GenAI4ELab/papercli-papers huggingface dataset:
Predicting Label Distribution from Ternary Labels
Authors: Yunan Lu; Xiuyi Jia
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Label distribution learning is a powerful learning paradigm to deal with label polysemy and has been widely applied in many practical tasks. A significant obstacle to the effective utilization of label distribution is the substantial expenses of accurate quantifying the label distributions. To tackle this challenge, label enhancement methods automatically infer label distributions from more easily accessible multi-label data based on binary annotations. However, the binary annotation of multi-label data requires experts to accurately assess whether each label can describe the instance, which may diminish the annotating efficiency and heighten the risk of erroneous annotation since the relationship between the label and the instance is unclear in many practical scenarios. Therefore, we propose to predict label distribution from ternary labels, allowing experts to annotate labels in a three-way annotation scheme. They can annotate the label as "$0$" indicating "uncertain relevant" if it is difficult to definitively determine whether the label can describe the instance, in addition to the binary annotation of "$1$" indicating "definitely relevant" and "$-1$" indicating "definitely irrelevant". Both the theoretical and methodological studies are conducted for the proposed learning paradigm. In the theoretical part, we conduct a quantitative comparison of approximation error between ternary and binary labels to elucidate the superiority of ternary labels over binary labels. In the methodological part, we propose a Categorical distribution with monotonicity and orderliness to model the mapping from label description degrees to ternary labels, which can serve as a loss function or as a probability distribution, allowing most existing label enhancement methods to be adapted to our task. Finally, we experimentally demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposal.
NeuralFuse: Learning to Recover the Accuracy of Access-Limited Neural Network Inference in Low-Voltage Regimes
Authors: Hao-Lun Sun; Lei Hsiung; Nandhini Chandramoorthy; Pin-Yu Chen; Tsung-Yi Ho
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Deep neural networks (DNNs) have become ubiquitous in machine learning, but their energy consumption remains problematically high. An effective strategy for reducing such consumption is supply-voltage reduction, but if done too aggressively, it can lead to accuracy degradation. This is due to random bit-flips in static random access memory (SRAM), where model parameters are stored. To address this challenge, we have developed NeuralFuse, a novel add-on module that handles the energy-accuracy tradeoff in low-voltage regimes by learning input transformations and using them to generate error-resistant data representations, thereby protecting DNN accuracy in both nominal and low-voltage scenarios. As well as being easy to implement, NeuralFuse can be readily applied to DNNs with limited access, such cloud-based APIs that are accessed remotely or non-configurable hardware. Our experimental results demonstrate that, at a 1% bit-error rate, NeuralFuse can reduce SRAM access energy by up to 24% while recovering accuracy by up to 57%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approach to addressing low-voltage-induced bit errors that requires no model retraining.
Provably Optimal Memory Capacity for  Modern Hopfield Models:   Transformer-Compatible   Dense Associative Memories as Spherical Codes
Authors: Jerry Yao-Chieh Hu; Dennis Wu; Han Liu
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: We study the optimal memorization capacity of modern Hopfield models and Kernelized Hopfield Models (KHMs), a transformer-compatible class of Dense Associative Memories.
We present a tight analysis by establishing a connection between the memory configuration of KHMs and spherical codes from information theory. 
Specifically, we treat the stored memory set as a specialized spherical code.
This enables us to cast the memorization problem in KHMs into a point arrangement problem on a hypersphere.
We show that the optimal capacity of KHMs occurs when the feature space allows memories to form an optimal spherical code.
This unique perspective leads to: 
1. An analysis of how KHMs achieve optimal memory capacity, and identify corresponding necessary conditions. 
Importantly, we establish an upper capacity bound that matches the well-known exponential lower bound in the literature. 
This provides the first tight and optimal asymptotic memory capacity  for modern Hopfield models.
2. A sub-linear time algorithm $\mathtt{U}\text{-}\mathtt{Hop}$+ to reach KHMs' optimal capacity. 
3. An analysis of the scaling behavior of the required feature dimension relative to the number of stored memories.

