OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Fraud Detection using Data-Driven approach
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

The extensive use of the internet is continuously drifting businesses to incorporate their services in the online environment. One of the first spectrums to embrace this evolution was the banking sector. In fact, the first known online banking service came in 1980. It was deployed from a community bank located in Knoxville, called the United American Bank. Since then, internet banking has been offering ease and efficiency to costumers in completing their daily banking tasks. The ever increasing use of internet banking and a large number of online transactions increased fraudulent behavior also. As if fraud increase was not enough, the massive number of online transactions further increased the data complexity. Modern data sources are not only complex but generated at high speed and in real-time as well. This presents a serious problem and a definite reason why more advanced solutions are desired to protect financial service companies and credit cardholders. Therefore, this research paper aims to construct an efficient fraud detection model which is adaptive to customer behavior changes and tends to decrease fraud manipulation, by detecting and filtering fraud in real-time. In order to achieve this aim, a review of various methods is conducted, adding above a personal experience working in the Banking sector, specifically in the Fraud Detection office. Unlike the majority of reviewed methods, the proposed model in this research paper is able to detect fraud in the moment of occurrence using an incremental classifier. The evaluation of synthetic data, based on fraud scenarios selected in collaboration with domain experts that replicate typical, real-world attacks, shows that this approach correctly ranks complex frauds. In particular, our proposal detects fraudulent behavior and anomalies with up to 97\% detection rate while maintaining a satisfyingly low cost.
Adaptive Convolution Kernel for Artificial Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

Many deep neural networks are built by using stacked convolutional layers of fixed and single size (often 3$\times$3) kernels. This paper describes a method for training the size of convolutional kernels to provide varying size kernels in a single layer. The method utilizes a differentiable, and therefore backpropagation-trainable Gaussian envelope which can grow or shrink in a base grid. Our experiments compared the proposed adaptive layers to ordinary convolution layers in a simple two-layer network, a deeper residual network, and a U-Net architecture. The results in the popular image classification datasets such as MNIST, MNIST-CLUTTERED, CIFAR-10, Fashion, and ``Faces in the Wild'' showed that the adaptive kernels can provide statistically significant improvements on ordinary convolution kernels. A segmentation experiment in the Oxford-Pets dataset demonstrated that replacing a single ordinary convolution layer in a U-shaped network with a single 7$\times$7 adaptive layer can improve its learning performance and ability to generalize.
A Task Allocation Approach for Human-Robot Collaboration in Product Defects Inspection Scenarios
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2020
Year: 2020

The presence and coexistence of human operators and collaborative robots in shop-floor environments raises the need for assigning tasks to either operators or robots, or both. Depending on task characteristics, operator capabilities and the involved robot functionalities, it is of the utmost importance to design strategies allowing for the concurrent and/or sequential allocation of tasks related to object manipulation and assembly. In this paper, we extend the \textsc{FlexHRC} framework presented in \cite{darvish2018flexible} to allow a human operator to interact with multiple, heterogeneous robots at the same time in order to jointly carry out a given task. The extended \textsc{FlexHRC} framework leverages a concurrent and sequential task representation framework to allocate tasks to either operators or robots as part of a dynamic collaboration process. In particular, we focus on a use case related to the inspection of product defects, which involves a human operator, a dual-arm Baxter manipulator from Rethink Robotics and a Kuka youBot mobile manipulator.
Adaptive Label Smoothing
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

This paper concerns the use of objectness measures to improve the calibration performance of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). CNNs have proven to be very good classifiers and generally localize objects well; however, the loss functions typically used to train classification CNNs do not penalize inability to localize an object, nor do they take into account an object's relative size in the given image. During training on ImageNet-1K almost all approaches use random crops on the images and this transformation sometimes provides the CNN with background only samples. This causes the classifiers to depend on context. Context dependence is harmful for safety-critical applications. We present a novel approach to classification that combines the ideas of objectness and label smoothing during training. Unlike previous methods, we compute a smoothing factor that is \emph{adaptive} based on relative object size within an image. This causes our approach to produce confidences that are grounded in the size of the object being classified instead of relying on context to make the correct predictions. We present extensive results using ImageNet to demonstrate that CNNs trained using adaptive label smoothing are much less likely to be overconfident in their predictions. We show qualitative results using class activation maps and quantitative results using classification and transfer learning tasks. Our approach is able to produce an order of magnitude reduction in confidence when predicting on context only images when compared to baselines. Using transfer learning, we gain 2.1mAP on MS COCO compared to the hard label approach.
Scene-Graph Augmented Data-Driven Risk Assessment of Autonomous Vehicle Decisions
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

