OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Learning Cross-modality Information Bottleneck Representation for Heterogeneous Person Re-Identification
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Visible-Infrared person re-identification (VI-ReID) is an important and challenging task in intelligent video surveillance. Existing methods mainly focus on learning a shared feature space to reduce the modality discrepancy between visible and infrared modalities, which still leave two problems underexplored: information redundancy and modality complementarity. To this end, properly eliminating the identity-irrelevant information as well as making up for the modality-specific information are critical and remains a challenging endeavor. To tackle the above problems, we present a novel mutual information and modality consensus network, namely CMInfoNet, to extract modality-invariant identity features with the most representative information and reduce the redundancies. The key insight of our method is to find an optimal representation to capture more identity-relevant information and compress the irrelevant parts by optimizing a mutual information bottleneck trade-off. Besides, we propose an automatically search strategy to find the most prominent parts that identify the pedestrians. To eliminate the cross- and intra-modality variations, we also devise a modality consensus module to align the visible and infrared modalities for task-specific guidance. Moreover, the global-local feature representations can also be acquired for key parts discrimination. Experimental results on four benchmarks, i.e., SYSU-MM01, RegDB, Occluded-DukeMTMC, Occluded-REID, Partial-REID and Partial\_iLIDS dataset, have demonstrated the effectiveness of CMInfoNet.
Group-Conditional Conformal Prediction via Quantile Regression Calibration for Crop and Weed Classification
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

As deep learning predictive models become an integral part of a large spectrum of precision agricultural systems, a barrier to the adoption of such automated solutions is the lack of user trust in these highly complex, opaque and uncertain models. Indeed, deep neural networks are not equipped with any explicit guarantees that can be used to certify the system's performance, especially in highly varying uncontrolled environments such as the ones typically faced in computer vision for agriculture.Fortunately, certain methods developed in other communities can prove to be important for agricultural applications. This article presents the conformal prediction framework that provides valid statistical guarantees on the predictive performance of any black box prediction machine, with almost no assumptions, applied to the problem of deep visual classification of weeds and crops in real-world conditions. The framework is exposed with a focus on its practical aspects and special attention accorded to the Adaptive Prediction Sets (APS) approach that delivers marginal guarantees on the model's coverage. Marginal results are then shown to be insufficient to guarantee performance on all groups of individuals in the population as characterized by their environmental and pedo-climatic auxiliary data gathered during image acquisition.To tackle this shortcoming, group-conditional conformal approaches are presented: the ''classical'' method that consists of iteratively applying the APS procedure on all groups, and a proposed elegant reformulation and implementation of the procedure using quantile regression on group membership indicators. Empirical results showing the validity of the proposed approach are presented and compared to the marginal APS then discussed.
FedChain: An Efficient and Secure Consensus Protocol based on Proof of Useful Federated Learning for Blockchain
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2023
Year: 2023

Blockchain has become a popular decentralized paradigm for various applications in the zero-trust environment. The core of the blockchain is the consensus protocol, which establishes consensus among all the participants. PoW (Proof-of-Work) is one of the most popular consensus protocols. However, the PoW consensus protocol which incentives the participants to use their computing power to solve a meaningless hash puzzle is continuously questioned as energy-wasting. To address these issues, we propose an efficient and secure consensus protocol based on proof of useful federated learning for blockchain (called FedChain). We first propose a secure and robust blockchain architecture that takes federated learning tasks as proof of work. Then a pool aggregation mechanism is integrated to improve the efficiency of the FedChain architecture. To protect model parameter privacy for each participant within a mining pool, a secret sharing-based ring-all reduce architecture is designed. We also introduce a data distribution-based federated learning model optimization algorithm to improve the model performance of FedChain. At last, a zero-knowledge proof-based federated learning model verification is introduced to preserve the privacy of federated learning participants while proving the model performance of federated learning participants. Our approach has been tested and validated through extensive experiments, demonstrating its performance.
Large Language Models on the Chessboard: A Study on ChatGPT's Formal Language Comprehension and Complex Reasoning Skills
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2023
Year: 2023

While large language models have made strides in natural language processing, their proficiency in complex reasoning tasks requiring formal language comprehension, such as chess, remains less investigated. This paper probes the performance of ChatGPT, a sophisticated language model by OpenAI in tackling such complex reasoning tasks, using chess as a case study. Through robust metrics examining both the legality and quality of moves, we assess ChatGPT's understanding of the chessboard, adherence to chess rules, and strategic decision-making abilities. Our evaluation identifies limitations within ChatGPT's attention mechanism that affect its formal language comprehension and uncovers the model's underdeveloped self-regulation abilities. Our study also reveals ChatGPT's propensity for a coherent strategy in its gameplay and a noticeable uptick in decision-making assertiveness when the model is presented with a greater volume of natural language or possesses a more lucid understanding of the state of the chessboard. These findings contribute to the growing exploration of language models' abilities beyond natural language processing, providing valuable information for future research towards models demonstrating human-like cognitive abilities.
AI-Based Facial Emotion Recognition Solutions for Education: A Study of Teacher-User and Other Categories
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2023
Year: 2023

