferred. Therefore, in this paper, we study the problem of prompt optimization with human feedback (POHF), in which we aim to optimize the prompt for a black-box LLM using only human preference feedback. Drawing inspiration from dueling bandits, we design a theoretically principled strategy to select a pair of prompts to query for preference feedback in every iteration, and hence introduce our algorithm named automated POHF (APOHF). We apply our APOHF algorithm to various tasks, including optimizing user instructions, prompt optimization for text-to-image generative models, and response optimization with human feedback (i.e., further refining the response using a variant of our APOHF). The results demonstrate that our APOHF can efficiently find a good prompt using a small number of preference feedback instances. Our code can be found at \url{https://github.com/xqlin98/APOHF}.
Authors: Chenhao Lu, Ruizhe Shi, Yuyao Liu, Kaizhe Hu, Simon S. Du, Huazhe Xu
Abstract: Sequential decision-making algorithms such as reinforcement learning (RL) in real-world scenarios inevitably face environments with partial observability. This paper scrutinizes the effectiveness of a popular architecture, namely Transformers, in Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) and reveals its theoretical limitations. We establish that regular languages, which Transformers struggle to model, are reducible to POMDPs. This poses a significant challenge for Transformers in learning POMDP-specific inductive biases, due to their lack of inherent recurrence found in other models like RNNs. This paper casts doubt on the prevalent belief in Transformers as sequence models for RL and proposes to introduce a point-wise recurrent structure. The Deep Linear Recurrent Unit (LRU) emerges as a well-suited alternative for Partially Observable RL, with empirical results highlighting the sub-optimal performance of the Transformer and considerable strength of LRU.
Authors: Zixian Huang, Wenhao Zhu, Gong Cheng, Lei Li, Fei Yuan
Abstract: Reasoning capabilities are crucial for Large Language Models (LLMs), yet a notable gap exists between English and non-English languages. To bridge this disparity, some works fine-tune LLMs to relearn reasoning capabilities in non-English languages, while others replace non-English inputs with an external model's outputs such as English translation text to circumvent the challenge of LLM understanding non-English. Unfortunately, these methods often underutilize the built-in skilled reasoning and useful language understanding capabilities of LLMs. In order to better utilize the minds of reasoning and language understanding in LLMs, we propose a new method, namely MindMerger, which merges LLMs with the external language understanding capabilities from multilingual models to boost the multilingual reasoning performance. Furthermore, a two-step training scheme is introduced to first train to embeded the external capabilities into LLMs and then train the collaborative utilization of the external capabilities and the built-in capabilities in LLMs. Experiments on three multilingual reasoning datasets and a language understanding dataset demonstrate that MindMerger consistently outperforms all baselines, especially in low-resource languages. Without updating the parameters of LLMs, the average accuracy improved by 6.7% and 8.0% across all languages and low-resource languages on the MGSM dataset, respectively.
Authors: Shenyuan Gao, Jiazhi Yang, Li Chen, Kashyap Chitta, Yihang Qiu, Andreas Geiger, Jun Zhang, Hongyang Li
Abstract: World models can foresee the outcomes of different actions, which is of paramount importance for autonomous driving. Nevertheless, existing driving world models still have limitations in generalization to unseen environments, prediction fidelity of critical details, and action controllability for flexible application. In this paper, we present Vista, a generalizable driving world model with high fidelity and versatile controllability. Based on a systematic diagnosis of existing methods, we introduce several key ingredients to address these limitations. To accurately predict real-world dynamics at high resolution, we propose two novel losses to promote the learning of moving instances and structural information. We also devise an effective latent replacement approach to inject historical frames as priors for coherent long-horizon rollouts. For action controllability, we incorporate a versatile set of controls from high-level intentions (command, goal point) to low-level maneuvers (trajectory, angle, and speed) through an efficient learning strategy. After large-scale training, the capabilities of Vista can seamlessly generalize to different scenarios. Extensive experiments on multiple datasets show that Vista outperforms the most advanced general-purpose video generator in over 70% of comparisons and surpasses the best-performing driving world model by 55% in FID and 27% in FVD. Moreover, for the first time, we utilize the capacity of Vista itself to establish a generalizable reward for real-world action evaluation without accessing the ground truth actions.
Authors: Sean McLeish, Arpit Bansal, Alex Stein, Neel Jain, John Kirchenbauer, Brian R. Bartoldson, Bhavya Kailkhura, Abhinav Bhatele, Jonas Geiping, Avi Schwarzschild, Tom Goldstein
Abstract: The poor performance of transformers on arithmetic tasks seems to stem in large part from their inability to keep track of the exact position of each digit inside of a large span of digits. We mend this problem by adding an embedding to each digit that encodes its position relative to the start of the number. In addition to the boost these embeddings provide on their own, we show that this fix enables architectural modifications such as input injection and recurrent layers to improve performance even further. With positions resolved, we can study the logical extrapolation ability of transformers. Can they solve arithmetic problems that are larger and more complex than those in their training data? We find that training on only 20 digit numbers with a single GPU for one day, we can reach state-of-the-art performance, achieving up to 99% accuracy on 100 digit addition problems. Finally, we show that these gains in numeracy also unlock improvements on other multi-step reasoning tasks including sorting and multiplication.
Authors: Kai Wang, Yukun Zhou, Mingjia Shi, Zhihang Yuan, Yuzhang Shang, Xiaojiang Peng, Hanwang Zhang, Yang You
Abstract: Training diffusion models is always a computation-intensive task. In this paper, we introduce a novel speed-up method for diffusion model training, called, which is based on a closer look at time steps. Our key findings are: i) Time steps can be empirically divided into acceleration, deceleration, and convergence areas based on the process increment. ii) These time steps are imbalanced, with many concentrated in the convergence area. iii) The concentrated steps provide limited benefits for diffusion training. To address this, we design an asymmetric sampling strategy that reduces the frequency of steps from the convergence area while increasing the sampling probability for steps from other areas. Additionally, we propose a weighting strategy to emphasize the importance of time steps with rapid-change process increments. As a plug-and-play and architecture-agnostic approach, SpeeD consistently achieves 3-times acceleration across various diffusion architectures, datasets, and tasks. Notably, due to its simple design, our approach significantly reduces the cost of diffusion model training with minimal overhead. Our research enables more researchers to train diffusion models at a lower cost.
Authors: Mucong Ding, Yinhan He, Jundong Li, Furong Huang
Abstract: The ubiquity of large-scale graphs in node-classification tasks significantly hinders the real-world applications of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). Node sampling, graph coarsening, and dataset condensation are effective strategies for enhancing data efficiency. However, owing to the interdependence of graph nodes, coreset selection, which selects subsets of the data examples, has not been successfully applied to speed up GNN training on large graphs, warranting special treatment. This paper studies graph coresets for GNNs and avoids the interdependence issue by selecting ego-graphs (i.e., neighborhood subgraphs around a node) based on their spectral embeddings. We decompose the coreset selection problem for GNNs into two phases: a coarse selection of widely spread ego graphs and a refined selection to diversify their topologies. We design a greedy algorithm that approximately optimizes both objectives. Our spectral greedy graph coreset (SGGC) scales to graphs with millions of nodes, obviates the need for model pre-training, and applies to low-homophily graphs. Extensive experiments on ten datasets demonstrate that SGGC outperforms other coreset methods by a wide margin, generalizes well across GNN architectures, and is much faster than graph condensation.
Authors: Aditya Ravuri, Neil D. Lawrence
Abstract: This paper shows that the dimensionality reduction methods, UMAP and t-SNE, can be approximately recast as MAP inference methods corresponding to a generalized Wishart-based model introduced in ProbDR. This interpretation offers deeper theoretical insights into these algorithms, while introducing tools with which similar dimensionality reduction methods can be studied.
Authors: Navin Kamuni, Dheerendra Panwar
Abstract: The aim of this study is to teach an algorithm how to recognize different types of music. Users will submit songs for analysis. Since the algorithm hasn't heard these songs before, it needs to figure out what makes each song unique. It does this by breaking down the songs into different parts and studying things like rhythm, melody, and tone via supervised learning because the program learns from examples that are already labelled. One important thing to consider when classifying music is its genre, which can be quite complex. To ensure accuracy, we use five different algorithms, each working independently, to analyze the songs. This helps us get a more complete understanding of each song's characteristics. Therefore, our goal is to correctly identify the genre of each submitted song. Once the analysis is done, the results are presented using a graphing tool, making it easy for users to understand and provide feedback.
Authors: Hao Dong, Yue Zhao, Eleni Chatzi, Olga Fink
Abstract: Detecting out-of-distribution (OOD) samples is important for deploying machine learning models in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving and robot-assisted surgery. Existing research has mainly focused on unimodal scenarios on image data. However, real-world applications are inherently multimodal, which makes it essential to leverage information from multiple modalities to enhance the efficacy of OOD detection. To establish a foundation for more realistic Multimodal OOD Detection, we introduce the first-of-its-kind benchmark, MultiOOD, characterized by diverse dataset sizes and varying modality combinations. We first evaluate existing unimodal OOD detection algorithms on MultiOOD, observing that the mere inclusion of additional modalities yields substantial improvements. This underscores the importance of utilizing multiple modalities for OOD detection. Based on the observation of Modality Prediction Discrepancy between in-distribution (ID) and OOD data, and its strong correlation with OOD performance, we propose the Agree-to-Disagree (A2D) algorithm to encourage such discrepancy during training. Moreover, we introduce a novel outlier synthesis method, NP-Mix, which explores broader feature spaces by leveraging the information from nearest neighbor classes and complements A2D to strengthen OOD detection performance. Extensive experiments on MultiOOD demonstrate that training with A2D and NP-Mix improves existing OOD detection algorithms by a large margin. Our source code and MultiOOD benchmark are available at https://github.com/donghao51/MultiOOD.
Authors: Shuai Zeng, Wenzhao Zheng, Jiwen Lu, Haibin Yan
Abstract: 3D object detection aims to recover the 3D information of concerning objects and serves as the fundamental task of autonomous driving perception. Its performance greatly depends on the scale of labeled training data, yet it is costly to obtain high-quality annotations for point cloud data. While conventional methods focus on generating pseudo-labels for unlabeled samples as supplements for training, the structural nature of 3D point cloud data facilitates the composition of objects and backgrounds to synthesize realistic scenes. Motivated by this, we propose a hardness-aware scene synthesis (HASS) method to generate adaptive synthetic scenes to improve the generalization of the detection models. We obtain pseudo-labels for unlabeled objects and generate diverse scenes with different compositions of objects and backgrounds. As the scene synthesis is sensitive to the quality of pseudo-labels, we further propose a hardness-aware strategy to reduce the effect of low-quality pseudo-labels and maintain a dynamic pseudo-database to ensure the diversity and quality of synthetic scenes. Extensive experimental results on the widely used KITTI and Waymo datasets demonstrate the superiority of the proposed HASS method, which outperforms existing semi-supervised learning methods on 3D object detection. Code: https://github.com/wzzheng/HASS.
Authors: Chankyu Lee, Rajarshi Roy, Mengyao Xu, Jonathan Raiman, Mohammad Shoeybi, Bryan Catanzaro, Wei Ping
Abstract: Decoder-only large language model (LLM)-based embedding models are beginning to outperform BERT or T5-based embedding models in general-purpose text embedding tasks, including dense vector-based retrieval. In this work, we introduce the NV-Embed model with a variety of architectural designs and training procedures to significantly enhance the performance of LLM as a versatile embedding model, while maintaining its simplicity and reproducibility. For model architecture, we propose a latent attention layer to obtain pooled embeddings, which consistently improves retrieval and downstream task accuracy compared to mean pooling or using the last
Authors: Yuanhui Huang, Wenzhao Zheng, Yunpeng Zhang, Jie Zhou, Jiwen Lu
Abstract: 3D semantic occupancy prediction aims to obtain 3D fine-grained geometry and semantics of the surrounding scene and is an important task for the robustness of vision-centric autonomous driving. Most existing methods employ dense grids such as voxels as scene representations, which ignore the sparsity of occupancy and the diversity of object scales and thus lead to unbalanced allocation of resources. To address this, we propose an object-centric representation to describe 3D scenes with sparse 3D semantic Gaussians where each Gaussian represents a flexible region of interest and its semantic features. We aggregate information from images through the attention mechanism and iteratively refine the properties of 3D Gaussians including position, covariance, and semantics. We then propose an efficient Gaussian-to-voxel splatting method to generate 3D occupancy predictions, which only aggregates the neighboring Gaussians for a certain position. We conduct extensive experiments on the widely adopted nuScenes and KITTI-360 datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that GaussianFormer achieves comparable performance with state-of-the-art methods with only 17.8% - 24.8% of their memory consumption. Code is available at: https://github.com/huang-yh/GaussianFormer.
Authors: Mu Cai, Jianwei Yang, Jianfeng Gao, Yong Jae Lee
Abstract: Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) such as LLaVA have shown strong performance in visual-linguistic reasoning. These models first embed images into a fixed large number of visual tokens and then feed them into a Large Language Model (LLM). However, this design causes an excessive number of tokens for dense visual scenarios such as high-resolution images and videos, leading to great inefficiency. While token pruning/merging methods do exist, they produce a single length output for each image and do not afford flexibility in trading off information density v.s. efficiency. Inspired by the concept of Matryoshka Dolls, we propose M3: Matryoshka Multimodal Models, which learns to represent visual content as nested sets of visual tokens that capture information across multiple coarse-to-fine granularities. Our approach offers several unique benefits for LMMs: (1) One can explicitly control the visual granularity per test instance during inference, e.g. , adjusting the number of tokens used to represent an image based on the anticipated complexity or simplicity of the content; (2) M3 provides a framework for analyzing the granularity needed for existing datasets, where we find that COCO-style benchmarks only need around ~9 visual tokens to obtain accuracy similar to that of using all 576 tokens; (3) Our approach provides a foundation to explore the best trade-off between performance and visual token length at sample level, where our investigation reveals that a large gap exists between the oracle upper bound and current fixed-scale representations.
Authors: Shangding Gu, Long Yang, Yali Du, Guang Chen, Florian Walter, Jun Wang, Alois Knoll
Abstract: Reinforcement Learning (RL) has achieved tremendous success in many complex decision-making tasks. However, safety concerns are raised during deploying RL in real-world applications, leading to a growing demand for safe RL algorithms, such as in autonomous driving and robotics scenarios. While safe control has a long history, the study of safe RL algorithms is still in the early stages. To establish a good foundation for future safe RL research, in this paper, we provide a review of safe RL from the perspectives of methods, theories, and applications. Firstly, we review the progress of safe RL from five dimensions and come up with five crucial problems for safe RL being deployed in real-world applications, coined as "2H3W". Secondly, we analyze the algorithm and theory progress from the perspectives of answering the "2H3W" problems. Particularly, the sample complexity of safe RL algorithms is reviewed and discussed, followed by an introduction to the applications and benchmarks of safe RL algorithms. Finally, we open the discussion of the challenging problems in safe RL, hoping to inspire future research on this thread. To advance the study of safe RL algorithms, we release an open-sourced repository containing the implementations of major safe RL algorithms at the link: https://github.com/chauncygu/Safe-Reinforcement-Learning-Baselines.git.
URLs: https://github.com/chauncygu/Safe-Reinforcement-Learning-Baselines.git.
Authors: Tilman Hinnerichs, Zhenwei Tang, Xi Peng, Xiangliang Zhang, Robert Hoehndorf
Abstract: Ontologies are one of the richest sources of knowledge. Real-world ontologies often contain thousands of axioms and are often human-made. Hence, they may contain inconsistency and incomplete information which may impair classical reasoners to compute entailments that are considered as useful. To overcome these two challenges, we propose FALCON, a Fuzzy Ontology Neural reasoner to approximate reasoning over ALC ontologies. We provide an approximate technique for the model generation step in classical ALC reasoners. Our approximation is not guaranteed to construct exact logical models, but can approximate arbitrary models, which is notably faster for some large ontologies. Moreover, by sampling multiple approximate logical models, our technique supports approximate entailment also over inconsistent ontologies. Theoretical results show that more models generated lead to closer, i.e., faithful approximation of entailment over ALC entailments. Experimental results show that FALCON enables approximate reasoning and reasoning in the presence of inconsistency. Our experiments further demonstrate how ontologies can improve knowledge base completion in biomedicine by incorporating knowledge expressed in ALC.
Authors: Jitao Xu, Hongbo Li, Minghao Yin
Abstract: The 0-1 Multidimensional Knapsack Problem (MKP) is a classical NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem with many engineering applications. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm combining evolutionary computation with the exact algorithm to solve the 0-1 MKP. It maintains a set of solutions and utilizes the information from the population to extract good partial assignments. To find high-quality solutions, an exact algorithm is applied to explore the promising search space specified by the good partial assignments. The new solutions are used to update the population. Thus, the good partial assignments evolve towards a better direction with the improvement of the population. Extensive experimentation with commonly used benchmark sets shows that our algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art heuristic algorithms, TPTEA and DQPSO, as well as the commercial solver CPlex. It finds better solutions than the existing algorithms and provides new lower bounds for 10 large and hard instances.
Authors: Jakub Kowalski, Elliot Doe, Mark H. M. Winands, Daniel G\'orski, Dennis J. N. J. Soemers
Abstract: This paper proposes a new game-search algorithm, PN-MCTS, which combines Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and Proof-Number Search (PNS). These two algorithms have been successfully applied for decision making in a range of domains. We define three areas where the additional knowledge provided by the proof and disproof numbers gathered in MCTS trees might be used: final move selection, solving subtrees, and the UCB1 selection mechanism. We test all possible combinations on different time settings, playing against vanilla UCT on several games: Lines of Action ($7$$\times$$7$ and $8$$\times$$8$ board sizes), MiniShogi, Knightthrough, and Awari. Furthermore, we extend this new algorithm to properly address games with draws, like Awari, by adding an additional layer of PNS on top of the MCTS tree. The experiments show that PN-MCTS is able to outperform MCTS in all tested game domains, achieving win rates up to 96.2% for Lines of Action.
Authors: Zhengbang Zhu, Minghuan Liu, Liyuan Mao, Bingyi Kang, Minkai Xu, Yong Yu, Stefano Ermon, Weinan Zhang
Abstract: Diffusion model (DM) recently achieved huge success in various scenarios including offline reinforcement learning, where the diffusion planner learn to generate desired trajectories during online evaluations. However, despite the effectiveness in single-agent learning, it remains unclear how DMs can operate in multi-agent problems, where agents can hardly complete teamwork without good coordination by independently modeling each agent's trajectories. In this paper, we propose MADiff, a novel generative multi-agent learning framework to tackle this problem. MADiff is realized with an attention-based diffusion model to model the complex coordination among behaviors of multiple agents. To the best of our knowledge, MADiff is the first diffusion-based multi-agent learning framework, which behaves as both a decentralized policy and a centralized controller. During decentralized executions, MADiff simultaneously performs teammate modeling, and the centralized controller can also be applied in multi-agent trajectory predictions. Our experiments show the superior performance of MADiff compared to baseline algorithms in a wide range of multi-agent learning tasks, which emphasizes the effectiveness of MADiff in modeling complex multi-agent interactions. Our code is available at https://github.com/zbzhu99/madiff.
Authors: Benjamin Devillers, L\'eopold Mayti\'e, Rufin VanRullen
Abstract: Recent deep learning models can efficiently combine inputs from different modalities (e.g., images and text) and learn to align their latent representations, or to translate signals from one domain to another (as in image captioning, or text-to-image generation). However, current approaches mainly rely on brute-force supervised training over large multimodal datasets. In contrast, humans (and other animals) can learn useful multimodal representations from only sparse experience with matched cross-modal data. Here we evaluate the capabilities of a neural network architecture inspired by the cognitive notion of a "Global Workspace": a shared representation for two (or more) input modalities. Each modality is processed by a specialized system (pretrained on unimodal data, and subsequently frozen). The corresponding latent representations are then encoded to and decoded from a single shared workspace. Importantly, this architecture is amenable to self-supervised training via cycle-consistency: encoding-decoding sequences should approximate the identity function. For various pairings of vision-language modalities and across two datasets of varying complexity, we show that such an architecture can be trained to align and translate between two modalities with very little need for matched data (from 4 to 7 times less than a fully supervised approach). The global workspace representation can be used advantageously for downstream classification tasks and for robust transfer learning. Ablation studies reveal that both the shared workspace and the self-supervised cycle-consistency training are critical to the system's performance.
Authors: Pengwei Xing, Songtao Lu, Han Yu
Abstract: Neuro-symbolic learning (NSL) models complex symbolic rule patterns into latent variable distributions by neural networks, which reduces rule search space and generates unseen rules to improve downstream task performance. Centralized NSL learning involves directly acquiring data from downstream tasks, which is not feasible for federated learning (FL). To address this limitation, we shift the focus from such a one-to-one interactive neuro-symbolic paradigm to one-to-many Federated Neuro-Symbolic Learning framework (FedNSL) with latent variables as the FL communication medium. Built on the basis of our novel reformulation of the NSL theory, FedNSL is capable of identifying and addressing rule distribution heterogeneity through a simple and effective Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence constraint on rule distribution applicable under the FL setting. It further theoretically adjusts variational expectation maximization (V-EM) to reduce the rule search space across domains. This is the first incorporation of distribution-coupled bilevel optimization into FL. Extensive experiments based on both synthetic and real-world data demonstrate significant advantages of FedNSL compared to five state-of-the-art methods. It outperforms the best baseline by 17% and 29% in terms of unbalanced average training accuracy and unseen average testing accuracy, respectively.
Authors: Zecheng Wang, Che Wang, Zixuan Dong, Keith Ross
Abstract: Recently, it has been shown that for offline deep reinforcement learning (DRL), pre-training Decision Transformer with a large language corpus can improve downstream performance (Reid et al., 2022). A natural question to ask is whether this performance gain can only be achieved with language pre-training, or can be achieved with simpler pre-training schemes which do not involve language. In this paper, we first show that language is not essential for improved performance, and indeed pre-training with synthetic IID data for a small number of updates can match the performance gains from pre-training with a large language corpus; moreover, pre-training with data generated by a one-step Markov chain can further improve the performance. Inspired by these experimental results, we then consider pre-training Conservative Q-Learning (CQL), a popular offline DRL algorithm, which is Q-learning-based and typically employs a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) backbone. Surprisingly, pre-training with simple synthetic data for a small number of updates can also improve CQL, providing consistent performance improvement on D4RL Gym locomotion datasets. The results of this paper not only illustrate the importance of pre-training for offline DRL but also show that the pre-training data can be synthetic and generated with remarkably simple mechanisms.
Authors: Peihua Mai, Ran Yan, Zhe Huang, Youjia Yang, Yan Pang
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) excel in natural language understanding by capturing hidden semantics in vector space. This process enriches the value of text embeddings for various downstream tasks, thereby fostering the Embedding-as-a-Service (EaaS) business model. However, the risk of privacy leakage due to direct text transmission to servers remains a critical concern. To address this, we introduce Split-N-Denoise (SnD), an private inference framework that splits the model to execute the token embedding layer on the client side at minimal computational cost. This allows the client to introduce noise prior to transmitting the embeddings to the server, and subsequently receive and denoise the perturbed output embeddings for downstream tasks. Our approach is designed for the inference stage of LLMs and requires no modifications to the model parameters. Extensive experiments demonstrate SnD's effectiveness in optimizing the privacy-utility tradeoff across various LLM architectures and diverse downstream tasks. The results reveal an improvement in performance under the same privacy budget compared to the baselines by over 10\% on average, offering clients a privacy-preserving solution for local privacy protection.
Authors: Hongda Sun, Weikai Xu, Wei Liu, Jian Luan, Bin Wang, Shuo Shang, Ji-Rong Wen, Rui Yan
Abstract: Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the landscape of reasoning tasks. To enhance the capabilities of LLMs to emulate human reasoning, prior studies have focused on modeling reasoning steps using various thought structures like chains, trees, or graphs. However, LLM-based reasoning still encounters the following challenges: (1) Limited adaptability of preset structures to diverse tasks; (2) Insufficient precision in exploiting known conditions to derive new ones; and (3) Inadequate consideration of historical reasoning experiences for subsequent reasoning steps. To this end, we propose DetermLR, a novel perspective that rethinks the reasoning process as an evolution from indeterminacy to determinacy. First, we categorize known conditions into two types: determinate and indeterminate premises This provides an oveall direction for the reasoning process and guides LLMs in converting indeterminate data into progressively determinate insights. Subsequently, we leverage quantitative measurements to prioritize more relevant premises to explore new insights. Furthermore, we automate the storage and extraction of available premises and reasoning paths with reasoning memory, preserving historical reasoning details for subsequent reasoning steps. Comprehensive experimental results demonstrate that DetermLR surpasses all baselines on various logical reasoning benchmarks: LogiQA, ProofWriter, FOLIO, PrOntoQA, and LogicalDeduction. Compared to previous multi-step reasoning methods, DetermLR achieves higher accuracy with fewer reasoning steps, highlighting its superior efficiency and effectiveness in solving logical reasoning tasks.
Authors: Chenhui Zuo, Kaibo He, Jing Shao, Yanan Sui
Abstract: Modeling and control of the human musculoskeletal system is important for understanding human motor functions, developing embodied intelligence, and optimizing human-robot interaction systems. However, current human musculoskeletal models are restricted to a limited range of body parts and often with a reduced number of muscles. There is also a lack of algorithms capable of controlling over 600 muscles to generate reasonable human movements. To fill this gap, we build a musculoskeletal model (MS-Human-700) with 90 body segments, 206 joints, and 700 muscle-tendon units, allowing simulation of full-body dynamics and interaction with various devices. We develop a new algorithm using low-dimensional representation and hierarchical deep reinforcement learning to achieve state-of-the-art full-body control. We validate the effectiveness of our model and algorithm in simulations with real human locomotion data. The musculoskeletal model, along with its control algorithm, will be made available to the research community to promote a deeper understanding of human motion control and better design of interactive robots. Project page: https://lnsgroup.cc/research/MS-Human-700
Authors: Hayet Dahmri, Salim Bouamama
Abstract: Minimum connected dominating set problem is an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem in graph theory. Finding connected dominating set is of high interest in various domains such as wireless sensor networks, optical networks, and systems biology. Its weighted variant named minimum weight connected dominating set is also useful in such applications. In this paper, we propose a simulated annealing algorithm based on a greedy heuristic for tackling a variant of the minimum connected dominating set problem and that by exploiting two objectives together namely the cardinality and the total weight of the connected dominating set. Experimental results compared to those obtained by a recent proposed research show the superiority of our approach.
