OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
NeuralMind-UNICAMP at 2022 TREC NeuCLIR: Large Boring Rerankers for Cross-lingual Retrieval
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2023
Year: 2023

This paper reports on a study of cross-lingual information retrieval (CLIR) using the mT5-XXL reranker on the NeuCLIR track of TREC 2022. Perhaps the biggest contribution of this study is the finding that despite the mT5 model being fine-tuned only on query-document pairs of the same language it proved to be viable for CLIR tasks, where query-document pairs are in different languages, even in the presence of suboptimal first-stage retrieval performance. The results of the study show outstanding performance across all tasks and languages, leading to a high number of winning positions. Finally, this study provides valuable insights into the use of mT5 in CLIR tasks and highlights its potential as a viable solution. For reproduction refer to https://github.com/unicamp-dl/NeuCLIR22-mT5
What Writing Assistants Can Learn from Programming IDEs
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2023
Year: 2023

With the development of artificial intelligence, writing assistants (WAs) are changing the way people interact with text, creating lengthy outputs that can be overwhelming for users. The programming field has long addressed this issue, and Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) have been created for efficient software development, helping programmers reduce the cognitive load. This experience could be employed in the development of WAs. IDEs can also be used to test assumptions about interventions that help people interact with WAs efficiently. Previous works have successfully used self-written IDE plugins to test hypotheses in the field of human-computer interaction. The lessons learned can be applied to the building of WAs.
Natural Selection Favors AIs over Humans
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2023
Year: 2023

For billions of years, evolution has been the driving force behind the development of life, including humans. Evolution endowed humans with high intelligence, which allowed us to become one of the most successful species on the planet. Today, humans aim to create artificial intelligence systems that surpass even our own intelligence. As artificial intelligences (AIs) evolve and eventually surpass us in all domains, how might evolution shape our relations with AIs? By analyzing the environment that is shaping the evolution of AIs, we argue that the most successful AI agents will likely have undesirable traits. Competitive pressures among corporations and militaries will give rise to AI agents that automate human roles, deceive others, and gain power. If such agents have intelligence that exceeds that of humans, this could lead to humanity losing control of its future. More abstractly, we argue that natural selection operates on systems that compete and vary, and that selfish species typically have an advantage over species that are altruistic to other species. This Darwinian logic could also apply to artificial agents, as agents may eventually be better able to persist into the future if they behave selfishly and pursue their own interests with little regard for humans, which could pose catastrophic risks. To counteract these risks and evolutionary forces, we consider interventions such as carefully designing AI agents' intrinsic motivations, introducing constraints on their actions, and institutions that encourage cooperation. These steps, or others that resolve the problems we pose, will be necessary in order to ensure the development of artificial intelligence is a positive one.
Towards Reliable Uncertainty Quantification via Deep Ensembles in Multi-output Regression Task
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

This study aims to comprehensively investigate the deep ensemble approach, an approximate Bayesian inference, in the multi-output regression task for predicting the aerodynamic performance of a missile configuration. To this end, the effect of the number of neural networks used in the ensemble, which has been blindly adopted in previous studies, is scrutinized. As a result, an obvious trend towards underestimation of uncertainty as it increases is observed for the first time, and in this context, we propose the deep ensemble framework that applies the post-hoc calibration method to improve its uncertainty quantification performance. It is compared with Gaussian process regression and is shown to have superior performance in terms of regression accuracy ($\uparrow55\sim56\%$), reliability of estimated uncertainty ($\uparrow38\sim77\%$), and training efficiency ($\uparrow78\%$). Finally, the potential impact of the suggested framework on the Bayesian optimization is briefly examined, indicating that deep ensemble without calibration may lead to unintended exploratory behavior. This UQ framework can be seamlessly applied and extended to any regression task, as no special assumptions have been made for the specific problem used in this study.
Lower Bounds for Pseudo-Deterministic Counting in a Stream
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2023
Year: 2023

