GenAI4ELab/papercli-papers huggingface dataset:
Proving Theorems Recursively
Authors: Haiming Wang; Huajian Xin; Zhengying Liu; Wenda Li; Yinya Huang; Jianqiao Lu; Zhicheng YANG; Jing Tang; Jian Yin; Zhenguo Li; Xiaodan Liang
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Recent advances in automated theorem proving leverages language models to explore expanded search spaces by step-by-step proof generation. However, such approaches are usually based on short-sighted heuristics (e.g., log probability or value function scores) that potentially lead to suboptimal or even distracting subgoals, preventing us from finding longer proofs. To address this challenge, we propose POETRY (PrOvE Theorems RecursivelY), which proves theorems in a recursive, level-by-level manner in the Isabelle theorem prover. Unlike previous step-by-step methods, POETRY searches for a verifiable sketch of the proof at each level and focuses on solving the current level's theorem or conjecture. Detailed proofs of intermediate conjectures within the sketch are temporarily replaced by a placeholder tactic called sorry, deferring their proofs to subsequent levels. This approach allows the theorem to be tackled incrementally by outlining the overall theorem at the first level and then solving the intermediate conjectures at deeper levels. Experiments are conducted on the miniF2F and PISA datasets and significant performance gains are observed in our POETRY approach over state-of-the-art methods. POETRY on miniF2F achieves an average proving success rate improvement of 5.1%. Moreover, we observe a substantial increase in the maximum proof length found by POETRY, from 10 to 26.
Hierarchical and Density-based Causal Clustering
Authors: Kwangho Kim; Jisu Kim; Larry Wasserman; Edward Kennedy
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Understanding treatment effect heterogeneity is vital for scientific and policy research. However, identifying and evaluating heterogeneous treatment effects pose significant challenges due to the typically unknown subgroup structure. Recently, a novel approach, causal k-means clustering, has emerged to assess heterogeneity of treatment effect by applying the k-means algorithm to unknown counterfactual regression functions. In this paper, we expand upon this framework by integrating hierarchical and density-based clustering algorithms. We propose plug-in estimators which are simple and readily implementable using off-the-shelf algorithms. Unlike k-means clustering, which requires the margin condition, our proposed estimators do not rely on strong structural assumptions on the outcome process. We go on to study their rate of convergence, and show that under the minimal regularity conditions, the additional cost of causal clustering is essentially the estimation error of the outcome regression functions. Our findings significantly extend the capabilities of the causal clustering framework, thereby contributing to the progression of methodologies for identifying homogeneous subgroups in treatment response, consequently facilitating more nuanced and targeted interventions. The proposed methods also open up new avenues for clustering with generic pseudo-outcomes. We explore finite sample properties via simulation, and illustrate the proposed methods in voting and employment projection datasets.
PhyRecon: Physically Plausible Neural Scene Reconstruction
Authors: Junfeng Ni; Yixin Chen; Bohan Jing; Nan Jiang; Bin Wang; Bo Dai; Puhao Li; Yixin Zhu; Song-Chun Zhu; Siyuan Huang
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: We address the issue of physical implausibility in multi-view neural reconstruction. While implicit representations have gained popularity in multi-view 3D reconstruction, previous work struggles to yield physically plausible results, limiting their utility in domains requiring rigorous physical accuracy. This lack of plausibility stems from the absence of physics modeling in existing methods and their inability to recover intricate geometrical structures. In this paper, we introduce PHYRECON, the first approach to leverage both differentiable rendering and differentiable physics simulation to learn implicit surface representations. PHYRECON features a novel differentiable particle-based physical simulator built on neural implicit representations. Central to this design is an efficient transformation between SDF-based implicit representations and explicit surface points via our proposed Surface Points Marching Cubes (SP-MC), enabling differentiable learning with both rendering and physical losses. Additionally, PHYRECON models both rendering and physical uncertainty to identify and compensate for inconsistent and inaccurate monocular geometric priors. The physical uncertainty further facilitates physics-guided pixel sampling to enhance the learning of slender structures. By integrating these techniques, our model supports differentiable joint modeling of appearance, geometry, and physics. Extensive experiments demonstrate that PHYRECON significantly improves the reconstruction quality. Our results also exhibit superior physical stability in physical simulators, with at least a 40% improvement across all datasets, paving the way for future physics-based applications.
Aligning Embeddings and Geometric Random Graphs: Informational Results and Computational Approaches for the Procrustes-Wasserstein Problem
Authors: Mathieu Even; Luca Ganassali; Jakob Maier; Laurent Massoulié
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: The Procrustes-Wasserstein problem consists in matching two high-dimensional point clouds in an unsupervised setting, and has many applications in natural language processing and computer vision. 
