OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
FuzzCoder: Byte-level Fuzzing Test via Large Language Model
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Fuzzing is an important dynamic program analysis technique designed for finding vulnerabilities in complex software. Fuzzing involves presenting a target program with crafted malicious input to cause crashes, buffer overflows, memory errors, and exceptions. Crafting malicious inputs in an efficient manner is a difficult open problem and the best approaches often apply uniform random mutations to pre-existing valid inputs. In this work, we propose to adopt fine-tuned large language models (FuzzCoder) to learn patterns in the input files from successful attacks to guide future fuzzing explorations. Specifically, we develop a framework to leverage the code LLMs to guide the mutation process of inputs in fuzzing. The mutation process is formulated as the sequence-to-sequence modeling, where LLM receives a sequence of bytes and then outputs the mutated byte sequence. FuzzCoder is fine-tuned on the created instruction dataset (Fuzz-Instruct), where the successful fuzzing history is collected from the heuristic fuzzing tool. FuzzCoder can predict mutation locations and strategies locations in input files to trigger abnormal behaviors of the program. Experimental results show that FuzzCoder based on AFL (American Fuzzy Lop) gain significant improvements in terms of effective proportion of mutation (EPM) and number of crashes (NC) for various input formats including ELF, JPG, MP3, and XML.
Learning Resilient Formation Control of Drones with Graph Attention Network
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

The rapid advancement of drone technology has significantly impacted various sectors, including search and rescue, environmental surveillance, and industrial inspection. Multidrone systems offer notable advantages such as enhanced efficiency, scalability, and redundancy over single-drone operations. Despite these benefits, ensuring resilient formation control in dynamic and adversarial environments, such as under communication loss or cyberattacks, remains a significant challenge. Classical approaches to resilient formation control, while effective in certain scenarios, often struggle with complex modeling and the curse of dimensionality, particularly as the number of agents increases. This paper proposes a novel, learning-based formation control for enhancing the adaptability and resilience of multidrone formations using graph attention networks (GATs). By leveraging GAT's dynamic capabilities to extract internode relationships based on the attention mechanism, this GAT-based formation controller significantly improves the robustness of drone formations against various threats, such as Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. Our approach not only improves formation performance in normal conditions but also ensures the resilience of multidrone systems in variable and adversarial environments. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of our method over baseline formation controllers. Furthermore, the physical experiments validate the effectiveness of the trained control policy in real-world flights.
Improving Electrolyte Performance for Target Cathode Loading Using Interpretable Data-Driven Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Higher loading of active electrode materials is desired in batteries, especially those based on conversion reactions, for enhanced energy density and cost efficiency. However, increasing active material loading in electrodes can cause significant performance depreciation due to internal resistance, shuttling, and parasitic side reactions, which can be alleviated to a certain extent by a compatible design of electrolytes. In this work, a data-driven approach is leveraged to find a high-performing electrolyte formulation for a novel interhalogen battery custom to the target cathode loading. An electrolyte design consisting of 4 solvents and 4 salts is experimentally devised for a novel interhalogen battery based on a multi-electron redox reaction. The experimental dataset with variable electrolyte compositions and active cathode loading, is used to train a graph-based deep learning model mapping changing variables in the battery's material design to its specific capacity. The trained model is used to further optimize the electrolyte formulation compositions for enhancing the battery capacity at a target cathode loading by a two-fold approach: large-scale screening and interpreting electrolyte design principles for different cathode loadings. The data-driven approach is demonstrated to bring about an additional 20% increment in the specific capacity of the battery over capacities obtained from the experimental optimization.
AI Governance in Higher Education: Case Studies of Guidance at Big Ten Universities
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2024
Year: 2024

Generative AI has drawn significant attention from stakeholders in higher education. As it introduces new opportunities for personalized learning and tutoring support, it simultaneously poses challenges to academic integrity and leads to ethical issues. Consequently, governing responsible AI usage within higher education institutions (HEIs) becomes increasingly important. Leading universities have already published guidelines on Generative AI, with most attempting to embrace this technology responsibly. This study provides a new perspective by focusing on strategies for responsible AI governance as demonstrated in these guidelines. Through a case study of 14 prestigious universities in the United States, we identified the multi-unit governance of AI, the role-specific governance of AI, and the academic characteristics of AI governance from their AI guidelines. The strengths and potential limitations of these strategies and characteristics are discussed. The findings offer practical implications for guiding responsible AI usage in HEIs and beyond.
Towards Metrics for Evaluating Creativity in Visualisation Design
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2024
Year: 2024