Existing information on AI-based facial emotion recognition (FER) is not easily comprehensible by those outside the field of computer science, requiring cross-disciplinary effort to determine a categorisation framework that promotes the understanding of this technology, and its impact on users. Most proponents classify FER in terms of methodology, implementation and analysis; relatively few by its application in education; and none by its users. This paper is concerned primarily with (potential) teacher-users of FER tools for education. It proposes a three-part classification of these teachers, by orientation, condition and preference, based on a classical taxonomy of affective educational objectives, and related theories. It also compiles and organises the types of FER solutions found in or inferred from the literature into "technology" and "applications" categories, as a prerequisite for structuring the proposed "teacher-user" category. This work has implications for proponents', critics', and users' understanding of the relationship between teachers and FER.
Evaluation of Real-World Risk-Based Authentication at Online Services Revisited: Complexity Wins
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2023
Year: 2023

Risk-based authentication (RBA) aims to protect end-users against attacks involving stolen or otherwise guessed passwords without requiring a second authentication method all the time. Online services typically set limits on what is still seen as normal and what is not, as well as the actions taken afterward. Consequently, RBA monitors different features, such as geolocation and device during login. If the features' values differ from the expected values, then a second authentication method might be requested. However, only a few online services publish information about how their systems work. This hinders not only RBA research but also its development and adoption in organizations. In order to understand how the RBA systems online services operate, black box testing is applied. To verify the results, we re-evaluate the three large providers: Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Based on our test setup and the test cases, we notice differences in RBA based on account creation at Google. Additionally, several test cases rarely trigger the RBA system. Our results provide new insights into RBA systems and raise several questions for future work.
A lightweight 3D dense facial landmark estimation model from position map data
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

The incorporation of 3D data in facial analysis tasks has gained popularity in recent years. Though it provides a more accurate and detailed representation of the human face, accruing 3D face data is more complex and expensive than 2D face images. Either one has to rely on expensive 3D scanners or depth sensors which are prone to noise. An alternative option is the reconstruction of 3D faces from uncalibrated 2D images in an unsupervised way without any ground truth 3D data. However, such approaches are computationally expensive and the learned model size is not suitable for mobile or other edge device applications. Predicting dense 3D landmarks over the whole face can overcome this issue. As there is no public dataset available containing dense landmarks, we propose a pipeline to create a dense keypoint training dataset containing 520 key points across the whole face from an existing facial position map data. We train a lightweight MobileNet-based regressor model with the generated data. As we do not have access to any evaluation dataset with dense landmarks in it we evaluate our model against the 68 keypoint detection task. Experimental results show that our trained model outperforms many of the existing methods in spite of its lower model size and minimal computational cost. Also, the qualitative evaluation shows the efficiency of our trained models in extreme head pose angles as well as other facial variations and occlusions.
Shared Lexical Items as Triggers of Code Switching
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2023
Year: 2023

Why do bilingual speakers code-switch (mix their two languages)? Among the several theories that attempt to explain this natural and ubiquitous phenomenon, the Triggering Hypothesis relates code-switching to the presence of lexical triggers, specifically cognates and proper names, adjacent to the switch point. We provide a fuller, more nuanced and refined exploration of the triggering hypothesis, based on five large datasets in three language pairs, reflecting both spoken and written bilingual interactions. Our results show that words that are assumed to reside in a mental lexicon shared by both languages indeed trigger code-switching; that the tendency to switch depends on the distance of the trigger from the switch point; and on whether the trigger precedes or succeeds the switch; but not on the etymology of the trigger words. We thus provide strong, robust, evidence-based confirmation to several hypotheses on the relationships between lexical triggers and code-switching.
Assessing Cyclostationary Malware Detection via Feature Selection and Classification
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2023
Year: 2023

