OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Complex Dynamics in Autobidding Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2024
Year: 2024

It has become the default in markets such as ad auctions for participants to bid in an auction through automated bidding agents (autobidders) which adjust bids over time to satisfy return-over-spend constraints. Despite the prominence of such systems for the internet economy, their resulting dynamical behavior is still not well understood. Although one might hope that such relatively simple systems would typically converge to the equilibria of their underlying auctions, we provide a plethora of results that show the emergence of complex behavior, such as bi-stability, periodic orbits and quasi periodicity. We empirically observe how the market structure (expressed as motifs) qualitatively affects the behavior of the dynamics. We complement it with theoretical results showing that autobidding systems can simulate both linear dynamical systems as well logical boolean gates.
Mamba or RWKV: Exploring High-Quality and High-Efficiency Segment Anything Model
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Transformer-based segmentation methods face the challenge of efficient inference when dealing with high-resolution images. Recently, several linear attention architectures, such as Mamba and RWKV, have attracted much attention as they can process long sequences efficiently. In this work, we focus on designing an efficient segment-anything model by exploring these different architectures. Specifically, we design a mixed backbone that contains convolution and RWKV operation, which achieves the best for both accuracy and efficiency. In addition, we design an efficient decoder to utilize the multiscale tokens to obtain high-quality masks. We denote our method as RWKV-SAM, a simple, effective, fast baseline for SAM-like models. Moreover, we build a benchmark containing various high-quality segmentation datasets and jointly train one efficient yet high-quality segmentation model using this benchmark. Based on the benchmark results, our RWKV-SAM achieves outstanding performance in efficiency and segmentation quality compared to transformers and other linear attention models. For example, compared with the same-scale transformer model, RWKV-SAM achieves more than 2x speedup and can achieve better segmentation performance on various datasets. In addition, RWKV-SAM outperforms recent vision Mamba models with better classification and semantic segmentation results. Code and models will be publicly available.
Threat-Informed Cyber Resilience Index: A Probabilistic Quantitative Approach to Measure Defence Effectiveness Against Cyber Attacks
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

In the dynamic cyber threat landscape, effective decision-making under uncertainty is crucial for maintaining robust information security. This paper introduces the Cyber Resilience Index (CRI), a threat-informed probabilistic approach to quantifying an organisation's defence effectiveness against cyber-attacks (campaigns). Building upon the Threat-Intelligence Based Security Assessment (TIBSA) methodology, we present a mathematical model that translates complex threat intelligence into an actionable, unified metric similar to a stock market index, that executives can understand and interact with while teams can act upon. Our method leverages Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) to simulate attacker behaviour considering real-world uncertainties and the latest threat actor tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). This allows for dynamic, context-aware evaluation of an organization's security posture, moving beyond static compliance-based assessments. As a result, decision-makers are equipped with a single metric of cyber resilience that bridges the gap between quantitative and qualitative assessments, enabling data-driven resource allocation and strategic planning. This can ultimately lead to more informed decision-making, mitigate under or overspending, and assist in resource allocation.
Woven Fabric Capture with a Reflection-Transmission Photo Pair
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Digitizing woven fabrics would be valuable for many applications, from digital humans to interior design. Previous work introduces a lightweight woven fabric acquisition approach by capturing a single reflection image and estimating the fabric parameters with a differentiable geometric and shading model. The renderings of the estimated fabric parameters can closely match the photo; however, the captured reflection image is insufficient to fully characterize the fabric sample reflectance. For instance, fabrics with different thicknesses might have similar reflection images but lead to significantly different transmission. We propose to recover the woven fabric parameters from two captured images: reflection and transmission. At the core of our method is a differentiable bidirectional scattering distribution function (BSDF) model, handling reflection and transmission, including single and multiple scattering. We propose a two-layer model, where the single scattering uses an SGGX phase function as in previous work, and multiple scattering uses a new azimuthally-invariant microflake definition, which we term ASGGX. This new fabric BSDF model closely matches real woven fabrics in both reflection and transmission. We use a simple setup for capturing reflection and transmission photos with a cell phone camera and two point lights, and estimate the fabric parameters via a lightweight network, together with a differentiable optimization. We also model the out-of-focus effects explicitly with a simple solution to match the thin-lens camera better. As a result, the renderings of the estimated parameters can agree with the input images on both reflection and transmission for the first time. The code for this paper is at https://github.com/lxtyin/FabricBTDF-Recovery.
Saliency Attention and Semantic Similarity-Driven Adversarial Perturbation
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