We consider a planted model with two datasets $X,Y$ that consist of $n$ datapoints in $\mathbb{R}^d$, where $Y$ is a noisy version of $X$, up to an orthogonal transformation and a relabeling of the data points. 
This setting is related to the graph alignment problem in geometric models.
In this work, we focus on the euclidean transport cost between the point clouds as a measure of performance for the alignment. We first establish information-theoretic results, in the high ($d \gg \log n$) and low ($d \ll \log n$) dimensional regimes. 
We then study computational aspects and propose the ‘Ping-Pong algorithm', alternatively estimating the orthogonal transformation and the relabeling, initialized via a Franke-Wolfe convex relaxation. We give sufficient conditions for the method to retrieve the planted signal after one single step. We provide experimental results to compare the proposed approach with the state-of-the-art method of Grave et al. (2019).
FUSE: Fast Unified Simulation and Estimation for PDEs
Authors: Levi E. Lingsch; Dana Grund; Siddhartha Mishra; Georgios Kissas
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: The joint prediction of continuous fields and statistical estimation of the underlying discrete parameters is a common problem for many physical systems, governed by PDEs. Hitherto, it has been separately addressed by employing operator learning surrogates for field prediction while using simulation-based inference (and its variants) for statistical parameter determination. Here, we argue that solving both problems within the same framework can lead to consistent gains in accuracy and robustness. To this end, we propose a novel and flexible formulation of the operator learning problem that jointly predicts continuous quantities and infers distributions of discrete parameters, thereby amortizing the cost of both the inverse and the surrogate models to a joint pre-training step. We present the capabilities of the proposed methodology for predicting continuous and discrete biomarkers in full-body haemodynamics simulations under different levels of missing information. We also consider a test case for atmospheric large-eddy simulation of a two-dimensional dry cold bubble, where we infer both continuous time-series and information about the system's conditions. We present comparisons against different baselines to showcase significantly increased accuracy in both the inverse and the surrogate tasks.
Unified Guidance for Geometry-Conditioned Molecular Generation
Authors: Sirine Ayadi; Leon Hetzel; Johanna Sommer; Fabian J Theis; Stephan Günnemann
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Effectively designing molecular geometries is essential to advancing pharmaceutical innovations, a domain, which has experienced great attention through the success of generative models and, in particular, diffusion models. However, current molecular diffusion models are tailored towards a specific downstream task and lack adaptability. We introduce UniGuide, a framework for controlled geometric guidance of unconditional diffusion models that allows flexible conditioning during inference without the requirement of extra training or networks. We show how applications such as structure-based, fragment-based, and ligand-based drug design are formulated in the UniGuide framework and demonstrate on-par or superior performance compared to specialised models. Offering a more versatile approach, UniGuide has the potential to streamline the development of molecular generative models, allowing them to be readily used in diverse application scenarios.
3D Equivariant Pose Regression via Direct Wigner-D Harmonics Prediction
Authors: Jongmin Lee; Minsu Cho
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Determining the 3D orientations of an object in an image, known as single-image pose estimation, is a crucial task in 3D vision applications. Existing methods typically learn 3D rotations parametrized in the spatial domain using Euler angles or quaternions, but these representations often introduce discontinuities and singularities. SO(3)-equivariant networks enable the structured capture of pose patterns with data-efficient learning, but the  parametrizations in spatial domain are incompatible with their architecture, particularly spherical CNNs, which operate in the frequency domain to enhance computational efficiency. To overcome these issues, we propose a frequency-domain approach that directly predicts Wigner-D coefficients for 3D rotation regression, aligning with the operations of spherical CNNs. Our SO(3)-equivariant pose harmonics predictor overcomes the limitations of spatial parameterizations, ensuring consistent pose estimation under arbitrary rotations. Trained with a frequency-domain regression loss, our method achieves state-of-the-art results on benchmarks such as ModelNet10-SO(3) and PASCAL3D+, with significant improvements in accuracy, robustness, and data efficiency.
A Separation in Heavy-Tailed Sampling: Gaussian vs. Stable Oracles for Proximal Samplers
Authors: Ye He; Alireza Mousavi-Hosseini; Krishna Balasubramanian; Murat A Erdogdu
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: We study the complexity of heavy-tailed sampling and present a separation result in terms of obtaining high-accuracy versus low-accuracy guarantees i.e., samplers that require only $\mathcal{O}(\log(1/\varepsilon))$ versus $\Omega(\text{poly}(1/\varepsilon))$ iterations to output a sample which is $\varepsilon$-close to the target in $\chi^2$-divergence. Our results are presented for proximal samplers that are based on Gaussian versus stable oracles. We show that proximal samplers based on the Gaussian oracle have a fundamental barrier in that they necessarily achieve only low-accuracy guarantees when sampling from a class of heavy-tailed targets. In contrast, proximal samplers based on the stable oracle exhibit high-accuracy guarantees, thereby overcoming the aforementioned limitation. We also prove lower bounds for samplers under the stable oracle and show that our upper bounds cannot be fundamentally improved.