Creativity in visualisation design is essential for designers and data scientists who need to present data in innovative ways. It is often achieved through sketching or drafting low-fidelity prototypes. However, judging this innovation is often difficult. A creative visualisation test would offer a structured approach to enhancing visual thinking and design skills, which are vital across many fields. Such a test can facilitate objective evaluation, skill identification, benchmarking, fostering innovation, and improving learning outcomes. In developing such a test, we propose focusing on four criteria: Quantity, Correctness, Novelty, and Feasibility. These criteria integrate into a test that is easy to administer. We name it the Rowen Test of Creativity in Visualisation Design; We introduce the test, scoring system and results from using eight visualisation experts.
A Deployed Online Reinforcement Learning Algorithm In An Oral Health Clinical Trial
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

Dental disease is a prevalent chronic condition associated with substantial financial burden, personal suffering, and increased risk of systemic diseases. Despite widespread recommendations for twice-daily tooth brushing, adherence to recommended oral self-care behaviors remains sub-optimal due to factors such as forgetfulness and disengagement. To address this, we developed Oralytics, a mHealth intervention system designed to complement clinician-delivered preventative care for marginalized individuals at risk for dental disease. Oralytics incorporates an online reinforcement learning algorithm to determine optimal times to deliver intervention prompts that encourage oral self-care behaviors. We have deployed Oralytics in a registered clinical trial. The deployment required careful design to manage challenges specific to the clinical trials setting in the U.S. In this paper, we (1) highlight key design decisions of the RL algorithm that address these challenges and (2) conduct a re-sampling analysis to evaluate algorithm design decisions. A second phase (randomized control trial) of Oralytics is planned to start in spring 2025.
Synthetic Data Generation and Automated Multidimensional Data Labeling for AI/ML in General and Circular Coordinates
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Insufficient amounts of available training data is a critical challenge for both development and deployment of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) models. This paper proposes a unified approach to both synthetic data generation (SDG) and automated data labeling (ADL) with a unified SDG-ADL algorithm. SDG-ADL uses multidimensional (n-D) representations of data visualized losslessly with General Line Coordinates (GLCs), relying on reversible GLC properties to visualize n-D data in multiple GLCs. This paper demonstrates use of the new Circular Coordinates in Static and Dynamic forms, used with Parallel Coordinates and Shifted Paired Coordinates, since each GLC exemplifies unique data properties, such as interattribute n-D distributions and outlier detection. The approach is interactively implemented in computer software with the Dynamic Coordinates Visualization system (DCVis). Results with real data are demonstrated in case studies, evaluating impact on classifiers.
Deep Neural Implicit Representation of Accessibility for Multi-Axis Manufacturing
Venue: arXiv cs.GR 2024
Year: 2024