These efforts improve both the retrieval capability of KHMs and the representation learning of corresponding transformers.
Experimentally, we provide thorough numerical results to back up theoretical findings.
Unlocking Tokens as Data Points for Generalization Bounds on Larger Language Models
Authors: Sanae Lotfi; Yilun Kuang; Marc Anton Finzi; Brandon Amos; Micah Goldblum; Andrew Gordon Wilson
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 spotlight)

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) with billions of parameters excel at predicting the next token in a sequence. Recent work computes non-vacuous compression-based generalization bounds for LLMs, but these bounds are vacuous for large models at the billion-parameter scale. Moreover, these bounds are obtained through restrictive compression techniques, bounding compressed models that generate low-quality text. Additionally, the tightness of these existing bounds depends on the number of IID documents in a training set rather than the much larger number of non-IID constituent tokens, leaving untapped potential for tighter bounds. In this work, we instead use properties of martingales to derive generalization bounds that benefit from the vast number of tokens in LLM training sets. Since a dataset contains far more tokens than documents, our generalization bounds not only tolerate but actually benefit from far less restrictive compression schemes. With Monarch matrices, Kronecker factorizations, and post-training quantization, we achieve non-vacuous generalization bounds for LLMs as large as LLaMA2-70B. Unlike previous approaches, our work achieves the first non-vacuous bounds for models that are deployed in practice and generate high-quality text.
Metric Transforms and Low Rank Representations of Kernels for Fast Attention
Authors: Timothy Zer-An Chu; Josh Alman; Gary Miller; Shyam Narayanan; Mark Sellke; Zhao Song
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 spotlight)

Abstract: We introduce a new linear-algebraic tool based on group representation theory, and use it to address three key problems in machine learning.

1. Past researchers have proposed fast attention algorithms for LLMs by approximating or replace softmax attention with other functions, such as low-degree polynomials. The key property of these functions is that, when applied entry-wise to the matrix $QK^{\top}$, the result is a low rank matrix when $Q$ and $K$ are $n \times d$ matrices and $n \gg d$. This suggests a natural question: what are all functions $f$ with this property? If other $f$ exist and are quickly computable, they can be used in place of softmax for fast subquadratic attention algorithms. It was previously known that low-degree polynomials have this property. We prove that low-degree polynomials are the only piecewise continuous functions with this property. This suggests that the low-rank fast attention only works for functions approximable by polynomials. Our work gives a converse to the polynomial method in algorithm design.

2. We prove the first full classification of all positive definite kernels that are functions of Manhattan or $\ell_1$ distance. Our work generalizes an existing theorem at the heart of all kernel methods in machine learning: the classification of all positive definite kernels that are functions of Euclidean distance. 

3. The key problem in metric transforms, a mathematical theory used in geometry and machine learning, asks what functions transform pairwise distances in semi-metric space $M$ to semi-metric space $N$ for specified $M$ and $N$. We provide the first full classification of functions that transform Manhattan distances to Manhattan distances. Our work generalizes the foundational work of Schoenberg, which fully classifies functions that transform Euclidean to Euclidean distances.
 
