OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Mechanisms for Data Sharing in Collaborative Causal Inference (Extended Version)
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Collaborative causal inference (CCI) is a federated learning method for pooling data from multiple, often self-interested, parties, to achieve a common learning goal over causal structures, e.g. estimation and optimization of treatment variables in a medical setting. Since obtaining data can be costly for the participants and sharing unique data poses the risk of losing competitive advantages, motivating the participation of all parties through equitable rewards and incentives is necessary. This paper devises an evaluation scheme to measure the value of each party's data contribution to the common learning task, tailored to causal inference's statistical demands, by comparing completed partially directed acyclic graphs (CPDAGs) inferred from observational data contributed by the participants. The Data Valuation Scheme thus obtained can then be used to introduce mechanisms that incentivize the agents to contribute data. It can be leveraged to reward agents fairly, according to the quality of their data, or to maximize all agents' data contributions.
Hadamard Adapter: An Extreme Parameter-Efficient Adapter Tuning Method for Pre-trained Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Recent years, Pre-trained Language models (PLMs) have swept into various fields of artificial intelligence and achieved great success. However, most PLMs, such as T5 and GPT3, have a huge amount of parameters, fine-tuning them is often expensive and time consuming, and storing them takes up a lot of space. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt a parameter-efficient approach to reduce parameters of PLMs in fine-tuning without compromising their performance in downstream tasks. In this paper, we design a novel adapter which only acts on self-attention outputs in PLMs. This adapter adopts element-wise linear transformation using Hadamard product, hence named as Hadamard adapter, requires the fewest parameters compared to previous parameter-efficient adapters. In addition, we also summarize some tuning patterns for Hadamard adapter shared by various downstream tasks, expecting to provide some guidance for further parameter reduction with shared adapters in future studies. The experiments conducted on the widely-used GLUE benchmark with several SOTA PLMs prove that the Hadamard adapter achieves competitive performance with only 0.033\% parameters compared with full fine-tuning, and it has the fewest parameters compared with other adapters. Moreover, we further find that there is also some redundant layers in the Hadamard adapter which can be removed to achieve more parameter efficiency with only 0.022\% parameters.
Bridging Data Gaps in Healthcare: A Scoping Review of Transfer Learning in Biomedical Data Analysis
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Clinical and biomedical research in low-resource settings often faces significant challenges due to the need for high-quality data with sufficient sample sizes to construct effective models. These constraints hinder robust model training and prompt researchers to seek methods for leveraging existing knowledge from related studies to support new research efforts. Transfer learning (TL), a machine learning technique, emerges as a powerful solution by utilizing knowledge from pre-trained models to enhance the performance of new models, offering promise across various healthcare domains. Despite its conceptual origins in the 1990s, the application of TL in medical research has remained limited, especially beyond image analysis. In our review of TL applications in structured clinical and biomedical data, we screened 3,515 papers, with 55 meeting the inclusion criteria. Among these, only 2% (one out of 55) utilized external studies, and 7% (four out of 55) addressed scenarios involving multi-site collaborations with privacy constraints. To achieve actionable TL with structured medical data while addressing regional disparities, inequality, and privacy constraints in healthcare research, we advocate for the careful identification of appropriate source data and models, the selection of suitable TL frameworks, and the validation of TL models with proper baselines.
Fuzzy Recurrent Stochastic Configuration Networks for Industrial Data Analytics
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

This paper presents a novel neuro-fuzzy model, termed fuzzy recurrent stochastic configuration networks (F-RSCNs), for industrial data analytics. Unlike the original recurrent stochastic configuration network (RSCN), the proposed F-RSCN is constructed by multiple sub-reservoirs, and each sub-reservoir is associated with a Takagi-Sugeno-Kang (TSK) fuzzy rule. Through this hybrid framework, first, the interpretability of the model is enhanced by incorporating fuzzy reasoning to embed the prior knowledge into the network. Then, the parameters of the neuro-fuzzy model are determined by the recurrent stochastic configuration (RSC) algorithm. This scheme not only ensures the universal approximation property and fast learning speed of the built model but also overcomes uncertain problems, such as unknown dynamic orders, arbitrary structure determination, and the sensitivity of learning parameters in modelling nonlinear dynamics. Finally, an online update of the output weights is performed using the projection algorithm, and the convergence analysis of the learning parameters is given. By integrating TSK fuzzy inference systems into RSCNs, F-RSCNs have strong fuzzy inference capability and can achieve sound performance for both learning and generalization. Comprehensive experiments show that the proposed F-RSCNs outperform other classical neuro-fuzzy and non-fuzzy models, demonstrating great potential for modelling complex industrial systems.