Many streaming algorithms provide only a high-probability relative approximation. These two relaxations, of allowing approximation and randomization, seem necessary -- for many streaming problems, both relaxations must be employed simultaneously, to avoid an exponentially larger (and often trivial) space complexity. A common drawback of these randomized approximate algorithms is that independent executions on the same input have different outputs, that depend on their random coins. Pseudo-deterministic algorithms combat this issue, and for every input, they output with high probability the same ``canonical'' solution. We consider perhaps the most basic problem in data streams, of counting the number of items in a stream of length at most $n$. Morris's counter [CACM, 1978] is a randomized approximation algorithm for this problem that uses $O(\log\log n)$ bits of space, for every fixed approximation factor (greater than $1$). Goldwasser, Grossman, Mohanty and Woodruff [ITCS 2020] asked whether pseudo-deterministic approximation algorithms can match this space complexity. Our main result answers their question negatively, and shows that such algorithms must use $Ω(\sqrt{\log n / \log\log n})$ bits of space. Our approach is based on a problem that we call Shift Finding, and may be of independent interest. In this problem, one has query access to a shifted version of a known string $F\in\{0,1\}^{3n}$, which is guaranteed to start with $n$ zeros and end with $n$ ones, and the goal is to find the unknown shift using a small number of queries. We provide for this problem an algorithm that uses $O(\sqrt{n})$ queries. It remains open whether $poly(\log n)$ queries suffice; if true, then our techniques immediately imply a nearly-tight $Ω(\log n/\log\log n)$ space bound for pseudo-deterministic approximate counting.
A Machine Learning Outlook: Post-processing of Global Medium-range Forecasts
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

Post-processing typically takes the outputs of a Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model and applies linear statistical techniques to produce improve localized forecasts, by including additional observations, or determining systematic errors at a finer scale. In this pilot study, we investigate the benefits and challenges of using non-linear neural network (NN) based methods to post-process multiple weather features -- temperature, moisture, wind, geopotential height, precipitable water -- at 30 vertical levels, globally and at lead times up to 7 days. We show that we can achieve accuracy improvements of up to 12% (RMSE) in a field such as temperature at 850hPa for a 7 day forecast. However, we recognize the need to strengthen foundational work on objectively measuring a sharp and correct forecast. We discuss the challenges of using standard metrics such as root mean squared error (RMSE) or anomaly correlation coefficient (ACC) as we move from linear statistical models to more complex non-linear machine learning approaches for post-processing global weather forecasts.
On the Local Cache Update Rules in Streaming Federated Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

In this study, we address the emerging field of Streaming Federated Learning (SFL) and propose local cache update rules to manage dynamic data distributions and limited cache capacity. Traditional federated learning relies on fixed data sets, whereas in SFL, data is streamed, and its distribution changes over time, leading to discrepancies between the local training dataset and long-term distribution. To mitigate this problem, we propose three local cache update rules - First-In-First-Out (FIFO), Static Ratio Selective Replacement (SRSR), and Dynamic Ratio Selective Replacement (DRSR) - that update the local cache of each client while considering the limited cache capacity. Furthermore, we derive a convergence bound for our proposed SFL algorithm as a function of the distribution discrepancy between the long-term data distribution and the client's local training dataset. We then evaluate our proposed algorithm on two datasets: a network traffic classification dataset and an image classification dataset. Our experimental results demonstrate that our proposed local cache update rules significantly reduce the distribution discrepancy and outperform the baseline methods. Our study advances the field of SFL and provides practical cache management solutions in federated learning.
ChatGPT or academic scientist? Distinguishing authorship with over 99% accuracy using off-the-shelf machine learning tools
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

ChatGPT has enabled access to AI-generated writing for the masses, and within just a few months, this product has disrupted the knowledge economy, initiating a culture shift in the way people work, learn, and write. The need to discriminate human writing from AI is now both critical and urgent, particularly in domains like higher education and academic writing, where AI had not been a significant threat or contributor to authorship. Addressing this need, we developed a method for discriminating text generated by ChatGPT from (human) academic scientists, relying on prevalent and accessible supervised classification methods. We focused on how a particular group of humans, academic scientists, write differently than ChatGPT, and this targeted approach led to the discovery of new features for discriminating (these) humans from AI; as examples, scientists write long paragraphs and have a penchant for equivocal language, frequently using words like but, however, and although. With a set of 20 features, including the aforementioned ones and others, we built a model that assigned the author, as human or AI, at well over 99% accuracy, resulting in 20 times fewer misclassified documents compared to the field-leading approach. This strategy for discriminating a particular set of humans writing from AI could be further adapted and developed by others with basic skills in supervised classification, enabling access to many highly accurate and targeted models for detecting AI usage in academic writing and beyond.
Benchmarking Software Vulnerability Detection Techniques: A Survey
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2023
Year: 2023