Pretraining with Random Noise for Fast and Robust Learning without Weight Transport
Authors: Jeonghwan Cheon; Sang Wan Lee; Se-Bum Paik
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: The brain prepares for learning even before interacting with the environment, by refining and optimizing its structures through spontaneous neural activity that resembles random noise. However, the mechanism of such a process has yet to be understood, and it is unclear whether this process can benefit the algorithm of machine learning. Here, we study this issue using a neural network with a feedback alignment algorithm, demonstrating that pretraining neural networks with random noise increases the learning efficiency as well as generalization abilities without weight transport. First, we found that random noise training modifies forward weights to match backward synaptic feedback, which is necessary for teaching errors by feedback alignment. As a result, a network with pre-aligned weights learns notably faster and reaches higher accuracy than a network without random noise training, even comparable to the backpropagation algorithm. We also found that the effective dimensionality of weights decreases in a network pretrained with random noise. This pre-regularization allows the network to learn simple solutions of a low rank, reducing the generalization error during subsequent training. This also enables the network to robustly generalize a novel, out-of-distribution dataset. Lastly, we confirmed that random noise pretraining reduces the amount of meta-loss, enhancing the network ability to adapt to various tasks. Overall, our results suggest that random noise training with feedback alignment offers a straightforward yet effective method of pretraining that facilitates quick and reliable learning without weight transport.
MiSO: Optimizing brain stimulation to create neural population activity states
Authors: Yuki Minai; Joana Soldado-Magraner; Matthew A. Smith; Byron M. Yu
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Brain stimulation has the potential to create desired neural population activity states. However, it is challenging to search the large space of stimulation parameters, for example, selecting which subset of electrodes to be used for stimulation. In this scenario, creating a model that maps the configuration of stimulation parameters to the brain’s response can be beneficial. Training such an expansive model usually requires more stimulation-response samples than can be collected in a given experimental session. Furthermore, changes in the properties of the recorded activity over time can make it challenging to merge stimulation-response samples across sessions. To address these challenges, we propose MiSO (MicroStimulation Optimization), a closed-loop stimulation framework to drive neural population activity toward specified states by optimizing over a large stimulation parameter space. MiSO consists of three key components: 1) a neural activity alignment method to merge stimulation-response samples across sessions, 2) a statistical model trained on the merged samples to predict the brain's response to untested stimulation parameter configurations, and 3) an online optimization algorithm to adaptively update the stimulation parameter configuration based on the model's predictions. In this study, we implemented MiSO with a factor analysis (FA) based alignment method, a convolutional neural network (CNN), and an epsilon greedy optimization algorithm. We tested MiSO in closed-loop experiments using electrical microstimulation in the prefrontal cortex of a non-human primate. Guided by the CNN predictions, MiSO successfully searched amongst thousands of stimulation parameter configurations to drive the neural population activity toward specified states. More broadly, MiSO increases the clinical viability of neuromodulation technologies by enabling the use of many-fold larger stimulation parameter spaces.
Bayes-optimal learning of an extensive-width neural network from quadratically many samples
Authors: Antoine Maillard; Emanuele Troiani; Simon Martin; Florent Krzakala; Lenka Zdeborova
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: We consider the problem of learning a target function corresponding to a single
hidden layer neural network, with a quadratic activation function after the first layer,
and random weights. We consider the asymptotic limit where the input dimension
and the network width are proportionally large. Recent work [Cui et al., 2023]
established that linear regression provides Bayes-optimal test error to learn such
a function when the number of available samples is only linear in the dimension.
That work stressed the open challenge of theoretically analyzing the optimal test
error in the more interesting regime where the number of samples is quadratic in
the dimension. In this paper, we solve this challenge for quadratic activations and
derive a closed-form expression for the Bayes-optimal test error. We also provide an
algorithm, that we call GAMP-RIE, which combines approximate message passing
with rotationally invariant matrix denoising, and that asymptotically achieves the
optimal performance. Technically, our result is enabled by establishing a link
with recent works on optimal denoising of extensive-rank matrices and on the
ellipsoid fitting problem. We further show empirically that, in the absence of
noise, randomly-initialized gradient descent seems to sample the space of weights,
leading to zero training loss, and averaging over initialization leads to a test error
equal to the Bayes-optimal one.