One of the main concerns in design and process planning for multi-axis additive and subtractive manufacturing is collision avoidance between moving objects (e.g., tool assemblies) and stationary objects (e.g., a part unified with fixtures). The collision measure for various pairs of relative rigid translations and rotations between the two pointsets can be conceptualized by a compactly supported scalar field over the 6D non-Euclidean configuration space. Explicit representation and computation of this field is costly in both time and space. If we fix $O(m)$ sparsely sampled rotations (e.g., tool orientations), computation of the collision measure field as a convolution of indicator functions of the 3D pointsets over a uniform grid (i.e., voxelized geometry) of resolution $O(n^3)$ via fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) scales as in $O(mn^3 \log n)$ in time and $O(mn^3)$ in space. In this paper, we develop an implicit representation of the collision measure field via deep neural networks (DNNs). We show that our approach is able to accurately interpolate the collision measure from a sparse sampling of rotations, and can represent the collision measure field with a small memory footprint. Moreover, we show that this representation can be efficiently updated through fine-tuning to more efficiently train the network on multi-resolution data, as well as accommodate incremental changes to the geometry (such as might occur in iterative processes such as topology optimization of the part subject to CNC tool accessibility constraints).
A Multimodal Object-level Contrast Learning Method for Cancer Survival Risk Prediction
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Computer-aided cancer survival risk prediction plays an important role in the timely treatment of patients. This is a challenging weakly supervised ordinal regression task associated with multiple clinical factors involved such as pathological images, genomic data and etc. In this paper, we propose a new training method, multimodal object-level contrast learning, for cancer survival risk prediction. First, we construct contrast learning pairs based on the survival risk relationship among the samples in the training sample set. Then we introduce the object-level contrast learning method to train the survival risk predictor. We further extend it to the multimodal scenario by applying cross-modal constrast. Considering the heterogeneity of pathological images and genomics data, we construct a multimodal survival risk predictor employing attention-based and self-normalizing based nerural network respectively. Finally, the survival risk predictor trained by our proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods on two public multimodal cancer datasets for survival risk prediction.
NoiseAttack: An Evasive Sample-Specific Multi-Targeted Backdoor Attack Through White Gaussian Noise
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Backdoor attacks pose a significant threat when using third-party data for deep learning development. In these attacks, data can be manipulated to cause a trained model to behave improperly when a specific trigger pattern is applied, providing the adversary with unauthorized advantages. While most existing works focus on designing trigger patterns in both visible and invisible to poison the victim class, they typically result in a single targeted class upon the success of the backdoor attack, meaning that the victim class can only be converted to another class based on the adversary predefined value. In this paper, we address this issue by introducing a novel sample-specific multi-targeted backdoor attack, namely NoiseAttack. Specifically, we adopt White Gaussian Noise (WGN) with various Power Spectral Densities (PSD) as our underlying triggers, coupled with a unique training strategy to execute the backdoor attack. This work is the first of its kind to launch a vision backdoor attack with the intent to generate multiple targeted classes with minimal input configuration. Furthermore, our extensive experimental results demonstrate that NoiseAttack can achieve a high attack success rate against popular network architectures and datasets, as well as bypass state-of-the-art backdoor detection methods. Our source code and experiments are available at https://github.com/SiSL-URI/NoiseAttack/tree/main.
How to Determine the Preferred Image Distribution of a Black-Box Vision-Language Model?
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Large foundation models have revolutionized the field, yet challenges remain in optimizing multi-modal models for specialized visual tasks. We propose a novel, generalizable methodology to identify preferred image distributions for black-box Vision-Language Models (VLMs) by measuring output consistency across varied input prompts. Applying this to different rendering types of 3D objects, we demonstrate its efficacy across various domains requiring precise interpretation of complex structures, with a focus on Computer-Aided Design (CAD) as an exemplar field. We further refine VLM outputs using in-context learning with human feedback, significantly enhancing explanation quality. To address the lack of benchmarks in specialized domains, we introduce CAD-VQA, a new dataset for evaluating VLMs on CAD-related visual question answering tasks. Our evaluation of state-of-the-art VLMs on CAD-VQA establishes baseline performance levels, providing a framework for advancing VLM capabilities in complex visual reasoning tasks across various fields requiring expert-level visual interpretation. We release the dataset and evaluation codes at \url{https://github.com/asgsaeid/cad_vqa}.
Reinforcement Learning-enabled Satellite Constellation Reconfiguration and Retasking for Mission-Critical Applications
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

The development of satellite constellation applications is rapidly advancing due to increasing user demands, reduced operational costs, and technological advancements. However, a significant gap in the existing literature concerns reconfiguration and retasking issues within satellite constellations, which is the primary focus of our research. In this work, we critically assess the impact of satellite failures on constellation performance and the associated task requirements. To facilitate this analysis, we introduce a system modeling approach for GPS satellite constellations, enabling an investigation into performance dynamics and task distribution strategies, particularly in scenarios where satellite failures occur during mission-critical operations. Additionally, we introduce reinforcement learning (RL) techniques, specifically Q-learning, Policy Gradient, Deep Q-Network (DQN), and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), for managing satellite constellations, addressing the challenges posed by reconfiguration and retasking following satellite failures. Our results demonstrate that DQN and PPO achieve effective outcomes in terms of average rewards, task completion rates, and response times.
Biochemical Prostate Cancer Recurrence Prediction: Thinking Fast & Slow
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Time to biochemical recurrence in prostate cancer is essential for prognostic monitoring of the progression of patients after prostatectomy, which assesses the efficacy of the surgery. In this work, we proposed to leverage multiple instance learning through a two-stage ``thinking fast \& slow'' strategy for the time to recurrence (TTR) prediction. The first (``thinking fast'') stage finds the most relevant WSI area for biochemical recurrence and the second (``thinking slow'') stage leverages higher resolution patches to predict TTR. Our approach reveals a mean C-index ($Ci$) of 0.733 ($θ=0.059$) on our internal validation and $Ci=0.603$ on the LEOPARD challenge validation set. Post hoc attention visualization shows that the most attentive area contributes to the TTR prediction.
RAMBO: Leaking Secrets from Air-Gap Computers by Spelling Covert Radio Signals from Computer RAM
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