Cyclostationarity involves periodic statistical variations in signals and processes, commonly used in signal analysis and network security. In the context of attacks, cyclostationarity helps detect malicious behaviors within network traffic, such as traffic patterns in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks or hidden communication channels in malware. This approach enhances security by identifying abnormal patterns and informing Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) to recognize potential attacks, enhancing protection against both known and novel threats. This research focuses on identifying cyclostationary malware behavior and its detection. The main goal is to pinpoint essential cyclostationary features used in NIDSs. These features are extracted using algorithms such as Boruta and Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and then categorized to find the most significant cyclostationary patterns. The aim of this article is to reveal periodically changing malware behaviors through cyclostationarity. The study highlights the importance of spotting cyclostationary malware in NIDSs by using established datasets like KDD99, NSL-KDD, and the UGRansome dataset. The UGRansome dataset is designed for anomaly detection research and includes both normal and abnormal network threat categories of zero-day attacks. A comparison is made using the Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms, while also evaluating the effectiveness of Boruta and PCA. The findings show that PCA is more promising than using Boruta alone for extracting cyclostationary network feature patterns. Additionally, the analysis identifies the internet protocol as the most noticeable cyclostationary feature pattern used by malware. Notably, the UGRansome dataset outperforms the KDD99 and NSL-KDD, achieving 99% accuracy in signature malware detection using the RF algorithm and 98% with the SVM.
Enhancing OCR Performance through Post-OCR Models: Adopting Glyph Embedding for Improved Correction
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

The study investigates the potential of post-OCR models to overcome limitations in OCR models and explores the impact of incorporating glyph embedding on post-OCR correction performance. In this study, we have developed our own post-OCR correction model. The novelty of our approach lies in embedding the OCR output using CharBERT and our unique embedding technique, capturing the visual characteristics of characters. Our findings show that post-OCR correction effectively addresses deficiencies in inferior OCR models, and glyph embedding enables the model to achieve superior results, including the ability to correct individual words.
A Multi-Perspective Learning to Rank Approach to Support Children's Information Seeking in the Classroom
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2023
Year: 2023

We introduce a novel re-ranking model that aims to augment the functionality of standard search engines to support classroom search activities for children (ages 6 to 11). This model extends the known listwise learning-to-rank framework by balancing risk and reward. Doing so enables the model to prioritize Web resources of high educational alignment, appropriateness, and adequate readability by analyzing the URLs, snippets, and page titles of Web resources retrieved by a given mainstream search engine. Experimental results, including an ablation study and comparisons with existing baselines, showcase the correctness of the proposed model. The outcomes of this work demonstrate the value of considering multiple perspectives inherent to the classroom setting, e.g., educational alignment, readability, and objectionability, when applied to the design of algorithms that can better support children's information discovery.
KGConv, a Conversational Corpus grounded in Wikidata
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2023
Year: 2023

We present KGConv, a large, conversational corpus of 71k conversations where each question-answer pair is grounded in a Wikidata fact. Conversations contain on average 8.6 questions and for each Wikidata fact, we provide multiple variants (12 on average) of the corresponding question using templates, human annotations, hand-crafted rules and a question rewriting neural model. We provide baselines for the task of Knowledge-Based, Conversational Question Generation. KGConv can further be used for other generation and analysis tasks such as single-turn question generation from Wikidata triples, question rewriting, question answering from conversation or from knowledge graphs and quiz generation.
Enhancing Mobile Face Anti-Spoofing: A Robust Framework for Diverse Attack Types under Screen Flash
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Face anti-spoofing (FAS) is crucial for securing face recognition systems. However, existing FAS methods with handcrafted binary or pixel-wise labels have limitations due to diverse presentation attacks (PAs). In this paper, we propose an attack type robust face anti-spoofing framework under light flash, called ATR-FAS. Due to imaging differences caused by various attack types, traditional FAS methods based on single binary classification network may result in excessive intra-class distance of spoof faces, leading to a challenge of decision boundary learning. Therefore, we employed multiple networks to reconstruct multi-frame depth maps as auxiliary supervision, and each network experts in one type of attack. A dual gate module (DGM) consisting of a type gate and a frame-attention gate is introduced, which perform attack type recognition and multi-frame attention generation, respectively. The outputs of DGM are utilized as weight to mix the result of multiple expert networks. The multi-experts mixture enables ATR-FAS to generate spoof-differentiated depth maps, and stably detects spoof faces without being affected by different types of PAs. Moreover, we design a differential normalization procedure to convert original flash frames into differential frames. This simple but effective processing enhances the details in flash frames, aiding in the generation of depth maps. To verify the effectiveness of our framework, we collected a large-scale dataset containing 12,660 live and spoof videos with diverse PAs under dynamic flash from the smartphone screen. Extensive experiments illustrate that the proposed ATR-FAS significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods. The code and dataset will be available at https://github.com/Chaochao-Lin/ATR-FAS.
Text-to-SQL Empowered by Large Language Models: A Benchmark Evaluation
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2023
Year: 2023