Despite impressive advancements in Autonomous Driving Systems (ADS), navigation in complex road conditions remains a challenging problem. There is considerable evidence that evaluating the subjective risk level of various decisions can improve ADS' safety in both normal and complex driving scenarios. However, existing deep learning-based methods often fail to model the relationships between traffic participants and can suffer when faced with complex real-world scenarios. Besides, these methods lack transferability and explainability. To address these limitations, we propose a novel data-driven approach that uses scene-graphs as intermediate representations. Our approach includes a Multi-Relation Graph Convolution Network, a Long-Short Term Memory Network, and attention layers for modeling the subjective risk of driving maneuvers. To train our model, we formulate this task as a supervised scene classification problem. We consider a typical use case to demonstrate our model's capabilities: lane changes. We show that our approach achieves a higher classification accuracy than the state-of-the-art approach on both large (96.4% vs. 91.2%) and small (91.8% vs. 71.2%) synthesized datasets, also illustrating that our approach can learn effectively even from smaller datasets. We also show that our model trained on a synthesized dataset achieves an average accuracy of 87.8% when tested on a real-world dataset compared to the 70.3% accuracy achieved by the state-of-the-art model trained on the same synthesized dataset, showing that our approach can more effectively transfer knowledge. Finally, we demonstrate that the use of spatial and temporal attention layers improves our model's performance by 2.7% and 0.7% respectively, and increases its explainability.
The Hardware Lottery
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2020
Year: 2020

Hardware, systems and algorithms research communities have historically had different incentive structures and fluctuating motivation to engage with each other explicitly. This historical treatment is odd given that hardware and software have frequently determined which research ideas succeed (and fail). This essay introduces the term hardware lottery to describe when a research idea wins because it is suited to the available software and hardware and not because the idea is superior to alternative research directions. Examples from early computer science history illustrate how hardware lotteries can delay research progress by casting successful ideas as failures. These lessons are particularly salient given the advent of domain specialized hardware which make it increasingly costly to stray off of the beaten path of research ideas. This essay posits that the gains from progress in computing are likely to become even more uneven, with certain research directions moving into the fast-lane while progress on others is further obstructed.
Accessibility evaluation of websites using WCAG tools and Cambridge Simulator
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2020
Year: 2020

There is plethora of tools available for automatic evaluation of web accessibility with respect to WCAG. This paper compares a set of WCAG tools and their results in terms of ease of comprehension and implementation by web developers. The paper highlights accessibility issues that cannot be captured only through conformance to WCAG tools and propose additional methods to evaluate accessibility through an Inclusive User Model. We initially selected ten WCAG tools from W3 website and used a set of these tools on the landing pages of BBC and WHO websites. We compared their outcome in terms of commonality, differences, amount of details and usability. Finally, we briefly introduced the Inclusive User Model and demonstrated how simulation of user interaction can capture usability and accessibility issues that are not detected through WCAG analysis. The paper concludes with a proposal on a Common User Profile format that can be used to compare and contrast accessibility systems and services, and to simulate and personalize interaction for users with different range of abilities.
Optimal Testing of Discrete Distributions with High Probability
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2020
Year: 2020

