OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Imperceptible Rhythm Backdoor Attacks: Exploring Rhythm Transformation for Embedding Undetectable Vulnerabilities on Speech Recognition
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2024
Year: 2024

Speech recognition is an essential start ring of human-computer interaction, and recently, deep learning models have achieved excellent success in this task. However, when the model training and private data provider are always separated, some security threats that make deep neural networks (DNNs) abnormal deserve to be researched. In recent years, the typical backdoor attacks have been researched in speech recognition systems. The existing backdoor methods are based on data poisoning. The attacker adds some incorporated changes to benign speech spectrograms or changes the speech components, such as pitch and timbre. As a result, the poisoned data can be detected by human hearing or automatic deep algorithms. To improve the stealthiness of data poisoning, we propose a non-neural and fast algorithm called Random Spectrogram Rhythm Transformation (RSRT) in this paper. The algorithm combines four steps to generate stealthy poisoned utterances. From the perspective of rhythm component transformation, our proposed trigger stretches or squeezes the mel spectrograms and recovers them back to signals. The operation keeps timbre and content unchanged for good stealthiness. Our experiments are conducted on two kinds of speech recognition tasks, including testing the stealthiness of poisoned samples by speaker verification and automatic speech recognition. The results show that our method has excellent effectiveness and stealthiness. The rhythm trigger needs a low poisoning rate and gets a very high attack success rate.
E-Bench: Towards Evaluating the Ease-of-Use of Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Most large language models (LLMs) are sensitive to prompts, and another synonymous expression or a typo may lead to unexpected results for the model. Composing an optimal prompt for a specific demand lacks theoretical support and relies entirely on human experimentation, which poses a considerable obstacle to popularizing generative artificial intelligence. However, there is no systematic analysis of the stability of LLMs in resisting prompt perturbations in real-world scenarios. In this work, we propose to evaluate the ease-of-use of LLMs and construct E-Bench, simulating the actual situation of human use from synonymous perturbation (including paraphrasing, simplification, and colloquialism) and typographical perturbation (such as typing). On this basis, we also discuss the combination of these two types of perturbation and analyze the main reasons for performance degradation. Experimental results indicate that with the increase of model size, although the ease-of-use are significantly improved, there is still a long way to go to build a sufficiently user-friendly model.
Toward Optimal LLM Alignments Using Two-Player Games
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

The standard Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) framework primarily focuses on optimizing the performance of large language models using pre-collected prompts. However, collecting prompts that provide comprehensive coverage is both tedious and challenging, and often fails to include scenarios that LLMs need to improve on the most. In this paper, we investigate alignment through the lens of two-agent games, involving iterative interactions between an adversarial and a defensive agent. The adversarial agent's task at each step is to generate prompts that expose the weakness of the defensive agent. In return, the defensive agent seeks to improve its responses to these newly identified prompts it struggled with, based on feedback from the reward model. We theoretically demonstrate that this iterative reinforcement learning optimization converges to a Nash Equilibrium for the game induced by the agents. Experimental results in safety scenarios demonstrate that learning in such a competitive environment not only fully trains agents but also leads to policies with enhanced generalization capabilities for both adversarial and defensive agents.
Threat Modelling and Risk Analysis for Large Language Model (LLM)-Powered Applications
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

The advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) has revolutionized various applications by providing advanced natural language processing capabilities. However, this innovation introduces new cybersecurity challenges. This paper explores the threat modeling and risk analysis specifically tailored for LLM-powered applications. Focusing on potential attacks like data poisoning, prompt injection, SQL injection, jailbreaking, and compositional injection, we assess their impact on security and propose mitigation strategies. We introduce a framework combining STRIDE and DREAD methodologies for proactive threat identification and risk assessment. Furthermore, we examine the feasibility of an end-to-end threat model through a case study of a custom-built LLM-powered application. This model follows Shostack's Four Question Framework, adjusted for the unique threats LLMs present. Our goal is to propose measures that enhance the security of these powerful AI tools, thwarting attacks, and ensuring the reliability and integrity of LLM-integrated systems.
RUPBench: Benchmarking Reasoning Under Perturbations for Robustness Evaluation in Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