Authors: Lei You, Lele Cao, Mattias Nilsson, Bo Zhao, Lei Lei
Abstract: Counterfactual explanations (CE) are the de facto method of providing insight and interpretability in black-box decision-making models by identifying alternative input instances that lead to different outcomes. This paper extends the concept of CE to a distributional context, broadening the scope from individual data points to entire input and output distributions, named distributional counterfactual explanation (DCE). In DCE, we take the stakeholder's perspective and shift focus to analyzing the distributional properties of the factual and counterfactual, drawing parallels to the classical approach of assessing individual instances and their resulting decisions. We leverage optimal transport (OT) to frame a chance-constrained optimization problem, aiming to derive a counterfactual distribution that closely aligns with its factual counterpart, substantiated by statistical confidence. Our proposed optimization method, Discount, strategically balances this confidence in both the input and output distributions. This algorithm is accompanied by an analysis of its convergence rate. The efficacy of our proposed method is substantiated through a series of quantitative and qualitative experiments, highlighting its potential to provide deep insights into decision-making models.
Authors: Jiri Nemecek, Tomas Pevny, Jakub Marecek
Abstract: Explainability of decisions made by AI systems is driven by both recent regulation and user demand. These decisions are often explainable only \emph{post hoc}, after the fact. In counterfactual explanations, one may ask what constitutes the best counterfactual explanation. Clearly, multiple criteria must be taken into account, although "distance from the sample" is a key criterion. Recent methods that consider the plausibility of a counterfactual seem to sacrifice this original objective. Here, we present a system that provides high-likelihood explanations that are, at the same time, close and sparse. We show that the search for the most likely explanations satisfying many common desiderata for counterfactual explanations can be modeled using mixed-integer optimization (MIO). In the process, we propose an MIO formulation of a Sum-Product Network (SPN) and use the SPN to estimate the likelihood of a counterfactual, which can be of independent interest.
Authors: Germ\'an Vidal
Abstract: The emergence of tools based on artificial intelligence has also led to the need of producing explanations which are understandable by a human being. In most approaches, the system is considered a \emph{black box}, making it difficult to generate appropriate explanations. In this work, though, we consider a setting where models are \emph{transparent}: probabilistic logic programming (PLP), a paradigm that combines logic programming for knowledge representation and probability to model uncertainty. However, given a query, the usual notion of \emph{explanation} is associated with a set of choices, one for each random variable of the model. Unfortunately, such a set does not explain \emph{why} the query is true and, in fact, it may contain choices that are actually irrelevant for the considered query. To improve this situation, we present in this paper an approach to explaining explanations which is based on defining a new query-driven inference mechanism for PLP where proofs are labeled with \emph{choice expressions}, a compact and easy to manipulate representation for sets of choices. The combination of proof trees and choice expressions allows one to produce comprehensible query justifications with a causal structure.
Authors: Juan-Ni Wu, Tong Wang, Li-Juan Tang, Hai-Long Wu, Ru-Qin Yu
Abstract: Encoding is the carrier of information. AI models possess basic capabilities in syntax, semantics, and reasoning, but these capabilities are sensitive to specific inputs. In this study, we introduce an encoding algorithm, TSIS (Simplified TSID), to the t-SMILES family as a fragment-based linear molecular representation. TSID has been demonstrated to significantly outperform classical SMILES, DeepSMILES, and SELFIES in previous work. A further comparative analysis in this study reveals that the tree structure used by TSID is more easily learned than anticipated, regardless of whether Transformer or LSTM models are used. Furthermore, TSIS demonstrates comparable performance to TSID and significantly outperforms SMILES, SELFIES, and SAFE. While SEFLIES and SAFE present significant challenges in semantic and syntactic analysis, respectively, due to their inherent complexity.
Authors: Hao Tang, Darren Key, Kevin Ellis
Abstract: We give a model-based agent that builds a Python program representing its knowledge of the world based on its interactions with the environment. The world model tries to explain its interactions, while also being optimistic about what reward it can achieve. We define this optimism as a logical constraint between a program and a planner. We study our agent on gridworlds, and on task planning, finding our approach is more sample-efficient compared to deep RL, more compute-efficient compared to ReAct-style agents, and that it can transfer its knowledge across environments by editing its code.
Authors: Yixuan Li, Julian Parsert, Elizabeth Polgreen
Abstract: Pre-trained Large Language Models (LLMs) are beginning to dominate the discourse around automatic code generation with natural language specifications. In contrast, the best-performing synthesizers in the domain of formal synthesis with precise logical specifications are still based on enumerative algorithms. In this paper, we evaluate the abilities of LLMs to solve formal synthesis benchmarks by carefully crafting a library of prompts for the domain. When one-shot synthesis fails, we propose a novel enumerative synthesis algorithm, which integrates calls to an LLM into a weighted probabilistic search. This allows the synthesizer to provide the LLM with information about the progress of the enumerator, and the LLM to provide the enumerator with syntactic guidance in an iterative loop. We evaluate our techniques on benchmarks from the Syntax-Guided Synthesis (SyGuS) competition. We find that GPT-3.5 as a stand-alone tool for formal synthesis is easily outperformed by state-of-the-art formal synthesis algorithms, but our approach integrating the LLM into an enumerative synthesis algorithm shows significant performance gains over both the LLM and the enumerative synthesizer alone and the winning SyGuS competition tool.
Authors: Arkajit Datta, Tushar Verma, Rajat Chawla, Mukunda N. S, Ishaan Bhola
Abstract: In recent advancements within the domain of Large Language Models (LLMs), there has been a notable emergence of agents capable of addressing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) challenges through enhanced cognitive capabilities and sophisticated reasoning. This development heralds a new era of scalability and human-like adaptability in goal attainment. In this context, we introduce AUTONODE (Autonomous User-interface Transformation through Online Neuro-graphic Operations and Deep Exploration). AUTONODE employs advanced neuro-graphical techniques to facilitate autonomous navigation and task execution on web interfaces, thereby obviating the necessity for predefined scripts or manual intervention. Our engine empowers agents to comprehend and implement complex workflows, adapting to dynamic web environments with unparalleled efficiency. Our methodology synergizes cognitive functionalities with robotic automation, endowing AUTONODE with the ability to learn from experience. We have integrated an exploratory module, DoRA (Discovery and mapping Operation for graph Retrieval Agent), which is instrumental in constructing a knowledge graph that the engine utilizes to optimize its actions and achieve objectives with minimal supervision. The versatility and efficacy of AUTONODE are demonstrated through a series of experiments, highlighting its proficiency in managing a diverse array of web-based tasks, ranging from data extraction to transaction processing.
Authors: Lirui Luo, Guoxi Zhang, Hongming Xu, Yaodong Yang, Cong Fang, Qing Li
Abstract: Neuro-symbolic reinforcement learning (NS-RL) has emerged as a promising paradigm for explainable decision-making, characterized by the interpretability of symbolic policies. NS-RL entails structured state representations for tasks with visual observations, but previous methods are unable to refine the structured states with rewards due to a lack of efficiency. Accessibility also remains to be an issue, as extensive domain knowledge is required to interpret symbolic policies. In this paper, we present a framework for learning structured states and symbolic policies jointly, whose key idea is to distill vision foundation models into a scalable perception module and refine it during policy learning. Moreover, we design a pipeline to generate language explanations for policies and decisions using large language models. In experiments on nine Atari tasks, we verify the efficacy of our approach, and we also present explanations for policies and decisions.
Authors: Peiwen Li, Xin Wang, Zeyang Zhang, Yuan Meng, Fang Shen, Yue Li, Jialong Wang, Yang Li, Wenweu Zhu
Abstract: In the field of Artificial Intelligence for Information Technology Operations, causal discovery is pivotal for operation and maintenance of graph construction, facilitating downstream industrial tasks such as root cause analysis. Temporal causal discovery, as an emerging method, aims to identify temporal causal relationships between variables directly from observations by utilizing interventional data. However, existing methods mainly focus on synthetic datasets with heavy reliance on intervention targets and ignore the textual information hidden in real-world systems, failing to conduct causal discovery for real industrial scenarios. To tackle this problem, in this paper we propose to investigate temporal causal discovery in industrial scenarios, which faces two critical challenges: 1) how to discover causal relationships without the interventional targets that are costly to obtain in practice, and 2) how to discover causal relations via leveraging the textual information in systems which can be complex yet abundant in industrial contexts. To address these challenges, we propose the RealTCD framework, which is able to leverage domain knowledge to discover temporal causal relationships without interventional targets. Specifically, we first develop a score-based temporal causal discovery method capable of discovering causal relations for root cause analysis without relying on interventional targets through strategic masking and regularization. Furthermore, by employing Large Language Models (LLMs) to handle texts and integrate domain knowledge, we introduce LLM-guided meta-initialization to extract the meta-knowledge from textual information hidden in systems to boost the quality of discovery. We conduct extensive experiments on simulation and real-world datasets to show the superiority of our proposed RealTCD framework over existing baselines in discovering temporal causal structures.
Authors: Sarah Keren, Chaimaa Essayeh, Stefano V. Albrecht, Thomas Morstyn
Abstract: The rapidly changing architecture and functionality of electrical networks and the increasing penetration of renewable and distributed energy resources have resulted in various technological and managerial challenges. These have rendered traditional centralized energy-market paradigms insufficient due to their inability to support the dynamic and evolving nature of the network. This survey explores how multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) can support the decentralization and decarbonization of energy networks and mitigate the associated challenges. This is achieved by specifying key computational challenges in managing energy networks, reviewing recent research progress on addressing them, and highlighting open challenges that may be addressed using MARL.
Authors: Chanwoo Park, Mingyang Liu, Dingwen Kong, Kaiqing Zhang, Asuman Ozdaglar
Abstract: Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has been an effective technique for aligning AI systems with human values, with remarkable successes in fine-tuning large-language models recently. Most existing RLHF paradigms make the underlying assumption that human preferences are relatively homogeneous, and can be encoded by a single reward model. In this paper, we focus on addressing the issues due to the inherent heterogeneity in human preferences, as well as their potential strategic behavior in providing feedback. Specifically, we propose two frameworks to address heterogeneous human feedback in principled ways: personalization-based one and aggregation-based one. For the former, we propose two approaches based on representation learning and clustering, respectively, for learning multiple reward models that trades off the bias (due to preference heterogeneity) and variance (due to the use of fewer data for learning each model by personalization). We then establish sample complexity guarantees for both approaches. For the latter, we aim to adhere to the single-model framework, as already deployed in the current RLHF paradigm, by carefully aggregating diverse and truthful preferences from humans. We propose two approaches based on reward and preference aggregation, respectively: the former utilizes both utilitarianism and Leximin approaches to aggregate individual reward models, with sample complexity guarantees; the latter directly aggregates the human feedback in the form of probabilistic opinions. Under the probabilistic-opinion-feedback model, we also develop an approach to handle strategic human labelers who may bias and manipulate the aggregated preferences with untruthful feedback. Based on the ideas in mechanism design, our approach ensures truthful preference reporting, with the induced aggregation rule maximizing social welfare functions.
Authors: Fabrizio Russo, Anna Rapberger, Francesca Toni
Abstract: Causal discovery amounts to unearthing causal relationships amongst features in data. It is a crucial companion to causal inference, necessary to build scientific knowledge without resorting to expensive or impossible randomised control trials. In this paper, we explore how reasoning with symbolic representations can support causal discovery. Specifically, we deploy assumption-based argumentation (ABA), a well-established and powerful knowledge representation formalism, in combination with causality theories, to learn graphs which reflect causal dependencies in the data. We prove that our method exhibits desirable properties, notably that, under natural conditions, it can retrieve ground-truth causal graphs. We also conduct experiments with an implementation of our method in answer set programming (ASP) on four datasets from standard benchmarks in causal discovery, showing that our method compares well against established baselines.
Authors: Shenghui Chen, Daniel Fried, Ufuk Topcu
Abstract: Developing autonomous agents that can strategize and cooperate with humans under information asymmetry is challenging without effective communication in natural language. We introduce a shared-control game, where two players collectively control a token in alternating turns to achieve a common objective under incomplete information. We formulate a policy synthesis problem for an autonomous agent in this game with a human as the other player. To solve this problem, we propose a communication-based approach comprising a language module and a planning module. The language module translates natural language messages into and from a finite set of flags, a compact representation defined to capture player intents. The planning module leverages these flags to compute a policy using an asymmetric information-set Monte Carlo tree search with flag exchange algorithm we present. We evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in a testbed based on Gnomes at Night, a search-and-find maze board game. Results of human subject experiments show that communication narrows the information gap between players and enhances human-agent cooperation efficiency with fewer turns.
Authors: Yang Zhang, Shixin Yang, Chenjia Bai, Fei Wu, Xiu Li, Zhen Wang, Xuelong Li
Abstract: Grounding the reasoning ability of large language models (LLMs) for embodied tasks is challenging due to the complexity of the physical world. Especially, LLM planning for multi-agent collaboration requires communication of agents or credit assignment as the feedback to re-adjust the proposed plans and achieve effective coordination. However, existing methods that overly rely on physical verification or self-reflection suffer from excessive and inefficient querying of LLMs. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for multi-agent collaboration that introduces Reinforced Advantage feedback (ReAd) for efficient self-refinement of plans. Specifically, we perform critic regression to learn a sequential advantage function from LLM-planned data, and then treat the LLM planner as an optimizer to generate actions that maximize the advantage function. It endows the LLM with the foresight to discern whether the action contributes to accomplishing the final task. We provide theoretical analysis by extending advantage-weighted regression in reinforcement learning to multi-agent systems. Experiments on Overcooked-AI and a difficult variant of RoCoBench show that ReAd surpasses baselines in success rate, and also significantly decreases the interaction steps of agents and query rounds of LLMs, demonstrating its high efficiency for grounding LLMs. More results are given at https://read-llm.github.io/.
Authors: Haoxuan Li, Jifan Yu, Yuanxin Ouyang, Zhuang Liu, Wenge Rong, Juanzi Li, Zhang Xiong
Abstract: Knowledge tracing (KT), aiming to mine students' mastery of knowledge by their exercise records and predict their performance on future test questions, is a critical task in educational assessment. While researchers achieved tremendous success with the rapid development of deep learning techniques, current knowledge tracing tasks fall into the cracks from real-world teaching scenarios. Relying heavily on extensive student data and solely predicting numerical performances differs from the settings where teachers assess students' knowledge state from limited practices and provide explanatory feedback. To fill this gap, we explore a new task formulation: Explainable Few-shot Knowledge Tracing. By leveraging the powerful reasoning and generation abilities of large language models (LLMs), we then propose a cognition-guided framework that can track the student knowledge from a few student records while providing natural language explanations. Experimental results from three widely used datasets show that LLMs can perform comparable or superior to competitive deep knowledge tracing methods. We also discuss potential directions and call for future improvements in relevant topics.
Authors: Pranab Sahoo, Ayush Kumar Singh, Sriparna Saha, Aman Chadha, Samrat Mondal
Abstract: The mining of adverse drug events (ADEs) is pivotal in pharmacovigilance, enhancing patient safety by identifying potential risks associated with medications, facilitating early detection of adverse events, and guiding regulatory decision-making. Traditional ADE detection methods are reliable but slow, not easily adaptable to large-scale operations, and offer limited information. With the exponential increase in data sources like social media content, biomedical literature, and Electronic Medical Records (EMR), extracting relevant ADE-related information from these unstructured texts is imperative. Previous ADE mining studies have focused on text-based methodologies, overlooking visual cues, limiting contextual comprehension, and hindering accurate interpretation. To address this gap, we present a MultiModal Adverse Drug Event (MMADE) detection dataset, merging ADE-related textual information with visual aids. Additionally, we introduce a framework that leverages the capabilities of LLMs and VLMs for ADE detection by generating detailed descriptions of medical images depicting ADEs, aiding healthcare professionals in visually identifying adverse events. Using our MMADE dataset, we showcase the significance of integrating visual cues from images to enhance overall performance. This approach holds promise for patient safety, ADE awareness, and healthcare accessibility, paving the way for further exploration in personalized healthcare.
Authors: Kieran Greer
Abstract: This paper suggests a statistical framework for describing the relations between the physical and conceptual entities of a brain-like model. Features and concept instances are put into context, where the paper suggests that features may be the electrical wiring, although chemical connections are also possible. With this idea, the actual length of the connection is important, because it is related to firing rates and neuron synchronization, but the signal type is less important. The paper then suggests that concepts are neuron groups that link feature sets and concept instances are determined by chemical signals from those groups. Therefore, features become the static horizontal framework of the neural system and concepts are vertically interconnected combinations of these. This would also suggest that features can be distributed entities and not concentrated to a single area.
Authors: Yichen Liu, Jiawei Chen, Defang Chen, Zhehui Zhou, Yan Feng, Can Wang
Abstract: Knowledge Graph Embedding (KGE), which projects entities and relations into continuous vector spaces, have garnered significant attention. Although high-dimensional KGE methods offer better performance, they come at the expense of significant computation and memory overheads. Decreasing embedding dimensions significantly deteriorates model performance. While several recent efforts utilize knowledge distillation or non-Euclidean representation learning to augment the effectiveness of low-dimensional KGE, they either necessitate a pre-trained high-dimensional teacher model or involve complex non-Euclidean operations, thereby incurring considerable additional computational costs. To address this, this work proposes Confidence-aware Self-Knowledge Distillation (CSD) that learns from model itself to enhance KGE in a low-dimensional space. Specifically, CSD extracts knowledge from embeddings in previous iterations, which would be utilized to supervise the learning of the model in the next iterations. Moreover, a specific semantic module is developed to filter reliable knowledge by estimating the confidence of previously learned embeddings. This straightforward strategy bypasses the need for time-consuming pre-training of teacher models and can be integrated into various KGE methods to improve their performance. Our comprehensive experiments on six KGE backbones and four datasets underscore the effectiveness of the proposed CSD.
Authors: Kourosh Shahnazari, Seyed Moein Ayyoubzadeh
Abstract: This paper introduces the innovative Power Muirhead Mean K-Nearest Neighbors (PMM-KNN) algorithm, a novel data classification approach that combines the K-Nearest Neighbors method with the adaptive Power Muirhead Mean operator. The proposed methodology aims to address the limitations of traditional KNN by leveraging the Power Muirhead Mean for calculating the local means of K-nearest neighbors in each class to the query sample. Extensive experimentation on diverse benchmark datasets demonstrates the superiority of PMM-KNN over other classification methods. Results indicate statistically significant improvements in accuracy on various datasets, particularly those with complex and high-dimensional distributions. The adaptability of the Power Muirhead Mean empowers PMM-KNN to effectively capture underlying data structures, leading to enhanced accuracy and robustness. The findings highlight the potential of PMM-KNN as a powerful and versatile tool for data classification tasks, encouraging further research to explore its application in real-world scenarios and the automation of Power Muirhead Mean parameters to unleash its full potential.
Authors: Xiaoning Feng, Xiaohong Han, Simin Chen, Wei Yang
Abstract: In this paper, we make the first attempt to understand and test potential computation efficiency robustness in state-of-the-art LLMs. By analyzing the working mechanism and implementation of 20,543 public-accessible LLMs, we observe a fundamental property in LLMs that could be manipulated in an adversarial manner to reduce computation efficiency significantly. Our key motivation is to generate test inputs that could sufficiently delay the generation of EOS such that LLMs would have to go through enough iterations to satisfy the pre-configured threshold. We present \tool, which can work under both white-box setting and black-box setting. In the white-box scenario, \tool develops a gradient-guided technique that searches for a minimal and unnoticeable perturbation at character-level, token-level, and structure-level. In the black-box scenario, \tool employs a causal inference-based approach to find critical tokens and similarly applies three levels of imperceptible perturbation to them. Both the white-box and black-box settings effectively delay the appearance of EOS, compelling these inputs to reach the naturally-unreachable threshold. To demonstrate the effectiveness of \tool, we conduct a systematic evaluation on nine public-available LLMs: Google T5, AllenAI WMT14, Helsinki-NLP translator, Facebook FairSeq, UNICAMP-DL translator, MarianMT, Google FLAN-T5, MBZUAI LaMini-GPT and Salesforce CodeGen. Experimental results show that \tool can increase on average LLMs' response latency and energy consumption by 325\% to 3244\% and 344\% to 3616\%, respectively, by perturbing just one character or token in the input sentence.
Authors: Qiaosi Wang (Georgia Institute of Technology), Ashok K. Goel (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Abstract: New developments are enabling AI systems to perceive, recognize, and respond with social cues based on inferences made from humans' explicit or implicit behavioral and verbal cues. These AI systems, equipped with an equivalent of human's Theory of Mind (ToM) capability, are currently serving as matchmakers on dating platforms, assisting student learning as teaching assistants, and enhancing productivity as work partners. They mark a new era in human-AI interaction (HAI) that diverges from traditional human-computer interaction (HCI), where computers are commonly seen as tools instead of social actors. Designing and understanding the human perceptions and experiences in this emerging HAI era becomes an urgent and critical issue for AI systems to fulfill human needs and mitigate risks across social contexts. In this paper, we posit the Mutual Theory of Mind (MToM) framework, inspired by our capability of ToM in human-human communications, to guide this new generation of HAI research by highlighting the iterative and mutual shaping nature of human-AI communication. We discuss the motivation of the MToM framework and its three key components that iteratively shape the human-AI communication in three stages. We then describe two empirical studies inspired by the MToM framework to demonstrate the power of MToM in guiding the design and understanding of human-AI communication. Finally, we discuss future research opportunities in human-AI interaction through the lens of MToM.
Authors: Ilias Driouich, Chuan Xu, Giovanni Neglia, Frederic Giroire, Eoin Thomas
Abstract: In this paper, we initiate the study of local model reconstruction attacks for federated learning, where a honest-but-curious adversary eavesdrops the messages exchanged between a targeted client and the server, and then reconstructs the local/personalized model of the victim. The local model reconstruction attack allows the adversary to trigger other classical attacks in a more effective way, since the local model only depends on the client's data and can leak more private information than the global model learned by the server. Additionally, we propose a novel model-based attribute inference attack in federated learning leveraging the local model reconstruction attack. We provide an analytical lower-bound for this attribute inference attack. Empirical results using real world datasets confirm that our local reconstruction attack works well for both regression and classification tasks. Moreover, we benchmark our novel attribute inference attack against the state-of-the-art attacks in federated learning. Our attack results in higher reconstruction accuracy especially when the clients' datasets are heterogeneous. Our work provides a new angle for designing powerful and explainable attacks to effectively quantify the privacy risk in FL.
Authors: Rabel Guharoy, Nanda Dulal Jana, Suparna Biswas, Lalit Garg
Abstract: An Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a non-invasive exam that records the brain's electrical activity. This is used to help diagnose conditions such as different brain problems. EEG signals are taken for epilepsy detection, and with Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and machine learning classifier, they perform epilepsy detection. In Epilepsy seizure detection, machine learning classifiers and statistical features are mainly used. The hidden information in the EEG signal helps detect diseases affecting the brain. Sometimes it is complicated to identify the minimum changes in the EEG in the time and frequency domain's purpose. The DWT can give a suitable decomposition of the signals in different frequency bands and feature extraction. We use the tri-dimensionality reduction algorithm, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Independent Component Analysis (ICA), and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). Finally, features are selected by using a fusion rule and at the last step, three different classifiers, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Naive Bayes (NB), and K-Nearest-Neighbor (KNN) have been used individually for the classification. The proposed framework is tested on the Bonn dataset. The simulation results provide 100% accuracy for the LDA and NB combination outperforming accuracy with other classifiers combinations, including 89.17% for LDA and SVM, 80.42% for LDA and KNN, 89.92% for PCA and NB, 85.58% PCA and SVM, 80.42% PCA and KNN, 82.33% for ICA and NB, 90.42% for ICA and SVM, 90% for ICA and KNN. Also, the LDA and NB combination shows the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, Precision, and Recall of 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, and 100%. The results prove the effectiveness of this model.
Authors: Xiwei Xuan, Ziquan Deng, Hsuan-Tien Lin, Zhaodan Kong, Kwan-Liu Ma
Abstract: Researchers have proposed various methods for visually interpreting the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) via saliency maps, which include Class-Activation-Map (CAM) based approaches as a leading family. However, in terms of the internal design logic, existing CAM-based approaches often overlook the causal perspective that answers the core "why" question to help humans understand the explanation. Additionally, current CNN explanations lack the consideration of both necessity and sufficiency, two complementary sides of a desirable explanation. This paper presents a causality-driven framework, SUNY, designed to rationalize the explanations toward better human understanding. Using the CNN model's input features or internal filters as hypothetical causes, SUNY generates explanations by bi-directional quantifications on both the necessary and sufficient perspectives. Extensive evaluations justify that SUNY not only produces more informative and convincing explanations from the angles of necessity and sufficiency, but also achieves performances competitive to other approaches across different CNN architectures over large-scale datasets, including ILSVRC2012 and CUB-200-2011.
Authors: Sangmin Yoo, Eric Yeu-Jer Lee, Ziyu Wang, Xinxin Wang, Wei D. Lu
Abstract: Event-based cameras are inspired by the sparse and asynchronous spike representation of the biological visual system. However, processing the event data requires either using expensive feature descriptors to transform spikes into frames, or using spiking neural networks that are expensive to train. In this work, we propose a neural network architecture, Reservoir Nodes-enabled neuromorphic vision sensing Network (RN-Net), based on simple convolution layers integrated with dynamic temporal encoding reservoirs for local and global spatiotemporal feature detection with low hardware and training costs. The RN-Net allows efficient processing of asynchronous temporal features, and achieves the highest accuracy of 99.2% for DVS128 Gesture reported to date, and one of the highest accuracy of 67.5% for DVS Lip dataset at a much smaller network size. By leveraging the internal device and circuit dynamics, asynchronous temporal feature encoding can be implemented at very low hardware cost without preprocessing and dedicated memory and arithmetic units. The use of simple DNN blocks and standard backpropagation-based training rules further reduces implementation costs.
Authors: Edoardo Gabrielli, Dimitri Belli, Vittorio Miori, Gabriele Tolomei
Abstract: Current defense mechanisms against model poisoning attacks in federated learning (FL) systems have proven effective up to a certain threshold of malicious clients. In this work, we introduce FLANDERS, a novel pre-aggregation filter for FL resilient to large-scale model poisoning attacks, i.e., when malicious clients far exceed legitimate participants. FLANDERS treats the sequence of local models sent by clients in each FL round as a matrix-valued time series. Then, it identifies malicious client updates as outliers in this time series by comparing actual observations with estimates generated by a matrix autoregressive forecasting model maintained by the server. Experiments conducted in several non-iid FL setups show that FLANDERS significantly improves robustness across a wide spectrum of attacks when paired with standard and robust existing aggregation methods.