We study the problem of testing discrete distributions with a focus on the high probability regime. Specifically, given samples from one or more discrete distributions, a property $\mathcal{P}$, and parameters $0< ε, δ<1$, we want to distinguish {\em with probability at least $1-δ$} whether these distributions satisfy $\mathcal{P}$ or are $ε$-far from $\mathcal{P}$ in total variation distance. Most prior work in distribution testing studied the constant confidence case (corresponding to $δ= Ω(1)$), and provided sample-optimal testers for a range of properties. While one can always boost the confidence probability of any such tester by black-box amplification, this generic boosting method typically leads to sub-optimal sample bounds. Here we study the following broad question: For a given property $\mathcal{P}$, can we {\em characterize} the sample complexity of testing $\mathcal{P}$ as a function of all relevant problem parameters, including the error probability $δ$? Prior to this work, uniformity testing was the only statistical task whose sample complexity had been characterized in this setting. As our main results, we provide the first algorithms for closeness and independence testing that are sample-optimal, within constant factors, as a function of all relevant parameters. We also show matching information-theoretic lower bounds on the sample complexity of these problems. Our techniques naturally extend to give optimal testers for related problems. To illustrate the generality of our methods, we give optimal algorithms for testing collections of distributions and testing closeness with unequal sized samples.
A Few Queries Go a Long Way: Information-Distortion Tradeoffs in Matching
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2020
Year: 2020

We consider the one-sided matching problem, where n agents have preferences over n items, and these preferences are induced by underlying cardinal valuation functions. The goal is to match every agent to a single item so as to maximize the social welfare. Most of the related literature, however, assumes that the values of the agents are not a priori known, and only access to the ordinal preferences of the agents over the items is provided. Consequently, this incomplete information leads to loss of efficiency, which is measured by the notion of distortion. In this paper, we further assume that the agents can answer a small number of queries, allowing us partial access to their values. We study the interplay between elicited cardinal information (measured by the number of queries per agent) and distortion for one-sided matching, as well as a wide range of well-studied related problems. Qualitatively, our results show that with a limited number of queries, it is possible to obtain significant improvements over the classic setting, where only access to ordinal information is given.
Beyond Weak Perspective for Monocular 3D Human Pose Estimation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

We consider the task of 3D joints location and orientation prediction from a monocular video with the skinned multi-person linear (SMPL) model. We first infer 2D joints locations with an off-the-shelf pose estimation algorithm. We use the SPIN algorithm and estimate initial predictions of body pose, shape and camera parameters from a deep regression neural network. We then adhere to the SMPLify algorithm which receives those initial parameters, and optimizes them so that inferred 3D joints from the SMPL model would fit the 2D joints locations. This algorithm involves a projection step of 3D joints to the 2D image plane. The conventional approach is to follow weak perspective assumptions which use ad-hoc focal length. Through experimentation on the 3D Poses in the Wild (3DPW) dataset, we show that using full perspective projection, with the correct camera center and an approximated focal length, provides favorable results. Our algorithm has resulted in a winning entry for the 3DPW Challenge, reaching first place in joints orientation accuracy.
Effective Proximal Methods for Non-convex Non-smooth Regularized Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

Sparse learning is a very important tool for mining useful information and patterns from high dimensional data. Non-convex non-smooth regularized learning problems play essential roles in sparse learning, and have drawn extensive attentions recently. We design a family of stochastic proximal gradient methods by applying arbitrary sampling to solve the empirical risk minimization problem with a non-convex and non-smooth regularizer. These methods draw mini-batches of training examples according to an arbitrary probability distribution when computing stochastic gradients. A unified analytic approach is developed to examine the convergence and computational complexity of these methods, allowing us to compare the different sampling schemes. We show that the independent sampling scheme tends to improve performance over the commonly-used uniform sampling scheme. Our new analysis also derives a tighter bound on convergence speed for the uniform sampling than the best one available so far. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that the proposed algorithms converge faster than the state of the art.
Robust Deep Learning Ensemble against Deception
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

Deep neural network (DNN) models are known to be vulnerable to maliciously crafted adversarial examples and to out-of-distribution inputs drawn sufficiently far away from the training data. How to protect a machine learning model against deception of both types of destructive inputs remains an open challenge. This paper presents XEnsemble, a diversity ensemble verification methodology for enhancing the adversarial robustness of DNN models against deception caused by either adversarial examples or out-of-distribution inputs. XEnsemble by design has three unique capabilities. First, XEnsemble builds diverse input denoising verifiers by leveraging different data cleaning techniques. Second, XEnsemble develops a disagreement-diversity ensemble learning methodology for guarding the output of the prediction model against deception. Third, XEnsemble provides a suite of algorithms to combine input verification and output verification to protect the DNN prediction models from both adversarial examples and out of distribution inputs. Evaluated using eleven popular adversarial attacks and two representative out-of-distribution datasets, we show that XEnsemble achieves a high defense success rate against adversarial examples and a high detection success rate against out-of-distribution data inputs, and outperforms existing representative defense methods with respect to robustness and defensibility.
Revealing Secrets in SPARQL Session Level
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2020
Year: 2020