We additionally prove results about stable-rank preserving functions that are potentially useful in algorithmic design, and more. Our core new tool is called the representation theory of the hyperrectangle.
From an Image to a Scene: Learning to Imagine the World from a Million 360° Videos
Authors: Matthew Wallingford; Anand Bhattad; Aditya Kusupati; Vivek Ramanujan; Matt Deitke; Aniruddha Kembhavi; Roozbeh Mottaghi; Wei-Chiu Ma; Ali Farhadi
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Three-dimensional (3D) understanding of objects and scenes play a key role in humans' ability to interact with the world and has been an active area of research in computer vision, graphics, and robotics. Large scale synthetic and object-centric 3D datasets have shown to be effective in training models that have 3D understanding of objects. However, applying a similar approach to real-world objects and scenes is difficult due to a lack of large-scale data. Videos are a potential source for real-world 3D data, but finding diverse yet corresponding views of the same content have shown to be difficult at scale. Furthermore, standard videos come with fixed viewpoints, determined at the time of capture. This restricts the ability to access scenes from a variety of more diverse and potentially useful perspectives. We argue that large scale ODIN videos can address these limitations to provide scalable corresponding frames from diverse views.  In this paper we introduce 360-1M, a 360° video dataset consisting of 1 million videos, and a process for efficiently finding corresponding frames from diverse viewpoints at scale. We train our diffusion-based model, ODIN, on 360-1M. Empowered by the largest real-world, multi-view dataset to date, ODIN is able to freely generate novel views of real-world scenes. Unlike previous methods, ODIN can move the camera through the environment, enabling the model to infer the geometry and layout of the scene. Additionally, we show improved performance on standard novel view synthesis and 3D reconstruction benchmarks.
U-DiTs: Downsample Tokens in U-Shaped Diffusion Transformers
Authors: Yuchuan Tian; Zhijun Tu; Hanting Chen; Jie Hu; Chao Xu; Yunhe Wang
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Diffusion Transformers (DiTs) introduce the transformer architecture to diffusion tasks for latent-space image generation. With an isotropic architecture that chains a series of transformer blocks, DiTs demonstrate competitive performance and good scalability; but meanwhile, the abandonment of U-Net by DiTs and their following improvements is worth rethinking. To this end, we conduct a simple toy experiment by comparing a U-Net architectured DiT with an isotropic one. It turns out that the U-Net architecture only gain a slight advantage amid the U-Net inductive bias, indicating potential redundancies within the U-Net-style DiT. Inspired by the discovery that U-Net backbone features are low-frequency-dominated, we perform token downsampling on the query-key-value tuple for self-attention and bring further improvements despite a considerable amount of reduction in computation. Based on self-attention with downsampled tokens, we propose a series of U-shaped DiTs (U-DiTs) in the paper and conduct extensive experiments to demonstrate the extraordinary performance of U-DiT models. The proposed U-DiT could outperform DiT-XL with only 1/6 of its computation cost. Codes are available at https://github.com/YuchuanTian/U-DiT.
Unscrambling disease progression at scale: fast inference of event permutations with optimal transport
Authors: Peter A. Wijeratne; Daniel C. Alexander
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Disease progression models infer group-level temporal trajectories of change in patients' features as a chronic degenerative condition plays out. They provide unique insight into disease biology and staging systems with individual-level clinical utility. Discrete models consider disease progression as a latent permutation of events, where each event corresponds to a feature becoming measurably abnormal. However, permutation inference using traditional maximum likelihood approaches becomes prohibitive due to combinatoric explosion, severely limiting model dimensionality and utility. Here we leverage ideas from optimal transport to model disease progression as a latent permutation matrix of events belonging to the Birkhoff polytope, facilitating fast inference via optimisation of the variational lower bound. This enables a factor of 1000 times faster inference than the current state of the art and, correspondingly, supports models with several orders of magnitude more features than the current state of the art can consider. Experiments demonstrate the increase in speed, accuracy and robustness to noise in simulation. Further experiments with real-world imaging data from two separate datasets, one from Alzheimer's disease patients, the other age-related macular degeneration, showcase, for the first time, pixel-level disease progression events in the brain and eye, respectively. Our method is low compute, interpretable and applicable to any progressive condition and data modality, giving it broad potential clinical utility.
Bridging Multicalibration and Out-of-distribution Generalization Beyond Covariate Shift
Authors: Jiayun Wu; Jiashuo Liu; Peng Cui; Steven Wu
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: We establish a new model-agnostic optimization framework for out-of-distribution generalization via multicalibration, a criterion that ensures a predictor is calibrated across a family of overlapping groups. Multicalibration is shown to be associated with robustness of statistical inference under covariate shift. We further establish a link between multicalibration and robustness for prediction tasks both under and beyond covariate shift. We accomplish this by extending multicalibration to incorporate grouping functions that consider covariates and labels jointly. This leads to an equivalence of the extended multicalibration and invariance, an objective for robust learning in existence of concept shift. We show a linear structure of the grouping function class spanned by density ratios, resulting in a unifying framework for robust learning by designing specific grouping functions. We propose MC-Pseudolabel, a post-processing algorithm to achieve both extended multicalibration and out-of-distribution generalization. The algorithm, with lightweight hyperparameters and optimization through a series of supervised regression steps, achieves superior performance on real-world datasets with distribution shift.
Score-based generative models are provably robust: an uncertainty quantification perspective
Authors: Nikiforos Mimikos-Stamatopoulos; Benjamin Zhang; Markos Katsoulakis
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Through an uncertainty quantification (UQ) perspective, we show that score-based generative models (SGMs) are provably robust to the multiple sources of error in practical implementation. Our primary tool is the Wasserstein uncertainty propagation (WUP) theorem, a *model-form UQ* bound that describes how the $L^2$ error from learning the score function propagates to a Wasserstein-1 ($\mathbf{d}_1$) ball around the true data distribution under the evolution of the Fokker-Planck equation. We show how errors due to (a) finite sample approximation, (b) early stopping, (c) score-matching objective choice, (d) score function parametrization expressiveness, and (e) reference distribution choice, impact the quality of the generative model in terms of a $\mathbf{d}_1$ bound of computable quantities. The WUP theorem relies on Bernstein estimates for Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman partial differential equations (PDE) and the regularizing properties of diffusion processes. Specifically, *PDE regularity theory* shows that *stochasticity* is the key mechanism ensuring SGM algorithms are provably robust. The WUP theorem applies to integral probability metrics beyond $\mathbf{d}_1$, such as the total variation distance and the maximum mean discrepancy. Sample complexity and generalization bounds in $\mathbf{d}_1$ follow directly from the WUP theorem. Our approach requires minimal assumptions, is agnostic to the manifold hypothesis and avoids absolute continuity assumptions for the target distribution. Additionally, our results clarify the *trade-offs* among multiple error sources in SGMs.
AirSketch: Generative Motion to Sketch
Authors: Hui Xian Grace Lim; Xuanming Cui; Yogesh S Rawat; Ser-Nam Lim
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Illustration is a fundamental mode of human expression and communication. Certain types of motion that accompany speech can provide this illustrative mode of communication. While Augmented and Virtual Reality technologies (AR/VR) have introduced tools for producing drawings with hand motions (air drawing), they typically require costly hardware and additional digital markers, thereby limiting their accessibility and portability. Furthermore, air drawing demands considerable skill to achieve aesthetic results. To address these challenges, we introduce the concept of AirSketch, aimed at generating faithful and visually coherent sketches directly from hand motions, eliminating the need for complicated headsets or markers. We devise a simple augmentation-based self-supervised training procedure, enabling a controllable image diffusion model to learn to translate from highly noisy hand tracking images to clean, aesthetically pleasing sketches, while preserving the essential visual cues from the original tracking data. We present two air drawing datasets to study this problem. Our findings demonstrate that beyond producing photo-realistic images from precise spatial inputs, controllable image diffusion can effectively produce a refined, clear sketch from a noisy input. Our work serves as an initial step towards marker-less air drawing and reveals distinct applications of controllable diffusion models to AirSketch and AR/VR in general.
FuseFL: One-Shot Federated Learning through the Lens of Causality with Progressive Model Fusion
Authors: Zhenheng Tang; Yonggang Zhang; Peijie Dong; Yiu-ming Cheung; Amelie Chi Zhou; Bo Han; Xiaowen Chu
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 spotlight)