Authors: Yuxing Tian, Mingjie Zhu, Jiachi Luo, Song Li
Abstract: This study focuses on long-term forecasting (LTF) on continuous-time dynamic graph networks (CTDGNs), which is important for real-world modeling. Existing CTDGNs are effective for modeling temporal graph data due to their ability to capture complex temporal dependencies but perform poorly on LTF due to the substantial requirement for historical data, which is not practical in most cases. To relieve this problem, a most intuitive way is data augmentation. In this study, we propose \textbf{\underline{U}ncertainty \underline{M}asked \underline{M}ix\underline{U}p (UmmU)}: a plug-and-play module that conducts uncertainty estimation to introduce uncertainty into the embedding of intermediate layer of CTDGNs, and perform masked mixup to further enhance the uncertainty of the embedding to make it generalize to more situations. UmmU can be easily inserted into arbitrary CTDGNs without increasing the number of parameters. We conduct comprehensive experiments on three real-world dynamic graph datasets, the results demonstrate that UmmU can effectively improve the long-term forecasting performance for CTDGNs.
Authors: Umang Bhatt, Valerie Chen, Katherine M. Collins, Parameswaran Kamalaruban, Emma Kallina, Adrian Weller, Ameet Talwalkar
Abstract: Individual human decision-makers may benefit from different forms of support to improve decision outcomes, but when each form of support will yield better outcomes? In this work, we posit that personalizing access to decision support tools can be an effective mechanism for instantiating the appropriate use of AI assistance. Specifically, we propose the general problem of learning a decision support policy that, for a given input, chooses which form of support to provide to decision-makers for whom we initially have no prior information. We develop $\texttt{Modiste}$, an interactive tool to learn personalized decision support policies. $\texttt{Modiste}$ leverages stochastic contextual bandit techniques to personalize a decision support policy for each decision-maker and supports extensions to the multi-objective setting to account for auxiliary objectives like the cost of support. We find that personalized policies outperform offline policies, and, in the cost-aware setting, reduce the incurred cost with minimal degradation to performance. Our experiments include various realistic forms of support (e.g., expert consensus and predictions from a large language model) on vision and language tasks. Our human subject experiments validate our computational experiments, demonstrating that personalization can yield benefits in practice for real users, who interact with $\texttt{Modiste}$.
Authors: Qinghua Lu, Liming Zhu, Xiwei Xu, Zhenchang Xing, Jon Whittle
Abstract: The release of ChatGPT, Gemini, and other large language model has drawn huge interests on foundations models. There is a broad consensus that foundations models will be the fundamental building blocks for future AI systems. However, there is a lack of systematic guidance on the architecture design. Particularly, the the rapidly growing capabilities of foundations models can eventually absorb other components of AI systems, posing challenges of moving boundary and interface evolution in architecture design. Furthermore, incorporating foundations models into AI systems raises significant concerns about responsible and safe AI due to their opaque nature and rapidly advancing intelligence. To address these challenges, the paper first presents an architecture evolution of AI systems in the era of foundation models, transitioning from "foundation-model-as-a-connector" to "foundation-model-as-a-monolithic architecture". The paper then identifies key design decisions and proposes a pattern-oriented reference architecture for designing responsible foundation-model-based systems. The patterns can enable the potential of foundation models while ensuring associated risks.
Authors: Yiping Jin, Leo Wanner, Vishakha Laxman Kadam, Alexander Shvets
Abstract: As pointed out by several scholars, current research on hate speech (HS) recognition is characterized by unsystematic data creation strategies and diverging annotation schemata. Subsequently, supervised-learning models tend to generalize poorly to datasets they were not trained on, and the performance of the models trained on datasets labeled using different HS taxonomies cannot be compared. To ease this problem, we propose applying extremely weak supervision that only relies on the class name rather than on class samples from the annotated data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of a state-of-the-art weakly-supervised text classification model in various in-dataset and cross-dataset settings. Furthermore, we conduct an in-depth quantitative and qualitative analysis of the source of poor generalizability of HS classification models.
Authors: Xiang Chen, Jintian Zhang, Xiaohan Wang, Ningyu Zhang, Tongtong Wu, Yuxiang Wang, Yongheng Wang, Huajun Chen
Abstract: Current Multimodal Knowledge Graph Construction (MKGC) models struggle with the real-world dynamism of continuously emerging entities and relations, often succumbing to catastrophic forgetting-loss of previously acquired knowledge. This study introduces benchmarks aimed at fostering the development of the continual MKGC domain. We further introduce MSPT framework, designed to surmount the shortcomings of existing MKGC approaches during multimedia data processing. MSPT harmonizes the retention of learned knowledge (stability) and the integration of new data (plasticity), outperforming current continual learning and multimodal methods. Our results confirm MSPT's superior performance in evolving knowledge environments, showcasing its capacity to navigate balance between stability and plasticity.
Authors: De Cheng, Lingfeng He, Nannan Wang, Shizhou Zhang, Zhen Wang, Xinbo Gao
Abstract: Unsupervised visible-infrared person re-identification (USL-VI-ReID) aims to match pedestrian images of the same identity from different modalities without annotations. Existing works mainly focus on alleviating the modality gap by aligning instance-level features of the unlabeled samples. However, the relationships between cross-modality clusters are not well explored. To this end, we propose a novel bilateral cluster matching-based learning framework to reduce the modality gap by matching cross-modality clusters. Specifically, we design a Many-to-many Bilateral Cross-Modality Cluster Matching (MBCCM) algorithm through optimizing the maximum matching problem in a bipartite graph. Then, the matched pairwise clusters utilize shared visible and infrared pseudo-labels during the model training. Under such a supervisory signal, a Modality-Specific and Modality-Agnostic (MSMA) contrastive learning framework is proposed to align features jointly at a cluster-level. Meanwhile, the cross-modality Consistency Constraint (CC) is proposed to explicitly reduce the large modality discrepancy. Extensive experiments on the public SYSU-MM01 and RegDB datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, surpassing state-of-the-art approaches by a large margin of 8.76% mAP on average.
Authors: Kwangjun Ahn, Ali Jadbabaie, Suvrit Sra
Abstract: Modern machine learning applications have witnessed the remarkable success of optimization algorithms that are designed to find flat minima. Motivated by this design choice, we undertake a formal study that (i) formulates the notion of flat minima, and (ii) studies the complexity of finding them. Specifically, we adopt the trace of the Hessian of the cost function as a measure of flatness, and use it to formally define the notion of approximate flat minima. Under this notion, we then analyze algorithms that find approximate flat minima efficiently. For general cost functions, we discuss a gradient-based algorithm that finds an approximate flat local minimum efficiently. The main component of the algorithm is to use gradients computed from randomly perturbed iterates to estimate a direction that leads to flatter minima. For the setting where the cost function is an empirical risk over training data, we present a faster algorithm that is inspired by a recently proposed practical algorithm called sharpness-aware minimization, supporting its success in practice.
Authors: Jikun Kang, Romain Laroche, Xingdi Yuan, Adam Trischler, Xue Liu, Jie Fu
Abstract: Decision Transformer-based decision-making agents have shown the ability to generalize across multiple tasks. However, their performance relies on massive data and computation. We argue that this inefficiency stems from the forgetting phenomenon, in which a model memorizes its behaviors in parameters throughout training. As a result, training on a new task may deteriorate the model's performance on previous tasks. In contrast to LLMs' implicit memory mechanism, the human brain utilizes distributed memory storage, which helps manage and organize multiple skills efficiently, mitigating the forgetting phenomenon. Inspired by this, we propose a working memory module to store, blend, and retrieve information for different downstream tasks. Evaluation results show that the proposed method improves training efficiency and generalization in Atari games and Meta-World object manipulation tasks. Moreover, we demonstrate that memory fine-tuning further enhances the adaptability of the proposed architecture.
Authors: Shiyue Zhang, Shijie Wu, Ozan Irsoy, Steven Lu, Mohit Bansal, Mark Dredze, David Rosenberg
Abstract: Autoregressive language models are trained by minimizing the cross-entropy of the model distribution Q relative to the data distribution P -- that is, minimizing the forward cross-entropy, which is equivalent to maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). We have observed that models trained in this way may "over-generalize", in the sense that they produce non-human-like text. Moreover, we believe that reverse cross-entropy, i.e., the cross-entropy of P relative to Q, is a better reflection of how a human would evaluate text generated by a model. Hence, we propose learning with MixCE, an objective that mixes the forward and reverse cross-entropies. We evaluate models trained with this objective on synthetic data settings (where P is known) and real data, and show that the resulting models yield better generated text without complex decoding strategies. Our code and models are publicly available at https://github.com/bloomberg/mixce-acl2023
Authors: Ivan R. Nabi, Ben Cardoen, Ismail M. Khater, Guang Gao, Timothy H. Wong, Ghassan Hamarneh
Abstract: Super-resolution microscopy, or nanoscopy, enables the use of fluorescent-based molecular localization tools to study molecular structure at the nanoscale level in the intact cell, bridging the mesoscale gap to classical structural biology methodologies. Analysis of super-resolution data by artificial intelligence (AI), such as machine learning, offers tremendous potential for discovery of new biology, that, by definition, is not known and lacks ground truth. Herein, we describe the application of weakly supervised paradigms to super-resolution microscopy and its potential to enable the accelerated exploration of the nanoscale architecture of subcellular macromolecules and organelles.
Authors: Christian Igel
Abstract: Monotonicity constraints are powerful regularizers in statistical modelling. They can support fairness in computer-aided decision making and increase plausibility in data-driven scientific models. The seminal min-max (MM) neural network architecture ensures monotonicity, but often gets stuck in undesired local optima during training because of partial derivatives of the MM nonlinearities being zero. We propose a simple modification of the MM network using strictly-increasing smooth minimum and maximum functions that alleviates this problem. The resulting smooth min-max (SMM) network module inherits the asymptotic approximation properties from the MM architecture. It can be used within larger deep learning systems trained end-to-end. The SMM module is conceptually simple and computationally less demanding than state-of-the-art neural networks for monotonic modelling. Our experiments show that this does not come with a loss in generalization performance compared to alternative neural and non-neural approaches.
Authors: Sayed Erfan Arefin, Tasnia Ashrafi Heya, Hasan Al-Qudah, Ynes Ineza, Abdul Serwadda
Abstract: The transformative influence of Large Language Models (LLMs) is profoundly reshaping the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology domain. Notably, ChatGPT distinguishes itself within these models, demonstrating remarkable performance in multi-turn conversations and exhibiting code proficiency across an array of languages. In this paper, we carry out a comprehensive evaluation of ChatGPT's coding capabilities based on what is to date the largest catalog of coding challenges. Our focus is on the python programming language and problems centered on data structures and algorithms, two topics at the very foundations of Computer Science. We evaluate ChatGPT for its ability to generate correct solutions to the problems fed to it, its code quality, and nature of run-time errors thrown by its code. Where ChatGPT code successfully executes, but fails to solve the problem at hand, we look into patterns in the test cases passed in order to gain some insights into how wrong ChatGPT code is in these kinds of situations. To infer whether ChatGPT might have directly memorized some of the data that was used to train it, we methodically design an experiment to investigate this phenomena. Making comparisons with human performance whenever feasible, we investigate all the above questions from the context of both its underlying learning models (GPT-3.5 and GPT-4), on a vast array sub-topics within the main topics, and on problems having varying degrees of difficulty.
Authors: Vito Walter Anelli, Daniele Malitesta, Claudio Pomo, Alejandro Bellog\'in, Tommaso Di Noia, Eugenio Di Sciascio
Abstract: The success of graph neural network-based models (GNNs) has significantly advanced recommender systems by effectively modeling users and items as a bipartite, undirected graph. However, many original graph-based works often adopt results from baseline papers without verifying their validity for the specific configuration under analysis. Our work addresses this issue by focusing on the replicability of results. We present a code that successfully replicates results from six popular and recent graph recommendation models (NGCF, DGCF, LightGCN, SGL, UltraGCN, and GFCF) on three common benchmark datasets (Gowalla, Yelp 2018, and Amazon Book). Additionally, we compare these graph models with traditional collaborative filtering models that historically performed well in offline evaluations. Furthermore, we extend our study to two new datasets (Allrecipes and BookCrossing) that lack established setups in existing literature. As the performance on these datasets differs from the previous benchmarks, we analyze the impact of specific dataset characteristics on recommendation accuracy. By investigating the information flow from users' neighborhoods, we aim to identify which models are influenced by intrinsic features in the dataset structure. The code to reproduce our experiments is available at: https://github.com/sisinflab/Graph-RSs-Reproducibility.
URLs: https://github.com/sisinflab/Graph-RSs-Reproducibility.
Authors: Joan Puigcerver, Carlos Riquelme, Basil Mustafa, Neil Houlsby
Abstract: Sparse mixture of expert architectures (MoEs) scale model capacity without significant increases in training or inference costs. Despite their success, MoEs suffer from a number of issues: training instability, token dropping, inability to scale the number of experts, or ineffective finetuning. In this work, we propose Soft MoE, a fully-differentiable sparse Transformer that addresses these challenges, while maintaining the benefits of MoEs. Soft MoE performs an implicit soft assignment by passing different weighted combinations of all input tokens to each expert. As in other MoEs, experts in Soft MoE only process a subset of the (combined) tokens, enabling larger model capacity (and performance) at lower inference cost. In the context of visual recognition, Soft MoE greatly outperforms dense Transformers (ViTs) and popular MoEs (Tokens Choice and Experts Choice). Furthermore, Soft MoE scales well: Soft MoE Huge/14 with 128 experts in 16 MoE layers has over 40x more parameters than ViT Huge/14, with only 2% increased inference time, and substantially better quality.
Authors: Zhenrong Zhang, Jianan Liu, Yuxuan Xia, Tao Huang, Qing-Long Han, Hongbin Liu
Abstract: Online multi-object tracking (MOT) plays a pivotal role in autonomous systems. The state-of-the-art approaches usually employ a tracking-by-detection method, and data association plays a critical role. This paper proposes a learning and graph-optimized (LEGO) modular tracker to improve data association performance in the existing literature. The proposed LEGO tracker integrates graph optimization and self-attention mechanisms, which efficiently formulate the association score map, facilitating the accurate and efficient matching of objects across time frames. To further enhance the state update process, the Kalman filter is added to ensure consistent tracking by incorporating temporal coherence in the object states. Our proposed method utilizing LiDAR alone has shown exceptional performance compared to other online tracking approaches, including LiDAR-based and LiDAR-camera fusion-based methods. LEGO ranked 1st at the time of submitting results to KITTI object tracking evaluation ranking board and remains 2nd at the time of submitting this paper, among all online trackers in the KITTI MOT benchmark for cars1
Authors: Yuankai Luo, Hongkang Li, Lei Shi, Xiao-Ming Wu
Abstract: Graph transformers need strong inductive biases to derive meaningful attention scores. Yet, current methods often fall short in capturing longer ranges, hierarchical structures, or community structures, which are common in various graphs such as molecules, social networks, and citation networks. This paper presents a Hierarchical Distance Structural Encoding (HDSE) method to model node distances in a graph, focusing on its multi-level, hierarchical nature. We introduce a novel framework to seamlessly integrate HDSE into the attention mechanism of existing graph transformers, allowing for simultaneous application with other positional encodings. To apply graph transformers with HDSE to large-scale graphs, we further propose a high-level HDSE that effectively biases the linear transformers towards graph hierarchies. We theoretically prove the superiority of HDSE over shortest path distances in terms of expressivity and generalization. Empirically, we demonstrate that graph transformers with HDSE excel in graph classification, regression on 7 graph-level datasets, and node classification on 11 large-scale graphs, including those with up to a billion nodes.
Authors: Chuyi Kong, Yaxin Fan, Xiang Wan, Feng Jiang, Benyou Wang
Abstract: The unparalleled performance of closed-sourced ChatGPT has sparked efforts towards its democratization, with notable strides made by leveraging real user and ChatGPT dialogues, as evidenced by Vicuna. However, due to challenges in gathering dialogues involving human participation, current endeavors like Baize and UltraChat rely on ChatGPT conducting roleplay to simulate humans based on instructions, resulting in overdependence on seeds, diminished human-likeness, limited topic diversity, and an absence of genuine multi-round conversational dynamics. To address the above issues, we propose a paradigm to simulate human behavior better and explore the benefits of incorporating more human-like questions in multi-turn conversations. Specifically, we directly target human questions extracted from genuine human-machine conversations as a learning goal and provide a novel user simulator called `Socratic'. The experimental results show our response model, `PlatoLM', achieves SoTA performance among LLaMA-based 7B models in MT-Bench. Our findings further demonstrate that our method introduces highly human-like questioning patterns and rich topic structures, which can teach the response model better than previous works in multi-round conversations.
Authors: Dingyang Chen, Qi Zhang
Abstract: Identification and analysis of symmetrical patterns in the natural world have led to significant discoveries across various scientific fields, such as the formulation of gravitational laws in physics and advancements in the study of chemical structures. In this paper, we focus on exploiting Euclidean symmetries inherent in certain cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) problems and prevalent in many applications. We begin by formally characterizing a subclass of Markov games with a general notion of symmetries that admits the existence of symmetric optimal values and policies. Motivated by these properties, we design neural network architectures with symmetric constraints embedded as an inductive bias for multi-agent actor-critic methods. This inductive bias results in superior performance in various cooperative MARL benchmarks and impressive generalization capabilities such as zero-shot learning and transfer learning in unseen scenarios with repeated symmetric patterns. The code is available at: https://github.com/dchen48/E3AC.
Authors: Tuwe L\"ofstr\"om, Helena L\"ofstr\"om, Ulf Johansson, Cecilia S\"onstr\"od, Rudy Matela
Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often an integral part of modern decision support systems. The best-performing predictive models used in AI-based decision support systems lack transparency. Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) aims to create AI systems that can explain their rationale to human users. Local explanations in XAI can provide information about the causes of individual predictions in terms of feature importance. However, a critical drawback of existing local explanation methods is their inability to quantify the uncertainty associated with a feature's importance. This paper introduces an extension of a feature importance explanation method, Calibrated Explanations, previously only supporting classification, with support for standard regression and probabilistic regression, i.e., the probability that the target is above an arbitrary threshold. The extension for regression keeps all the benefits of Calibrated Explanations, such as calibration of the prediction from the underlying model with confidence intervals, uncertainty quantification of feature importance, and allows both factual and counterfactual explanations. Calibrated Explanations for standard regression provides fast, reliable, stable, and robust explanations. Calibrated Explanations for probabilistic regression provides an entirely new way of creating probabilistic explanations from any ordinary regression model, allowing dynamic selection of thresholds. The method is model agnostic with easily understood conditional rules. An implementation in Python is freely available on GitHub and for installation using both pip and conda, making the results in this paper easily replicable.
Authors: Yinghao Zhu, Zixiang Wang, Long He, Shiyun Xie, Xiaochen Zheng, Liantao Ma, Chengwei Pan
Abstract: Electronic Health Records (EHRs) contain a wealth of patient data; however, the sparsity of EHRs data often presents significant challenges for predictive modeling. Conventional imputation methods inadequately distinguish between real and imputed data, leading to potential inaccuracies of patient representations. To address these issues, we introduce PRISM, a framework that indirectly imputes data by leveraging prototype representations of similar patients, thus ensuring compact representations that preserve patient information. PRISM also includes a feature confidence learner module, which evaluates the reliability of each feature considering missing statuses. Additionally, PRISM introduces a new patient similarity metric that accounts for feature confidence, avoiding overreliance on imprecise imputed values. Our extensive experiments on the MIMIC-III, MIMIC-IV, PhysioNet Challenge 2012, eICU datasets demonstrate PRISM's superior performance in predicting in-hospital mortality and 30-day readmission tasks, showcasing its effectiveness in handling EHR data sparsity. For the sake of reproducibility and further research, we have made the code publicly available at https://github.com/yhzhu99/PRISM.
Authors: Wenjing Xie, Tao Hu, Neiwen Ling, Guoliang Xing, Chun Jason Xue, Nan Guan
Abstract: Fusing Radar and Lidar sensor data can fully utilize their complementary advantages and provide more accurate reconstruction of the surrounding for autonomous driving systems. Surround Radar/Lidar can provide 360-degree view sampling with the minimal cost, which are promising sensing hardware solutions for autonomous driving systems. However, due to the intrinsic physical constraints, the rotating speed of surround Radar, and thus the frequency to generate Radar data frames, is much lower than surround Lidar. Existing Radar/Lidar fusion methods have to work at the low frequency of surround Radar, which cannot meet the high responsiveness requirement of autonomous driving systems.This paper develops techniques to fuse surround Radar/Lidar with working frequency only limited by the faster surround Lidar instead of the slower surround Radar, based on the state-of-the-art object detection model MVDNet. The basic idea of our approach is simple: we let MVDNet work with temporally unaligned data from Radar/Lidar, so that fusion can take place at any time when a new Lidar data frame arrives, instead of waiting for the slow Radar data frame. However, directly applying MVDNet to temporally unaligned Radar/Lidar data greatly degrades its object detection accuracy. The key information revealed in this paper is that we can achieve high output frequency with little accuracy loss by enhancing the training procedure to explore the temporal redundancy in MVDNet so that it can tolerate the temporal unalignment of input data. We explore several different ways of training enhancement and compare them quantitatively with experiments.
Authors: Ziyuan Xia, Anchen Sun, Xiaodong Cai, Saixing Zeng
Abstract: Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reports are globally recognized as a keystone in sustainable enterprise development. However, current literature has not concluded the development of topics and trends in ESG contexts in the twenty-first century. Therefore, We selected 1114 ESG reports from firms in the technology industry to analyze the evolutionary trends of ESG topics by text mining. We discovered the homogenization effect towards low environmental, medium governance, and high social features in the evolution. We also designed a strategic framework to look closer into the dynamic changes of firms' within-industry scores and across-domain importances. We found that companies are gradually converging towards the third quadrant, which indicates that firms contribute less to industrial outstanding and professional distinctiveness in ESG reporting. Firms choose to imitate ESG reports from each other to mitigate uncertainty and enhance behavioral legitimacy.
Authors: Tianbao Xie, Siheng Zhao, Chen Henry Wu, Yitao Liu, Qian Luo, Victor Zhong, Yanchao Yang, Tao Yu
Abstract: Designing reward functions is a longstanding challenge in reinforcement learning (RL); it requires specialized knowledge or domain data, leading to high costs for development. To address this, we introduce Text2Reward, a data-free framework that automates the generation and shaping of dense reward functions based on large language models (LLMs). Given a goal described in natural language, Text2Reward generates shaped dense reward functions as an executable program grounded in a compact representation of the environment. Unlike inverse RL and recent work that uses LLMs to write sparse reward codes or unshaped dense rewards with a constant function across timesteps, Text2Reward produces interpretable, free-form dense reward codes that cover a wide range of tasks, utilize existing packages, and allow iterative refinement with human feedback. We evaluate Text2Reward on two robotic manipulation benchmarks (ManiSkill2, MetaWorld) and two locomotion environments of MuJoCo. On 13 of the 17 manipulation tasks, policies trained with generated reward codes achieve similar or better task success rates and convergence speed than expert-written reward codes. For locomotion tasks, our method learns six novel locomotion behaviors with a success rate exceeding 94%. Furthermore, we show that the policies trained in the simulator with our method can be deployed in the real world. Finally, Text2Reward further improves the policies by refining their reward functions with human feedback. Video results are available at https://text-to-reward.github.io/ .
Authors: Lukas Berglund, Meg Tong, Max Kaufmann, Mikita Balesni, Asa Cooper Stickland, Tomasz Korbak, Owain Evans
Abstract: We expose a surprising failure of generalization in auto-regressive large language models (LLMs). If a model is trained on a sentence of the form "A is B", it will not automatically generalize to the reverse direction "B is A". This is the Reversal Curse. For instance, if a model is trained on "Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to travel to space", it will not automatically be able to answer the question, "Who was the first woman to travel to space?". Moreover, the likelihood of the correct answer ("Valentina Tershkova") will not be higher than for a random name. Thus, models do not generalize a prevalent pattern in their training set: if "A is B" occurs, "B is A" is more likely to occur. It is worth noting, however, that if "A is B" appears in-context, models can deduce the reverse relationship. We provide evidence for the Reversal Curse by finetuning GPT-3 and Llama-1 on fictitious statements such as "Uriah Hawthorne is the composer of Abyssal Melodies" and showing that they fail to correctly answer "Who composed Abyssal Melodies?". The Reversal Curse is robust across model sizes and model families and is not alleviated by data augmentation. We also evaluate ChatGPT (GPT-3.5 and GPT-4) on questions about real-world celebrities, such as "Who is Tom Cruise's mother? [A: Mary Lee Pfeiffer]" and the reverse "Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer's son?". GPT-4 correctly answers questions like the former 79% of the time, compared to 33% for the latter. Code available at: https://github.com/lukasberglund/reversal_curse.
Authors: Yixuan Huang, Jialin Yuan, Chanho Kim, Pupul Pradhan, Bryan Chen, Li Fuxin, Tucker Hermans
Abstract: Robots need to have a memory of previously observed, but currently occluded objects to work reliably in realistic environments. We investigate the problem of encoding object-oriented memory into a multi-object manipulation reasoning and planning framework. We propose DOOM and LOOM, which leverage transformer relational dynamics to encode the history of trajectories given partial-view point clouds and an object discovery and tracking engine. Our approaches can perform multiple challenging tasks including reasoning with occluded objects, novel objects appearance, and object reappearance. Throughout our extensive simulation and real-world experiments, we find that our approaches perform well in terms of different numbers of objects and different numbers of distractor actions. Furthermore, we show our approaches outperform an implicit memory baseline.
Authors: Thomas A. Berrueta, Allison Pinosky, Todd D. Murphey
Abstract: Robots and animals both experience the world through their bodies and senses. Their embodiment constrains their experiences, ensuring they unfold continuously in space and time. As a result, the experiences of embodied agents are intrinsically correlated. Correlations create fundamental challenges for machine learning, as most techniques rely on the assumption that data are independent and identically distributed. In reinforcement learning, where data are directly collected from an agent's sequential experiences, violations of this assumption are often unavoidable. Here, we derive a method that overcomes this issue by exploiting the statistical mechanics of ergodic processes, which we term maximum diffusion reinforcement learning. By decorrelating agent experiences, our approach provably enables single-shot learning in continuous deployments over the course of individual task attempts. Moreover, we prove our approach generalizes well-known maximum entropy techniques, and robustly exceeds state-of-the-art performance across popular benchmarks. Our results at the nexus of physics, learning, and control form a foundation for transparent and reliable decision-making in embodied reinforcement learning agents.
Authors: Ambar Pal, Jeremias Sulam, Ren\'e Vidal
Abstract: The susceptibility of modern machine learning classifiers to adversarial examples has motivated theoretical results suggesting that these might be unavoidable. However, these results can be too general to be applicable to natural data distributions. Indeed, humans are quite robust for tasks involving vision. This apparent conflict motivates a deeper dive into the question: Are adversarial examples truly unavoidable? In this work, we theoretically demonstrate that a key property of the data distribution -- concentration on small-volume subsets of the input space -- determines whether a robust classifier exists. We further demonstrate that, for a data distribution concentrated on a union of low-dimensional linear subspaces, utilizing structure in data naturally leads to classifiers that enjoy data-dependent polyhedral robustness guarantees, improving upon methods for provable certification in certain regimes.