A Survey on LoRA of Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Low-Rank Adaptation~(LoRA), which updates the dense neural network layers with pluggable low-rank matrices, is one of the best performed parameter efficient fine-tuning paradigms. Furthermore, it has significant advantages in cross-task generalization and privacy-preserving. Hence, LoRA has gained much attention recently, and the number of related literature demonstrates exponential growth. It is necessary to conduct a comprehensive overview of the current progress on LoRA. This survey categorizes and reviews the progress from the perspectives of (1) downstream adaptation improving variants that improve LoRA's performance on downstream tasks; (2) cross-task generalization methods that mix multiple LoRA plugins to achieve cross-task generalization; (3) efficiency-improving methods that boost the computation-efficiency of LoRA; (4) data privacy-preserving methods that use LoRA in federated learning; (5) application. Besides, this survey also discusses the future directions in this field. At last, we provide a Github page~\footnote{\href{https://github.com/ZJU-LLMs/Awesome-LoRAs.git}{https://github.com/ZJU-LLMs/Awesome-LoRAs.git}} for readers to check the updates and initiate discussions on this survey paper.
Magnitude and Rotation Invariant Detection of Transportation Modes with Missing Data Modalities
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

This work presents the solution of the Signal Sleuths team for the 2024 SHL recognition challenge. The challenge involves detecting transportation modes using shuffled, non-overlapping 5-second windows of phone movement data, with exactly one of the three available modalities (accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer) randomly missing. Data analysis indicated a significant distribution shift between train and validation data, necessitating a magnitude and rotation-invariant approach. We utilize traditional machine learning, focusing on robust processing, feature extraction, and rotation-invariant aggregation. An ablation study showed that relying solely on the frequently used signal magnitude vector results in the poorest performance. Conversely, our proposed rotation-invariant aggregation demonstrated substantial improvement over using rotation-aware features, while also reducing the feature vector length. Moreover, z-normalization proved crucial for creating robust spectral features.
A review of graph neural network applications in mechanics-related domains
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Mechanics-related problems often present unique challenges in achieving accurate geometric and physical representations, particularly for non-uniform structures. Graph neural networks (GNNs) have emerged as a promising tool to tackle these challenges by adeptly learning from graph data with irregular underlying structures. Consequently, recent years have witnessed a surge in complex mechanics-related applications inspired by the advancements of GNNs. Despite this process, there is a notable absence of a systematic review addressing the recent advancement of GNNs in solving mechanics-related problems. To bridge this gap, this review article aims to provide an in-depth overview of the GNN applications in mechanics-related domains while identifying key challenges and outlining potential future research directions. In this review article, we begin by introducing the fundamental algorithms of GNNs that are widely employed in mechanics-related applications. We provide a concise explanation of their underlying principles to establish a solid understanding that will serve as a basis for exploring the applications of GNNs in mechanics-related domains. The scope of this paper is intended to cover the categorisation of literature into solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, and interdisciplinary mechanics-related domains, providing a comprehensive summary of graph representation methodologies, GNN architectures, and further discussions in their respective subdomains. Additionally, open data and source codes relevant to these applications are summarised for the convenience of future researchers. This article promotes an interdisciplinary integration of GNNs and mechanics and provides a guide for researchers interested in applying GNNs to solve complex mechanics-related problems.
ST-RetNet: A Long-term Spatial-Temporal Traffic Flow Prediction Method
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Traffic flow forecasting is considered a critical task in the field of intelligent transportation systems. In this paper, to address the issue of low accuracy in long-term forecasting of spatial-temporal big data on traffic flow, we propose an innovative model called Spatial-Temporal Retentive Network (ST-RetNet). We extend the Retentive Network to address the task of traffic flow forecasting. At the spatial scale, we integrate a topological graph structure into Spatial Retentive Network(S-RetNet), utilizing an adaptive adjacency matrix to extract dynamic spatial features of the road network. We also employ Graph Convolutional Networks to extract static spatial features of the road network. These two components are then fused to capture dynamic and static spatial correlations. At the temporal scale, we propose the Temporal Retentive Network(T-RetNet), which has been demonstrated to excel in capturing long-term dependencies in traffic flow patterns compared to other time series models, including Recurrent Neural Networks based and transformer models. We achieve the spatial-temporal traffic flow forecasting task by integrating S-RetNet and T-RetNet to form ST-RetNet. Through experimental comparisons conducted on four real-world datasets, we demonstrate that ST-RetNet outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches in traffic flow forecasting.