Based on Semantic Web technologies, knowledge graphs help users to discover information of interest by using live SPARQL services. Answer-seekers often examine intermediate results iteratively and modify SPARQL queries repeatedly in a search session. In this context, understanding user behaviors is critical for effective intention prediction and query optimization. However, these behaviors have not yet been researched systematically at the SPARQL session level. This paper reveals secrets of session-level user search behaviors by conducting a comprehensive investigation over massive real-world SPARQL query logs. In particular, we thoroughly assess query changes made by users w.r.t. structural and data-driven features of SPARQL queries. To illustrate the potentiality of our findings, we employ an application example of how to use our findings, which might be valuable to devise efficient SPARQL caching, auto-completion, query suggestion, approximation, and relaxation techniques in the future.
Advanced Virus Monitoring and Analysis System
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2020
Year: 2020

This research proposed an architecture and a system which able to monitor the virus behavior and classify them as a traditional or polymorphic virus. Preliminary research was conducted to get the current virus behavior and to find the certain parameters which usually used by virus to attack the computer target. Finally, test bed environment is used to test our system by releasing the virus in a real environment, and try to capture their behavior, and followed by generating the conclusion that the tested or monitored virus is classified as a traditional or polymorphic virus.
Data Quality Evaluation using Probability Models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

This paper discusses an approach with machine-learning probability models to evaluate the difference between good and bad data quality in a dataset. A decision tree algorithm is used to predict data quality based on no domain knowledge of the datasets under examination. It is shown that for the data examined, the ability to predict the quality of data based on simple good/bad pre-labelled learning examples is accurate, however in general it may not be sufficient for useful production data quality assessment.
Methods of the Vehicle Re-identification
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

Most of researchers use the vehicle re-identification based on classification. This always requires an update with the new vehicle models in the market. In this paper, two types of vehicle re-identification will be presented. First, the standard method, which needs an image from the search vehicle. VRIC and VehicleID data set are suitable for training this module. It will be explained in detail how to improve the performance of this method using a trained network, which is designed for the classification. The second method takes as input a representative image of the search vehicle with similar make/model, released year and colour. It is very useful when an image from the search vehicle is not available. It produces as output a shape and a colour features. This could be used by the matching across a database to re-identify vehicles, which look similar to the search vehicle. To get a robust module for the re-identification, a fine-grained classification has been trained, which its class consists of four elements: the make of a vehicle refers to the vehicle's manufacturer, e.g. Mercedes-Benz, the model of a vehicle refers to type of model within that manufacturer's portfolio, e.g. C Class, the year refers to the iteration of the model, which may receive progressive alterations and upgrades by its manufacturer and the perspective of the vehicle. Thus, all four elements describe the vehicle at increasing degree of specificity. The aim of the vehicle shape classification is to classify the combination of these four elements. The colour classification has been separately trained. The results of vehicle re-identification will be shown. Using a developed tool, the re-identification of vehicles on video images and on controlled data set will be demonstrated. This work was partially funded under the grant.
The Radicalization Risks of GPT-3 and Advanced Neural Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2020
Year: 2020

In this paper, we expand on our previous research of the potential for abuse of generative language models by assessing GPT-3. Experimenting with prompts representative of different types of extremist narrative, structures of social interaction, and radical ideologies, we find that GPT-3 demonstrates significant improvement over its predecessor, GPT-2, in generating extremist texts. We also show GPT-3's strength in generating text that accurately emulates interactive, informational, and influential content that could be utilized for radicalizing individuals into violent far-right extremist ideologies and behaviors. While OpenAI's preventative measures are strong, the possibility of unregulated copycat technology represents significant risk for large-scale online radicalization and recruitment; thus, in the absence of safeguards, successful and efficient weaponization that requires little experimentation is likely. AI stakeholders, the policymaking community, and governments should begin investing as soon as possible in building social norms, public policy, and educational initiatives to preempt an influx of machine-generated disinformation and propaganda. Mitigation will require effective policy and partnerships across industry, government, and civil society.