Large language models (LLMs) have emerged as a new paradigm for Text-to-SQL task. However, the absence of a systematical benchmark inhibits the development of designing effective, efficient and economic LLM-based Text-to-SQL solutions. To address this challenge, in this paper, we first conduct a systematical and extensive comparison over existing prompt engineering methods, including question representation, example selection and example organization, and with these experimental results, we elaborate their pros and cons. Based on these findings, we propose a new integrated solution, named DAIL-SQL, which refreshes the Spider leaderboard with 86.6% execution accuracy and sets a new bar. To explore the potential of open-source LLM, we investigate them in various scenarios, and further enhance their performance with supervised fine-tuning. Our explorations highlight open-source LLMs' potential in Text-to-SQL, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of the supervised fine-tuning. Additionally, towards an efficient and economic LLM-based Text-to-SQL solution, we emphasize the token efficiency in prompt engineering and compare the prior studies under this metric. We hope that our work provides a deeper understanding of Text-to-SQL with LLMs, and inspires further investigations and broad applications.
AnomalyGPT: Detecting Industrial Anomalies Using Large Vision-Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) such as MiniGPT-4 and LLaVA have demonstrated the capability of understanding images and achieved remarkable performance in various visual tasks. Despite their strong abilities in recognizing common objects due to extensive training datasets, they lack specific domain knowledge and have a weaker understanding of localized details within objects, which hinders their effectiveness in the Industrial Anomaly Detection (IAD) task. On the other hand, most existing IAD methods only provide anomaly scores and necessitate the manual setting of thresholds to distinguish between normal and abnormal samples, which restricts their practical implementation. In this paper, we explore the utilization of LVLM to address the IAD problem and propose AnomalyGPT, a novel IAD approach based on LVLM. We generate training data by simulating anomalous images and producing corresponding textual descriptions for each image. We also employ an image decoder to provide fine-grained semantic and design a prompt learner to fine-tune the LVLM using prompt embeddings. Our AnomalyGPT eliminates the need for manual threshold adjustments, thus directly assesses the presence and locations of anomalies. Additionally, AnomalyGPT supports multi-turn dialogues and exhibits impressive few-shot in-context learning capabilities. With only one normal shot, AnomalyGPT achieves the state-of-the-art performance with an accuracy of 86.1%, an image-level AUC of 94.1%, and a pixel-level AUC of 95.3% on the MVTec-AD dataset. Code is available at https://github.com/CASIA-IVA-Lab/AnomalyGPT.
Color Aesthetics: Fuzzy based User-driven Method for Harmony and Preference Prediction
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Color is the most important intrinsic sensory feature that has a powerful impact on product sales. Color is even responsible for raising the aesthetic senses in our brains. Account for individual differences is crucial in color aesthetics. It requires user-driven mechanisms for various e-commerce applications. We propose a method for quantitative evaluation of all types of perceptual responses to color(s): distinct color preference, color harmony, and color combination preference. Preference for color schemes can be predicted by combining preferences for the basic colors and ratings of color harmony. Harmonious pallets are extracted from big data set using comparison algorithms based on fuzzy similarity and grouping. The proposed model results in useful predictions of harmony and preference of multicolored images. For example, in the context of apparel coordination, it allows predicting a preference for a look based on clothing colors. Our approach differs from standard aesthetic models, since in accounts for a personal variation. In addition, it can process not only lower-order color pairs, but also groups of several colors.
Only YOU Can Make IEEE VIS Environmentally Sustainable
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2023
Year: 2023

The IEEE VIS Conference (or VIS) hosts more than 1000 people annually. It brings together visualization researchers and practitioners from across the world to share new research and knowledge. Behind the scenes, a team of volunteers puts together the entire conference and makes sure it runs smoothly. Organizing involves logistics of the conference, ensuring that the attendees have an enjoyable time, allocating rooms to multiple concurrent tracks, and keeping the conference within budget. In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has abruptly disrupted plans, forcing organizers to switch to virtual, hybrid, and satellite formats. These alternatives offer many benefits: fewer costs (e.g., travel, venue, institutional), greater accessibility (who can physically travel, who can get visas, who can get child care), and a lower carbon footprint (as people do not need to fly to attend). As many conferences begin to revert to the pre-pandemic status quo of primarily in-person conferences, we suggest that it is an opportune moment to reflect on the benefits and drawbacks of lower-carbon conference formats. To learn more about the logistics of conference organizing, we talked to 6 senior executive-level VIS organizers. We review some of the many considerations that go into planning, particularly with regard to how they influence decisions about alternative formats. We aim to start a discussion about the sustainability of VIS -- including sustainability for finance, volunteers, and, central to this work, the environment -- for the next three years and the next three hundred years.