With the increasing use of large language models (LLMs), ensuring reliable performance in diverse, real-world environments is essential. Despite their remarkable achievements, LLMs often struggle with adversarial inputs, significantly impacting their effectiveness in practical applications. To systematically understand the robustness of LLMs, we present RUPBench, a comprehensive benchmark designed to evaluate LLM robustness across diverse reasoning tasks. Our benchmark incorporates 15 reasoning datasets, categorized into commonsense, arithmetic, logical, and knowledge-intensive reasoning, and introduces nine types of textual perturbations at lexical, syntactic, and semantic levels. By examining the performance of state-of-the-art LLMs such as GPT-4o, Llama3, Phi-3, and Gemma on both original and perturbed datasets, we provide a detailed analysis of their robustness and error patterns. Our findings highlight that larger models tend to exhibit greater robustness to perturbations. Additionally, common error types are identified through manual inspection, revealing specific challenges faced by LLMs in different reasoning contexts. This work provides insights into areas where LLMs need further improvement to handle diverse and noisy inputs effectively.
Kolmogorov Arnold Informed neural network: A physics-informed deep learning framework for solving forward and inverse problems based on Kolmogorov Arnold Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

AI for partial differential equations (PDEs) has garnered significant attention, particularly with the emergence of Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs). The recent advent of Kolmogorov-Arnold Network (KAN) indicates that there is potential to revisit and enhance the previously MLP-based PINNs. Compared to MLPs, KANs offer interpretability and require fewer parameters. PDEs can be described in various forms, such as strong form, energy form, and inverse form. While mathematically equivalent, these forms are not computationally equivalent, making the exploration of different PDE formulations significant in computational physics. Thus, we propose different PDE forms based on KAN instead of MLP, termed Kolmogorov-Arnold-Informed Neural Network (KINN) for solving forward and inverse problems. We systematically compare MLP and KAN in various numerical examples of PDEs, including multi-scale, singularity, stress concentration, nonlinear hyperelasticity, heterogeneous, and complex geometry problems. Our results demonstrate that KINN significantly outperforms MLP regarding accuracy and convergence speed for numerous PDEs in computational solid mechanics, except for the complex geometry problem. This highlights KINN's potential for more efficient and accurate PDE solutions in AI for PDEs.
Advancing Solar Flare Prediction using Deep Learning with Active Region Patches
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

In this paper, we introduce a novel methodology for leveraging shape-based characteristics of magnetograms of active region (AR) patches and provide a novel capability for predicting solar flares covering the entirety of the solar disk (AR patches spanning from -90$^{\circ}$ to +90$^{\circ}$ of solar longitude). We create three deep learning models: (i) ResNet34, (ii) MobileNet, and (iii) MobileViT to predict $\geq$M-class flares and assess the efficacy of these models across various ranges of solar longitude. Given the inherent imbalance in our data, we employ augmentation techniques alongside undersampling during the model training phase, while maintaining imbalanced partitions in the testing data for realistic evaluation. We use a composite skill score (CSS) as our evaluation metric, computed as the geometric mean of the True Skill Score (TSS) and the Heidke Skill Score (HSS) to rank and compare models. The primary contributions of this work are as follows: (i) We introduce a novel capability in solar flare prediction that allows predicting flares for each ARs throughout the solar disk and evaluate and compare the performance, (ii) Our candidate model (MobileNet) achieves a CSS=0.51 (TSS=0.60 and HSS=0.44), CSS=0.51 (TSS=0.59 and HSS=0.44), and CSS=0.48 (TSS=0.56 and HSS=0.40) for AR patches within $\pm$30$^{\circ}$, $\pm$60$^{\circ}$, $\pm$90$^{\circ}$ of solar longitude respectively. Additionally, we demonstrate the ability to issue flare forecasts for ARs in near-limb regions (regions between $\pm$60$^{\circ}$ to $\pm$90 $^{\circ}$) with a CSS=0.39 (TSS=0.48 and HSS=0.32), expanding the scope of AR-based models for solar flare prediction. This advancement opens new avenues for more reliable prediction of solar flares, thereby contributing to improved forecasting capabilities.
Parameter Blending for Multi-Camera Harmonization for Automotive Surround View Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

In a surround view system, the image color and tone captured by multiple cameras can be different due to cameras applying auto white balance (AWB), global tone mapping (GTM) individually for each camera. The color and brightness along stitched seam location may look discontinuous among multiple cameras which impacts overall stitched image visual quality. To improve the color transition between adjacent cameras in stitching algorithm, we propose harmonization algorithm which applies before stitching to adjust multiple cameras' color and tone so that stitched image has smoother color and tone transition between adjacent cameras. Our proposed harmonization algorithm consists of AWB harmonization and GTM harmonization leveraging Image Signal Processor (ISP)'s AWB and GTM metadata statistics. Experiment result shows that our proposed algorithm outperforms global color transfer method in both visual quality and computational cost.
Learning Relighting and Intrinsic Decomposition in Neural Radiance Fields
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