In this paper, we introduce an enhanced textual adversarial attack method, known as Saliency Attention and Semantic Similarity driven adversarial Perturbation (SASSP). The proposed scheme is designed to improve the effectiveness of contextual perturbations by integrating saliency, attention, and semantic similarity. Traditional adversarial attack methods often struggle to maintain semantic consistency and coherence while effectively deceiving target models. Our proposed approach addresses these challenges by incorporating a three-pronged strategy for word selection and perturbation. First, we utilize a saliency-based word selection to prioritize words for modification based on their importance to the model's prediction. Second, attention mechanisms are employed to focus perturbations on contextually significant words, enhancing the attack's efficacy. Finally, an advanced semantic similarity-checking method is employed that includes embedding-based similarity and paraphrase detection. By leveraging models like Sentence-BERT for embedding similarity and fine-tuned paraphrase detection models from the Sentence Transformers library, the scheme ensures that the perturbed text remains contextually appropriate and semantically consistent with the original. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that SASSP generates adversarial examples that not only maintain high semantic fidelity but also effectively deceive state-of-the-art natural language processing models. Moreover, in comparison to the original scheme of contextual perturbation CLARE, SASSP has yielded a higher attack success rate and lower word perturbation rate.
Data Poisoning Attacks to Locally Differentially Private Frequent Itemset Mining Protocols
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

Local differential privacy (LDP) provides a way for an untrusted data collector to aggregate users' data without violating their privacy. Various privacy-preserving data analysis tasks have been studied under the protection of LDP, such as frequency estimation, frequent itemset mining, and machine learning. Despite its privacy-preserving properties, recent research has demonstrated the vulnerability of certain LDP protocols to data poisoning attacks. However, existing data poisoning attacks are focused on basic statistics under LDP, such as frequency estimation and mean/variance estimation. As an important data analysis task, the security of LDP frequent itemset mining has yet to be thoroughly examined. In this paper, we aim to address this issue by presenting novel and practical data poisoning attacks against LDP frequent itemset mining protocols. By introducing a unified attack framework with composable attack operations, our data poisoning attack can successfully manipulate the state-of-the-art LDP frequent itemset mining protocols and has the potential to be adapted to other protocols with similar structures. We conduct extensive experiments on three datasets to compare the proposed attack with four baseline attacks. The results demonstrate the severity of the threat and the effectiveness of the proposed attack.
LoPT: Low-Rank Prompt Tuning for Parameter Efficient Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

In prompt tuning, a prefix or suffix text is added to the prompt, and the embeddings (soft prompts) or token indices (hard prompts) of the prefix/suffix are optimized to gain more control over language models for specific tasks. This approach eliminates the need for hand-crafted prompt engineering or explicit model fine-tuning. Prompt tuning is significantly more parameter-efficient than model fine-tuning, as it involves optimizing partial inputs of language models to produce desired outputs. In this work, we aim to further reduce the amount of trainable parameters required for a language model to perform well on specific tasks. We propose Low-rank Prompt Tuning (LoPT), a low-rank model for prompts that achieves efficient prompt optimization. The proposed method demonstrates similar outcomes to full parameter prompt tuning while reducing the number of trainable parameters by a factor of 5. It also provides promising results compared to the state-of-the-art methods that would require 10 to 20 times more parameters.
Weighted Group Search on the Disk & Improved Lower Bounds for Priority Evacuation
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2024
Year: 2024

We consider \emph{weighted group search on a disk}, which is a search-type problem involving 2 mobile agents with unit-speed. The two agents start collocated and their goal is to reach a (hidden) target at an unknown location and a known distance of exactly 1 (i.e., the search domain is the unit disk). The agents operate in the so-called \emph{wireless} model that allows them instantaneous knowledge of each others findings. The termination cost of agents' trajectories is the worst-case \emph{arithmetic weighted average}, which we quantify by parameter $w$, of the times it takes each agent to reach the target, hence the name of the problem. Our work follows a long line of research in search and evacuation, but quite importantly it is a variation and extension of two well-studied problems, respectively. The known variant is the one in which the search domain is the line, and for which an optimal solution is known. Our problem is also the extension of the so-called \emph{priority evacuation}, which we obtain by setting the weight parameter $w$ to $0$. For the latter problem the best upper/lower bound gap known is significant. Our contributions for weighted group search on a disk are threefold. \textit{First}, we derive upper bounds for the entire spectrum of weighted averages $w$. Our algorithms are obtained as a adaptations of known techniques, however the analysis is much more technical. \textit{Second}, our main contribution is the derivation of lower bounds for all weighted averages. This follows from a \emph{novel framework} for proving lower bounds for combinatorial search problems based on linear programming and inspired by metric embedding relaxations. \textit{Third}, we apply our framework to the priority evacuation problem, improving the previously best lower bound known from $4.38962$ to $4.56798$, thus reducing the upper/lower bound gap from $0.42892$ to $0.25056$.
Stereo Vision Based Robot for Remote Monitoring with VR Support
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