Authors: Jintian Zhang, Xin Xu, Ningyu Zhang, Ruibo Liu, Bryan Hooi, Shumin Deng
Abstract: As Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems are increasingly employed in intricate social environments, a pressing query emerges: Can these NLP systems mirror human-esque collaborative intelligence, in a multi-agent society consisting of multiple large language models (LLMs)? This paper probes the collaboration mechanisms among contemporary NLP systems by melding practical experiments with theoretical insights. We fabricate four unique `societies' comprised of LLM agents, where each agent is characterized by a specific `trait' (easy-going or overconfident) and engages in collaboration with a distinct `thinking pattern' (debate or reflection). Through evaluating these multi-agent societies on three benchmark datasets, we discern that certain collaborative strategies not only outshine previous top-tier approaches, but also optimize efficiency (using fewer API tokens). Moreover, our results further illustrate that LLM agents manifest human-like social behaviors, such as conformity and consensus reaching, mirroring foundational social psychology theories. In conclusion, we integrate insights from social psychology to contextualize the collaboration of LLM agents, inspiring further investigations into the collaboration mechanism for LLMs. We commit to sharing our code and datasets\footnote{\url{https://github.com/zjunlp/MachineSoM}.}, hoping to catalyze further research in this promising avenue.
Authors: Taraneh Younesian, Daniel Daza, Emile van Krieken, Thiviyan Thanapalasingam, Peter Bloem
Abstract: Graph neural networks (GNNs) learn to represent nodes by aggregating information from their neighbors. As GNNs increase in depth, their receptive field grows exponentially, leading to high memory costs. Several existing methods address this by sampling a small subset of nodes, scaling GNNs to much larger graphs. These methods are primarily evaluated on homophilous graphs, where neighboring nodes often share the same label. However, most of these methods rely on static heuristics that may not generalize across different graphs or tasks. We argue that the sampling method should be adaptive, adjusting to the complex structural properties of each graph. To this end, we introduce GRAPES, an adaptive sampling method that learns to identify the set of nodes crucial for training a GNN. GRAPES trains a second GNN to predict node sampling probabilities by optimizing the downstream task objective. We evaluate GRAPES on various node classification benchmarks, involving homophilous as well as heterophilous graphs. We demonstrate GRAPES' effectiveness in accuracy and scalability, particularly in multi-label heterophilous graphs. Unlike other sampling methods, GRAPES maintains high accuracy even with smaller sample sizes and, therefore, can scale to massive graphs. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/dfdazac/grapes.
Authors: Yufei Li, Xiao Yu, Yanghong Guo, Yanchi Liu, Haifeng Chen, Cong Liu
Abstract: Joint entity and relation extraction is a process that identifies entity pairs and their relations using a single model. We focus on the problem of joint extraction in distantly-labeled data, whose labels are generated by aligning entity mentions with the corresponding entity and relation tags using a knowledge base (KB). One key challenge is the presence of noisy labels arising from both incorrect entity and relation annotations, which significantly impairs the quality of supervised learning. Existing approaches, either considering only one source of noise or making decisions using external knowledge, cannot well-utilize significant information in the training data. We propose DENRL, a generalizable framework that 1) incorporates a lightweight transformer backbone into a sequence labeling scheme for joint tagging, and 2) employs a noise-robust framework that regularizes the tagging model with significant relation patterns and entity-relation dependencies, then iteratively self-adapts to instances with less noise from both sources. Surprisingly, experiments on two benchmark datasets show that DENRL, using merely its own parametric distribution and simple data-driven heuristics, outperforms large language model-based baselines by a large margin with better interpretability.
Authors: Azim Akhtarshenas, Mohammad Ali Vahedifar, Navid Ayoobi, Behrouz Maham, Tohid Alizadeh, Sina Ebrahimi, David L\'opez-P\'erez
Abstract: Robust machine learning (ML) models can be developed by leveraging large volumes of data and distributing the computational tasks across numerous devices or servers. Federated learning (FL) is a technique in the realm of ML that facilitates this goal by utilizing cloud infrastructure to enable collaborative model training among a network of decentralized devices. Beyond distributing the computational load, FL targets the resolution of privacy issues and the reduction of communication costs simultaneously. To protect user privacy, FL requires users to send model updates rather than transmitting large quantities of raw and potentially confidential data. Specifically, individuals train ML models locally using their own data and then upload the results in the form of weights and gradients to the cloud for aggregation into the global model. This strategy is also advantageous in environments with limited bandwidth or high communication costs, as it prevents the transmission of large data volumes. With the increasing volume of data and rising privacy concerns, alongside the emergence of large-scale ML models like Large Language Models (LLMs), FL presents itself as a timely and relevant solution. It is therefore essential to review current FL algorithms to guide future research that meets the rapidly evolving ML demands. This survey provides a comprehensive analysis and comparison of the most recent FL algorithms, evaluating them on various fronts including mathematical frameworks, privacy protection, resource allocation, and applications. Beyond summarizing existing FL methods, this survey identifies potential gaps, open areas, and future challenges based on the performance reports and algorithms used in recent studies. This survey enables researchers to readily identify existing limitations in the FL field for further exploration.
Authors: Gang Xu, Shuhao Wang, Lingyu Zhao, Xiao Chen, Tongwei Wang, Lang Wang, Zhenwei Luo, Dahan Wang, Zewen Zhang, Aijun Liu, Wei Ba, Zhigang Song, Huaiyin Shi, Dingrong Zhong, Jianpeng Ma
Abstract: Histopathology image analysis plays a crucial role in cancer diagnosis. However, training a clinically applicable segmentation algorithm requires pathologists to engage in labour-intensive labelling. In contrast, weakly supervised learning methods, which only require coarse-grained labels at the image level, can significantly reduce the labeling efforts. Unfortunately, while these methods perform reasonably well in slide-level prediction, their ability to locate cancerous regions, which is essential for many clinical applications, remains unsatisfactory. Previously, we proposed CAMEL, which achieves comparable results to those of fully supervised baselines in pixel-level segmentation. However, CAMEL requires 1,280x1,280 image-level binary annotations for positive WSIs. Here, we present CAMEL2, by introducing a threshold of the cancerous ratio for positive bags, it allows us to better utilize the information, consequently enabling us to scale up the image-level setting from 1,280x1,280 to 5,120x5,120 while maintaining the accuracy. Our results with various datasets, demonstrate that CAMEL2, with the help of 5,120x5,120 image-level binary annotations, which are easy to annotate, achieves comparable performance to that of a fully supervised baseline in both instance- and slide-level classifications.
Authors: Zeming Wei, Yifei Wang, Ang Li, Yichuan Mo, Yisen Wang
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown remarkable success in various tasks, yet their safety and the risk of generating harmful content remain pressing concerns. In this paper, we delve into the potential of In-Context Learning (ICL) to modulate the alignment of LLMs. Specifically, we propose the In-Context Attack (ICA) which employs harmful demonstrations to subvert LLMs, and the In-Context Defense (ICD) which bolsters model resilience through examples that demonstrate refusal to produce harmful responses. We offer theoretical insights to elucidate how a limited set of in-context demonstrations can pivotally influence the safety alignment of LLMs. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate the efficacy of ICA and ICD in respectively elevating and mitigating the success rates of jailbreaking prompts. Our findings illuminate the profound influence of ICL on LLM behavior, opening new avenues for improving the safety of LLMs.
Authors: Kexun Zhang, Hongqiao Chen, Lei Li, William Wang
Abstract: Instruction-tuned large language models (LLMs) excel at many tasks but often fail to use external tools due to complicated and unfamiliar syntax constraints. While extensive fine-tuning and prompting can mitigate the issue, these approaches are expensive and hard to generalize. Furthermore, because syntax constraints are only learned implicitly during fine-tuning, models still make frequent syntax errors. Motivated by the fact that these constraints can be better satisfied explicitly with constrained decoding, we propose TOOLDEC, a decoding algorithm using finite state machines to force LLMs to follow tool syntax. Our experiments show that TOOLDEC eliminates all syntax errors, achieving significantly better performance on various base models and benchmarks. More surprisingly, when applied to generalist out-of-the-box LLMs such as Mistral-Instruct, TOOLDEC improves its accuracy in tool use from the initial 0% to an impressive 52%, matching the performance of specialized fine-tuned models such as ToolLLM.
Authors: Licong Lin, Yu Bai, Song Mei
Abstract: Large transformer models pretrained on offline reinforcement learning datasets have demonstrated remarkable in-context reinforcement learning (ICRL) capabilities, where they can make good decisions when prompted with interaction trajectories from unseen environments. However, when and how transformers can be trained to perform ICRL have not been theoretically well-understood. In particular, it is unclear which reinforcement-learning algorithms transformers can perform in context, and how distribution mismatch in offline training data affects the learned algorithms. This paper provides a theoretical framework that analyzes supervised pretraining for ICRL. This includes two recently proposed training methods -- algorithm distillation and decision-pretrained transformers. First, assuming model realizability, we prove the supervised-pretrained transformer will imitate the conditional expectation of the expert algorithm given the observed trajectory. The generalization error will scale with model capacity and a distribution divergence factor between the expert and offline algorithms. Second, we show transformers with ReLU attention can efficiently approximate near-optimal online reinforcement learning algorithms like LinUCB and Thompson sampling for stochastic linear bandits, and UCB-VI for tabular Markov decision processes. This provides the first quantitative analysis of the ICRL capabilities of transformers pretrained from offline trajectories.
Authors: Xiang Chen, Duanzheng Song, Honghao Gui, Chenxi Wang, Ningyu Zhang, Yong Jiang, Fei Huang, Chengfei Lv, Dan Zhang, Huajun Chen
Abstract: Despite their impressive generative capabilities, LLMs are hindered by fact-conflicting hallucinations in real-world applications. The accurate identification of hallucinations in texts generated by LLMs, especially in complex inferential scenarios, is a relatively unexplored area. To address this gap, we present FactCHD, a dedicated benchmark designed for the detection of fact-conflicting hallucinations from LLMs. FactCHD features a diverse dataset that spans various factuality patterns, including vanilla, multi-hop, comparison, and set operation. A distinctive element of FactCHD is its integration of fact-based evidence chains, significantly enhancing the depth of evaluating the detectors' explanations. Experiments on different LLMs expose the shortcomings of current approaches in detecting factual errors accurately. Furthermore, we introduce Truth-Triangulator that synthesizes reflective considerations by tool-enhanced ChatGPT and LoRA-tuning based on Llama2, aiming to yield more credible detection through the amalgamation of predictive results and evidence. The benchmark dataset is available at https://github.com/zjunlp/FactCHD.
Authors: Chen Jin, Ryutaro Tanno, Amrutha Saseendran, Tom Diethe, Philip Teare
Abstract: Textural Inversion, a prompt learning method, learns a singular text embedding for a new "word" to represent image style and appearance, allowing it to be integrated into natural language sentences to generate novel synthesised images. However, identifying multiple unknown object-level concepts within one scene remains a complex challenge. While recent methods have resorted to cropping or masking individual images to learn multiple concepts, these techniques often require prior knowledge of new concepts and are labour-intensive. To address this challenge, we introduce Multi-Concept Prompt Learning (MCPL), where multiple unknown "words" are simultaneously learned from a single sentence-image pair, without any imagery annotations. To enhance the accuracy of word-concept correlation and refine attention mask boundaries, we propose three regularisation techniques: Attention Masking, Prompts Contrastive Loss, and Bind Adjective. Extensive quantitative comparisons with both real-world categories and biomedical images demonstrate that our method can learn new semantically disentangled concepts. Our approach emphasises learning solely from textual embeddings, using less than 10% of the storage space compared to others. The project page, code, and data are available at https://astrazeneca.github.io/mcpl.github.io.
Authors: Xuejie Liu, Anji Liu, Guy Van den Broeck, Yitao Liang
Abstract: A popular paradigm for offline Reinforcement Learning (RL) tasks is to first fit the offline trajectories to a sequence model, and then prompt the model for actions that lead to high expected return. In addition to obtaining accurate sequence models, this paper highlights that tractability, the ability to exactly and efficiently answer various probabilistic queries, plays an important role in offline RL. Specifically, due to the fundamental stochasticity from the offline data-collection policies and the environment dynamics, highly non-trivial conditional/constrained generation is required to elicit rewarding actions. it is still possible to approximate such queries, we observe that such crude estimates significantly undermine the benefits brought by expressive sequence models. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes Trifle (Tractable Inference for Offline RL), which leverages modern Tractable Probabilistic Models (TPMs) to bridge the gap between good sequence models and high expected returns at evaluation time. Empirically, Trifle achieves the most state-of-the-art scores in 9 Gym-MuJoCo benchmarks against strong baselines. Further, owing to its tractability, Trifle significantly outperforms prior approaches in stochastic environments and safe RL tasks (e.g. with action constraints) with minimum algorithmic modifications.
Authors: Abdellah Rahmani, Pascal Frossard
Abstract: We address the challenge of structure learning from multivariate time series that are characterized by a sequence of different, unknown regimes. We introduce a new optimization-based method (CASTOR), that concurrently learns the Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) for each regime and determine the number of regimes along with their sequential arrangement. Through the optimization of a score function via an expectation maximization (EM) algorithm, CASTOR alternates between learning the regime indices (Expectation step) and inferring causal relationships in each regime (Maximization step). We further prove the identifiability of regimes and DAGs within the CASTOR framework. We conduct extensive experiments and show that our method consistently outperforms causal discovery models across various settings (linear and nonlinear causal relationships) and datasets (synthetic and real data).
Authors: Changdae Oh, Hyesu Lim, Mijoo Kim, Dongyoon Han, Sangdoo Yun, Jaegul Choo, Alexander Hauptmann, Zhi-Qi Cheng, Kyungwoo Song
Abstract: Improving out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization through in-distribution (ID) adaptation is a primary goal of robust fine-tuning methods beyond the naive fine-tuning approach. However, despite decent OOD generalization performance from recent robust fine-tuning methods, OOD confidence calibration for reliable machine learning has not been fully addressed. This work proposes a robust fine-tuning method that improves both OOD accuracy and calibration error in Vision Language Models (VLMs). Firstly, we show that both types of errors have a shared upper bound consisting of two terms of ID data: 1) calibration error and 2) the smallest singular value of the input covariance matrix. Based on this insight, we design a novel framework that conducts fine-tuning with a constrained multimodal contrastive loss enforcing a larger smallest singular value, which is further aided by the self-distillation of a moving averaged model to achieve well-calibrated prediction. Starting from an empirical validation of our theoretical statements, we provide extensive experimental results on ImageNet distribution shift benchmarks that demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
Authors: Ashok Urlana, Pruthwik Mishra, Tathagato Roy, Rahul Mishra
Abstract: Generic text summarization approaches often fail to address the specific intent and needs of individual users. Recently, scholarly attention has turned to the development of summarization methods that are more closely tailored and controlled to align with specific objectives and user needs. Despite a growing corpus of controllable summarization research, there is no comprehensive survey available that thoroughly explores the diverse controllable attributes employed in this context, delves into the associated challenges, and investigates the existing solutions. In this survey, we formalize the Controllable Text Summarization (CTS) task, categorize controllable attributes according to their shared characteristics and objectives, and present a thorough examination of existing datasets and methods within each category. Moreover, based on our findings, we uncover limitations and research gaps, while also exploring potential solutions and future directions for CTS. We release our detailed analysis of CTS papers at \url{https://github.com/ashokurlana/controllable\_text\_summarization\_survey}.
URLs: https://github.com/ashokurlana/controllable\_text\_summarization\_survey
Authors: Jiahao Yu, Yuhang Wu, Dong Shu, Mingyu Jin, Sabrina Yang, Xinyu Xing
Abstract: In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, ChatGPT has been widely used in various applications. The new feature - customization of ChatGPT models by users to cater to specific needs has opened new frontiers in AI utility. However, this study reveals a significant security vulnerability inherent in these user-customized GPTs: prompt injection attacks. Through comprehensive testing of over 200 user-designed GPT models via adversarial prompts, we demonstrate that these systems are susceptible to prompt injections. Through prompt injection, an adversary can not only extract the customized system prompts but also access the uploaded files. This paper provides a first-hand analysis of the prompt injection, alongside the evaluation of the possible mitigation of such attacks. Our findings underscore the urgent need for robust security frameworks in the design and deployment of customizable GPT models. The intent of this paper is to raise awareness and prompt action in the AI community, ensuring that the benefits of GPT customization do not come at the cost of compromised security and privacy.
Authors: Shicheng Xu, Danyang Hou, Liang Pang, Jingcheng Deng, Jun Xu, Huawei Shen, Xueqi Cheng
Abstract: With the advancement of generation models, AI-generated content (AIGC) is becoming more realistic, flooding the Internet. A recent study suggests that this phenomenon causes source bias in text retrieval for web search. Specifically, neural retrieval models tend to rank generated texts higher than human-written texts. In this paper, we extend the study of this bias to cross-modal retrieval. Firstly, we successfully construct a suitable benchmark to explore the existence of the bias. Subsequent extensive experiments on this benchmark reveal that AI-generated images introduce an invisible relevance bias to text-image retrieval models. Specifically, our experiments show that text-image retrieval models tend to rank the AI-generated images higher than the real images, even though the AI-generated images do not exhibit more visually relevant features to the query than real images. This invisible relevance bias is prevalent across retrieval models with varying training data and architectures. Furthermore, our subsequent exploration reveals that the inclusion of AI-generated images in the training data of the retrieval models exacerbates the invisible relevance bias. The above phenomenon triggers a vicious cycle, which makes the invisible relevance bias become more and more serious. To elucidate the potential causes of invisible relevance and address the aforementioned issues, we introduce an effective training method aimed at alleviating the invisible relevance bias. Subsequently, we apply our proposed debiasing method to retroactively identify the causes of invisible relevance, revealing that the AI-generated images induce the image encoder to embed additional information into their representation. This information exhibits a certain consistency across generated images with different semantics and can make the retriever estimate a higher relevance score.
Authors: Vandan Gorade, Sparsh Mittal, Debesh Jha, Ulas Bagci
Abstract: Knowledge distillation (KD) has demonstrated remarkable success across various domains, but its application to medical imaging tasks, such as kidney and liver tumor segmentation, has encountered challenges. Many existing KD methods are not specifically tailored for these tasks. Moreover, prevalent KD methods often lack a careful consideration of `what' and `from where' to distill knowledge from the teacher to the student. This oversight may lead to issues like the accumulation of training bias within shallower student layers, potentially compromising the effectiveness of KD. To address these challenges, we propose Hierarchical Layer-selective Feedback Distillation (HLFD). HLFD strategically distills knowledge from a combination of middle layers to earlier layers and transfers final layer knowledge to intermediate layers at both the feature and pixel levels. This design allows the model to learn higher-quality representations from earlier layers, resulting in a robust and compact student model. Extensive quantitative evaluations reveal that HLFD outperforms existing methods by a significant margin. For example, in the kidney segmentation task, HLFD surpasses the student model (without KD) by over 10\%, significantly improving its focus on tumor-specific features. From a qualitative standpoint, the student model trained using HLFD excels at suppressing irrelevant information and can focus sharply on tumor-specific details, which opens a new pathway for more efficient and accurate diagnostic tools. Code is available \href{https://github.com/vangorade/RethinkingKD_ISBI24}{here}.
Authors: Anh-Quan Cao, Angela Dai, Raoul de Charette
Abstract: We propose the task of Panoptic Scene Completion (PSC) which extends the recently popular Semantic Scene Completion (SSC) task with instance-level information to produce a richer understanding of the 3D scene. Our PSC proposal utilizes a hybrid mask-based technique on the non-empty voxels from sparse multi-scale completions. Whereas the SSC literature overlooks uncertainty which is critical for robotics applications, we instead propose an efficient ensembling to estimate both voxel-wise and instance-wise uncertainties along PSC. This is achieved by building on a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) strategy, while improving performance and yielding better uncertainty for little additional compute. Additionally, we introduce a technique to aggregate permutation-invariant mask predictions. Our experiments demonstrate that our method surpasses all baselines in both Panoptic Scene Completion and uncertainty estimation on three large-scale autonomous driving datasets. Our code and data are available at https://astra-vision.github.io/PaSCo .
Authors: Samar Khanna, Patrick Liu, Linqi Zhou, Chenlin Meng, Robin Rombach, Marshall Burke, David Lobell, Stefano Ermon
Abstract: Diffusion models have achieved state-of-the-art results on many modalities including images, speech, and video. However, existing models are not tailored to support remote sensing data, which is widely used in important applications including environmental monitoring and crop-yield prediction. Satellite images are significantly different from natural images -- they can be multi-spectral, irregularly sampled across time -- and existing diffusion models trained on images from the Web do not support them. Furthermore, remote sensing data is inherently spatio-temporal, requiring conditional generation tasks not supported by traditional methods based on captions or images. In this paper, we present DiffusionSat, to date the largest generative foundation model trained on a collection of publicly available large, high-resolution remote sensing datasets. As text-based captions are sparsely available for satellite images, we incorporate the associated metadata such as geolocation as conditioning information. Our method produces realistic samples and can be used to solve multiple generative tasks including temporal generation, superresolution given multi-spectral inputs and in-painting. Our method outperforms previous state-of-the-art methods for satellite image generation and is the first large-scale generative foundation model for satellite imagery. The project website can be found here: https://samar-khanna.github.io/DiffusionSat/
Authors: Daniel Ordo\~nez-Apraez, Vladimir Kostic, Giulio Turrisi, Pietro Novelli, Carlos Mastalli, Claudio Semini, Massimiliano Pontil
Abstract: We introduce the use of harmonic analysis to decompose the state space of symmetric robotic systems into orthogonal isotypic subspaces. These are lower-dimensional spaces that capture distinct, symmetric, and synergistic motions. For linear dynamics, we characterize how this decomposition leads to a subdivision of the dynamics into independent linear systems on each subspace, a property we term dynamics harmonic analysis (DHA). To exploit this property, we use Koopman operator theory to propose an equivariant deep-learning architecture that leverages the properties of DHA to learn a global linear model of the system dynamics. Our architecture, validated on synthetic systems and the dynamics of locomotion of a quadrupedal robot, exhibits enhanced generalization, sample efficiency, and interpretability, with fewer trainable parameters and computational costs.
Authors: Wenbin An, Wenkai Shi, Feng Tian, Haonan Lin, QianYing Wang, Yaqiang Wu, Mingxiang Cai, Luyan Wang, Yan Chen, Haiping Zhu, Ping Chen
Abstract: Generalized Category Discovery (GCD) is a crucial task that aims to recognize both known and novel categories from a set of unlabeled data by utilizing a few labeled data with only known categories. Due to the lack of supervision and category information, current methods usually perform poorly on novel categories and struggle to reveal semantic meanings of the discovered clusters, which limits their applications in the real world. To mitigate the above issues, we propose Loop, an end-to-end active-learning framework that introduces Large Language Models (LLMs) into the training loop, which can boost model performance and generate category names without relying on any human efforts. Specifically, we first propose Local Inconsistent Sampling (LIS) to select samples that have a higher probability of falling to wrong clusters, based on neighborhood prediction consistency and entropy of cluster assignment probabilities. Then we propose a Scalable Query strategy to allow LLMs to choose true neighbors of the selected samples from multiple candidate samples. Based on the feedback from LLMs, we perform Refined Neighborhood Contrastive Learning (RNCL) to pull samples and their neighbors closer to learn clustering-friendly representations. Finally, we select representative samples from clusters corresponding to novel categories to allow LLMs to generate category names for them. Extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets show that Loop outperforms SOTA models by a large margin and generates accurate category names for the discovered clusters. Code and data are available at https://github.com/Lackel/LOOP.
Authors: Hanqi Su, Jay Lee
Abstract: In the field of Prognostics and Health Management (PHM), recent years have witnessed a significant surge in the application of machine learning (ML). Despite this growth, the field grapples with a lack of unified guidelines and systematic approaches for effectively implementing these ML techniques and comprehensive analysis regarding industrial open-source data across varied scenarios. To address these gaps, this paper provides a comprehensive review of machine learning approaches for diagnostics and prognostics of industrial systems using open-source datasets from PHM Data Challenge Competitions held between 2018 and 2023 by PHM Society and IEEE Reliability Society and summarizes a unified ML framework. This review systematically categorizes and scrutinizes the problems, challenges, methodologies, and advancements demonstrated in these competitions, highlighting the evolving role of both conventional machine learning and deep learning in tackling complex industrial tasks related to detection, diagnosis, assessment, and prognosis. Moreover, this paper delves into the common challenges in PHM data challenge competitions by emphasizing both data-related and model-related issues and summarizes the solutions that have been employed to address these challenges. Finally, we identify key themes and potential directions for future research, providing opportunities and prospects for ML further development in PHM.
Authors: Paul K. Mandal, Cole Leo, Connor Hurley
Abstract: In the modern world, the amount of visual data recorded has been rapidly increasing. In many cases, data is stored in geographically distinct locations and thus requires a large amount of time and space to consolidate. Sometimes, there are also regulations for privacy protection which prevent data consolidation. In this work, we present federated implementations for object detection and recognition using a federated Faster R-CNN (FRCNN) and image segmentation using a federated Fully Convolutional Network (FCN). Our FRCNN was trained on 5000 examples of the COCO2017 dataset while our FCN was trained on the entire train set of the CamVid dataset. The proposed federated models address the challenges posed by the increasing volume and decentralized nature of visual data, offering efficient solutions in compliance with privacy regulations.
Authors: Orson Mengara
Abstract: The area of Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) is experiencing increased implementation due to recent advancements in the AI (Artificial Intelligence) industry. However, this spike has prompted concerns regarding AI defense mechanisms, specifically regarding potential covert attacks from third-party providers that cannot be entirely trusted. Recent research has uncovered that auditory backdoors may use certain modifications as their initiating mechanism. DynamicTrigger is introduced as a methodology for carrying out dynamic backdoor attacks that use cleverly designed tweaks to ensure that corrupted samples are indistinguishable from clean. By utilizing fluctuating signal sampling rates and masking speaker identities through dynamic sound triggers (such as the clapping of hands), it is possible to deceive speech recognition systems (ASR). Our empirical testing demonstrates that DynamicTrigger is both potent and stealthy, achieving impressive success rates during covert attacks while maintaining exceptional accuracy with non-poisoned datasets.