Towards Adversarially Robust Vision-Language Models: Insights from Design Choices and Prompt Formatting Techniques
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Vision-Language Models (VLMs) have witnessed a surge in both research and real-world applications. However, as they are becoming increasingly prevalent, ensuring their robustness against adversarial attacks is paramount. This work systematically investigates the impact of model design choices on the adversarial robustness of VLMs against image-based attacks. Additionally, we introduce novel, cost-effective approaches to enhance robustness through prompt formatting. By rephrasing questions and suggesting potential adversarial perturbations, we demonstrate substantial improvements in model robustness against strong image-based attacks such as Auto-PGD. Our findings provide important guidelines for developing more robust VLMs, particularly for deployment in safety-critical environments.
Optimizing Nurse Scheduling: A Supply Chain Approach for Healthcare Institutions
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

When managing an organization, planners often encounter numerous challenging scenarios. In such instances, relying solely on intuition or managerial experience may not suffice, necessitating a quantitative approach. This demand is further accentuated in the era of big data, where the sheer scale and complexity of constraints pose significant challenges. Therefore, the aim of this study is to provide a foundational framework for addressing personnel scheduling, a critical issue in organizational management. Specifically, we focus on optimizing shift assignments for staff, a task fraught with complexities due to factors such as contractual obligations and mandated rest periods. Moreover, the current landscape is characterized by frequent employee shortages across various industries, with many organizations lacking efficient and dependable management tools to address them. Therefore, our attention is particularly drawn to the nurse rostering problem, a personnel scheduling challenge prevalent in healthcare settings. These issues are characterized by a multitude of variables, given that a single healthcare facility may employ hundreds of nurses, alongside stringent constraints such as the need for adequate staffing levels and rest periods postnight shifts. Furthermore, the ongoing COVID19 pandemic has exacerbated staffing challenges in healthcare institutions, underlining the importance of accurately assessing staffing needs and optimizing shift allocations for effective operation amidst crisis situations.
A Vision to Enhance Trust Requirements for Peer Support Systems by Revisiting Trust Theories
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

This vision paper focuses on the mental health crisis impacting healthcare workers (HCWs), which exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, leads to increased stress and psychological issues like burnout. Peer Support Programs (PSP) are a recognized intervention for mitigating these issues. These programs are increasingly being delivered virtually through Peer Support Systems (PSS) for increased convenience and accessibility. However, HCWs perception of these systems results in fear of information sharing, perceived lack of safety, and low participation rate, which challenges these systems ability to achieve their goals. In line with the rich body of research on the requirements and properties of trustworthy systems, we posit that increasing HCWs trust in PSS could address these challenges. However, extant research focuses on objectively defined trustworthiness rather than perceptual trust because trustworthy requirements are viewed as more controllable and easier to operationalize. This study proposes a novel approach to elicit perceptual trust requirements by proposing a trust framework anchored in recognized trust theories from different disciplines that unpacks trust into its recognized types and their antecedents. This approach allows the identification of trust requirements beyond those already proposed for trustworthy systems, providing a strong foundation for improving the effectiveness of PSS for HCWs. Keywords: Trust Requirements, Requirements elicitation, Peer support systems, Healthcare workers
The Life Cycle of Large Language Models: A Review of Biases in Education
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly adopted in educational contexts to provide personalized support to students and teachers. The unprecedented capacity of LLM-based applications to understand and generate natural language can potentially improve instructional effectiveness and learning outcomes, but the integration of LLMs in education technology has renewed concerns over algorithmic bias which may exacerbate educational inequities. In this review, building on prior work on mapping the traditional machine learning life cycle, we provide a holistic map of the LLM life cycle from the initial development of LLMs to customizing pre-trained models for various applications in educational settings. We explain each step in the LLM life cycle and identify potential sources of bias that may arise in the context of education. We discuss why current measures of bias from traditional machine learning fail to transfer to LLM-generated content in education, such as tutoring conversations because the text is high-dimensional, there can be multiple correct responses, and tailoring responses may be pedagogically desirable rather than unfair. This review aims to clarify the complex nature of bias in LLM applications and provide practical guidance for their evaluation to promote educational equity.
Mechanistic interpretability of large language models with applications to the financial services industry
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Large Language Models such as GPTs (Generative Pre-trained Transformers) exhibit remarkable capabilities across a broad spectrum of applications. Nevertheless, due to their intrinsic complexity, these models present substantial challenges in interpreting their internal decision-making processes. This lack of transparency poses critical challenges when it comes to their adaptation by financial institutions, where concerns and accountability regarding bias, fairness, and reliability are of paramount importance. Mechanistic interpretability aims at reverse engineering complex AI models such as transformers. In this paper, we are pioneering the use of mechanistic interpretability to shed some light on the inner workings of large language models for use in financial services applications. We offer several examples of how algorithmic tasks can be designed for compliance monitoring purposes. In particular, we investigate GPT-2 Small's attention pattern when prompted to identify potential violation of Fair Lending laws. Using direct logit attribution, we study the contributions of each layer and its corresponding attention heads to the logit difference in the residual stream. Finally, we design clean and corrupted prompts and use activation patching as a causal intervention method to localize our task completion components further. We observe that the (positive) heads $10.2$ (head $2$, layer $10$), $10.7$, and $11.3$, as well as the (negative) heads $9.6$ and $10.6$ play a significant role in the task completion.