The machine vision systems have been playing a significant role in visual monitoring systems. With the help of stereovision and machine learning, it will be able to mimic human-like visual system and behaviour towards the environment. In this paper, we present a stereo vision based 3-DOF robot which will be used to monitor places from remote using cloud server and internet devices. The 3-DOF robot will transmit human-like head movements, i.e., yaw, pitch, roll and produce 3D stereoscopic video and stream it in Real-time. This video stream is sent to the user through any generic internet devices with VR box support, i.e., smartphones giving the user a First-person real-time 3D experience and transfers the head motion of the user to the robot also in Real-time. The robot will also be able to track moving objects and faces as a target using deep neural networks which enables it to be a standalone monitoring robot. The user will be able to choose specific subjects to monitor in a space. The stereovision enables us to track the depth information of different objects detected and will be used to track human interest objects with its distances and sent to the cloud. A full working prototype is developed which showcases the capabilities of a monitoring system based on stereo vision, robotics, and machine learning.
Code Linting using Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

Code linters play a crucial role in developing high-quality software systems by detecting potential problems (e.g., memory leaks) in the source code of systems. Despite their benefits, code linters are often language-specific, focused on certain types of issues, and prone to false positives in the interest of speed. This paper investigates whether large language models can be used to develop a more versatile code linter. Such a linter is expected to be language-independent, cover a variety of issue types, and maintain high speed. To achieve this, we collected a large dataset of code snippets and their associated issues. We then selected a language model and trained two classifiers based on the collected datasets. The first is a binary classifier that detects if the code has issues, and the second is a multi-label classifier that identifies the types of issues. Through extensive experimental studies, we demonstrated that the developed large language model-based linter can achieve an accuracy of 84.9% for the binary classifier and 83.6% for the multi-label classifier.
Comparative Analysis Of Color Models For Human Perception And Visual Color Difference
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Color is integral to human experience, influencing emotions, decisions, and perceptions. This paper presents a comparative analysis of various color models' alignment with human visual perception. The study evaluates color models such as RGB, HSV, HSL, XYZ, CIELAB, and CIELUV to assess their effectiveness in accurately representing how humans perceive color. We evaluate each model based on its ability to accurately reflect visual color differences and dominant palette extraction compatible with the human eye. In image processing, accurate assessment of color difference is essential for applications ranging from digital design to quality control. Current color difference metrics do not always match how people see colors, causing issues in accurately judging subtle differences. Understanding how different color models align with human visual perception is crucial for various applications in image processing, digital media, and design.
Reliable edge machine learning hardware for scientific applications
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Extreme data rate scientific experiments create massive amounts of data that require efficient ML edge processing. This leads to unique validation challenges for VLSI implementations of ML algorithms: enabling bit-accurate functional simulations for performance validation in experimental software frameworks, verifying those ML models are robust under extreme quantization and pruning, and enabling ultra-fine-grained model inspection for efficient fault tolerance. We discuss approaches to developing and validating reliable algorithms at the scientific edge under such strict latency, resource, power, and area requirements in extreme experimental environments. We study metrics for developing robust algorithms, present preliminary results and mitigation strategies, and conclude with an outlook of these and future directions of research towards the longer-term goal of developing autonomous scientific experimentation methods for accelerated scientific discovery.
TocBERT: Medical Document Structure Extraction Using Bidirectional Transformers
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Text segmentation holds paramount importance in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). It plays an important role in several NLP downstream tasks like information retrieval and document summarization. In this work, we propose a new solution, namely TocBERT, for segmenting texts using bidirectional transformers. TocBERT represents a supervised solution trained on the detection of titles and sub-titles from their semantic representations. This task was formulated as a named entity recognition (NER) problem. The solution has been applied on a medical text segmentation use-case where the Bio-ClinicalBERT model is fine-tuned to segment discharge summaries of the MIMIC-III dataset. The performance of TocBERT has been evaluated on a human-labeled ground truth corpus of 250 notes. It achieved an F1-score of 84.6% when evaluated on a linear text segmentation problem and 72.8% on a hierarchical text segmentation problem. It outperformed a carefully designed rule-based solution, particularly in distinguishing titles from subtitles.
Understanding Modality Preferences in Search Clarification
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2024
Year: 2024