Authors: Shangyu Wu, Ying Xiong, Yufei Cui, Xue Liu, Buzhou Tang, Tei-Wei Kuo, Chun Jason Xue
Abstract: Retrieval-based augmentations (RA) incorporating knowledge from an external database into language models have greatly succeeded in various knowledge-intensive (KI) tasks. However, integrating retrievals in non-knowledge-intensive (NKI) tasks is still challenging. Existing works focus on concatenating retrievals with inputs to improve model performance. Unfortunately, the use of retrieval concatenation-based augmentations causes an increase in the input length, substantially raising the computational demands of attention mechanisms. This paper proposes a new paradigm of RA named \textbf{ReFusion}, a computation-efficient Retrieval representation Fusion with bi-level optimization. Unlike previous works, ReFusion directly fuses the retrieval representations into the hidden states of models. Specifically, ReFusion leverages an adaptive retrieval integrator to seek the optimal combination of the proposed ranking schemes across different model layers. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed ReFusion can achieve superior and robust performance in various NKI tasks.
Authors: Haonan Wang, Qianli Shen, Yao Tong, Yang Zhang, Kenji Kawaguchi
Abstract: The commercialization of text-to-image diffusion models (DMs) brings forth potential copyright concerns. Despite numerous attempts to protect DMs from copyright issues, the vulnerabilities of these solutions are underexplored. In this study, we formalized the Copyright Infringement Attack on generative AI models and proposed a backdoor attack method, SilentBadDiffusion, to induce copyright infringement without requiring access to or control over training processes. Our method strategically embeds connections between pieces of copyrighted information and text references in poisoning data while carefully dispersing that information, making the poisoning data inconspicuous when integrated into a clean dataset. Our experiments show the stealth and efficacy of the poisoning data. When given specific text prompts, DMs trained with a poisoning ratio of 0.20% can produce copyrighted images. Additionally, the results reveal that the more sophisticated the DMs are, the easier the success of the attack becomes. These findings underline potential pitfalls in the prevailing copyright protection strategies and underscore the necessity for increased scrutiny to prevent the misuse of DMs.
Authors: Shuofei Qiao, Ningyu Zhang, Runnan Fang, Yujie Luo, Wangchunshu Zhou, Yuchen Eleanor Jiang, Chengfei Lv, Huajun Chen
Abstract: Language agents have achieved considerable performance on various complex question-answering tasks by planning with external tools. Despite the incessant exploration in this field, existing language agent systems still struggle with costly, non-reproducible data reliance and face the challenge of compelling a single model for multiple functions. To this end, we introduce AutoAct, an automatic agent learning framework for QA that does not rely on large-scale annotated data and synthetic planning trajectories from closed-source models (e.g., GPT-4). Given limited data with a tool library, AutoAct first automatically synthesizes planning trajectories without any assistance from humans or strong closed-source models. Then, AutoAct leverages a division-of-labor strategy to automatically differentiate based on the target task information and synthesized trajectories, producing a sub-agent group to complete the task. We conduct comprehensive experiments with different LLMs, which demonstrates that AutoAct yields better or parallel performance compared to various strong baselines. Further analysis demonstrates the effectiveness of the division-of-labor strategy, with the trajectory quality generated by AutoAct generally outperforming that of others. Code will be available at https://github.com/zjunlp/AutoAct.
Authors: Yotam Wolf, Noam Wies, Dorin Shteyman, Binyamin Rothberg, Yoav Levine, Amnon Shashua
Abstract: Language model alignment has become an important component of AI safety, allowing safe interactions between humans and language models, by enhancing desired behaviors and inhibiting undesired ones. It is often done by tuning the model or inserting preset aligning prompts. Recently, representation engineering, a method which alters the model's behavior via changing its representations post-training, was shown to be effective in aligning LLMs (Zou et al., 2023a). Representation engineering yields gains in alignment oriented tasks such as resistance to adversarial attacks and reduction of social biases, but was also shown to cause a decrease in the ability of the model to perform basic tasks. In this paper we study the tradeoff between the increase in alignment and decrease in helpfulness of the model. We propose a theoretical framework which provides bounds for these two quantities, and demonstrate their relevance empirically. First, we find that under the conditions of our framework, alignment can be guaranteed with representation engineering, and at the same time that helpfulness is harmed in the process. Second, we show that helpfulness is harmed quadratically with the norm of the representation engineering vector, while the alignment increases linearly with it, indicating a regime in which it is efficient to use representation engineering. We validate our findings empirically, and chart the boundaries to the usefulness of representation engineering for alignment.
Authors: Ziqi Zhang, Jingzehua Xu, Jinxin Liu, Zifeng Zhuang, Donglin Wang, Miao Liu, Shuai Zhang
Abstract: Offline reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms can learn better decision-making compared to behavior policies by stitching the suboptimal trajectories to derive more optimal ones. Meanwhile, Decision Transformer (DT) abstracts the RL as sequence modeling, showcasing competitive performance on offline RL benchmarks. However, recent studies demonstrate that DT lacks of stitching capacity, thus exploiting stitching capability for DT is vital to further improve its performance. In order to endow stitching capability to DT, we abstract trajectory stitching as expert matching and introduce our approach, ContextFormer, which integrates contextual information-based imitation learning (IL) and sequence modeling to stitch sub-optimal trajectory fragments by emulating the representations of a limited number of expert trajectories. To validate our approach, we conduct experiments from two perspectives: 1) We conduct extensive experiments on D4RL benchmarks under the settings of IL, and experimental results demonstrate ContextFormer can achieve competitive performance in multiple IL settings. 2) More importantly, we conduct a comparison of ContextFormer with various competitive DT variants using identical training datasets. The experimental results unveiled ContextFormer's superiority, as it outperformed all other variants, showcasing its remarkable performance.
Authors: Marius-Constantin Dinu, Claudiu Leoveanu-Condrei, Markus Holzleitner, Werner Zellinger, Sepp Hochreiter
Abstract: We introduce SymbolicAI, a versatile and modular framework employing a logic-based approach to concept learning and flow management in generative processes. SymbolicAI enables the seamless integration of generative models with a diverse range of solvers by treating large language models (LLMs) as semantic parsers that execute tasks based on both natural and formal language instructions, thus bridging the gap between symbolic reasoning and generative AI. We leverage probabilistic programming principles to tackle complex tasks, and utilize differentiable and classical programming paradigms with their respective strengths. The framework introduces a set of polymorphic, compositional, and self-referential operations for multi-modal data that connects multi-step generative processes and aligns their outputs with user objectives in complex workflows. As a result, we can transition between the capabilities of various foundation models with in-context learning capabilities and specialized, fine-tuned models or solvers proficient in addressing specific problems. Through these operations based on in-context learning our framework enables the creation and evaluation of explainable computational graphs. Finally, we introduce a quality measure and its empirical score for evaluating these computational graphs, and propose a benchmark that compares various state-of-the-art LLMs across a set of complex workflows. We refer to the empirical score as the "Vector Embedding for Relational Trajectory Evaluation through Cross-similarity", or VERTEX score for short. The framework codebase and benchmark are linked below.
Authors: Zhisheng Zheng, Puyuan Peng, Ziyang Ma, Xie Chen, Eunsol Choi, David Harwath
Abstract: Spatial sound reasoning is a fundamental human skill, enabling us to navigate and interpret our surroundings based on sound. In this paper we present BAT, which combines the spatial sound perception ability of a binaural acoustic scene analysis model with the natural language reasoning capabilities of a large language model (LLM) to replicate this innate ability. To address the lack of existing datasets of in-the-wild spatial sounds, we synthesized a binaural audio dataset using AudioSet and SoundSpaces 2.0. Next, we developed SpatialSoundQA, a spatial sound-based question-answering dataset, offering a range of QA tasks that train BAT in various aspects of spatial sound perception and reasoning. The acoustic front end encoder of BAT is a novel spatial audio encoder named Spatial Audio Spectrogram Transformer, or Spatial-AST, which by itself achieves strong performance across sound event detection, spatial localization, and distance estimation. By integrating Spatial-AST with LLaMA-2 7B model, BAT transcends standard Sound Event Localization and Detection (SELD) tasks, enabling the model to reason about the relationships between the sounds in its environment. Our experiments demonstrate BAT's superior performance on both spatial sound perception and reasoning, showcasing the immense potential of LLMs in navigating and interpreting complex spatial audio environments.
Authors: Haowei Lin, Baizhou Huang, Haotian Ye, Qinyu Chen, Zihao Wang, Sujian Li, Jianzhu Ma, Xiaojun Wan, James Zou, Yitao Liang
Abstract: The ever-growing ecosystem of LLMs has posed a challenge in selecting the most appropriate pre-trained model to fine-tune amidst a sea of options. Given constrained resources, fine-tuning all models and making selections afterward is unrealistic. In this work, we formulate this resource-constrained selection task into predicting fine-tuning performance and illustrate its natural connection with Scaling Law. Unlike pre-training, We find that the fine-tuning scaling curve includes not just the well-known "power phase" but also the previously unobserved "pre-power phase". We also explain why existing Scaling Law fails to capture this phase transition phenomenon both theoretically and empirically. To address this, we introduce the concept of "pre-learned data size" into our Rectified Scaling Law, which overcomes theoretical limitations and fits experimental results much better. By leveraging our law, we propose a novel LLM selection algorithm that selects the near-optimal model with hundreds of times less resource consumption, while other methods may provide negatively correlated selection.
Authors: Xiang Chen, Chenxi Wang, Yida Xue, Ningyu Zhang, Xiaoyan Yang, Qiang Li, Yue Shen, Lei Liang, Jinjie Gu, Huajun Chen
Abstract: Despite significant strides in multimodal tasks, Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) are plagued by the critical issue of hallucination. The reliable detection of such hallucinations in MLLMs has, therefore, become a vital aspect of model evaluation and the safeguarding of practical application deployment. Prior research in this domain has been constrained by a narrow focus on singular tasks, an inadequate range of hallucination categories addressed, and a lack of detailed granularity. In response to these challenges, our work expands the investigative horizons of hallucination detection. We present a novel meta-evaluation benchmark, MHaluBench, meticulously crafted to facilitate the evaluation of advancements in hallucination detection methods. Additionally, we unveil a novel unified multimodal hallucination detection framework, UNIHD, which leverages a suite of auxiliary tools to validate the occurrence of hallucinations robustly. We demonstrate the effectiveness of UNIHD through meticulous evaluation and comprehensive analysis. We also provide strategic insights on the application of specific tools for addressing various categories of hallucinations.
Authors: Chinmaya Kausik, Mirco Mutti, Aldo Pacchiano, Ambuj Tewari
Abstract: The growing deployment of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) calls for a deeper theoretical investigation of its underlying models. The prevalent models of RLHF do not account for neuroscience-backed, partially-observed "internal states" that can affect human feedback, nor do they accommodate intermediate feedback during an interaction. Both of these can be instrumental in speeding up learning and improving alignment. To address these limitations, we model RLHF as reinforcement learning with partially observed reward-states (PORRL). We accommodate two kinds of feedback $-$ cardinal and dueling feedback. We first demonstrate that PORRL subsumes a wide class of RL problems, including traditional RL, RLHF, and reward machines. For cardinal feedback, we present two model-based methods (POR-UCRL, POR-UCBVI). We give both cardinal regret and sample complexity guarantees for the methods, showing that they improve over naive history-summarization. We then discuss the benefits of a model-free method like GOLF with naive history-summarization in settings with recursive internal states and dense intermediate feedback. For this purpose, we define a new history aware version of the Bellman-eluder dimension and give a new guarantee for GOLF in our setting, which can be exponentially sharper in illustrative examples. For dueling feedback, we show that a naive reduction to cardinal feedback fails to achieve sublinear dueling regret. We then present the first explicit reduction that converts guarantees for cardinal regret to dueling regret. In both feedback settings, we show that our models and guarantees generalize and extend existing ones.
Authors: David Peer, Philemon Sch\"opf, Volckmar Nebendahl, Alexander Rietzler, Sebastian Stabinger
Abstract: Traditionally, discriminative models have been the predominant choice for tasks like document classification and information extraction. These models make predictions that fall into a limited number of predefined classes, facilitating a binary true or false evaluation and enabling the direct calculation of metrics such as the F1 score. However, recent advancements in generative large language models (GLLMs) have prompted a shift in the field due to their enhanced zero-shot capabilities, which eliminate the need for a downstream dataset and computationally expensive fine-tuning. However, evaluating GLLMs presents a challenge as the binary true or false evaluation used for discriminative models is not applicable to the predictions made by GLLMs. This paper introduces a new metric for generative models called ANLS* for evaluating a wide variety of tasks, including information extraction and classification tasks. The ANLS* metric extends existing ANLS metrics as a drop-in-replacement and is still compatible with previously reported ANLS scores. An evaluation of 7 different datasets, 6 different GLLMs and 3 different prompting methods using the ANLS* metric is also provided, demonstrating the importance of the proposed metric. We also benchmark a novel approach to generate prompts for documents, called SFT, against other prompting techniques such as LATIN. In 27 out of 35 cases, SFT outperforms other techniques and improves the state-of-the-art, sometimes by as much as $18$ percentage points. Sources are available at https://github.com/deepopinion/anls_star_metric
Authors: Jerry Yao-Chieh Hu, Thomas Lin, Zhao Song, Han Liu
Abstract: We investigate the computational limits of the memory retrieval dynamics of modern Hopfield models from the fine-grained complexity analysis. Our key contribution is the characterization of a phase transition behavior in the efficiency of all possible modern Hopfield models based on the norm of patterns. Specifically, we establish an upper bound criterion for the norm of input query patterns and memory patterns. Only below this criterion, sub-quadratic (efficient) variants of the modern Hopfield model exist, assuming the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH). To showcase our theory, we provide a formal example of efficient constructions of modern Hopfield models using low-rank approximation when the efficient criterion holds. This includes a derivation of a lower bound on the computational time, scaling linearly with $\max\{$\# of stored memory patterns, length of input query sequence$\}$. In addition, we prove its memory retrieval error bound and exponential memory capacity.
Authors: Lior Cohen, Kaixin Wang, Bingyi Kang, Shie Mannor
Abstract: Motivated by the success of Transformers when applied to sequences of discrete symbols, token-based world models (TBWMs) were recently proposed as sample-efficient methods. In TBWMs, the world model consumes agent experience as a language-like sequence of tokens, where each observation constitutes a sub-sequence. However, during imagination, the sequential token-by-token generation of next observations results in a severe bottleneck, leading to long training times, poor GPU utilization, and limited representations. To resolve this bottleneck, we devise a novel Parallel Observation Prediction (POP) mechanism. POP augments a Retentive Network (RetNet) with a novel forward mode tailored to our reinforcement learning setting. We incorporate POP in a novel TBWM agent named REM (Retentive Environment Model), showcasing a 15.4x faster imagination compared to prior TBWMs. REM attains superhuman performance on 12 out of 26 games of the Atari 100K benchmark, while training in less than 12 hours. Our code is available at \url{https://github.com/leor-c/REM}.
Authors: Jonathan Thomm, Aleksandar Terzic, Giacomo Camposampiero, Michael Hersche, Bernhard Sch\"olkopf, Abbas Rahimi
Abstract: We analyze the capabilities of Transformer language models in learning compositional discrete tasks. To this end, we evaluate training LLaMA models and prompting GPT-4 and Gemini on four tasks demanding to learn a composition of several discrete sub-tasks. On both training LLaMA models from scratch and prompting on GPT-4 and Gemini, we measure how well these models can reuse primitives observable in the sub-tasks to learn the composition task. Our results indicate that compositional learning in state-of-the-art Transformer language models is highly sample inefficient: LLaMA requires more data samples than relearning all sub-tasks from scratch to learn the compositional task; in-context prompting with few samples is unreliable and fails at executing the sub-tasks or correcting the errors in multi-round code generation. Further, by leveraging complexity theory, we support these findings with a theoretical analysis focused on the sample inefficiency of gradient descent in memorizing feedforward models.
Authors: Benjamin Plaut, Hanlin Zhu, Stuart Russell
Abstract: Most reinforcement learning algorithms with formal regret guarantees assume all mistakes are reversible and essentially rely on trying all possible behaviors. This approach leads to poor outcomes when some mistakes are irreparable or even catastrophic. We propose a variant of the contextual bandit problem where the goal is to minimize the chance of catastrophe. Specifically, we assume that the payoff each round represents the chance of avoiding catastrophe that round, and try to maximize the product of payoffs (the overall chance of avoiding catastrophe). We allow a limited number of queries to a mentor and assume a Lipschitz continuous payoff function. We first show that in general, any algorithm either constantly queries the mentor or is nearly guaranteed to cause catastrophe. However, when the mentor policy class has bounded Natarajan dimension and contains at least some "reasonable" policies, we provide an algorithm whose regret and rate of querying the mentor both approach 0 as the time horizon grows. We also present an alternative algorithm which provides the same regret and query guarantees when the mentor's action changes a constant number of times in a 1D state space, and can handle adversarially chosen states.
Authors: Nina Pardal, Santiago Cifuentes, Edwin Pin, Maria Vanina Martinez, Sergio Abriola
Abstract: Preferences are a pivotal component in practical reasoning, especially in tasks that involve decision-making over different options or courses of action that could be pursued. In this work, we focus on repairing and querying inconsistent knowledge bases in the form of graph databases, which involves finding a way to solve conflicts in the knowledge base and considering answers that are entailed from every possible repair, respectively. Without a priori domain knowledge, all possible repairs are equally preferred. Though that may be adequate for some settings, it seems reasonable to establish and exploit some form of preference order among the potential repairs. We study the problem of computing prioritized repairs over graph databases with data values, using a notion of consistency based on GXPath expressions as integrity constraints. We present several preference criteria based on the standard subset repair semantics, incorporating weights, multisets, and set-based priority levels. We show that it is possible to maintain the same computational complexity as in the case where no preference criterion is available for exploitation. Finally, we explore the complexity of consistent query answering in this setting and obtain tight lower and upper bounds for all the preference criteria introduced.
Authors: Jin-Hwa Kim
Abstract: Recent advancements in visualizing deep neural networks provide insights into their structures and mesh extraction from Continuous Piecewise Affine (CPWA) functions. Meanwhile, developments in neural surface representation learning incorporate non-linear positional encoding, addressing issues like spectral bias; however, this poses challenges in applying mesh extraction techniques based on CPWA functions. Focusing on trilinear interpolating methods as positional encoding, we present theoretical insights and an analytical mesh extraction, showing the transformation of hypersurfaces to flat planes within the trilinear region under the eikonal constraint. Moreover, we introduce a method for approximating intersecting points among three hypersurfaces contributing to broader applications. We empirically validate correctness and parsimony through chamfer distance and efficiency, and angular distance, while examining the correlation between the eikonal loss and the planarity of the hypersurfaces.
Authors: Jiaxi Hu, Yuehong Hu, Wei Chen, Ming Jin, Shirui Pan, Qingsong Wen, Yuxuan Liang
Abstract: In long-term time series forecasting (LTSF) tasks, an increasing number of models have acknowledged that discrete time series originate from continuous dynamic systems and have attempted to model their dynamical structures. Recognizing the chaotic nature of real-world data, our model, \textbf{\textit{Attraos}}, incorporates chaos theory into LTSF, perceiving real-world time series as observations from unknown high-dimensional chaotic dynamic systems. Under the concept of attractor invariance, Attraos utilizes non-parametric Phase Space Reconstruction embedding and the proposed multi-scale dynamic memory unit to memorize historical dynamics structure and predicts by a frequency-enhanced local evolution strategy. Detailed theoretical analysis and abundant empirical evidence consistently show that Attraos outperforms various LTSF methods on mainstream LTSF datasets and chaotic datasets with only one-twelfth of the parameters compared to PatchTST.
Authors: Yu Zhang, Hui-Ling Zhen, Zehua Pei, Yingzhao Lian, Lihao Yin, Mingxuan Yuan, Bei Yu
Abstract: Considering the challenges faced by large language models (LLMs) in logical reasoning and planning, prior efforts have sought to augment LLMs with access to external solvers. While progress has been made on simple reasoning problems, solving classical constraint satisfaction problems, such as the Boolean Satisfiability Problem (SAT) and Graph Coloring Problem (GCP), remains difficult for off-the-shelf solvers due to their intricate expressions and exponential search spaces. In this paper, we propose a novel differential logic layer-aided language modeling (DiLA) approach, where logical constraints are integrated into the forward and backward passes of a network layer, to provide another option for LLM tool learning. In DiLA, LLM aims to transform the language description to logic constraints and identify initial solutions of the highest quality, while the differential logic layer focuses on iteratively refining the LLM-prompted solution. Leveraging the logic layer as a bridge, DiLA enhances the logical reasoning ability of LLMs on a range of reasoning problems encoded by Boolean variables, guaranteeing the efficiency and correctness of the solution process. We evaluate the performance of DiLA on two classic reasoning problems and empirically demonstrate its consistent outperformance against existing prompt-based and solver-aided approaches.
Authors: Zijun Liu, Boqun Kou, Peng Li, Ming Yan, Ji Zhang, Fei Huang, Yang Liu
Abstract: Despite the strong performance of large language models (LLMs) across a wide range of tasks, they still have reliability issues. Previous studies indicate that strong LLMs like GPT-4-turbo excel in evaluating the reliability of responses from LLMs, but face efficiency and local deployment issues. Thus, to enable weak LLMs to effectively assess the reliability of LLM responses, we propose a novel cross-query-comparison-based method called $\textit{Meta Ranking}$ (MR). Unlike previous few-shot methods that solely based on in-context learning capabilities in LLMs, MR assesses reliability by pairwisely ranking the target query-response pair with multiple reference query-response pairs. We found that MR is highly effective in error detection for LLM responses, where weak LLMs, such as Phi-2, could surpass strong baselines like GPT-3.5-turbo, requiring only five reference samples and significantly improving efficiency. We further demonstrate that MR can enhance strong LLMs' performance in two practical applications: model cascading and instruction tuning. In model cascading, we combine open- and closed-source LLMs to achieve performance comparable to GPT-4-turbo with lower costs. In instruction tuning, we use MR for iterative training data filtering, significantly reducing data processing time and enabling LLaMA-7B and Phi-2 to surpass Alpaca-13B with fewer training tokens. These results underscore the high potential of MR in both efficiency and effectiveness.
Authors: Sankarshanaa Sagaram, Krish Didwania, Laven Srivastava, Aditya Kasliwal, Pallavi Kailas, Ujjwal Verma
Abstract: The increasing adoption of solar energy necessitates advanced methodologies for monitoring and maintenance to ensure optimal performance of solar panel installations. A critical component in this context is the accurate segmentation of solar panels from aerial or satellite imagery, which is essential for identifying operational issues and assessing efficiency. This paper addresses the significant challenges in panel segmentation, particularly the scarcity of annotated data and the labour-intensive nature of manual annotation for supervised learning. We explore and apply Self-Supervised Learning (SSL) to solve these challenges. We demonstrate that SSL significantly enhances model generalization under various conditions and reduces dependency on manually annotated data, paving the way for robust and adaptable solar panel segmentation solutions.
Authors: Zhengbao Jiang, Zhiqing Sun, Weijia Shi, Pedro Rodriguez, Chunting Zhou, Graham Neubig, Xi Victoria Lin, Wen-tau Yih, Srinivasan Iyer
Abstract: In order for large language model (LLM)-based assistants to effectively adapt to evolving information needs, it must be possible to update their factual knowledge through continued training on new data. The standard recipe for doing so involves continued pre-training on new documents followed by instruction-tuning on question-answer (QA) pairs. However, we find that LLMs trained with this recipe struggle to answer questions, even though the perplexity of documents is minimized. We found that QA pairs are generally straightforward, while documents are more complex, weaving many factual statements together in an intricate manner. Therefore, we hypothesize that it is beneficial to expose LLMs to QA pairs before continued pre-training on documents so that the process of encoding knowledge from complex documents takes into account how this knowledge is accessed through questions. Based on this, we propose pre-instruction-tuning (PIT), a method that instruction-tunes on questions prior to training on documents. This contrasts with standard instruction-tuning, which learns how to extract knowledge after training on documents. Extensive experiments and ablation studies demonstrate that pre-instruction-tuning significantly enhances the ability of LLMs to absorb knowledge from new documents, outperforming standard instruction-tuning by 17.8%.
Authors: Chenyang Song, Xu Han, Zhengyan Zhang, Shengding Hu, Xiyu Shi, Kuai Li, Chen Chen, Zhiyuan Liu, Guangli Li, Tao Yang, Maosong Sun
Abstract: Activation sparsity refers to the existence of considerable weakly-contributed elements among activation outputs. As a prevalent property of the models using the ReLU activation function, activation sparsity has been proven a promising paradigm to boost model inference efficiency. Nevertheless, most large language models (LLMs) adopt activation functions without intrinsic activation sparsity (e.g., GELU and Swish). Some recent efforts have explored introducing ReLU or its variants as the substitutive activation function to help LLMs achieve activation sparsity and inference acceleration, but few can simultaneously obtain high sparsity and comparable model performance. This paper introduces a simple and effective sparsification method named "ProSparse" to push LLMs for higher activation sparsity while maintaining comparable performance. Specifically, after substituting the activation function of LLMs with ReLU, ProSparse adopts progressive sparsity regularization with a factor smoothly increasing along the multi-stage sine curves. This can enhance activation sparsity and mitigate performance degradation by avoiding radical shifts in activation distributions. With ProSparse, we obtain high sparsity of 89.32% for LLaMA2-7B, 88.80% for LLaMA2-13B, and 87.89% for end-size MiniCPM-1B, respectively, achieving comparable performance to their original Swish-activated versions. These present the most sparsely activated models among open-source LLaMA versions and competitive end-size models, considerably surpassing ReluLLaMA-7B (66.98%) and ReluLLaMA-13B (71.56%). Our inference acceleration experiments further demonstrate the significant practical acceleration potential of LLMs with higher activation sparsity, obtaining up to 4.52$\times$ inference speedup.
Authors: Jiayu Chen, Bhargav Ganguly, Yang Xu, Yongsheng Mei, Tian Lan, Vaneet Aggarwal
Abstract: Deep generative models (DGMs) have demonstrated great success across various domains, particularly in generating texts, images, and videos using models trained from offline data. Similarly, data-driven decision-making and robotic control also necessitate learning a generator function from the offline data to serve as the strategy or policy. In this case, applying deep generative models in offline policy learning exhibits great potential, and numerous studies have explored in this direction. However, this field still lacks a comprehensive review and so developments of different branches are relatively independent. In this paper, we provide the first systematic review on the applications of deep generative models for offline policy learning. In particular, we cover five mainstream deep generative models, including Variational Auto-Encoders, Generative Adversarial Networks, Normalizing Flows, Transformers, and Diffusion Models, and their applications in both offline reinforcement learning (offline RL) and imitation learning (IL). Offline RL and IL are two main branches of offline policy learning and are widely-adopted techniques for sequential decision-making. Notably, for each type of DGM-based offline policy learning, we distill its fundamental scheme, categorize related works based on the usage of the DGM, and sort out the development process of algorithms in that field. Subsequent to the main content, we provide in-depth discussions on deep generative models and offline policy learning as a summary, based on which we present our perspectives on future research directions. This work offers a hands-on reference for the research progress in deep generative models for offline policy learning, and aims to inspire improved DGM-based offline RL or IL algorithms. For convenience, we maintain a paper list on https://github.com/LucasCJYSDL/DGMs-for-Offline-Policy-Learning.