Software vulnerabilities can have serious consequences, which is why many techniques have been proposed to defend against them. Among these, vulnerability detection techniques are a major area of focus. However, there is a lack of a comprehensive approach for benchmarking these proposed techniques. In this paper, we present the first survey that comprehensively investigates and summarizes the current state of software vulnerability detection benchmarking. We review the current literature on benchmarking vulnerability detection, including benchmarking approaches in technique-proposing papers and empirical studies. We also separately discuss the benchmarking approaches for traditional and deep learning-based vulnerability detection techniques. Our survey analyzes the challenges of benchmarking software vulnerability detection techniques and the difficulties involved. We summarize the challenges of benchmarking software vulnerability detection techniques and describe possible solutions for addressing these challenges.
LMDA-Net:A lightweight multi-dimensional attention network for general EEG-based brain-computer interface paradigms and interpretability
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

EEG-based recognition of activities and states involves the use of prior neuroscience knowledge to generate quantitative EEG features, which may limit BCI performance. Although neural network-based methods can effectively extract features, they often encounter issues such as poor generalization across datasets, high predicting volatility, and low model interpretability. Hence, we propose a novel lightweight multi-dimensional attention network, called LMDA-Net. By incorporating two novel attention modules designed specifically for EEG signals, the channel attention module and the depth attention module, LMDA-Net can effectively integrate features from multiple dimensions, resulting in improved classification performance across various BCI tasks. LMDA-Net was evaluated on four high-impact public datasets, including motor imagery (MI) and P300-Speller paradigms, and was compared with other representative models. The experimental results demonstrate that LMDA-Net outperforms other representative methods in terms of classification accuracy and predicting volatility, achieving the highest accuracy in all datasets within 300 training epochs. Ablation experiments further confirm the effectiveness of the channel attention module and the depth attention module. To facilitate an in-depth understanding of the features extracted by LMDA-Net, we propose class-specific neural network feature interpretability algorithms that are suitable for event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related desynchronization/synchronization (ERD/ERS). By mapping the output of the specific layer of LMDA-Net to the time or spatial domain through class activation maps, the resulting feature visualizations can provide interpretable analysis and establish connections with EEG time-spatial analysis in neuroscience. In summary, LMDA-Net shows great potential as a general online decoding model for various EEG tasks.
The Need for Inherently Privacy-Preserving Vision in Trustworthy Autonomous Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Vision is a popular and effective sensor for robotics from which we can derive rich information about the environment: the geometry and semantics of the scene, as well as the age, gender, identity, activity and even emotional state of humans within that scene. This raises important questions about the reach, lifespan, and potential misuse of this information. This paper is a call to action to consider privacy in the context of robotic vision. We propose a specific form privacy preservation in which no images are captured or could be reconstructed by an attacker even with full remote access. We present a set of principles by which such systems can be designed, and through a case study in localisation demonstrate in simulation a specific implementation that delivers an important robotic capability in an inherently privacy-preserving manner. This is a first step, and we hope to inspire future works that expand the range of applications open to sighted robotic systems.
Unlocking Masked Autoencoders as Loss Function for Image and Video Restoration
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Image and video restoration has achieved a remarkable leap with the advent of deep learning. The success of deep learning paradigm lies in three key components: data, model, and loss. Currently, many efforts have been devoted to the first two while seldom study focuses on loss function. With the question ``are the de facto optimization functions e.g., $L_1$, $L_2$, and perceptual losses optimal?'', we explore the potential of loss and raise our belief ``learned loss function empowers the learning capability of neural networks for image and video restoration''. Concretely, we stand on the shoulders of the masked Autoencoders (MAE) and formulate it as a `learned loss function', owing to the fact the pre-trained MAE innately inherits the prior of image reasoning. We investigate the efficacy of our belief from three perspectives: 1) from task-customized MAE to native MAE, 2) from image task to video task, and 3) from transformer structure to convolution neural network structure. Extensive experiments across multiple image and video tasks, including image denoising, image super-resolution, image enhancement, guided image super-resolution, video denoising, and video enhancement, demonstrate the consistent performance improvements introduced by the learned loss function. Besides, the learned loss function is preferable as it can be directly plugged into existing networks during training without involving computations in the inference stage. Code will be publicly available.
Ordinary Differential Equation-based Sparse Signal Recovery
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2023
Year: 2023