Identifying and Solving Conditional Image Leakage in Image-to-Video Diffusion Model
Authors: Min Zhao; Hongzhou Zhu; Chendong Xiang; Kaiwen Zheng; Chongxuan Li; Jun Zhu
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Diffusion models have obtained substantial progress in image-to-video generation. However, in this paper, we find that these models tend to generate videos with less motion than expected. We attribute this to the issue called conditional image leakage, where the image-to-video diffusion models (I2V-DMs) tend to over-rely on the conditional image at large time steps. We further address this challenge from both inference and training aspects. First, we propose to start the generation process from an earlier time step to avoid the unreliable large-time steps of I2V-DMs, as well as an initial noise distribution with optimal analytic expressions (Analytic-Init) by minimizing the KL divergence between it and the actual marginal distribution to bridge the training-inference gap. Second, we design a time-dependent noise distribution (TimeNoise) for the conditional image during training, applying higher noise levels at larger time steps to disrupt it and reduce the model's dependency on it. We validate these general strategies on various I2V-DMs on our collected open-domain image benchmark and the UCF101 dataset. Extensive results show that our methods outperform baselines by producing higher motion scores with lower errors while maintaining image alignment and temporal consistency, thereby yielding superior overall performance and enabling more accurate motion control. The project page: \url{https://cond-image-leak.github.io/}.
What Makes Partial-Label Learning Algorithms Effective?
Authors: Jiaqi Lv; Yangfan Liu; Shiyu Xia; Ning Xu; Miao Xu; Gang Niu; Min-Ling Zhang; Masashi Sugiyama; Xin Geng
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: A partial label (PL) specifies a set of candidate labels for an instance and partial-label learning (PLL) trains multi-class classifiers with PLs.
Recently, many methods that incorporate techniques from other domains have shown strong potential.
The expectation that stronger techniques would enhance performance has resulted in prominent PLL methods becoming not only highly complicated but also quite different from one another, making it challenging to choose the best direction for future algorithm design.
While it is exciting to see higher performance, this leaves open a fundamental question: what makes a PLL method effective?
We present a comprehensive empirical analysis of this question and summarize the success of PLL so far into some minimal algorithm design principles.
Our findings reveal that high accuracy on benchmark-simulated datasets with PLs can misleadingly amplify the perceived effectiveness of some general techniques, which may improve representation learning but have limited impact on addressing the inherent challenges of PLs. 
We further identify the common behavior among successful PLL methods as a progressive transition from uniform to one-hot pseudo-labels, highlighting the critical role of mini-batch PL purification in achieving top performance.
Based on our findings, we introduce a minimal working algorithm that is surprisingly simple yet effective, and propose an improved strategy to implement the design principles, suggesting a promising direction for improvements in PLL.
Optical Diffusion Models for Image Generation
Authors: Ilker Oguz; Niyazi Ulas Dinc; Mustafa Yildirim; Junjie Ke; Innfarn Yoo; QIFEI WANG; Feng Yang; Christophe Moser; Demetri Psaltis
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: Diffusion models generate new samples by progressively decreasing the noise from the initially provided random distribution. This inference procedure generally utilizes a trained neural network numerous times to obtain the final output, creating significant latency and energy consumption on digital electronic hardware such as GPUs. In this study, we demonstrate that the propagation of a light beam through a transparent medium can be programmed to implement a denoising diffusion model on image samples. This framework projects noisy image patterns through passive diffractive optical layers, which collectively only transmit the predicted noise term in the image. The optical transparent layers, which are trained with an online training approach, backpropagating the error to the analytical model of the system, are passive and kept the same across different steps of denoising.  Hence this method enables high-speed image generation with minimal power consumption, benefiting from the bandwidth and energy efficiency of optical information processing.
FIARSE: Model-Heterogeneous Federated Learning via Importance-Aware Submodel Extraction
Authors: Feijie Wu; Xingchen Wang; Yaqing Wang; Tianci Liu; Lu Su; Jing Gao
Venue: NeurIPS 2024 (NeurIPS 2024 poster)

Abstract: In federated learning (FL), accommodating clients' varied computational capacities poses a challenge, often limiting the participation of those with constrained resources in global model training.  To address this issue, the concept of model heterogeneity through submodel extraction has emerged, offering a tailored solution that aligns the model's complexity with each client's computational capacity. In this work, we propose Federated Importance-Aware Submodel Extraction (FIARSE), a novel approach that dynamically adjusts submodels based on the importance of model parameters, thereby overcoming the limitations of previous static and dynamic submodel extraction methods.  Compared to existing works, the proposed method offers a theoretical foundation for the submodel extraction and eliminates the need for additional information beyond the model parameters themselves to determine parameter importance, significantly reducing the overhead on clients. Extensive experiments are conducted on various datasets to showcase the superior performance of the proposed FIARSE.