URLs: https://github.com/LucasCJYSDL/DGMs-for-Offline-Policy-Learning.
Authors: Honghao Gui, Lin Yuan, Hongbin Ye, Ningyu Zhang, Mengshu Sun, Lei Liang, Huajun Chen
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) demonstrate remarkable potential across various domains; however, they exhibit a significant performance gap in Information Extraction (IE). Note that high-quality instruction data is the vital key for enhancing the specific capabilities of LLMs, while current IE datasets tend to be small in scale, fragmented, and lack standardized schema. To this end, we introduce IEPile, a comprehensive bilingual (English and Chinese) IE instruction corpus, which contains approximately 0.32B tokens. We construct IEPile by collecting and cleaning 33 existing IE datasets, and introduce schema-based instruction generation to unearth a large-scale corpus. Experimentally, IEPile enhance the performance of LLMs for IE, with notable improvements in zero-shot generalization. We open-source the resource and pre-trained models, hoping to provide valuable support to the NLP community.
Authors: Nikhil Behari, Edwin Zhang, Yunfan Zhao, Aparna Taneja, Dheeraj Nagaraj, Milind Tambe
Abstract: Restless multi-armed bandits (RMAB) have demonstrated success in optimizing resource allocation for large beneficiary populations in public health settings. Unfortunately, RMAB models lack flexibility to adapt to evolving public health policy priorities. Concurrently, Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as adept automated planners across domains of robotic control and navigation. In this paper, we propose a Decision Language Model (DLM) for RMABs, enabling dynamic fine-tuning of RMAB policies in public health settings using human-language commands. We propose using LLMs as automated planners to (1) interpret human policy preference prompts, (2) propose reward functions as code for a multi-agent RMAB environment, and (3) iterate on the generated reward functions using feedback from grounded RMAB simulations. We illustrate the application of DLM in collaboration with ARMMAN, an India-based non-profit promoting preventative care for pregnant mothers, that currently relies on RMAB policies to optimally allocate health worker calls to low-resource populations. We conduct a technology demonstration in simulation using the Gemini Pro model, showing DLM can dynamically shape policy outcomes using only human prompts as input.
Authors: Felipe Maia Polo, Lucas Weber, Leshem Choshen, Yuekai Sun, Gongjun Xu, Mikhail Yurochkin
Abstract: The versatility of large language models (LLMs) led to the creation of diverse benchmarks that thoroughly test a variety of language models' abilities. These benchmarks consist of tens of thousands of examples making evaluation of LLMs very expensive. In this paper, we investigate strategies to reduce the number of evaluations needed to assess the performance of an LLM on several key benchmarks. For example, we show that to accurately estimate the performance of an LLM on MMLU, a popular multiple-choice QA benchmark consisting of 14K examples, it is sufficient to evaluate this LLM on 100 curated examples. We release evaluation tools and tiny versions of popular benchmarks: Open LLM Leaderboard, MMLU, HELM, and AlpacaEval 2.0. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that these tools and tiny benchmarks are sufficient to reliably and efficiently reproduce the original evaluation results.
Authors: Cody Rushing, Neel Nanda
Abstract: Prior interpretability research studying narrow distributions has preliminarily identified self-repair, a phenomena where if components in large language models are ablated, later components will change their behavior to compensate. Our work builds off this past literature, demonstrating that self-repair exists on a variety of models families and sizes when ablating individual attention heads on the full training distribution. We further show that on the full training distribution self-repair is imperfect, as the original direct effect of the head is not fully restored, and noisy, since the degree of self-repair varies significantly across different prompts (sometimes overcorrecting beyond the original effect). We highlight two different mechanisms that contribute to self-repair, including changes in the final LayerNorm scaling factor and sparse sets of neurons implementing Anti-Erasure. We additionally discuss the implications of these results for interpretability practitioners and close with a more speculative discussion on the mystery of why self-repair occurs in these models at all, highlighting evidence for the Iterative Inference hypothesis in language models, a framework that predicts self-repair.
Authors: Seohong Park, Tobias Kreiman, Sergey Levine
Abstract: Unsupervised and self-supervised objectives, such as next token prediction, have enabled pre-training generalist models from large amounts of unlabeled data. In reinforcement learning (RL), however, finding a truly general and scalable unsupervised pre-training objective for generalist policies from offline data remains a major open question. While a number of methods have been proposed to enable generic self-supervised RL, based on principles such as goal-conditioned RL, behavioral cloning, and unsupervised skill learning, such methods remain limited in terms of either the diversity of the discovered behaviors, the need for high-quality demonstration data, or the lack of a clear adaptation mechanism for downstream tasks. In this work, we propose a novel unsupervised framework to pre-train generalist policies that capture diverse, optimal, long-horizon behaviors from unlabeled offline data such that they can be quickly adapted to any arbitrary new tasks in a zero-shot manner. Our key insight is to learn a structured representation that preserves the temporal structure of the underlying environment, and then to span this learned latent space with directional movements, which enables various zero-shot policy "prompting" schemes for downstream tasks. Through our experiments on simulated robotic locomotion and manipulation benchmarks, we show that our unsupervised policies can solve goal-conditioned and general RL tasks in a zero-shot fashion, even often outperforming prior methods designed specifically for each setting. Our code and videos are available at https://seohong.me/projects/hilp/.
Authors: Haotian Fu, Pratyusha Sharma, Elias Stengel-Eskin, George Konidaris, Nicolas Le Roux, Marc-Alexandre C\^ot\'e, Xingdi Yuan
Abstract: We present an algorithm for skill discovery from expert demonstrations. The algorithm first utilizes Large Language Models (LLMs) to propose an initial segmentation of the trajectories. Following that, a hierarchical variational inference framework incorporates the LLM-generated segmentation information to discover reusable skills by merging trajectory segments. To further control the trade-off between compression and reusability, we introduce a novel auxiliary objective based on the Minimum Description Length principle that helps guide this skill discovery process. Our results demonstrate that agents equipped with our method are able to discover skills that help accelerate learning and outperform baseline skill learning approaches on new long-horizon tasks in BabyAI, a grid world navigation environment, as well as ALFRED, a household simulation environment.
Authors: Yushun Zhang, Congliang Chen, Tian Ding, Ziniu Li, Ruoyu Sun, Zhi-Quan Luo
Abstract: SGD performs worse than Adam by a significant margin on Transformers, but the reason remains unclear. In this work, we provide an explanation of SGD's bad performance on Transformers through the lens of Hessian: (i) Transformers are "heterogeneous": the Hessian spectrum across parameter blocks vary dramatically, a phenomenon we call "block heterogeneity"; (ii) Heterogeneity hampers SGD: SGD performs badly on problems with block heterogeneity. To validate that heterogeneity hampers SGD, we check various Transformers, CNNs, MLPs, and quadratic problems, and find that SGD works well on problems without block heterogeneity but performs badly when the heterogeneity exists. Our initial theoretical analysis indicates that SGD performs poorly because it applies one single learning rate to all blocks, which cannot handle the heterogeneity among blocks. This limitation could be ameliorated if we use coordinate-wise learning rates, as designed in Adam.
Authors: Melody Y Huang, Harsh Parikh
Abstract: Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are pivotal in generating internally valid estimates with minimal assumptions, serving as a cornerstone for researchers dedicated to advancing causal inference methods. However, extending these findings beyond the experimental cohort to achieve externally valid estimates is crucial for broader scientific inquiry. This paper delves into the forefront of addressing these external validity challenges, encapsulating the essence of a multidisciplinary workshop held at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM), Brown University, in Fall 2023. The workshop congregated experts from diverse fields including social science, medicine, public health, statistics, computer science, and education, to tackle the unique obstacles each discipline faces in extrapolating experimental findings. Our study presents three key contributions: we integrate ongoing efforts, highlighting methodological synergies across fields; provide an exhaustive review of generalizability and transportability based on the workshop's discourse; and identify persistent hurdles while suggesting avenues for future research. By doing so, this paper aims to enhance the collective understanding of the generalizability and transportability of causal effects, fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration and offering valuable insights for researchers working on refining and applying causal inference methods.
Authors: Vadim Liventsev, Tobias Fritz
Abstract: Reinforcement Learning in Healthcare is typically concerned with narrow self-contained tasks such as sepsis prediction or anesthesia control. However, previous research has demonstrated the potential of generalist models (the prime example being Large Language Models) to outperform task-specific approaches due to their capability for implicit transfer learning. To enable training of foundation models for Healthcare as well as leverage the capabilities of state of the art Transformer architectures, we propose the paradigm of Healthcare as Sequence Modeling, in which interaction between the patient and the healthcare provider is represented as an event stream and tasks like diagnosis and treatment selection are modeled as prediction of future events in the stream. To explore this paradigm experimentally we develop MIMIC-SEQ, a sequence modeling benchmark derived by translating heterogenous clinical records from MIMIC-IV dataset into a uniform event stream format, train a baseline model and explore its capabilities.
Authors: Yosuke Fukuchi, Seiji Yamada
Abstract: This paper addresses the challenge of selecting explanations for XAI (Explainable AI)-based Intelligent Decision Support Systems (IDSSs). IDSSs have shown promise in improving user decisions through XAI-generated explanations along with AI predictions, and the development of XAI made it possible to generate a variety of such explanations. However, how IDSSs should select explanations to enhance user decision-making remains an open question. This paper proposes X-Selector, a method for selectively presenting XAI explanations. It enables IDSSs to strategically guide users to an AI-suggested decision by predicting the impact of different combinations of explanations on a user's decision and selecting the combination that is expected to minimize the discrepancy between an AI suggestion and a user decision. We compared the efficacy of X-Selector with two naive strategies (all possible explanations and explanations only for the most likely prediction) and two baselines (no explanation and no AI support). The results suggest the potential of X-Selector to guide users to AI-suggested decisions and improve task performance under the condition of a high AI accuracy.
Authors: Sheng Wang, Liheng Chen, Jiyue Jiang, Boyang Xue, Lingpeng Kong, Chuan Wu
Abstract: With the remarkable capabilities, large language models (LLMs) have emerged as essential elements in numerous NLP applications, while parameter-efficient finetuning, especially LoRA, has gained popularity as a lightweight approach for model customization. Meanwhile, various dropout methods, initially designed for full finetuning with all the parameters updated, alleviates overfitting associated with excessive parameter redundancy. Hence, a possible contradiction arises from negligible trainable parameters of LoRA and the effectiveness of previous dropout methods, which has been largely overlooked. To fill this gap, we first confirm that parameter-efficient LoRA is also overfitting-prone. We then revisit transformer-specific dropout methods, and establish their equivalence and distinctions mathematically and empirically. Building upon this comparative analysis, we introduce a unified framework for a comprehensive investigation, which instantiates these methods based on dropping position, structural pattern and compensation measure. Through this framework, we reveal the new preferences and performance comparisons of them when involved with limited trainable parameters. This framework also allows us to amalgamate the most favorable aspects into a novel dropout method named HiddenKey. Extensive experiments verify the remarkable superiority and sufficiency of HiddenKey across multiple models and tasks, which highlights it as the preferred approach for high-performance and parameter-efficient finetuning of LLMs.
Authors: Fakhraddin Alwajih, El Moatez Billah Nagoudi, Gagan Bhatia, Abdelrahman Mohamed, Muhammad Abdul-Mageed
Abstract: Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have proven effective in a wide range of tasks requiring complex reasoning and linguistic comprehension. However, due to a lack of high-quality multimodal resources in languages other than English, success of MLLMs remains relatively limited to English-based settings. This poses significant challenges in developing comparable models for other languages, including even those with large speaker populations such as Arabic. To alleviate this challenge, we introduce a comprehensive family of Arabic MLLMs, dubbed \textit{Peacock}, with strong vision and language capabilities. Through comprehensive qualitative and quantitative analysis, we demonstrate the solid performance of our models on various visual reasoning tasks and further show their emerging dialectal potential. Additionally, we introduce ~\textit{Henna}, a new benchmark specifically designed for assessing MLLMs on aspects related to Arabic culture, setting the first stone for culturally-aware Arabic MLLMs.The GitHub repository for the \textit{Peacock} project is available at \url{https://github.com/UBC-NLP/peacock}.
Authors: Ruikang Liu, Haoli Bai, Haokun Lin, Yuening Li, Han Gao, Zhengzhuo Xu, Lu Hou, Jun Yao, Chun Yuan
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) excel in natural language processing but demand intensive computation. To mitigate this, various quantization methods have been explored, yet they compromise LLM performance. This paper unveils a previously overlooked type of outliers in LLMs. Such outliers are found to allocate most of the attention scores on initial tokens of input, termed as pivot tokens, which are crucial to the performance of quantized LLMs. Given that, we propose IntactKV to generate the KV cache of pivot tokens losslessly from the full-precision model. The approach is simple and easy to combine with existing quantization solutions with no extra inference overhead. Besides, IntactKV can be calibrated as additional LLM parameters to boost the quantized LLMs further with minimal training costs. Mathematical analysis also proves that IntactKV effectively reduces the upper bound of quantization error. Empirical results show that IntactKV brings consistent improvement over various quantization methods across different LLMs and downstream tasks, leading to the new state-of-the-art for LLM quantization. The codes are available at https://github.com/ruikangliu/IntactKV.
Authors: Jianheng Huang, Leyang Cui, Ante Wang, Chengyi Yang, Xinting Liao, Linfeng Song, Junfeng Yao, Jinsong Su
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) suffer from catastrophic forgetting during continual learning. Conventional rehearsal-based methods rely on previous training data to retain the model's ability, which may not be feasible in real-world applications. When conducting continual learning based on a publicly-released LLM checkpoint, the availability of the original training data may be non-existent. To address this challenge, we propose a framework called Self-Synthesized Rehearsal (SSR) that uses the LLM to generate synthetic instances for rehearsal. Concretely, we first employ the base LLM for in-context learning to generate synthetic instances. Subsequently, we utilize the latest LLM to refine the instance outputs based on the synthetic inputs, preserving its acquired ability. Finally, we select diverse high-quality synthetic instances for rehearsal in future stages. Experimental results demonstrate that SSR achieves superior or comparable performance compared to conventional rehearsal-based approaches while being more data-efficient. Besides, SSR effectively preserves the generalization capabilities of LLMs in general domains.
Authors: Th\'eo Vincent, Daniel Palenicek, Boris Belousov, Jan Peters, Carlo D'Eramo
Abstract: The vast majority of Reinforcement Learning methods is largely impacted by the computation effort and data requirements needed to obtain effective estimates of action-value functions, which in turn determine the quality of the overall performance and the sample-efficiency of the learning procedure. Typically, action-value functions are estimated through an iterative scheme that alternates the application of an empirical approximation of the Bellman operator and a subsequent projection step onto a considered function space. It has been observed that this scheme can be potentially generalized to carry out multiple iterations of the Bellman operator at once, benefiting the underlying learning algorithm. However, till now, it has been challenging to effectively implement this idea, especially in high-dimensional problems. In this paper, we introduce iterated $Q$-Network (iQN), a novel principled approach that enables multiple consecutive Bellman updates by learning a tailored sequence of action-value functions where each serves as the target for the next. We show that iQN is theoretically grounded and that it can be seamlessly used in value-based and actor-critic methods. We empirically demonstrate the advantages of iQN in Atari $2600$ games and MuJoCo continuous control problems.
Authors: Ariyan Bighashdel, Yongzhao Wang, Stephen McAleer, Rahul Savani, Frans A. Oliehoek
Abstract: Game theory provides a mathematical way to study the interaction between multiple decision makers. However, classical game-theoretic analysis is limited in scalability due to the large number of strategies, precluding direct application to more complex scenarios. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of a framework for large games, known as Policy Space Response Oracles (PSRO), which holds promise to improve scalability by focusing attention on sufficient subsets of strategies. We first motivate PSRO and provide historical context. We then focus on the strategy exploration problem for PSRO: the challenge of assembling effective subsets of strategies that still represent the original game well with minimum computational cost. We survey current research directions for enhancing the efficiency of PSRO, and explore the applications of PSRO across various domains. We conclude by discussing open questions and future research.
Authors: Sang T. Truong, Duc Q. Nguyen, Toan Nguyen, Dong D. Le, Nhi N. Truong, Tho Quan, Sanmi Koyejo
Abstract: Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have underscored their importance in the evolution of artificial intelligence. However, despite extensive pretraining on multilingual datasets, available open-sourced LLMs exhibit limited effectiveness in processing Vietnamese. The challenge is exacerbated by the absence of systematic benchmark datasets and metrics tailored for Vietnamese LLM evaluation. To mitigate these issues, we have finetuned LLMs specifically for Vietnamese and developed a comprehensive evaluation framework encompassing 10 common tasks and 31 metrics. Our evaluation results reveal that the fine-tuned LLMs exhibit enhanced comprehension and generative capabilities in Vietnamese. Moreover, our analysis indicates that models with more parameters can introduce more biases and uncalibrated outputs and the key factor influencing LLM performance is the quality of the training or fine-tuning datasets. These insights underscore the significance of meticulous fine-tuning with high-quality datasets in enhancing LLM performance.
Authors: Patrick Knab, Sascha Marton, Christian Bartelt
Abstract: Explainable Artificial Intelligence is critical in unraveling decision-making processes in complex machine learning models. LIME (Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations) is a well-known XAI framework for image analysis. It utilizes image segmentation to create features to identify relevant areas for classification. Consequently, poor segmentation can compromise the consistency of the explanation and undermine the importance of the segments, affecting the overall interpretability. Addressing these challenges, we introduce DSEG-LIME (Data-Driven Segmentation LIME), featuring: i) a data-driven segmentation for human-recognized feature generation, and ii) a hierarchical segmentation procedure through composition. We benchmark DSEG-LIME on pre-trained models with images from the ImageNet dataset - scenarios without domain-specific knowledge. The analysis includes a quantitative evaluation using established XAI metrics, complemented by a qualitative assessment through a user study. Our findings demonstrate that DSEG outperforms in most of the XAI metrics and enhances the alignment of explanations with human-recognized concepts, significantly improving interpretability. The code is available under: https://github. com/patrick-knab/DSEG-LIME
URLs: https://github.
Authors: Yuksel Arslantas, Ege Yuceel, Muhammed O. Sayin
Abstract: In this paper, we explore the susceptibility of the independent Q-learning algorithms (a classical and widely used multi-agent reinforcement learning method) to strategic manipulation of sophisticated opponents in normal-form games played repeatedly. We quantify how much strategically sophisticated agents can exploit naive Q-learners if they know the opponents' Q-learning algorithm. To this end, we formulate the strategic actors' interactions as a stochastic game (whose state encompasses Q-function estimates of the Q-learners) as if the Q-learning algorithms are the underlying dynamical system. We also present a quantization-based approximation scheme to tackle the continuum state space and analyze its performance for two competing strategic actors and a single strategic actor both analytically and numerically.
Authors: Allen Z. Ren, Jaden Clark, Anushri Dixit, Masha Itkina, Anirudha Majumdar, Dorsa Sadigh
Abstract: We consider the problem of Embodied Question Answering (EQA), which refers to settings where an embodied agent such as a robot needs to actively explore an environment to gather information until it is confident about the answer to a question. In this work, we leverage the strong semantic reasoning capabilities of large vision-language models (VLMs) to efficiently explore and answer such questions. However, there are two main challenges when using VLMs in EQA: they do not have an internal memory for mapping the scene to be able to plan how to explore over time, and their confidence can be miscalibrated and can cause the robot to prematurely stop exploration or over-explore. We propose a method that first builds a semantic map of the scene based on depth information and via visual prompting of a VLM - leveraging its vast knowledge of relevant regions of the scene for exploration. Next, we use conformal prediction to calibrate the VLM's question answering confidence, allowing the robot to know when to stop exploration - leading to a more calibrated and efficient exploration strategy. To test our framework in simulation, we also contribute a new EQA dataset with diverse, realistic human-robot scenarios and scenes built upon the Habitat-Matterport 3D Research Dataset (HM3D). Both simulated and real robot experiments show our proposed approach improves the performance and efficiency over baselines that do no leverage VLM for exploration or do not calibrate its confidence. Webpage with experiment videos and code: https://explore-eqa.github.io/
Authors: Chanwoo Park, Xiangyu Liu, Asuman Ozdaglar, Kaiqing Zhang
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have been increasingly employed for (interactive) decision-making, via the development of LLM-based autonomous agents. Despite their emerging successes, the performance of LLM agents in decision-making has not been fully investigated through quantitative metrics, especially in the multi-agent setting when they interact with each other, a typical scenario in real-world LLM-agent applications. To better understand the limits of LLM agents in these interactive environments, we propose to study their interactions in benchmark decision-making settings in online learning and game theory, through the performance metric of \emph{regret}. We first empirically study the {no-regret} behaviors of LLMs in canonical (non-stationary) online learning problems, as well as the emergence of equilibria when LLM agents interact through playing repeated games. We then provide some theoretical insights into the no-regret behaviors of LLM agents, under certain assumptions on the supervised pre-training and the rationality model of human decision-makers who generate the data. Notably, we also identify (simple) cases where advanced LLMs such as GPT-4 fail to be no-regret. To promote the no-regret behaviors, we propose a novel \emph{unsupervised} training loss of \emph{regret-loss}, which, in contrast to the supervised pre-training loss, does not require the labels of (optimal) actions. We then establish the statistical guarantee of generalization bound for regret-loss minimization, followed by the optimization guarantee that minimizing such a loss may automatically lead to known no-regret learning algorithms. Our further experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our regret-loss, especially in addressing the above ``regrettable'' cases.
Authors: Rui Pan, Xiang Liu, Shizhe Diao, Renjie Pi, Jipeng Zhang, Chi Han, Tong Zhang
Abstract: The machine learning community has witnessed impressive advancements since large language models (LLMs) first appeared. Yet, their massive memory consumption has become a significant roadblock to large-scale training. For instance, a 7B model typically requires at least 60 GB of GPU memory with full parameter training, which presents challenges for researchers without access to high-resource environments. Parameter Efficient Fine-Tuning techniques such as Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) have been proposed to alleviate this problem. However, in most large-scale fine-tuning settings, their performance does not reach the level of full parameter training because they confine the parameter search to a low-rank subspace. Attempting to complement this deficiency, we investigate the layerwise properties of LoRA on fine-tuning tasks and observe an unexpected but consistent skewness of weight norms across different layers. Utilizing this key observation, a surprisingly simple training strategy is discovered, which outperforms both LoRA and full parameter training in a wide range of settings with memory costs as low as LoRA. We name it Layerwise Importance Sampled AdamW (LISA), a promising alternative for LoRA, which applies the idea of importance sampling to different layers in LLMs and randomly freezes most middle layers during optimization. Experimental results show that with similar or less GPU memory consumption, LISA surpasses LoRA or even full parameter tuning in downstream fine-tuning tasks, where LISA consistently outperforms LoRA by over 10%-35% in terms of MT-Bench score while achieving on-par or better performance in MMLU, AGIEval and WinoGrande. On large models, specifically LLaMA-2-70B, LISA surpasses LoRA on MT-Bench, GSM8K, and PubMedQA, demonstrating its effectiveness across different domains.
Authors: Qiuhong Shen, Zike Wu, Xuanyu Yi, Pan Zhou, Hanwang Zhang, Shuicheng Yan, Xinchao Wang
Abstract: We tackle the challenge of efficiently reconstructing a 3D asset from a single image at millisecond speed. Existing methods for single-image 3D reconstruction are primarily based on Score Distillation Sampling (SDS) with Neural 3D representations. Despite promising results, these approaches encounter practical limitations due to lengthy optimizations and significant memory consumption. In this work, we introduce Gamba, an end-to-end 3D reconstruction model from a single-view image, emphasizing two main insights: (1) Efficient Backbone Design: introducing a Mamba-based GambaFormer network to model 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) reconstruction as sequential prediction with linear scalability of token length, thereby accommodating a substantial number of Gaussians; (2) Robust Gaussian Constraints: deriving radial mask constraints from multi-view masks to eliminate the need for warmup supervision of 3D point clouds in training. We trained Gamba on Objaverse and assessed it against existing optimization-based and feed-forward 3D reconstruction approaches on the GSO Dataset, among which Gamba is the only end-to-end trained single-view reconstruction model with 3DGS. Experimental results demonstrate its competitive generation capabilities both qualitatively and quantitatively and highlight its remarkable speed: Gamba completes reconstruction within 0.05 seconds on a single NVIDIA A100 GPU, which is about $1,000\times$ faster than optimization-based methods. Please see our project page at https://florinshen.github.io/gamba-project.
Authors: Robert Godwin-Jones
Abstract: Generative AI offers significant opportunities for language learning. Tools like ChatGPT can provide informal second language practice through chats in written or voice forms, with the learner specifying through prompts conversational parameters such as proficiency level, language register, and discussion topics. AI can be instructed to give corrective feedback, create practice exercises, or develop an extended study plan. Instructors can use AI to build learning and assessment materials in a variety of media. AI is likely to make immersive technologies more powerful and versatile, moving away from scripted interactions. For both learners and teachers, it is important to understand the limitations of AI systems that arise from their purely statistical model of human language, which limits their ability to deal with nuanced social and cultural aspects of language use. Additionally, there are ethical concerns over how AI systems are created as well as practical constraints in their use, especially for less privileged populations. The power and versatility of AI tools are likely to turn them into valuable and constant companions in many peoples lives (akin to smartphones), creating a close connection that goes beyond simple tool use. Ecological theories such as sociomaterialism are helpful in examining the shared agency that develops through close user-AI interactions, as are the perspectives on human-object relations from Indigenous cultures.
Authors: Yassir Bendou, Giulia Lioi, Bastien Pasdeloup, Lukas Mauch, Ghouthi Boukli Hacene, Fabien Cardinaux, Vincent Gripon
Abstract: We consider the problem of zero-shot one-class visual classification, extending traditional one-class classification to scenarios where only the label of the target class is available. This method aims to discriminate between positive and negative query samples without requiring examples from the target class. We propose a two-step solution that first queries large language models for visually confusing objects and then relies on vision-language pre-trained models (e.g., CLIP) to perform classification. By adapting large-scale vision benchmarks, we demonstrate the ability of the proposed method to outperform adapted off-the-shelf alternatives in this setting. Namely, we propose a realistic benchmark where negative query samples are drawn from the same original dataset as positive ones, including a granularity-controlled version of iNaturalist, where negative samples are at a fixed distance in the taxonomy tree from the positive ones. To our knowledge, we are the first to demonstrate the ability to discriminate a single category from other semantically related ones using only its label.