The task of extracting intrinsic components, such as reflectance and shading, from neural radiance fields is of growing interest. However, current methods largely focus on synthetic scenes and isolated objects, overlooking the complexities of real scenes with backgrounds. To address this gap, our research introduces a method that combines relighting with intrinsic decomposition. By leveraging light variations in scenes to generate pseudo labels, our method provides guidance for intrinsic decomposition without requiring ground truth data. Our method, grounded in physical constraints, ensures robustness across diverse scene types and reduces the reliance on pre-trained models or hand-crafted priors. We validate our method on both synthetic and real-world datasets, achieving convincing results. Furthermore, the applicability of our method to image editing tasks demonstrates promising outcomes.
A Bayesian Drift-Diffusion Model of Schachter-Singer's Two Factor Theory of Emotion
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2024
Year: 2024

Bayesian inference has been used in the past to model visual perception (Kersten, Mamassian, & Yuille, 2004), accounting for the Helmholtz principle of perception as "unconscious inference" that is constrained by bottom-up sensory evidence (likelihood) while subject to top-down expectation, priming, or other contextual influences (prior bias); here "unconsciousness" merely relates to the "directness" of perception in the sense of Gibson. Here, we adopt the same Bayesian framework to model emotion process in accordance with Schachter-Singer's Two-Factor theory, which argues that emotion is the outcome of cognitive labeling or attribution of a diffuse pattern of autonomic arousal (Schachter & Singer, 1962). In analogous to visual perception, we conceptualize the emotion process as an instance of Bayesian inference, combining the contextual information with a person's physiological arousal patterns. Drift-diffusion models were constructed to simulate emotional processes, where the decision boundaries correspond to the emotional state experienced by the participants, and boundary-crossing constitutes "labeling" in Schachter-Singer's sense. Our model is tested against experimental data from the Schachter & Singer's study (1962) and the Ross et al. study (1969). Two model scenarios are investigated, in which arousal pattern as one factor is pitted against contextual interaction with an confederate (in Schachter-Singer case) or explicitly instructed mis-attribution (in Ross et al. case) as another factor, mapping onto the Bayesian prior (initial position of the drift) and the likelihood function (evidence accumulation or drift rate). We find that the first scenario (arousal as the prior and context as the likelihood) has a better fit with Schachter & Singer (1962) whereas the second scenario (context as the prior and arousal as the likelihood) has a better fit with Ross et al. (1969).
Active search for Bifurcations
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Bifurcations mark qualitative changes of long-term behavior in dynamical systems and can often signal sudden ("hard") transitions or catastrophic events (divergences). Accurately locating them is critical not just for deeper understanding of observed dynamic behavior, but also for designing efficient interventions. When the dynamical system at hand is complex, possibly noisy, and expensive to sample, standard (e.g. continuation based) numerical methods may become impractical. We propose an active learning framework, where Bayesian Optimization is leveraged to discover saddle-node or Hopf bifurcations, from a judiciously chosen small number of vector field observations. Such an approach becomes especially attractive in systems whose state x parameter space exploration is resource-limited. It also naturally provides a framework for uncertainty quantification (aleatoric and epistemic), useful in systems with inherent stochasticity.
Save It All: Enabling Full Parameter Tuning for Federated Large Language Models via Cycle Block Gradient Descent
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

The advent of large language models (LLMs) has revolutionized the deep learning paradigm, yielding impressive results across a wide array of tasks. However, the pre-training or fine-tuning of LLMs within a federated learning (FL) framework poses substantial challenges, including considerable computational and memory resource demands, as well as communication bottlenecks between servers and clients. Existing solutions either make the unrealistic assumption that the entire model is exchanged for training, or apply parameter-effective fine-tuning methods from centralized learning to train LLMs in FL which tend to underperform during training or fine-tuning stages due to the limited search subspace of parameter updating. In this paper, we introduce a novel method for the efficient training and fine-tuning of LLMs in FL, with minimal resource consumption. Our approach, termed FedCyBGD, utilizes Cycle Block Gradient Descent to periodically update the model. In particular, we design a compression scheme for FedCyBGD, aiming to further decrease the model download cost. It enables full parameter training in FL with only selected block updates and uploads, thereby reducing communication, computation, and memory costs. Our method achieves state-of-the-art performance for FL LLM training, while significantly reducing associated costs. Codes are provided here.
Problematic Tokens: Tokenizer Bias in Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Recent advancements in large language models(LLMs), such as GPT-4 and GPT-4o, have shown exceptional performance, especially in languages with abundant resources like English, thanks to extensive datasets that ensure robust training. Conversely, these models exhibit limitations when processing under-resourced languages such as Chinese and Korean, where issues including hallucinatory responses remain prevalent. This paper traces the roots of these disparities to the tokenization process inherent to these models. Specifically, it explores how the tokenizers vocabulary, often used to speed up the tokenization process and reduce tokens but constructed independently of the actual model training data, inadequately represents non-English languages. This misrepresentation results in the propagation of under-trained or untrained tokens, which perpetuate biases and pose serious concerns related to data security and ethical standards. We aim to dissect the tokenization mechanics of GPT-4o, illustrating how its simplified token-handling methods amplify these risks and offer strategic solutions to mitigate associated security and ethical issues. Through this study, we emphasize the critical need to rethink tokenization frameworks to foster more equitable and secure AI technologies. The code and data are available at https://github.com/yeyimilk/LLMGPT4o
The Benefits of Power Regularization in Cooperative Reinforcement Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) algorithms, trained only to optimize task reward, can lead to a concentration of power where the failure or adversarial intent of a single agent could decimate the reward of every agent in the system. In the context of teams of people, it is often useful to explicitly consider how power is distributed to ensure no person becomes a single point of failure. Here, we argue that explicitly regularizing the concentration of power in cooperative RL systems can result in systems which are more robust to single agent failure, adversarial attacks, and incentive changes of co-players. To this end, we define a practical pairwise measure of power that captures the ability of any co-player to influence the ego agent's reward, and then propose a power-regularized objective which balances task reward and power concentration. Given this new objective, we show that there always exists an equilibrium where every agent is playing a power-regularized best-response balancing power and task reward. Moreover, we present two algorithms for training agents towards this power-regularized objective: Sample Based Power Regularization (SBPR), which injects adversarial data during training; and Power Regularization via Intrinsic Motivation (PRIM), which adds an intrinsic motivation to regulate power to the training objective. Our experiments demonstrate that both algorithms successfully balance task reward and power, leading to lower power behavior than the baseline of task-only reward and avoid catastrophic events in case an agent in the system goes off-policy.
STEVE Series: Step-by-Step Construction of Agent Systems in Minecraft
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Building an embodied agent system with a large language model (LLM) as its core is a promising direction. Due to the significant costs and uncontrollable factors associated with deploying and training such agents in the real world, we have decided to begin our exploration within the Minecraft environment. Our STEVE Series agents can complete basic tasks in a virtual environment and more challenging tasks such as navigation and even creative tasks, with an efficiency far exceeding previous state-of-the-art methods by a factor of $2.5\times$ to $7.3\times$. We begin our exploration with a vanilla large language model, augmenting it with a vision encoder and an action codebase trained on our collected high-quality dataset STEVE-21K. Subsequently, we enhanced it with a Critic and memory to transform it into a complex system. Finally, we constructed a hierarchical multi-agent system. Our recent work explored how to prune the agent system through knowledge distillation. In the future, we will explore more potential applications of STEVE agents in the real world.
Can Machines Resonate with Humans? Evaluating the Emotional and Empathic Comprehension of LMs
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Empathy plays a pivotal role in fostering prosocial behavior, often triggered by the sharing of personal experiences through narratives. However, modeling empathy using NLP approaches remains challenging due to its deep interconnection with human interaction dynamics. Previous approaches, which involve fine-tuning language models (LMs) on human-annotated empathic datasets, have had limited success. In our pursuit of improving empathy understanding in LMs, we propose several strategies, including contrastive learning with masked LMs and supervised fine-tuning with large language models. While these methods show improvements over previous methods, the overall results remain unsatisfactory. To better understand this trend, we performed an analysis which reveals a low agreement among annotators. This lack of consensus hinders training and highlights the subjective nature of the task. We also explore the cultural impact on annotations. To study this, we meticulously collected story pairs in Urdu language and find that subjectivity in interpreting empathy among annotators appears to be independent of cultural background. Our systematic exploration of LMs' understanding of empathy reveals substantial opportunities for further investigation in both task formulation and modeling.
Skip-Layer Attention: Bridging Abstract and Detailed Dependencies in Transformers
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

The Transformer architecture has significantly advanced deep learning, particularly in natural language processing, by effectively managing long-range dependencies. However, as the demand for understanding complex relationships grows, refining the Transformer's architecture becomes critical. This paper introduces Skip-Layer Attention (SLA) to enhance Transformer models by enabling direct attention between non-adjacent layers. This method improves the model's ability to capture dependencies between high-level abstract features and low-level details. By facilitating direct attention between these diverse feature levels, our approach overcomes the limitations of current Transformers, which often rely on suboptimal intra-layer attention. Our implementation extends the Transformer's functionality by enabling queries in a given layer to interact with keys and values from both the current layer and one preceding layer, thus enhancing the diversity of multi-head attention without additional computational burden. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our enhanced Transformer model achieves superior performance in language modeling tasks, highlighting the effectiveness of our skip-layer attention mechanism.