Air-gapped systems are physically separated from external networks, including the Internet. This isolation is achieved by keeping the air-gap computers disconnected from wired or wireless networks, preventing direct or remote communication with other devices or networks. Air-gap measures may be used in sensitive environments where security and isolation are critical to prevent private and confidential information leakage. In this paper, we present an attack allowing adversaries to leak information from air-gapped computers. We show that malware on a compromised computer can generate radio signals from memory buses (RAM). Using software-generated radio signals, malware can encode sensitive information such as files, images, keylogging, biometric information, and encryption keys. With software-defined radio (SDR) hardware, and a simple off-the-shelf antenna, an attacker can intercept transmitted raw radio signals from a distance. The signals can then be decoded and translated back into binary information. We discuss the design and implementation and present related work and evaluation results. This paper presents fast modification methods to leak data from air-gapped computers at 1000 bits per second. Finally, we propose countermeasures to mitigate this out-of-band air-gap threat.
Robust Federated Finetuning of Foundation Models via Alternating Minimization of LoRA
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) has risen as an innovative training strategy that updates only a select few model parameters, significantly lowering both computational and memory demands. PEFT also helps to decrease data transfer in federated learning settings, where communication depends on the size of updates. In this work, we explore the constraints of previous studies that integrate a well-known PEFT method named LoRA with federated fine-tuning, then introduce RoLoRA, a robust federated fine-tuning framework that utilizes an alternating minimization approach for LoRA, providing greater robustness against decreasing fine-tuning parameters and increasing data heterogeneity. Our results indicate that RoLoRA not only presents the communication benefits but also substantially enhances the robustness and effectiveness in multiple federated fine-tuning scenarios.
GGS: Generalizable Gaussian Splatting for Lane Switching in Autonomous Driving
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

We propose GGS, a Generalizable Gaussian Splatting method for Autonomous Driving which can achieve realistic rendering under large viewpoint changes. Previous generalizable 3D gaussian splatting methods are limited to rendering novel views that are very close to the original pair of images, which cannot handle large differences in viewpoint. Especially in autonomous driving scenarios, images are typically collected from a single lane. The limited training perspective makes rendering images of a different lane very challenging. To further improve the rendering capability of GGS under large viewpoint changes, we introduces a novel virtual lane generation module into GSS method to enables high-quality lane switching even without a multi-lane dataset. Besides, we design a diffusion loss to supervise the generation of virtual lane image to further address the problem of lack of data in the virtual lanes. Finally, we also propose a depth refinement module to optimize depth estimation in the GSS model. Extensive validation of our method, compared to existing approaches, demonstrates state-of-the-art performance.
Learning Privacy-Preserving Student Networks via Discriminative-Generative Distillation
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

While deep models have proved successful in learning rich knowledge from massive well-annotated data, they may pose a privacy leakage risk in practical deployment. It is necessary to find an effective trade-off between high utility and strong privacy. In this work, we propose a discriminative-generative distillation approach to learn privacy-preserving deep models. Our key idea is taking models as bridge to distill knowledge from private data and then transfer it to learn a student network via two streams. First, discriminative stream trains a baseline classifier on private data and an ensemble of teachers on multiple disjoint private subsets, respectively. Then, generative stream takes the classifier as a fixed discriminator and trains a generator in a data-free manner. After that, the generator is used to generate massive synthetic data which are further applied to train a variational autoencoder (VAE). Among these synthetic data, a few of them are fed into the teacher ensemble to query labels via differentially private aggregation, while most of them are embedded to the trained VAE for reconstructing synthetic data. Finally, a semi-supervised student learning is performed to simultaneously handle two tasks: knowledge transfer from the teachers with distillation on few privately labeled synthetic data, and knowledge enhancement with tangent-normal adversarial regularization on many triples of reconstructed synthetic data. In this way, our approach can control query cost over private data and mitigate accuracy degradation in a unified manner, leading to a privacy-preserving student model. Extensive experiments and analysis clearly show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Local Map Construction with SDMap: A Comprehensive Survey
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Local map construction is a vital component of intelligent driving perception, offering necessary reference for vehicle positioning and planning. Standard Definition map (SDMap), known for its low cost, accessibility, and versatility, has significant potential as prior information for local map perception. This paper mainly reviews the local map construction methods with SDMap, including definitions, general processing flow, and datasets. Besides, this paper analyzes multimodal data representation and fusion methods in SDMap-based local map construction. This paper also discusses key challenges and future directions, such as optimizing SDMap processing, enhancing spatial alignment with real-time data, and incorporating richer environmental information. At last, the review looks forward to future research focusing on enhancing road topology inference and multimodal data fusion to improve the robustness and scalability of local map perception.