Evaluating geometric accuracy of NeRF reconstructions compared to SLAM method
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

As Neural Radiance Field (NeRF) implementations become faster, more efficient and accurate, their applicability to real world mapping tasks becomes more accessible. Traditionally, 3D mapping, or scene reconstruction, has relied on expensive LiDAR sensing. Photogrammetry can perform image-based 3D reconstruction but is computationally expensive and requires extremely dense image representation to recover complex geometry and photorealism. NeRFs perform 3D scene reconstruction by training a neural network on sparse image and pose data, achieving superior results to photogrammetry with less input data. This paper presents an evaluation of two NeRF scene reconstructions for the purpose of estimating the diameter of a vertical PVC cylinder. One of these are trained on commodity iPhone data and the other is trained on robot-sourced imagery and poses. This neural-geometry is compared to state-of-the-art lidar-inertial SLAM in terms of scene noise and metric-accuracy.
M18K: A Comprehensive RGB-D Dataset and Benchmark for Mushroom Detection and Instance Segmentation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Automating agricultural processes holds significant promise for enhancing efficiency and sustainability in various farming practices. This paper contributes to the automation of agricultural processes by providing a dedicated mushroom detection dataset related to automated harvesting, growth monitoring, and quality control of the button mushroom produced using Agaricus Bisporus fungus. With over 18,000 mushroom instances in 423 RGB-D image pairs taken with an Intel RealSense D405 camera, it fills the gap in mushroom-specific datasets and serves as a benchmark for detection and instance segmentation algorithms in smart mushroom agriculture. The dataset, featuring realistic growth environment scenarios with comprehensive annotations, is assessed using advanced detection and instance segmentation algorithms. The paper details the dataset's characteristics, evaluates algorithmic performance, and for broader applicability, we have made all resources publicly available including images, codes, and trained models via our GitHub repository https://github.com/abdollahzakeri/m18k
FR-SLAM: A SLAM Improvement Method Based on Floor Plan Registration
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technology enables the construction of environmental maps and localization, serving as a key technique for indoor autonomous navigation of mobile robots. Traditional SLAM methods typically require exhaustive traversal of all rooms during indoor navigation to obtain a complete map, resulting in lengthy path planning times and prolonged time to reach target points. Moreover, cumulative errors during motion lead to inaccurate robot localization, impacting navigation efficiency.This paper proposes an improved SLAM method, FR-SLAM, based on floor plan registration, utilizing a morphology-based floor plan registration algorithm to align and transform original floor plans. This approach facilitates the rapid acquisition of comprehensive motion maps and efficient path planning, enabling swift navigation to target positions within a shorter timeframe. To enhance registration and robot motion localization accuracy, a real-time update strategy is employed, comparing the current position's building structure with the map and dynamically updating floor plan registration results for precise localization. Comparative tests conducted on real and simulated datasets demonstrate that, compared to other benchmark algorithms, this method achieves higher floor plan registration accuracy and shorter time consumption to reach target positions.
Learning-augmented Maximum Independent Set
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2024
Year: 2024

We study the Maximum Independent Set (MIS) problem on general graphs within the framework of learning-augmented algorithms. The MIS problem is known to be NP-hard and is also NP-hard to approximate to within a factor of $n^{1-δ}$ for any $δ>0$. We show that we can break this barrier in the presence of an oracle obtained through predictions from a machine learning model that answers vertex membership queries for a fixed MIS with probability $1/2+\varepsilon$. In the first setting we consider, the oracle can be queried once per vertex to know if a vertex belongs to a fixed MIS, and the oracle returns the correct answer with probability $1/2 + \varepsilon$. Under this setting, we show an algorithm that obtains an $\tilde{O}(\sqrtΔ/\varepsilon)$-approximation in $O(m)$ time where $Δ$ is the maximum degree of the graph. In the second setting, we allow multiple queries to the oracle for a vertex, each of which is correct with probability $1/2 + \varepsilon$. For this setting, we show an $O(1)$-approximation algorithm using $O(n/\varepsilon^2)$ total queries and $\tilde{O}(m)$ runtime.