This study is the first attempt to explore the impact of clarification question modality on user preference in search engines. We introduce the multi-modal search clarification dataset, MIMICS-MM, containing clarification questions with associated expert-collected and model-generated images. We analyse user preferences over different clarification modes of text, image, and combination of both through crowdsourcing by taking into account image and text quality, clarity, and relevance. Our findings demonstrate that users generally prefer multi-modal clarification over uni-modal approaches. We explore the use of automated image generation techniques and compare the quality, relevance, and user preference of model-generated images with human-collected ones. The study reveals that text-to-image generation models, such as Stable Diffusion, can effectively generate multi-modal clarification questions. By investigating multi-modal clarification, this research establishes a foundation for future advancements in search systems.
ASCENT: Amplifying Power Side-Channel Resilience via Learning & Monte-Carlo Tree Search
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

Power side-channel (PSC) analysis is pivotal for securing cryptographic hardware. Prior art focused on securing gate-level netlists obtained as-is from chip design automation, neglecting all the complexities and potential side-effects for security arising from the design automation process. That is, automation traditionally prioritizes power, performance, and area (PPA), sidelining security. We propose a "security-first" approach, refining the logic synthesis stage to enhance the overall resilience of PSC countermeasures. We introduce ASCENT, a learning-and-search-based framework that (i) drastically reduces the time for post-design PSC evaluation and (ii) explores the security-vs-PPA design space. Thus, ASCENT enables an efficient exploration of a large number of candidate netlists, leading to an improvement in PSC resilience compared to regular PPA-optimized netlists. ASCENT is up to 120x faster than traditional PSC analysis and yields a 3.11x improvement for PSC resilience of state-of-the-art PSC countermeasures
Synthetic Cancer -- Augmenting Worms with LLMs
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

With increasingly sophisticated large language models (LLMs), the potential for abuse rises drastically. As a submission to the Swiss AI Safety Prize, we present a novel type of metamorphic malware leveraging LLMs for two key processes. First, LLMs are used for automatic code rewriting to evade signature-based detection by antimalware programs. The malware then spreads its copies via email by utilizing an LLM to socially engineer email replies to encourage recipients to execute the attached malware. Our submission includes a functional minimal prototype, highlighting the risks that LLMs pose for cybersecurity and underscoring the need for further research into intelligent malware.
On Counterfactual Interventions in Vector Autoregressive Models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Counterfactual reasoning allows us to explore hypothetical scenarios in order to explain the impacts of our decisions. However, addressing such inquires is impossible without establishing the appropriate mathematical framework. In this work, we introduce the problem of counterfactual reasoning in the context of vector autoregressive (VAR) processes. We also formulate the inference of a causal model as a joint regression task where for inference we use both data with and without interventions. After learning the model, we exploit linearity of the VAR model to make exact predictions about the effects of counterfactual interventions. Furthermore, we quantify the total causal effects of past counterfactual interventions. The source code for this project is freely available at https://github.com/KurtButler/counterfactual_interventions.
PathAlign: A vision-language model for whole slide images in histopathology
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Microscopic interpretation of histopathology images underlies many important diagnostic and treatment decisions. While advances in vision-language modeling raise new opportunities for analysis of such images, the gigapixel-scale size of whole slide images (WSIs) introduces unique challenges. Additionally, pathology reports simultaneously highlight key findings from small regions while also aggregating interpretation across multiple slides, often making it difficult to create robust image-text pairs. As such, pathology reports remain a largely untapped source of supervision in computational pathology, with most efforts relying on region-of-interest annotations or self-supervision at the patch-level. In this work, we develop a vision-language model based on the BLIP-2 framework using WSIs paired with curated text from pathology reports. This enables applications utilizing a shared image-text embedding space, such as text or image retrieval for finding cases of interest, as well as integration of the WSI encoder with a frozen large language model (LLM) for WSI-based generative text capabilities such as report generation or AI-in-the-loop interactions. We utilize a de-identified dataset of over 350,000 WSIs and diagnostic text pairs, spanning a wide range of diagnoses, procedure types, and tissue types. We present pathologist evaluation of text generation and text retrieval using WSI embeddings, as well as results for WSI classification and workflow prioritization (slide-level triaging). Model-generated text for WSIs was rated by pathologists as accurate, without clinically significant error or omission, for 78% of WSIs on average. This work demonstrates exciting potential capabilities for language-aligned WSI embeddings.