Authors: Sannyuya Liu, Qing Li, Xiaoxuan Shen, Jianwen Sun, Zongkai Yang
Abstract: Skill acquisition is a key area of research in cognitive psychology as it encompasses multiple psychological processes. The laws discovered under experimental paradigms are controversial and lack generalizability. This paper aims to unearth the laws of skill learning from large-scale training log data. A two-stage algorithm was developed to tackle the issues of unobservable cognitive states and algorithmic explosion in searching. Initially a deep learning model is employed to determine the learner's cognitive state and assess the feature importance. Subsequently, symbolic regression algorithms are utilized to parse the neural network model into algebraic equations. Experimental results show the algorithm can accurately restore preset laws within a noise range in continuous feedback settings. When applied to Lumosity training data, the method outperforms traditional and recent models in fitness terms. The study reveals two new forms of skill acquisition laws and reaffirms some previous findings.
Authors: Zhenhailong Wang, Joy Hsu, Xingyao Wang, Kuan-Hao Huang, Manling Li, Jiajun Wu, Heng Ji
Abstract: While large multimodal models excel in broad vision-language benchmarks, they often struggle with tasks requiring precise perception of low-level visual details, such as comparing line lengths or solving simple mazes. In particular, this failure mode persists in question-answering tasks about vector graphics -- images composed purely of 2D objects and shapes. To address this challenge, we propose the Visually Descriptive Language Model (VDLM), which performs text-based reasoning about vector graphics. VDLM leverages Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) for a more precise visual description and first uses an off-the-shelf raster-to-SVG algorithm for encoding. Since existing language models cannot understand raw SVGs in a zero-shot setting, VDLM then bridges SVG with pretrained language models through a newly introduced intermediate symbolic representation, Primal Visual Description (PVD), comprising primitive attributes (e.g., shape, position, measurement) with their corresponding predicted values. PVD is task-agnostic and represents visual primitives that are universal across all vector graphics. It can be learned with procedurally generated (SVG, PVD) pairs and also enables the direct use of LLMs for generalization to complex reasoning tasks. By casting an image to a text-based representation, we can leverage the power of language models to learn alignment from SVG to visual primitives and generalize to unseen question-answering tasks. Empirical results show that VDLM achieves stronger zero-shot performance compared to state-of-the-art LMMs, such as GPT-4V, in various low-level multimodal perception and reasoning tasks on vector graphics. We additionally present extensive analyses on VDLM's performance, demonstrating that our framework offers better interpretability due to its disentangled perception and reasoning processes. Project page: https://mikewangwzhl.github.io/VDLM/
Authors: Ameesh Shah, Cameron Voloshin, Chenxi Yang, Abhinav Verma, Swarat Chaudhuri, Sanjit A. Seshia
Abstract: Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) offers a precise means for constraining the behavior of reinforcement learning agents. However, in many tasks, LTL is insufficient for task specification; LTL-constrained policy optimization, where the goal is to optimize a scalar reward under LTL constraints, is needed. Prior methods for this constrained problem are restricted to finite state spaces. In this work, we present Cycle Experience Replay (CyclER), a reward-shaping approach to this problem that allows continuous state and action spaces and the use of function approximations. CyclER guides a policy towards satisfaction by encouraging partial behaviors compliant with the LTL constraint, using the structure of the constraint. In doing so, it addresses the optimization challenges stemming from the sparse nature of LTL satisfaction. We evaluate CyclER in three continuous control domains. On these tasks, CyclER outperforms existing reward-shaping methods at finding performant and LTL-satisfying policies.
Authors: Siyi Lin, Chongming Gao, Jiawei Chen, Sheng Zhou, Binbin Hu, Chun Chen, Can Wang
Abstract: Recommendation Systems (RS) are often plagued by popularity bias. When training a recommendation model on a typically long-tailed dataset, the model tends to not only inherit this bias but often exacerbate it, resulting in over-representation of popular items in the recommendation lists. This study conducts comprehensive empirical and theoretical analyses to expose the root causes of this phenomenon, yielding two core insights: 1) Item popularity is memorized in the principal spectrum of the score matrix predicted by the recommendation model; 2) The dimension collapse phenomenon amplifies the relative prominence of the principal spectrum, thereby intensifying the popularity bias. Building on these insights, we propose a novel debiasing strategy that leverages a spectral norm regularizer to penalize the magnitude of the principal singular value. We have developed an efficient algorithm to expedite the calculation of the spectral norm by exploiting the spectral property of the score matrix. Extensive experiments across seven real-world datasets and three testing paradigms have been conducted to validate the superiority of the proposed method.
Authors: Jinhee Kim, Taesung Kim, Jaegul Choo
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive in-context learning capabilities across various domains. Inspired by this, our study explores the effectiveness of LLMs in generating realistic tabular data to mitigate class imbalance. We investigate and identify key prompt design elements such as data format, class presentation, and variable mapping to optimize the generation performance. Our findings indicate that using CSV format, balancing classes, and employing unique variable mapping produces realistic and reliable data, significantly enhancing machine learning performance for minor classes in imbalanced datasets. Additionally, these approaches improve the stability and efficiency of LLM data generation. We validate our approach using six real-world datasets and a toy dataset, achieving state-of-the-art performance in classification tasks. The code is available at: https://github.com/seharanul17/synthetic-tabular-LLM
Authors: Dohoon Lee, Kyogu Lee
Abstract: In the field of generative modeling based on differential equations, conventional methods utilize scalar-valued time during both the training and inference phases. This work introduces, for the first time, a tensor-valued time that expands the conventional scalar-valued time into multiple dimensions. Additionally, we propose a novel path optimization problem designed to adaptively determine multidimensional inference trajectories using a predetermined differential equation solver and a fixed number of function evaluations. Our approach leverages the stochastic interpolant framework, simulation dynamics, and adversarial training to optimize the inference pathway. Notably, incorporating tensor-valued time during training improves some models' inference performance, even without path optimization. When the adaptive, multidimensional path derived from our optimization process is employed, further performance gains are achieved despite the fixed solver configurations. The introduction of tensor-valued time not only enhances the efficiency of models but also opens new avenues for exploration in training and inference methodologies, highlighting the potential of adaptive multidimensional paths.
Authors: Chaohao Yuan, Songyou Li, Geyan Ye, Yikun Zhang, Long-Kai Huang, Wenbing Huang, Wei Liu, Jianhua Yao, Yu Rong
Abstract: The core challenge of de novo protein design lies in creating proteins with specific functions or properties, guided by certain conditions. Current models explore to generate protein using structural and evolutionary guidance, which only provide indirect conditions concerning functions and properties. However, textual annotations of proteins, especially the annotations for protein domains, which directly describe the protein's high-level functionalities, properties, and their correlation with target amino acid sequences, remain unexplored in the context of protein design tasks. In this paper, we propose Protein-Annotation Alignment Generation (PAAG), a multi-modality protein design framework that integrates the textual annotations extracted from protein database for controllable generation in sequence space. Specifically, within a multi-level alignment module, PAAG can explicitly generate proteins containing specific domains conditioned on the corresponding domain annotations, and can even design novel proteins with flexible combinations of different kinds of annotations. Our experimental results underscore the superiority of the aligned protein representations from PAAG over 7 prediction tasks. Furthermore, PAAG demonstrates a nearly sixfold increase in generation success rate (24.7% vs 4.7% in zinc finger, and 54.3% vs 8.7% in the immunoglobulin domain) in comparison to the existing model.
Authors: Yuxuan Yan, Qianqian Yang, Shunpu Tang, Zhiguo Shi
Abstract: Despite their exceptional performance on various tasks after fine-tuning, pre-trained language models (PLMs) face significant challenges due to growing privacy concerns with data in centralized training methods. We consider federated learning (FL) to fine-tune PLMs in this paper. However, the substantial number of parameters in PLMs poses significant difficulties for client devices with limited communication and computational resources. One promising solution is to exploit parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) into FL, which trains a much smaller set of parameters than full parameter fine-tuning (FFT). Although remarkably improving training efficiency, PEFT methods may lead to degraded performance especially when data across different clients are non i.i.d, as revealed by experimental results. To overcome this, we propose FeDeRA, which extends and improves a widely used PEFT method, i.e., low-rank adaption (LoRA). FeDeRA follows LoRA by decomposing the weight matrices of the PLMs into low-rank matrices, which allows for more efficient computation and parameter updates during fine-tuning. Different from LoRA which simply initializes these low-rank matrices by random sampling or zeros, the proposed FeDeRA initializes these matrices by the results of performing singular value decomposition (SVD) on the pre-trained weight matrices. Extensive experiments across various tasks and datasets show that FeDeRA outperforms the considered PEFT baselines and is comparable to or even surpasses FFT method within the FL setting in terms of task performance. Moreover, FeDeRA requires only 1% trainable paramentes compared to FFT, significantly reducing training time costs by more than 90% to achieve the same task performance level. The experimental results also highlight the robustness of FeDeRA against data heterogeneity, as it maintains stable task performance even as data heterogeneity increases.
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: Yue Wu, Zhiqing Sun, Huizhuo Yuan, Kaixuan Ji, Yiming Yang, Quanquan Gu
Abstract: Traditional reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) approaches relying on parametric models like the Bradley-Terry model fall short in capturing the intransitivity and irrationality in human preferences. Recent advancements suggest that directly working with preference probabilities can yield a more accurate reflection of human preferences, enabling more flexible and accurate language model alignment. In this paper, we propose a self-play-based method for language model alignment, which treats the problem as a constant-sum two-player game aimed at identifying the Nash equilibrium policy. Our approach, dubbed \textit{Self-play Probabilistic Preference Optimization} (SPPO), approximates the Nash equilibrium through iterative policy updates and enjoys a theoretical convergence guarantee. Our method can effectively increase the log-likelihood of the chosen response and decrease that of the rejected response, which cannot be trivially achieved by symmetric pairwise loss such as Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) and Identity Preference Optimization (IPO). In our experiments, using only 60k prompts (without responses) from the UltraFeedback dataset and without any prompt augmentation, by leveraging a pre-trained preference model PairRM with only 0.4B parameters, SPPO can obtain a model from fine-tuning Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 that achieves the state-of-the-art length-controlled win-rate of 28.53\% against GPT-4-Turbo on AlpacaEval 2.0. It also outperforms the (iterative) DPO and IPO on MT-Bench and the Open LLM Leaderboard. Notably, the strong performance of SPPO is achieved without additional external supervision (e.g., responses, preferences, etc.) from GPT-4 or other stronger language models.
Authors: Mengxian Hu, Minghao Zhu, Xun Zhou, Qingqing Yan, Shu Li, Chengju Liu, Qijun Chen
Abstract: Motion diffusion models excel at text-driven motion generation but struggle with real-time inference since motion sequences are time-axis redundant and solving reverse diffusion trajectory involves tens or hundreds of sequential iterations. In this paper, we propose a Motion Latent Consistency Training (MLCT) framework, which allows for large-scale skip sampling of compact motion latent representation by constraining the consistency of the outputs of adjacent perturbed states on the precomputed trajectory. In particular, we design a flexible motion autoencoder with quantization constraints to guarantee the low-dimensionality, succinctness, and boundednes of the motion embedding space. We further present a conditionally guided consistency training framework based on conditional trajectory simulation without additional pre-training diffusion model, which significantly improves the conditional generation performance with minimal training cost. Experiments on two benchmarks demonstrate our model's state-of-the-art performance with an 80\% inference cost saving and around 14 ms on a single RTX 4090 GPU.
Authors: Reda Marzouk, Colin de La Higuera
Abstract: Thanks to its solid theoretical foundation, the SHAP framework is arguably one the most widely utilized frameworks for local explainability of ML models. Despite its popularity, its exact computation is known to be very challenging, proven to be NP-Hard in various configurations. Recent works have unveiled positive complexity results regarding the computation of the SHAP score for specific model families, encompassing decision trees, random forests, and some classes of boolean circuits. Yet, all these positive results hinge on the assumption of feature independence, often simplistic in real-world scenarios. In this article, we investigate the computational complexity of the SHAP score by relaxing this assumption and introducing a Markovian perspective. We show that, under the Markovian assumption, computing the SHAP score for the class of Weighted automata, Disjoint DNFs and Decision Trees can be performed in polynomial time, offering a first positive complexity result for the problem of SHAP score computation that transcends the limitations of the feature independence assumption.
Authors: Hritik Bansal, Yonatan Bitton, Michal Yarom, Idan Szpektor, Aditya Grover, Kai-Wei Chang
Abstract: Recent advances in diffusion-based generative modeling have led to the development of text-to-video (T2V) models that can generate high-quality videos conditioned on a text prompt. Most of these T2V models often produce single-scene video clips that depict an entity performing a particular action (e.g., 'a red panda climbing a tree'). However, it is pertinent to generate multi-scene videos since they are ubiquitous in the real-world (e.g., 'a red panda climbing a tree' followed by 'the red panda sleeps on the top of the tree'). To generate multi-scene videos from a pretrained T2V model, we introduce Time-Aligned Captions (TALC) framework. Specifically, we enhance the text-conditioning mechanism in the T2V architecture to recognize the temporal alignment between the video scenes and scene descriptions. As a result, we show that the pretrained T2V model can generate multi-scene videos that adhere to the multi-scene text descriptions and be visually consistent (e.g., w.r.t entity and background). Our TALC-finetuned model outperforms the baseline methods on multi-scene video-text data by 15.5 points on aggregated score, averaging visual consistency and text adherence using human evaluation. The project website is https://talc-mst2v.github.io/.
Authors: Jiayi Chen, Chunhua Deng
Abstract: With the advancement of video analysis technology, the multi-object tracking (MOT) problem in complex scenes involving pedestrians is gaining increasing importance. This challenge primarily involves two key tasks: pedestrian detection and re-identification. While significant progress has been achieved in pedestrian detection tasks in recent years, enhancing the effectiveness of re-identification tasks remains a persistent challenge. This difficulty arises from the large total number of pedestrian samples in multi-object tracking datasets and the scarcity of individual instance samples. Motivated by recent rapid advancements in meta-learning techniques, we introduce MAML MOT, a meta-learning-based training approach for multi-object tracking. This approach leverages the rapid learning capability of meta-learning to tackle the issue of sample scarcity in pedestrian re-identification tasks, aiming to improve the model's generalization performance and robustness. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves high accuracy on mainstream datasets in the MOT Challenge. This offers new perspectives and solutions for research in the field of pedestrian multi-object tracking.
Authors: Syed Mhamudul Hasan, Alaa M. Alotaibi, Sajedul Talukder, Abdur R. Shahid
Abstract: With the proliferation of edge devices, there is a significant increase in attack surface on these devices. The decentralized deployment of threat intelligence on edge devices, coupled with adaptive machine learning techniques such as the in-context learning feature of Large Language Models (LLMs), represents a promising paradigm for enhancing cybersecurity on resource-constrained edge devices. This approach involves the deployment of lightweight machine learning models directly onto edge devices to analyze local data streams, such as network traffic and system logs, in real-time. Additionally, distributing computational tasks to an edge server reduces latency and improves responsiveness while also enhancing privacy by processing sensitive data locally. LLM servers can enable these edge servers to autonomously adapt to evolving threats and attack patterns, continuously updating their models to improve detection accuracy and reduce false positives. Furthermore, collaborative learning mechanisms facilitate peer-to-peer secure and trustworthy knowledge sharing among edge devices, enhancing the collective intelligence of the network and enabling dynamic threat mitigation measures such as device quarantine in response to detected anomalies. The scalability and flexibility of this approach make it well-suited for diverse and evolving network environments, as edge devices only send suspicious information such as network traffic and system log changes, offering a resilient and efficient solution to combat emerging cyber threats at the network edge. Thus, our proposed framework can improve edge computing security by providing better security in cyber threat detection and mitigation by isolating the edge devices from the network.
Authors: Siwei Wang, Yifei Shen, Shi Feng, Haoran Sun, Shang-Hua Teng, Wei Chen
Abstract: In this paper, we present the findings of our Project ALPINE which stands for ``Autoregressive Learning for Planning In NEtworks." Project ALPINE initiates a theoretical investigation into the development of planning capabilities in Transformer-based language models through their autoregressive learning mechanisms, aiming to identify any potential limitations in their planning abilities. We abstract planning as a network path-finding task where the objective is to generate a valid path from a specified source node to a designated target node. In terms of expressiveness, we show that the Transformer is capable of executing path-finding by embedding the adjacency and reachability matrices within its weights. Our theoretical analysis of the gradient-based learning dynamic of the Transformer reveals that the Transformer is capable of learning both the adjacency matrix and a limited form of the reachability matrix. These theoretical insights are then validated through experiments, which demonstrate that the Transformer indeed learns the adjacency matrix and an incomplete reachability matrix, which aligns with the predictions made in our theoretical analysis. Additionally, when applying our methodology to a real-world planning benchmark, called Blocksworld, our observations remain consistent. Our theoretical and empirical analyses further unveil a potential limitation of Transformer in path-finding: it cannot identify reachability relationships through transitivity, and thus would fail when path concatenation is needed to generate a path. In summary, our findings shed new light on how the internal mechanisms of autoregressive learning enable planning in networks. This study may contribute to our understanding of the general planning capabilities in other related domains.
Authors: Pierre Baldi, Alireza Rahmansetayesh
Abstract: We develop a theory of neural synaptic balance and how it can emerge or be enforced in neural networks. For a given additive cost function $R$ (regularizer), a neuron is said to be in balance if the total cost of its input weights is equal to the total cost of its output weights. The basic example is provided by feedforward networks of ReLU units trained with $L_2$ regularizers, which exhibit balance after proper training. The theory explains this phenomenon and extends it in several directions. The first direction is the extension to bilinear and other activation functions. The second direction is the extension to more general regularizers, including all $L_p$ ($p>0$) regularizers. The third direction is the extension to non-layered architectures, recurrent architectures, convolutional architectures, as well as architectures with mixed activation functions. The theory is based on two local neuronal operations: scaling which is commutative, and balancing which is not commutative. Finally, and most importantly, given any initial set of weights, when local balancing operations are applied to each neuron in a stochastic manner, global order always emerges through the convergence of the stochastic balancing algorithm to the same unique set of balanced weights. The reason for this convergence is the existence of an underlying strictly convex optimization problem where the relevant variables are constrained to a linear, only architecture-dependent, manifold. The theory is corroborated through various simulations carried out on benchmark data sets. Scaling and balancing operations are entirely local and thus physically plausible in biological and neuromorphic networks.
Authors: Yifu Qiu, Zheng Zhao, Yftah Ziser, Anna Korhonen, Edoardo M. Ponti, Shay B. Cohen
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) often exhibit undesirable behaviours, such as generating untruthful or biased content. Editing their internal representations has been shown to be effective in mitigating such behaviours on top of the existing alignment methods. We propose a novel inference-time editing method, namely spectral editing of activations (SEA), to project the input representations into directions with maximal covariance with the positive demonstrations (e.g., truthful) while minimising covariance with the negative demonstrations (e.g., hallucinated). We also extend our method to non-linear editing using feature functions. We run extensive experiments on benchmarks concerning truthfulness and bias with six open-source LLMs of different sizes and model families. The results demonstrate the superiority of SEA in effectiveness, generalisation to similar tasks, as well as computation and data efficiency. We also show that SEA editing only has a limited negative impact on other model capabilities.
Authors: Yirong Zhou, Chengyan Wang, Mengtian Lu, Kunyuan Guo, Zi Wang, Dan Ruan, Rui Guo, Peijun Zhao, Jianhua Wang, Naiming Wu, Jianzhong Lin, Yinyin Chen, Hang Jin, Lianxin Xie, Lilan Wu, Liuhong Zhu, Jianjun Zhou, Congbo Cai, He Wang, Xiaobo Qu
Abstract: In cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) analysis, simultaneous myocardial segmentation and T2 quantification are crucial for assessing myocardial pathologies. Existing methods often address these tasks separately, limiting their synergistic potential. To address this, we propose SQNet, a dual-task network integrating Transformer and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) components. SQNet features a T2-refine fusion decoder for quantitative analysis, leveraging global features from the Transformer, and a segmentation decoder with multiple local region supervision for enhanced accuracy. A tight coupling module aligns and fuses CNN and Transformer branch features, enabling SQNet to focus on myocardium regions. Evaluation on healthy controls (HC) and acute myocardial infarction patients (AMI) demonstrates superior segmentation dice scores (89.3/89.2) compared to state-of-the-art methods (87.7/87.9). T2 quantification yields strong linear correlations (Pearson coefficients: 0.84/0.93) with label values for HC/AMI, indicating accurate mapping. Radiologist evaluations confirm SQNet's superior image quality scores (4.60/4.58 for segmentation, 4.32/4.42 for T2 quantification) over state-of-the-art methods (4.50/4.44 for segmentation, 3.59/4.37 for T2 quantification). SQNet thus offers accurate simultaneous segmentation and quantification, enhancing cardiac disease diagnosis, such as AMI.
Authors: Lujain Ibrahim, Saffron Huang, Lama Ahmad, Markus Anderljung
Abstract: Model evaluations are central to understanding the safety, risks, and societal impacts of AI systems. While most real-world AI applications involve human-AI interaction, most current evaluations (e.g., common benchmarks) of AI models do not. Instead, they incorporate human factors in limited ways, assessing the safety of models in isolation, thereby falling short of capturing the complexity of human-model interactions. In this paper, we discuss and operationalize a definition of an emerging category of evaluations -- "human interaction evaluations" (HIEs) -- which focus on the assessment of human-model interactions or the process and the outcomes of humans using models. First, we argue that HIEs can be used to increase the validity of safety evaluations, assess direct human impact and interaction-specific harms, and guide future assessments of models' societal impact. Second, we propose a safety-focused HIE design framework -- containing a human-LLM interaction taxonomy -- with three stages: (1) identifying the risk or harm area, (2) characterizing the use context, and (3) choosing the evaluation parameters. Third, we apply our framework to two potential evaluations for overreliance and persuasion risks. Finally, we conclude with tangible recommendations for addressing concerns over costs, replicability, and unrepresentativeness of HIEs.
Authors: Junzhang Liu, Zhecan Wang, Hammad Ayyubi, Haoxuan You, Chris Thomas, Rui Sun, Shih-Fu Chang, Kai-Wei Chang
Abstract: Despite the widespread adoption of Vision-Language Understanding (VLU) benchmarks such as VQA v2, OKVQA, A-OKVQA, GQA, VCR, SWAG, and VisualCOMET, our analysis reveals a pervasive issue affecting their integrity: these benchmarks contain samples where answers rely on assumptions unsupported by the provided context. Training models on such data foster biased learning and hallucinations as models tend to make similar unwarranted assumptions. To address this issue, we collect contextual data for each sample whenever available and train a context selection module to facilitate evidence-based model predictions. Strong improvements across multiple benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Further, we develop a general-purpose Context-AwaRe Abstention (CARA) detector to identify samples lacking sufficient context and enhance model accuracy by abstaining from responding if the required context is absent. CARA exhibits generalization to new benchmarks it wasn't trained on, underscoring its utility for future VLU benchmarks in detecting or cleaning samples with inadequate context. Finally, we curate a Context Ambiguity and Sufficiency Evaluation (CASE) set to benchmark the performance of insufficient context detectors. Overall, our work represents a significant advancement in ensuring that vision-language models generate trustworthy and evidence-based outputs in complex real-world scenarios.
Authors: Zhuangzhuang He, Yifan Wang, Yonghui Yang, Peijie Sun, Le Wu, Haoyue Bai, Jinqi Gong, Richang Hong, Min Zhang
Abstract: As its availability and generality in online services, implicit feedback is more commonly used in recommender systems. However, implicit feedback usually presents noisy samples in real-world recommendation scenarios (such as misclicks or non-preferential behaviors), which will affect precise user preference learning. To overcome the noisy samples problem, a popular solution is based on dropping noisy samples in the model training phase, which follows the observation that noisy samples have higher training losses than clean samples. Despite the effectiveness, we argue that this solution still has limits. (1) High training losses can result from model optimization instability or hard samples, not just noisy samples. (2) Completely dropping of noisy samples will aggravate the data sparsity, which lacks full data exploitation. To tackle the above limitations, we propose a Double Correction Framework for Denoising Recommendation (DCF), which contains two correction components from views of more precise sample dropping and avoiding more sparse data. In the sample dropping correction component, we use the loss value of the samples over time to determine whether it is noise or not, increasing dropping stability. Instead of averaging directly, we use the damping function to reduce the bias effect of outliers. Furthermore, due to the higher variance exhibited by hard samples, we derive a lower bound for the loss through concentration inequality to identify and reuse hard samples. In progressive label correction, we iteratively re-label highly deterministic noisy samples and retrain them to further improve performance. Finally, extensive experimental results on three datasets and four backbones demonstrate the effectiveness and generalization of our proposed framework.
Authors: Moein E. Samadi, Younes M\"uller, Andreas Schuppert
Abstract: Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs) offer an efficient and interpretable alternative to traditional multi-layer perceptron (MLP) architectures due to their finite network topology. However, according to the results of Kolmogorov and Vitushkin, the representation of generic smooth functions by KAN implementations using analytic functions constrained to a finite number of cutoff points cannot be exact. Hence, the convergence of KAN throughout the training process may be limited. This paper explores the relevance of smoothness in KANs, proposing that smooth, structurally informed KANs can achieve equivalence to MLPs in specific function classes. By leveraging inherent structural knowledge, KANs may reduce the data required for training and mitigate the risk of generating hallucinated predictions, thereby enhancing model reliability and performance in computational biomedicine.
Authors: Bowen Chen, Namgi Han, Yusuke Miyao
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs), trained on massive corpora with billions of parameters, show unprecedented performance in various fields. Though surprised by their excellent performances, researchers also noticed some special behaviors of those LLMs. One of those behaviors is memorization, in which LLMs can generate the same content used to train them. Though previous research has discussed memorization, the memorization of LLMs still lacks explanation, especially the cause of memorization and the dynamics of generating them. In this research, we comprehensively discussed memorization from various perspectives and extended the discussion scope to not only just the memorized content but also less and unmemorized content. Through various studies, we found that: (1) Through experiments, we revealed the relation of memorization between model size, continuation size, and context size. Further, we showed how unmemorized sentences transition to memorized sentences. (2) Through embedding analysis, we showed the distribution and decoding dynamics across model size in embedding space for sentences with different memorization scores. The n-gram statistics analysis presents d (3) An analysis over n-gram and entropy decoding dynamics discovered a boundary effect when the model starts to generate memorized sentences or unmemorized sentences. (4)We trained a Transformer model to predict the memorization of different models, showing that it is possible to predict memorizations by context.
Authors: Dongseong Hwang
Abstract: This paper establishes a mathematical foundation for the Adam optimizer, elucidating its connection to natural gradient descent through Riemannian and information geometry. We rigorously analyze the diagonal empirical Fisher information matrix (FIM) in Adam, clarifying all detailed approximations and advocating for the use of log probability functions as loss, which should be based on discrete distributions, due to the limitations of empirical FIM. Our analysis uncovers flaws in the original Adam algorithm, leading to proposed corrections such as enhanced momentum calculations, adjusted bias corrections, adaptive epsilon, and gradient clipping. We refine the weight decay term based on our theoretical framework. Our modified algorithm, Fisher Adam (FAdam), demonstrates superior performance across diverse domains including LLM, ASR, and VQ-VAE, achieving state-of-the-art results in ASR.
