OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Enhancing AAC Software for Dysarthric Speakers in e-Health Settings: An Evaluation Using TORGO
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Individuals with cerebral palsy (CP) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) frequently face challenges with articulation, leading to dysarthria and resulting in atypical speech patterns. In healthcare settings, communication breakdowns reduce the quality of care. While building an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) tool to enable fluid communication we found that state-of-the-art (SOTA) automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology like Whisper and Wav2vec2.0 marginalizes atypical speakers largely due to the lack of training data. Our work looks to leverage SOTA ASR followed by domain specific error-correction. English dysarthric ASR performance is often evaluated on the TORGO dataset. Prompt-overlap is a well-known issue with this dataset where phrases overlap between training and test speakers. Our work proposes an algorithm to break this prompt-overlap. After reducing prompt-overlap, results with SOTA ASR models produce extremely high word error rates for speakers with mild and severe dysarthria. Furthermore, to improve ASR, our work looks at the impact of n-gram language models and large-language model (LLM) based multi-modal generative error-correction algorithms like Whispering-LLaMA for a second pass ASR. Our work highlights how much more needs to be done to improve ASR for atypical speakers to enable equitable healthcare access both in-person and in e-health settings.
PairSmell: A Novel Perspective Inspecting Software Modular Structure
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

Enhancing the modular structure of existing systems has attracted substantial research interest, focusing on two main methods: (1) software modularization and (2) identifying design issues (e.g., smells) as refactoring opportunities. However, re-modularization solutions often require extensive modifications to the original modules, and the design issues identified are generally too coarse to guide refactoring strategies. Combining the above two methods, this paper introduces a novel concept, PairSmell, which exploits modularization to pinpoint design issues necessitating refactoring. We concentrate on a granular but fundamental aspect of modularity principles -- modular relation (MR), i.e., whether a pair of entities are separated or collocated. The main assumption is that, if the actual MR of a pair violates its `apt MR', i.e., an MR agreed on by multiple modularization tools (as raters), it can be deemed likely a flawed architectural decision that necessitates further examination. To quantify and evaluate PairSmell, we conduct an empirical study on 20 C/C++ and Java projects, using 4 established modularization tools to identify two forms of PairSmell: inapt separated pairs InSep and inapt collocated pairs InCol. Our study on 260,003 instances reveals that their architectural impacts are substantial: (1) on average, 14.60% and 20.44% of software entities are involved in InSep and InCol MRs respectively; (2) InSep pairs are associated with 190% more co-changes than properly separated pairs, while InCol pairs are associated with 35% fewer co-changes than properly collocated pairs, both indicating a successful identification of modular structures detrimental to software quality; and (3) both forms of PairSmell persist across software evolution.
A Similarity-Based Oversampling Method for Multi-label Imbalanced Text Data
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

In real-world applications, as data availability increases, obtaining labeled data for machine learning (ML) projects remains challenging due to the high costs and intensive efforts required for data annotation. Many ML projects, particularly those focused on multi-label classification, also grapple with data imbalance issues, where certain classes may lack sufficient data to train effective classifiers. This study introduces and examines a novel oversampling method for multi-label text classification, designed to address performance challenges associated with data imbalance. The proposed method identifies potential new samples from unlabeled data by leveraging similarity measures between instances. By iteratively searching the unlabeled dataset, the method locates instances similar to those in underrepresented classes and evaluates their contribution to classifier performance enhancement. Instances that demonstrate performance improvement are then added to the labeled dataset. Experimental results indicate that the proposed approach effectively enhances classifier performance post-oversampling.
Capturing and Anticipating User Intents in Data Analytics via Knowledge Graphs
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

In today's data-driven world, the ability to extract meaningful information from data is becoming essential for businesses, organizations and researchers alike. For that purpose, a wide range of tools and systems exist addressing data-related tasks, from data integration, preprocessing and modeling, to the interpretation and evaluation of the results. As data continues to grow in volume, variety, and complexity, there is an increasing need for advanced but user-friendly tools, such as intelligent discovery assistants (IDAs) or automated machine learning (AutoML) systems, that facilitate the user's interaction with the data. This enables non-expert users, such as citizen data scientists, to leverage powerful data analytics techniques effectively. The assistance offered by IDAs or AutoML tools should not be guided only by the analytical problem's data but should also be tailored to each individual user. To this end, this work explores the usage of Knowledge Graphs (KG) as a basic framework for capturing in a human-centered manner complex analytics workflows, by storing information not only about the workflow's components, datasets and algorithms but also about the users, their intents and their feedback, among others. The data stored in the generated KG can then be exploited to provide assistance (e.g., recommendations) to the users interacting with these systems. To accomplish this objective, two methods are explored in this work. Initially, the usage of query templates to extract relevant information from the KG is studied. However, upon identifying its main limitations, the usage of link prediction with knowledge graph embeddings is explored, which enhances flexibility and allows leveraging the entire structure and components of the graph. The experiments show that the proposed method is able to capture the graph's structure and to produce sensible suggestions.
SKI-SAT: A CMOS-compatible Hardware for Solving SAT Problems
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2024
Year: 2024

Nature-inspired computation is receiving increasing attention. Various Ising machine implementations have recently been proven to be effective in solving numerous combinatorial optimization problems including maximum cut, low density parity check (LDPC) decoding, and Boolean satisfiability (SAT) problems. In this paper, a novel method is presented to solve SAT or MAX-SAT problems with a CMOS circuit implementation. The technique solves a SAT problem by mapping the SAT variables onto quantized capacitor voltages generated by an array of nodes that interact through a network of coupling units. The nodal interaction is achieved through coupling currents produced by the coupling units, which charge or discharge capacitor voltages, implementing a gradient descent along the SAT problem's cost function to minimize the number of unsatisfied clauses. The system also incorporates a unique low-complexity perturbation scheme to avoid settling in local minima, greatly enhancing the performance of the system. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed SKI-SAT is a high-performance and low-energy alternative that surpasses existing solvers by significant margins, achieving more than 10 times faster solution and 300 times less power.
Provable Length Generalization in Sequence Prediction via Spectral Filtering
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

We consider the problem of length generalization in sequence prediction. We define a new metric of performance in this setting -- the Asymmetric-Regret -- which measures regret against a benchmark predictor with longer context length than available to the learner. We continue by studying this concept through the lens of the spectral filtering algorithm. We present a gradient-based learning algorithm that provably achieves length generalization for linear dynamical systems. We conclude with proof-of-concept experiments which are consistent with our theory.
Enhancing Question Answering Precision with Optimized Vector Retrieval and Instructions
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2024
Year: 2024

Question-answering (QA) is an important application of Information Retrieval (IR) and language models, and the latest trend is toward pre-trained large neural networks with embedding parameters. Augmenting QA performances with these LLMs requires intensive computational resources for fine-tuning. We propose an innovative approach to improve QA task performances by integrating optimized vector retrievals and instruction methodologies. Based on retrieval augmentation, the process involves document embedding, vector retrieval, and context construction for optimal QA results. We experiment with different combinations of text segmentation techniques and similarity functions, and analyze their impacts on QA performances. