OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Congested Urban Networks Tend to Be Insensitive to Signal Settings: Implications for Learning-Based Control
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

This paper highlights several properties of large urban networks that can have an impact on machine learning methods applied to traffic signal control. In particular, we show that the average network flow tends to be independent of the signal control policy as density increases. This property, which so far has remained under the radar, implies that deep reinforcement learning (DRL) methods becomes ineffective when trained under congested conditions, and might explain DRL's limited success for traffic signal control. Our results apply to all possible grid networks thanks to a parametrization based on two network parameters: the ratio of the expected distance between consecutive traffic lights to the expected green time, and the turning probability at intersections. Networks with different parameters exhibit very different responses to traffic signal control. Notably, we found that no control (i.e. random policy) can be an effective control strategy for a surprisingly large family of networks. The impact of the turning probability turned out to be very significant both for baseline and for DRL policies. It also explains the loss of symmetry observed for these policies, which is not captured by existing theories that rely on corridor approximations without turns. Our findings also suggest that supervised learning methods have enormous potential as they require very little examples to produce excellent policies.
Delving into Inter-Image Invariance for Unsupervised Visual Representations
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

Contrastive learning has recently shown immense potential in unsupervised visual representation learning. Existing studies in this track mainly focus on intra-image invariance learning. The learning typically uses rich intra-image transformations to construct positive pairs and then maximizes agreement using a contrastive loss. The merits of inter-image invariance, conversely, remain much less explored. One major obstacle to exploit inter-image invariance is that it is unclear how to reliably construct inter-image positive pairs, and further derive effective supervision from them since no pair annotations are available. In this work, we present a comprehensive empirical study to better understand the role of inter-image invariance learning from three main constituting components: pseudo-label maintenance, sampling strategy, and decision boundary design. To facilitate the study, we introduce a unified and generic framework that supports the integration of unsupervised intra- and inter-image invariance learning. Through carefully-designed comparisons and analysis, multiple valuable observations are revealed: 1) online labels converge faster and perform better than offline labels; 2) semi-hard negative samples are more reliable and unbiased than hard negative samples; 3) a less stringent decision boundary is more favorable for inter-image invariance learning. With all the obtained recipes, our final model, namely InterCLR, shows consistent improvements over state-of-the-art intra-image invariance learning methods on multiple standard benchmarks. We hope this work will provide useful experience for devising effective unsupervised inter-image invariance learning. Code: https://github.com/open-mmlab/mmselfsup.
Dynamical Variational Autoencoders: A Comprehensive Review
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Variational autoencoders (VAEs) are powerful deep generative models widely used to represent high-dimensional complex data through a low-dimensional latent space learned in an unsupervised manner. In the original VAE model, the input data vectors are processed independently. Recently, a series of papers have presented different extensions of the VAE to process sequential data, which model not only the latent space but also the temporal dependencies within a sequence of data vectors and corresponding latent vectors, relying on recurrent neural networks or state-space models. In this paper, we perform a literature review of these models. We introduce and discuss a general class of models, called dynamical variational autoencoders (DVAEs), which encompasses a large subset of these temporal VAE extensions. Then, we present in detail seven recently proposed DVAE models, with an aim to homogenize the notations and presentation lines, as well as to relate these models with existing classical temporal models. We have reimplemented those seven DVAE models and present the results of an experimental benchmark conducted on the speech analysis-resynthesis task (the PyTorch code is made publicly available). The paper concludes with a discussion on important issues concerning the DVAE class of models and future research guidelines.
Puzzle-AE: Novelty Detection in Images through Solving Puzzles
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

Autoencoder, as an essential part of many anomaly detection methods, is lacking flexibility on normal data in complex datasets. U-Net is proved to be effective for this purpose but overfits on the training data if trained by just using reconstruction error similar to other AE-based frameworks. Puzzle-solving, as a pretext task of self-supervised learning (SSL) methods, has earlier proved its ability in learning semantically meaningful features. We show that training U-Nets based on this task is an effective remedy that prevents overfitting and facilitates learning beyond pixel-level features. Shortcut solutions, however, are a big challenge in SSL tasks, including jigsaw puzzles. We propose adversarial robust training as an effective automatic shortcut removal. We achieve competitive or superior results compared to the State of the Art (SOTA) anomaly detection methods on various toy and real-world datasets. Unlike many competitors, the proposed framework is stable, fast, data-efficient, and does not require unprincipled early stopping.
Statistically Robust, Risk-Averse Best Arm Identification in Multi-Armed Bandits
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Traditional multi-armed bandit (MAB) formulations usually make certain assumptions about the underlying arms' distributions, such as bounds on the support or their tail behaviour. Moreover, such parametric information is usually 'baked' into the algorithms. In this paper, we show that specialized algorithms that exploit such parametric information are prone to inconsistent learning performance when the parameter is misspecified. Our key contributions are twofold: (i) We establish fundamental performance limits of statistically robust MAB algorithms under the fixed-budget pure exploration setting, and (ii) We propose two classes of algorithms that are asymptotically near-optimal. Additionally, we consider a risk-aware criterion for best arm identification, where the objective associated with each arm is a linear combination of the mean and the conditional value at risk (CVaR). Throughout, we make a very mild 'bounded moment' assumption, which lets us work with both light-tailed and heavy-tailed distributions within a unified framework.
Turning Machines: a simple algorithmic model for molecular robotics
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2022
Year: 2022

Molecular robotics is challenging, so it seems best to keep it simple. We consider an abstract molecular robotics model based on simple folding instructions that execute asynchronously. Turning Machines are a simple 1D to 2D folding model, also easily generalisable to 2D to 3D folding. A Turning Machine starts out as a line of connected monomers in the discrete plane, each with an associated turning number. A monomer turns relative to its neighbours, executing a unit-distance translation that drags other monomers along with it, and through collective motion the initial set of monomers eventually folds into a programmed shape. We provide a suite of tools for reasoning about Turning Machines by fully characterising their ability to execute line rotations: executing an almost-full line rotation of $5π/3$ radians is possible, yet a full $2π$ rotation is impossible. Furthermore, line rotations up to $5π/3$ are executed efficiently, in $O(\log n)$ expected time in our continuous time Markov chain time model. We then show that such line-rotations represent a fundamental primitive in the model, by using them to efficiently and asynchronously fold shapes. In particular, arbitrarily large zig-zag-rastered squares and zig-zag paths are foldable, as are $y$-monotone shapes albeit with error (bounded by perimeter length). Finally, we give shapes that despite having paths that traverse all their points, are in fact impossible to fold, as well as techniques for folding certain classes of (scaled) shapes without error. Our approach relies on careful geometric-based analyses of the feats possible and impossible by a very simple robotic system, and pushes conceptional hardness towards mathematical analysis and away from molecular implementation.
Generalized vec trick for fast learning of pairwise kernel models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Pairwise learning corresponds to the supervised learning setting where the goal is to make predictions for pairs of objects. Prominent applications include predicting drug-target or protein-protein interactions, or customer-product preferences. In this work, we present a comprehensive review of pairwise kernels, that have been proposed for incorporating prior knowledge about the relationship between the objects. Specifically, we consider the standard, symmetric and anti-symmetric Kronecker product kernels, metric-learning, Cartesian, ranking, as well as linear, polynomial and Gaussian kernels. Recently, a O(nm + nq) time generalized vec trick algorithm, where n, m, and q denote the number of pairs, drugs and targets, was introduced for training kernel methods with the Kronecker product kernel. This was a significant improvement over previous O(n^2) training methods, since in most real-world applications m,q << n. In this work we show how all the reviewed kernels can be expressed as sums of Kronecker products, allowing the use of generalized vec trick for speeding up their computation. In the experiments, we demonstrate how the introduced approach allows scaling pairwise kernels to much larger data sets than previously feasible, and provide an extensive comparison of the kernels on a number of biological interaction prediction tasks.
Quantifying Explainability of Saliency Methods in Deep Neural Networks with a Synthetic Dataset
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

Post-hoc analysis is a popular category in eXplainable artificial intelligence (XAI) study. In particular, methods that generate heatmaps have been used to explain the deep neural network (DNN), a black-box model. Heatmaps can be appealing due to the intuitive and visual ways to understand them but assessing their qualities might not be straightforward. Different ways to assess heatmaps' quality have their own merits and shortcomings. This paper introduces a synthetic dataset that can be generated adhoc along with the ground-truth heatmaps for more objective quantitative assessment. Each sample data is an image of a cell with easily recognized features that are distinguished from localization ground-truth mask, hence facilitating a more transparent assessment of different XAI methods. Comparison and recommendations are made, shortcomings are clarified along with suggestions for future research directions to handle the finer details of select post-hoc analysis methods. Furthermore, mabCAM is introduced as the heatmap generation method compatible with our ground-truth heatmaps. The framework is easily generalizable and uses only standard deep learning components.
Modelling Gossip Interactions in Open Multi-Agent Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.MA 2022
Year: 2022

We consider open multi-agent systems, which are systems subject to frequent arrivals and departures of agents while the studied process takes place. We study the behavior of all-to-all pairwise gossip interactions in such open systems. Arrivals and departures of agents imply that the composition and size of the system evolve with time, and in particular prevent convergence. We describe the expected behavior of the system by showing that the evolution of scale-independent quantities can be characterized exactly by a fixed-size linear dynamical system. We apply this approach to characterize the evolution of the two first moments (and thus also of the variance) for open systems of fixed and variable size. Our approach is based on the continuous-time modelling of random asynchronous events impacting the systems (gossip steps, arrivals, departures, and replacements), and can be extended to other types of events.
Second-Order Asymptotically Optimal Outlier Hypothesis Testing
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2022
Year: 2022

We revisit the outlier hypothesis testing framework of Li \emph{et al.} (TIT 2014) and derive fundamental limits for the optimal test under the generalized Neyman-Pearson criterion. In outlier hypothesis testing, one is given multiple observed sequences, where most sequences are generated i.i.d. from a nominal distribution. The task is to discern the set of outlying sequences that are generated from anomalous distributions. The nominal and anomalous distributions are \emph{unknown}. We study the tradeoff among the probabilities of misclassification error, false alarm and false reject for tests that satisfy weak conditions on the rate of decrease of these error probabilities as a function of sequence length. Specifically, we propose a threshold-based test that ensures exponential decay of misclassification error and false alarm probabilities. We study two constraints on the false reject probability, with one constraint being that it is a non-vanishing constant and the other being that it has an exponential decay rate. For both cases, we characterize bounds on the false reject probability, as a function of the threshold, for each pair of nominal and anomalous distributions and demonstrate the optimality of our test under the generalized Neyman-Pearson criterion. We first consider the case of at most one outlying sequence and then generalize our results to the case of multiple outlying sequences where the number of outlying sequences is unknown and each outlying sequence can follow a different anomalous distribution.
Linear Temporal Public Announcement Logic: a new perspective for reasoning about the knowledge of multi-classifiers
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2022
Year: 2022

In this note, a formal transition system model called LTPAL to extract knowledge in a classification process is suggested. The model combines the Public Announcement Logic (PAL) and the Linear Temporal Logic (LTL). In the model, first, we consider classifiers, which capture single-framed data. Next, we took classifiers for data-stream data input into consideration. Finally, we formalize natural language properties in LTPAL with a video-stream object detection sample.
Multi-Objective Model-based Reinforcement Learning for Infectious Disease Control
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Severe infectious diseases such as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pose a huge threat to public health. Stringent control measures, such as school closures and stay-at-home orders, while having significant effects, also bring huge economic losses. In the face of an emerging infectious disease, a crucial question for policymakers is how to make the trade-off and implement the appropriate interventions timely given the huge uncertainty. In this work, we propose a Multi-Objective Model-based Reinforcement Learning framework to facilitate data-driven decision-making and minimize the overall long-term cost. Specifically, at each decision point, a Bayesian epidemiological model is first learned as the environment model, and then the proposed model-based multi-objective planning algorithm is applied to find a set of Pareto-optimal policies. This framework, combined with the prediction bands for each policy, provides a real-time decision support tool for policymakers. The application is demonstrated with the spread of COVID-19 in China.
Meta-learning based Alternating Minimization Algorithm for Non-convex Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

In this paper, we propose a novel solution for non-convex problems of multiple variables, especially for those typically solved by an alternating minimization (AM) strategy that splits the original optimization problem into a set of sub-problems corresponding to each variable, and then iteratively optimize each sub-problem using a fixed updating rule. However, due to the intrinsic non-convexity of the original optimization problem, the optimization can usually be trapped into spurious local minimum even when each sub-problem can be optimally solved at each iteration. Meanwhile, learning-based approaches, such as deep unfolding algorithms, are highly limited by the lack of labelled data and restricted explainability. To tackle these issues, we propose a meta-learning based alternating minimization (MLAM) method, which aims to minimize a partial of the global losses over iterations instead of carrying minimization on each sub-problem, and it tends to learn an adaptive strategy to replace the handcrafted counterpart resulting in advance on superior performance. Meanwhile, the proposed MLAM still maintains the original algorithmic principle, which contributes to a better interpretability. We evaluate the proposed method on two representative problems, namely, bi-linear inverse problem: matrix completion, and non-linear problem: Gaussian mixture models. The experimental results validate that our proposed approach outperforms AM-based methods in standard settings, and is able to achieve effective optimization in challenging cases while other comparing methods would typically fail.
Wireless Powering Internet of Things with UAVs: Challenges and Opportunities
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2022
Year: 2022

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have the potential to overcome the deployment constraint of Internet of Things (IoT) in remote or rural area. Wirelessly powered communications (WPC) can address the battery limitation of IoT devices through transferring wireless power to IoT devices. The integration of UAVs and WPC, namely UAV-enabled Wireless Powering IoT (Ue-WPIoT) can greatly extend the IoT applications from cities to remote or rural areas. In this article, we present a state-of-the-art overview of Ue-WPIoT by first illustrating the working flow of Ue-WPIoT and discussing the challenges. We then introduce the enabling technologies in realizing Ue-WPIoT. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the enabling technologies in Ue-WPIoT. We finally outline the future directions and open issues.
Applications of Deep Neural Networks with Keras
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Deep learning is a group of exciting new technologies for neural networks. Through a combination of advanced training techniques and neural network architectural components, it is now possible to create neural networks that can handle tabular data, images, text, and audio as both input and output. Deep learning allows a neural network to learn hierarchies of information in a way that is like the function of the human brain. This course will introduce the student to classic neural network structures, Convolution Neural Networks (CNN), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Gated Recurrent Neural Networks (GRU), General Adversarial Networks (GAN), and reinforcement learning. Application of these architectures to computer vision, time series, security, natural language processing (NLP), and data generation will be covered. High-Performance Computing (HPC) aspects will demonstrate how deep learning can be leveraged both on graphical processing units (GPUs), as well as grids. Focus is primarily upon the application of deep learning to problems, with some introduction to mathematical foundations. Readers will use the Python programming language to implement deep learning using Google TensorFlow and Keras. It is not necessary to know Python prior to this book; however, familiarity with at least one programming language is assumed.
Adaptive KL-UCB based Bandit Algorithms for Markovian and i.i.d. Settings
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

In the regret-based formulation of Multi-armed Bandit (MAB) problems, except in rare instances, much of the literature focuses on arms with i.i.d. rewards. In this paper, we consider the problem of obtaining regret guarantees for MAB problems in which the rewards of each arm form a Markov chain which may not belong to a single parameter exponential family. To achieve a logarithmic regret in such problems is not difficult: a variation of standard Kullback-Leibler Upper Confidence Bound (KL-UCB) does the job. However, the constants obtained from such an analysis are poor for the following reason: i.i.d. rewards are a special case of Markov rewards and it is difficult to design an algorithm that works well independent of whether the underlying model is truly Markovian or i.i.d. To overcome this issue, we introduce a novel algorithm that identifies whether the rewards from each arm are truly Markovian or i.i.d. using a total variation distance-based test. Our algorithm then switches from using a standard KL-UCB to a specialized version of KL-UCB when it determines that the arm reward is Markovian, thus resulting in low regrets for both i.i.d. and Markovian settings.
Spectral Flow on the Manifold of SPD Matrices for Multimodal Data Processing
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

In this paper, we consider data acquired by multimodal sensors capturing complementary aspects and features of a measured phenomenon. We focus on a scenario in which the measurements share mutual sources of variability but might also be contaminated by other measurement-specific sources such as interferences or noise. Our approach combines manifold learning, which is a class of nonlinear data-driven dimension reduction methods, with the well-known Riemannian geometry of symmetric and positive-definite (SPD) matrices. Manifold learning typically includes the spectral analysis of a kernel built from the measurements. Here, we take a different approach, utilizing the Riemannian geometry of the kernels. In particular, we study the way the spectrum of the kernels changes along geodesic paths on the manifold of SPD matrices. We show that this change enables us, in a purely unsupervised manner, to derive a compact, yet informative, description of the relations between the measurements, in terms of their underlying components. Based on this result, we present new algorithms for extracting the common latent components and for identifying common and measurement-specific components.
Reward Maximisation through Discrete Active Inference
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2022
Year: 2022

Active inference is a probabilistic framework for modelling the behaviour of biological and artificial agents, which derives from the principle of minimising free energy. In recent years, this framework has successfully been applied to a variety of situations where the goal was to maximise reward, offering comparable and sometimes superior performance to alternative approaches. In this paper, we clarify the connection between reward maximisation and active inference by demonstrating how and when active inference agents perform actions that are optimal for maximising reward. Precisely, we show the conditions under which active inference produces the optimal solution to the Bellman equation--a formulation that underlies several approaches to model-based reinforcement learning and control. On partially observed Markov decision processes, the standard active inference scheme can produce Bellman optimal actions for planning horizons of 1, but not beyond. In contrast, a recently developed recursive active inference scheme (sophisticated inference) can produce Bellman optimal actions on any finite temporal horizon. We append the analysis with a discussion of the broader relationship between active inference and reinforcement learning.