Authors: Zavareh Bozorgasl, Hao Chen
Abstract: In this paper, we introduce Wav-KAN, an innovative neural network architecture that leverages the Wavelet Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (Wav-KAN) framework to enhance interpretability and performance. Traditional multilayer perceptrons (MLPs) and even recent advancements like Spl-KAN face challenges related to interpretability, training speed, robustness, computational efficiency, and performance. Wav-KAN addresses these limitations by incorporating wavelet functions into the Kolmogorov-Arnold network structure, enabling the network to capture both high-frequency and low-frequency components of the input data efficiently. Wavelet-based approximations employ orthogonal or semi-orthogonal basis and maintain a balance between accurately representing the underlying data structure and avoiding overfitting to the noise. While continuous wavelet transform (CWT) has a lot of potentials, we also employed discrete wavelet transform (DWT) for multiresolution analysis, which obviated the need for recalculation of the previous steps in finding the details. Analogous to how water conforms to the shape of its container, Wav-KAN adapts to the data structure, resulting in enhanced accuracy, faster training speeds, and increased robustness compared to Spl-KAN and MLPs. Our results highlight the potential of Wav-KAN as a powerful tool for developing interpretable and high-performance neural networks, with applications spanning various fields. This work sets the stage for further exploration and implementation of Wav-KAN in frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow, aiming to make wavelets in KAN as widespread as activation functions like ReLU and sigmoid in universal approximation theory (UAT). The codes to replicate the simulations are available at https://github.com/zavareh1/Wav-KAN.
Authors: Saddam Hussain Khan (Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of Computer Systems Engineering, University of Engineering,Applied Sciences)
Abstract: Alzheimer diseases (ADs) involves cognitive decline and abnormal brain protein accumulation, necessitating timely diagnosis for effective treatment. Therefore, CAD systems leveraging deep learning advancements have demonstrated success in AD detection but pose computational intricacies and the dataset minor contrast, structural, and texture variations. In this regard, a novel hybrid FME-Residual-HSCMT technique is introduced, comprised of residual CNN and Transformer concepts to capture global and local fine-grained AD analysis in MRI. This approach integrates three distinct elements: a novel CNN Meet Transformer (HSCMT), customized residual learning CNN, and a new Feature Map Enhancement (FME) strategy to learn diverse morphological, contrast, and texture variations of ADs. The proposed HSCMT at the initial stage utilizes stem convolution blocks that are integrated with CMT blocks followed by systematic homogenous and structural (HS) operations. The customized CMT block encapsulates each element with global contextual interactions through multi-head attention and facilitates computational efficiency through lightweight. Moreover, inverse residual and stem CNN in customized CMT enables effective extraction of local texture information and handling vanishing gradients. Furthermore, in the FME strategy, residual CNN blocks utilize TL-based generated auxiliary and are combined with the proposed HSCMT channels at the target level to achieve diverse enriched feature space. Finally, diverse enhanced channels are fed into a novel spatial attention mechanism for optimal pixel selection to reduce redundancy and discriminate minor contrast and texture inter-class variation. The proposed achieves an F1-score (98.55%), an accuracy of 98.42% and a sensitivity of 98.50%, a precision of 98.60% on the standard Kaggle dataset, and demonstrates outperformance existing ViTs and CNNs methods.
Authors: Yao Rong, David Scheerer, Enkelejda Kasneci
Abstract: In recent years, model explanation methods have been designed to interpret model decisions faithfully and intuitively so that users can easily understand them. In this paper, we propose a framework, Faithful Attention Explainer (FAE), capable of generating faithful textual explanations regarding the attended-to features. Towards this goal, we deploy an attention module that takes the visual feature maps from the classifier for sentence generation. Furthermore, our method successfully learns the association between features and words, which allows a novel attention enforcement module for attention explanation. Our model achieves promising performance in caption quality metrics and a faithful decision-relevance metric on two datasets (CUB and ACT-X). In addition, we show that FAE can interpret gaze-based human attention, as human gaze indicates the discriminative features that humans use for decision-making, demonstrating the potential of deploying human gaze for advanced human-AI interaction.
Authors: Safouane El Ghazouali, Arnaud Gucciardi, Umberto Michelucci
Abstract: Self-rewarding have emerged recently as a powerful tool in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP), allowing language models to generate high-quality relevant responses by providing their own rewards during training. This innovative technique addresses the limitations of other methods that rely on human preferences. In this paper, we build upon the concept of self-rewarding models and introduce its vision equivalent for Text-to-Image generative AI models. This approach works by fine-tuning diffusion model on a self-generated self-judged dataset, making the fine-tuning more automated and with better data quality. The proposed mechanism makes use of other pre-trained models such as vocabulary based-object detection, image captioning and is conditioned by the a set of object for which the user might need to improve generated data quality. The approach has been implemented, fine-tuned and evaluated on stable diffusion and has led to a performance that has been evaluated to be at least 60\% better than existing commercial and research Text-to-image models. Additionally, the built self-rewarding mechanism allowed a fully automated generation of images, while increasing the visual quality of the generated images and also more efficient following of prompt instructions. The code used in this work is freely available on https://github.com/safouaneelg/SRT2I.
Authors: Alireza Nadali, Ashutosh Trivedi, Majid Zamani
Abstract: Control barrier certificates have proven effective in formally guaranteeing the safety of the control systems. However, designing a control barrier certificate is a time-consuming and computationally expensive endeavor that requires expert input in the form of domain knowledge and mathematical maturity. Additionally, when a system undergoes slight changes, the new controller and its correctness certificate need to be recomputed, incurring similar computational challenges as those faced during the design of the original controller. Prior approaches have utilized transfer learning to transfer safety guarantees in the form of a barrier certificate while maintaining the control invariant. Unfortunately, in practical settings, the source and the target environments often deviate substantially in their control inputs, rendering the aforementioned approach impractical. To address this challenge, we propose integrating \emph{inverse dynamics} -- a neural network that suggests required action given a desired successor state -- of the target system with the barrier certificate of the source system to provide formal proof of safety. In addition, we propose a validity condition that, when met, guarantees correctness of the controller. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through three case studies.
Authors: Wanghan Xu, Fenghua Ling, Wenlong Zhang, Tao Han, Hao Chen, Wanli Ouyang, Lei Bai
Abstract: Data-driven artificial intelligence (AI) models have made significant advancements in weather forecasting, particularly in medium-range and nowcasting. However, most data-driven weather forecasting models are black-box systems that focus on learning data mapping rather than fine-grained physical evolution in the time dimension. Consequently, the limitations in the temporal scale of datasets prevent these models from forecasting at finer time scales. This paper proposes a physics-AI hybrid model (i.e., WeatherGFT) which Generalizes weather forecasts to Finer-grained Temporal scales beyond training dataset. Specifically, we employ a carefully designed PDE kernel to simulate physical evolution on a small time scale (e.g., 300 seconds) and use a parallel neural networks with a learnable router for bias correction. Furthermore, we introduce a lead time-aware training framework to promote the generalization of the model at different lead times. The weight analysis of physics-AI modules indicates that physics conducts major evolution while AI performs corrections adaptively. Extensive experiments show that WeatherGFT trained on an hourly dataset, achieves state-of-the-art performance across multiple lead times and exhibits the capability to generalize 30-minute forecasts.
Authors: Xin Qiu, Risto Miikkulainen
Abstract: With the widespread application of Large Language Models (LLMs) to various domains, concerns regarding the trustworthiness of LLMs in safety-critical scenarios have been raised, due to their unpredictable tendency to hallucinate and generate misinformation. Existing LLMs do not have an inherent functionality to provide the users with an uncertainty metric for each response it generates, making it difficult to evaluate trustworthiness. Although a number of works aim to develop uncertainty quantification methods for LLMs, they have fundamental limitations, such as being restricted to classification tasks, requiring additional training and data, considering only lexical instead of semantic information, and being prompt-wise but not response-wise. A new framework is proposed in this paper to address these issues. Semantic density extracts uncertainty information for each response from a probability distribution perspective in semantic space. It has no restriction on task types and is "off-the-shelf" for new models and tasks. Experiments on seven state-of-the-art LLMs, including the latest Llama 3 and Mixtral-8x22B models, on four free-form question-answering benchmarks demonstrate the superior performance and robustness of semantic density compared to prior approaches.
Authors: Fangqiang Ding, Xiangyu Wen, Yunzhou Zhu, Yiming Li, Chris Xiaoxuan Lu
Abstract: 3D occupancy-based perception pipeline has significantly advanced autonomous driving by capturing detailed scene descriptions and demonstrating strong generalizability across various object categories and shapes. Current methods predominantly rely on LiDAR or camera inputs for 3D occupancy prediction. These methods are susceptible to adverse weather conditions, limiting the all-weather deployment of self-driving cars. To improve perception robustness, we leverage the recent advances in automotive radars and introduce a novel approach that utilizes 4D imaging radar sensors for 3D occupancy prediction. Our method, RadarOcc, circumvents the limitations of sparse radar point clouds by directly processing the 4D radar tensor, thus preserving essential scene details. RadarOcc innovatively addresses the challenges associated with the voluminous and noisy 4D radar data by employing Doppler bins descriptors, sidelobe-aware spatial sparsification, and range-wise self-attention mechanisms. To minimize the interpolation errors associated with direct coordinate transformations, we also devise a spherical-based feature encoding followed by spherical-to-Cartesian feature aggregation. We benchmark various baseline methods based on distinct modalities on the public K-Radar dataset. The results demonstrate RadarOcc's state-of-the-art performance in radar-based 3D occupancy prediction and promising results even when compared with LiDAR- or camera-based methods. Additionally, we present qualitative evidence of the superior performance of 4D radar in adverse weather conditions and explore the impact of key pipeline components through ablation studies.
Authors: Rub\'en Ballester, Pablo Hern\'andez-Garc\'ia, Mathilde Papillon, Claudio Battiloro, Nina Miolane, Tolga Birdal, Carles Casacuberta, Sergio Escalera, Mustafa Hajij
Abstract: Topological Deep Learning seeks to enhance the predictive performance of neural network models by harnessing topological structures in input data. Topological neural networks operate on spaces such as cell complexes and hypergraphs, that can be seen as generalizations of graphs. In this work, we introduce the Cellular Transformer (CT), a novel architecture that generalizes graph-based transformers to cell complexes. First, we propose a new formulation of the usual self- and cross-attention mechanisms, tailored to leverage incidence relations in cell complexes, e.g., edge-face and node-edge relations. Additionally, we propose a set of topological positional encodings specifically designed for cell complexes. By transforming three graph datasets into cell complex datasets, our experiments reveal that CT not only achieves state-of-the-art performance, but it does so without the need for more complex enhancements such as virtual nodes, in-domain structural encodings, or graph rewiring.
Authors: Jiannan Wang, Jiarui Fang, Aoyu Li, PengCheng Yang
Abstract: This paper introduces PipeFusion, a novel approach that harnesses multi-GPU parallelism to address the high computational and latency challenges of generating high-resolution images with diffusion transformers (DiT) models. PipeFusion splits images into patches and distributes the network layers across multiple devices. It employs a pipeline parallel manner to orchestrate communication and computations. By leveraging the high similarity between the input from adjacent diffusion steps, PipeFusion eliminates the waiting time in the pipeline by reusing the one-step stale feature maps to provide context for the current step. Our experiments demonstrate that it can generate higher image resolution where existing DiT parallel approaches meet OOM. PipeFusion significantly reduces the required communication bandwidth, enabling DiT inference to be hosted on GPUs connected via PCIe rather than the more costly NVLink infrastructure, which substantially lowers the overall operational expenses for serving DiT models. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/PipeFusion/PipeFusion.
Authors: Alex Iacob, Lorenzo Sani, Bill Marino, Preslav Aleksandrov, William F. Shen, Nicholas Donald Lane
Abstract: The reliance of language model training on massive amounts of computation and vast datasets scraped from potentially low-quality, copyrighted, or sensitive data has come into question practically, legally, and ethically. Federated learning provides a plausible alternative by enabling previously untapped data to be voluntarily gathered from collaborating organizations. However, when scaled globally, federated learning requires collaboration across heterogeneous legal, security, and privacy regimes while accounting for the inherent locality of language data; this further exacerbates the established challenge of federated statistical heterogeneity. We propose a Worldwide Federated Language Model Training~(WorldLM) system based on federations of federations, where each federation has the autonomy to account for factors such as its industry, operating jurisdiction, or competitive environment. WorldLM enables such autonomy in the presence of statistical heterogeneity via partial model localization by allowing sub-federations to attentively aggregate key layers from their constituents. Furthermore, it can adaptively share information across federations via residual layer embeddings. Evaluations of language modeling on naturally heterogeneous datasets show that WorldLM outperforms standard federations by up to $1.91\times$, approaches the personalized performance of fully local models, and maintains these advantages under privacy-enhancing techniques.
Authors: Abhishek Kumar, Sarfaroz Yunusov, Ali Emami
Abstract: Research on Large Language Models (LLMs) has often neglected subtle biases that, although less apparent, can significantly influence the models' outputs toward particular social narratives. This study addresses two such biases within LLMs: representative bias, which denotes a tendency of LLMs to generate outputs that mirror the experiences of certain identity groups, and affinity bias, reflecting the models' evaluative preferences for specific narratives or viewpoints. We introduce two novel metrics to measure these biases: the Representative Bias Score (RBS) and the Affinity Bias Score (ABS), and present the Creativity-Oriented Generation Suite (CoGS), a collection of open-ended tasks such as short story writing and poetry composition, designed with customized rubrics to detect these subtle biases. Our analysis uncovers marked representative biases in prominent LLMs, with a preference for identities associated with being white, straight, and men. Furthermore, our investigation of affinity bias reveals distinctive evaluative patterns within each model, akin to `bias fingerprints'. This trend is also seen in human evaluators, highlighting a complex interplay between human and machine bias perceptions.
Authors: Oscar Davis, Samuel Kessler, Mircea Petrache, \.Ismail \.Ilkan Ceylan, Avishek Joey Bose
Abstract: Generative modeling over discrete data has recently seen numerous success stories, with applications spanning language modeling, biological sequence design, and graph-structured molecular data. The predominant generative modeling paradigm for discrete data is still autoregressive, with more recent alternatives based on diffusion or flow-matching falling short of their impressive performance in continuous data settings, such as image or video generation. In this work, we introduce Fisher-Flow, a novel flow-matching model for discrete data. Fisher-Flow takes a manifestly geometric perspective by considering categorical distributions over discrete data as points residing on a statistical manifold equipped with its natural Riemannian metric: the $\textit{Fisher-Rao metric}$. As a result, we demonstrate discrete data itself can be continuously reparameterised to points on the positive orthant of the $d$-hypersphere $\mathbb{S}^d_+$, which allows us to define flows that map any source distribution to target in a principled manner by transporting mass along (closed-form) geodesics of $\mathbb{S}^d_+$. Furthermore, the learned flows in Fisher-Flow can be further bootstrapped by leveraging Riemannian optimal transport leading to improved training dynamics. We prove that the gradient flow induced by Fisher-Flow is optimal in reducing the forward KL divergence. We evaluate Fisher-Flow on an array of synthetic and diverse real-world benchmarks, including designing DNA Promoter, and DNA Enhancer sequences. Empirically, we find that Fisher-Flow improves over prior diffusion and flow-matching models on these benchmarks.
Authors: Luke Strgar, David Matthews, Tyler Hummer, Sam Kriegman
Abstract: The automatic design of robots has existed for 30 years but has been constricted by serial non-differentiable design evaluations, premature convergence to simple bodies or clumsy behaviors, and a lack of sim2real transfer to physical machines. Thus, here we employ massively-parallel differentiable simulations to rapidly and simultaneously optimize individual neural control of behavior across a large population of candidate body plans and return a fitness score for each design based on the performance of its fully optimized behavior. Non-differentiable changes to the mechanical structure of each robot in the population -- mutations that rearrange, combine, add, or remove body parts -- were applied by a genetic algorithm in an outer loop of search, generating a continuous flow of novel morphologies with highly-coordinated and graceful behaviors honed by gradient descent. This enabled the exploration of several orders-of-magnitude more designs than all previous methods, despite the fact that robots here have the potential to be much more complex, in terms of number of independent motors, than those in prior studies. We found that evolution reliably produces ``increasingly differentiable'' robots: body plans that smooth the loss landscape in which learning operates and thereby provide better training paths toward performant behaviors. Finally, one of the highly differentiable morphologies discovered in simulation was realized as a physical robot and shown to retain its optimized behavior. This provides a cyberphysical platform to investigate the relationship between evolution and learning in biological systems and broadens our understanding of how a robot's physical structure can influence the ability to train policies for it. Videos and code at https://sites.google.com/view/eldir.
Authors: Mohamed Debbagh, Yixue Liu, Zhouzhou Zheng, Xintong Jiang, Shangpeng Sun, Mark Lefsrud
Abstract: A plant growth simulation can be characterized as a reconstructed visual representation of a plant or plant system. The phenotypic characteristics and plant structures are controlled by the scene environment and other contextual attributes. Considering the temporal dependencies and compounding effects of various factors on growth trajectories, we formulate a probabilistic approach to the simulation task by solving a frame synthesis and pattern recognition problem. We introduce a sequence-informed plant growth simulation framework (SI-PGS) that employs a conditional generative model to implicitly learn a distribution of possible plant representations within a dynamic scene from a fusion of low dimensional temporal sensor and context data. Methods such as controlled latent sampling and recurrent output connections are used to improve coherence in the plant structures between frames of predictions. In this work, we demonstrate that SI-PGS is able to capture temporal dependencies and continuously generate realistic frames of plant growth.
Authors: Xu Pan, Aaron Philip, Ziqian Xie, Odelia Schwartz
Abstract: Self-attention in vision transformers is often thought to perform perceptual grouping where tokens attend to other tokens with similar embeddings, which could correspond to semantically similar features of an object. However, attending to dissimilar tokens can be beneficial by providing contextual information. We propose to use the Singular Value Decomposition to dissect the query-key interaction (i.e. ${\textbf{W}_q}^\top\textbf{W}_k$). We find that early layers attend more to similar tokens, while late layers show increased attention to dissimilar tokens, providing evidence corresponding to perceptual grouping and contextualization, respectively. Many of these interactions between features represented by singular vectors are interpretable and semantic, such as attention between relevant objects, between parts of an object, or between the foreground and background. This offers a novel perspective on interpreting the attention mechanism, which contributes to understanding how transformer models utilize context and salient features when processing images.
Authors: Jingzhe Shi, Qinwei Ma, Huan Ma, Lei Li
Abstract: Scaling law that rewards large datasets, complex models and enhanced data granularity has been observed in various fields of deep learning. Yet, studies on time series forecasting have cast doubt on scaling behaviors of deep learning methods for time series forecasting: while more training data improves performance, more capable models do not always outperform less capable models, and longer input horizons may hurt performance for some models. We propose a theory for scaling law for time series forecasting that can explain these seemingly abnormal behaviors. We take into account the impact of dataset size and model complexity, as well as time series data granularity, particularly focusing on the look-back horizon, an aspect that has been unexplored in previous theories. Furthermore, we empirically evaluate various models using a diverse set of time series forecasting datasets, which (1) verifies the validity of scaling law on dataset size and model complexity within the realm of time series forecasting, and (2) validates our theoretical framework, particularly regarding the influence of look back horizon. We hope our findings may inspire new models targeting time series forecasting datasets of limited size, as well as large foundational datasets and models for time series forecasting in future works.\footnote{Codes for our experiments will be made public at: \url{https://github.com/JingzheShi/ScalingLawForTimeSeriesForecasting}.
URLs: https://github.com/JingzheShi/ScalingLawForTimeSeriesForecasting
Authors: Yanwei Zheng, Changrui Li, Chuanlin Lan, Yaling Li, Xiao Zhang, Yifei Zou, Dongxiao Yu, Zhipeng Cai
Abstract: Zero-shot object navigation (ZSON) addresses situation where an agent navigates to an unseen object that does not present in the training set. Previous works mainly train agent using seen objects with known labels, and ignore the seen objects without labels. In this paper, we introduce seen objects without labels, herein termed as ``unknown objects'', into training procedure to enrich the agent's knowledge base with distinguishable but previously overlooked information. Furthermore, we propose the label-wise meta-correlation module (LWMCM) to harness relationships among objects with and without labels, and obtain enhanced objects information. Specially, we propose target feature generator (TFG) to generate the features representation of the unlabeled target objects. Subsequently, the unlabeled object identifier (UOI) module assesses whether the unlabeled target object appears in the current observation frame captured by the camera and produces an adapted target features representation specific to the observed context. In meta contrastive feature modifier (MCFM), the target features is modified via approaching the features of objects within the observation frame while distancing itself from features of unobserved objects. Finally, the meta object-graph learner (MOGL) module is utilized to calculate the relationships among objects based on the features. Experiments conducted on AI2THOR and RoboTHOR platforms demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.
Authors: Khanh-Binh Nguyen, Chae Jung Park
Abstract: Self-supervised learning (SSL) is gaining attention for its ability to learn effective representations with large amounts of unlabeled data. Lightweight models can be distilled from larger self-supervised pre-trained models using contrastive and consistency constraints. Still, the different sizes of the projection heads make it challenging for students to mimic the teacher's embedding accurately. We propose \textsc{Retro}, which reuses the teacher's projection head for students, and our experimental results demonstrate significant improvements over the state-of-the-art on all lightweight models. For instance, when training EfficientNet-B0 using ResNet-50/101/152 as teachers, our approach improves the linear result on ImageNet to $66.9\%$, $69.3\%$, and $69.8\%$, respectively, with significantly fewer parameters.
Authors: Jinguo Cheng, Chunwei Yang, Wanlin Cai, Yuxuan Liang, Yuankai Wu
Abstract: Time series imputation plays a crucial role in various real-world systems and has been extensively explored. Models for time series imputation often require specialization, necessitating distinct designs for different domains and missing patterns. In this study, we introduce NuwaTS, a framework to repurpose Pre-trained Language Model (PLM) for general time series imputation. Once trained, this model can be applied to imputation tasks on incomplete time series from any domain with any missing patterns. We begin by devising specific embeddings for each sub-series patch of the incomplete time series. These embeddings encapsulate information about the patch itself, the missing data patterns within the patch, and the patch's statistical characteristics. To enhance the model's adaptability to different missing patterns, we propose a contrastive learning approach to make representations of the same patch more similar across different missing patterns. By combining this contrastive loss with the missing data imputation task, we train PLMs to obtain a one-for-all imputation model. Furthermore, we utilize a plug-and-play layer-wise fine-tuning approach to train domain-specific models. Experimental results demonstrate that leveraging a dataset of over seventeen million time series from diverse domains, we obtain a one-for-all imputation model which outperforms existing domain-specific models across various datasets and missing patterns. Additionally, we find that NuwaTS can be generalized to other time series tasks such as forecasting. Our codes are available at https://github.com/Chengyui/NuwaTS.
Authors: Patryk Krukowski, Anna Bielawska, Kamil Ksi\k{a}\.zek, Pawe{\l} Wawrzy\'nski, Pawe{\l} Batorski, Przemys{\l}aw Spurek
Abstract: Recently, a new Continual Learning (CL) paradigm was presented to control catastrophic forgetting, called Interval Continual Learning (InterContiNet), which relies on enforcing interval constraints on the neural network parameter space. Unfortunately, InterContiNet training is challenging due to the high dimensionality of the weight space, making intervals difficult to manage. To address this issue, we introduce HyperInterval, a technique that employs interval arithmetic within the embedding space and utilizes a hypernetwork to map these intervals to the target network parameter space. We train interval embeddings for consecutive tasks and train a hypernetwork to transform these embeddings into weights of the target network. An embedding for a given task is trained along with the hypernetwork, preserving the response of the target network for the previous task embeddings. Interval arithmetic works with a more manageable, lower-dimensional embedding space rather than directly preparing intervals in a high-dimensional weight space. Our model allows faster and more efficient training. Furthermore, HyperInterval maintains the guarantee of not forgetting. At the end of training, we can choose one universal embedding to produce a single network dedicated to all tasks. In such a framework, hypernetwork is used only for training and can be seen as a meta-trainer. HyperInterval obtains significantly better results than InterContiNet and gives SOTA results on several benchmarks.
Authors: Keyuan Cheng, Muhammad Asif Ali, Shu Yang, Gang Lin, Yuxuan Zhai, Haoyang Fei, Ke Xu, Lu Yu, Lijie Hu, Di Wang
Abstract: Multi-hop Question Answering (MQA) under knowledge editing (KE) is a key challenge in Large Language Models (LLMs). While best-performing solutions in this domain use a plan and solve paradigm to split a question into sub-questions followed by response generation, we claim that this approach is sub-optimal as it fails for hard to decompose questions, and it does not explicitly cater to correlated knowledge updates resulting as a consequence of knowledge edits. This has a detrimental impact on the overall consistency of the updated knowledge. To address these issues, in this paper, we propose a novel framework named RULE-KE, i.e., RULE based Knowledge Editing, which is a cherry on the top for augmenting the performance of all existing MQA methods under KE. Specifically, RULE-KE leverages rule discovery to discover a set of logical rules. Then, it uses these discovered rules to update knowledge about facts highly correlated with the edit. Experimental evaluation using existing and newly curated datasets (i.e., RKE-EVAL) shows that RULE-KE helps augment both performances of parameter-based and memory-based solutions up to 92% and 112.9%, respectively.
Authors: Rui Miao, Kaixiong Zhou, Yili Wang, Ninghao Liu, Ying Wang, Xin Wang
Abstract: Graph neural networks (GNNs) have exhibited prominent performance in learning graph-structured data. Considering node classification task, based on the i.i.d assumption among node labels, the traditional supervised learning simply sums up cross-entropy losses of the independent training nodes and applies the average loss to optimize GNNs' weights. But different from other data formats, the nodes are naturally connected. It is found that the independent distribution modeling of node labels restricts GNNs' capability to generalize over the entire graph and defend adversarial attacks. In this work, we propose a new framework, termed joint-cluster supervised learning, to model the joint distribution of each node with its corresponding cluster. We learn the joint distribution of node and cluster labels conditioned on their representations, and train GNNs with the obtained joint loss. In this way, the data-label reference signals extracted from the local cluster explicitly strengthen the discrimination ability on the target node. The extensive experiments demonstrate that our joint-cluster supervised learning can effectively bolster GNNs' node classification accuracy. Furthermore, being benefited from the reference signals which may be free from spiteful interference, our learning paradigm significantly protects the node classification from being affected by the adversarial attack.