Abstract: One-shot Federated Learning (OFL) significantly reduces communication costs in FL by aggregating trained models only once. However, the performance of advanced OFL methods is far behind the normal FL. In this work, we provide a causal view to find that this performance drop of OFL methods comes from the isolation problem, which means that local isolatedly trained models in OFL may easily fit to spurious correlations due to the data heterogeneity. From the causal perspective, we observe that the spurious fitting can be alleviated by augmenting intermediate features from other clients. Built upon our observation, we propose a novel learning approach to endow OFL with superb performance and low communication and storage costs, termed as FuseFL. Specifically, FuseFL decomposes neural networks into several blocks, and progressively trains and fuses each block following a bottom-up manner for feature augmentation, introducing no additional communication costs. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that FuseFL outperforms existing OFL and ensemble FL by a significant margin. We conduct comprehensive experiments to show that FuseFL supports high scalability of clients, heterogeneous model training, and low memory costs. Our work is the first attempt using causality to analyze and alleviate data heterogeneity of OFL.
Few-Shot Adversarial Prompt Learning on Vision-Language Models
Authors: Yiwei Zhou; Xiaobo Xia; Zhiwei Lin; Bo Han; Tongliang Liu
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: The vulnerability of deep neural networks to imperceptible adversarial perturbations has attracted widespread attention. Inspired by the success of vision-language foundation models, previous efforts achieved zero-shot adversarial robustness by aligning adversarial visual features with text supervision. However, in practice, they are still unsatisfactory due to several issues, including heavy adaptation cost, suboptimal text supervision, and uncontrolled natural generalization capacity. In this paper, to address these issues, we propose a few-shot adversarial prompt framework where adapting input sequences with limited data makes significant adversarial robustness improvement. Specifically, we achieve this by providing adversarially correlated text supervision that is end-to-end learned from adversarial examples. We also propose a novel training objective that enhances the consistency of multi-modal features while encourages differentiated uni-modal features between natural and adversarial examples. The proposed framework gives access to learn adversarial text supervision, which provides superior cross-modal adversarial alignment and matches state-of-the-art zero-shot adversarial robustness with only 1\% training data. Code is available at: https://github.com/lionel-w2/FAP.
A Generative Model of Symmetry Transformations
Authors: James Urquhart Allingham; Bruno Kacper Mlodozeniec; Shreyas Padhy; Javier Antoran; David Krueger; Richard E. Turner; Eric Nalisnick; José Miguel Hernández-Lobato
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Correctly capturing the symmetry transformations of data can lead to efficient models with strong generalization capabilities, though methods incorporating symmetries often require prior knowledge.
While recent advancements have been made in learning those symmetries directly from the dataset, most of this work has focused on the discriminative setting.
In this paper, we take inspiration from group theoretic ideas to construct a generative model that explicitly aims to capture the data's approximate symmetries. 
This results in a model that, given a prespecified broad set of possible symmetries, learns to what extent, if at all, those symmetries are actually present.
Our model can be seen as a generative process for data augmentation.
We provide a simple algorithm for learning our generative model and empirically demonstrate its ability to capture symmetries under affine and color transformations, in an interpretable way.
Combining our symmetry model with standard generative models results in higher marginal test-log-likelihoods and improved data efficiency.