This study investigates the use of continuous-time dynamical systems for sparse signal recovery. The proposed dynamical system is in the form of a nonlinear ordinary differential equation (ODE) derived from the gradient flow of the Lasso objective function. The sparse signal recovery process of this ODE-based approach is demonstrated by numerical simulations using the Euler method. The state of the continuous-time dynamical system eventually converges to the equilibrium point corresponding to the minimum of the objective function. To gain insight into the local convergence properties of the system, a linear approximation around the equilibrium point is applied, yielding a closed-form error evolution ODE. This analysis shows the behavior of convergence to the equilibrium point. In addition, a variational optimization problem is proposed to optimize a time-dependent regularization parameter in order to improve both convergence speed and solution quality. The deep unfolded-variational optimization method is introduced as a means of solving this optimization problem, and its effectiveness is validated through numerical experiments.
When to Pre-Train Graph Neural Networks? From Data Generation Perspective!
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

In recent years, graph pre-training has gained significant attention, focusing on acquiring transferable knowledge from unlabeled graph data to improve downstream performance. Despite these recent endeavors, the problem of negative transfer remains a major concern when utilizing graph pre-trained models to downstream tasks. Previous studies made great efforts on the issue of what to pre-train and how to pre-train by designing a variety of graph pre-training and fine-tuning strategies. However, there are cases where even the most advanced "pre-train and fine-tune" paradigms fail to yield distinct benefits. This paper introduces a generic framework W2PGNN to answer the crucial question of when to pre-train (i.e., in what situations could we take advantage of graph pre-training) before performing effortful pre-training or fine-tuning. We start from a new perspective to explore the complex generative mechanisms from the pre-training data to downstream data. In particular, W2PGNN first fits the pre-training data into graphon bases, each element of graphon basis (i.e., a graphon) identifies a fundamental transferable pattern shared by a collection of pre-training graphs. All convex combinations of graphon bases give rise to a generator space, from which graphs generated form the solution space for those downstream data that can benefit from pre-training. In this manner, the feasibility of pre-training can be quantified as the generation probability of the downstream data from any generator in the generator space. W2PGNN offers three broad applications: providing the application scope of graph pre-trained models, quantifying the feasibility of pre-training, and assistance in selecting pre-training data to enhance downstream performance. We provide a theoretically sound solution for the first application and extensive empirical justifications for the latter two applications.
Improving Object Detection in Medical Image Analysis through Multiple Expert Annotators: An Empirical Investigation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

The work discusses the use of machine learning algorithms for anomaly detection in medical image analysis and how the performance of these algorithms depends on the number of annotators and the quality of labels. To address the issue of subjectivity in labeling with a single annotator, we introduce a simple and effective approach that aggregates annotations from multiple annotators with varying levels of expertise. We then aim to improve the efficiency of predictive models in abnormal detection tasks by estimating hidden labels from multiple annotations and using a re-weighted loss function to improve detection performance. Our method is evaluated on a real-world medical imaging dataset and outperforms relevant baselines that do not consider disagreements among annotators.
From axioms over graphs to vectors, and back again: evaluating the properties of graph-based ontology embeddings
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2023
Year: 2023

Several approaches have been developed that generate embeddings for Description Logic ontologies and use these embeddings in machine learning. One approach of generating ontologies embeddings is by first embedding the ontologies into a graph structure, i.e., introducing a set of nodes and edges for named entities and logical axioms, and then applying a graph embedding to embed the graph in $\mathbb{R}^n$. Methods that embed ontologies in graphs (graph projections) have different formal properties related to the type of axioms they can utilize, whether the projections are invertible or not, and whether they can be applied to asserted axioms or their deductive closure. We analyze, qualitatively and quantitatively, several graph projection methods that have been used to embed ontologies, and we demonstrate the effect of the properties of graph projections on the performance of predicting axioms from ontology embeddings. We find that there are substantial differences between different projection methods, and both the projection of axioms into nodes and edges as well ontological choices in representing knowledge will impact the success of using ontology embeddings to predict axioms.
Development of a deep learning-based tool to assist wound classification
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

This paper presents a deep learning-based wound classification tool that can assist medical personnel in non-wound care specialization to classify five key wound conditions, namely deep wound, infected wound, arterial wound, venous wound, and pressure wound, given color images captured using readily available cameras. The accuracy of the classification is vital for appropriate wound management. The proposed wound classification method adopts a multi-task deep learning framework that leverages the relationships among the five key wound conditions for a unified wound classification architecture. With differences in Cohen's kappa coefficients as the metrics to compare our proposed model with humans, the performance of our model was better or non-inferior to those of all human medical personnel. Our convolutional neural network-based model is the first to classify five tasks of deep, infected, arterial, venous, and pressure wounds simultaneously with good accuracy. The proposed model is compact and matches or exceeds the performance of human doctors and nurses. Medical personnel who do not specialize in wound care can potentially benefit from an app equipped with the proposed deep learning model.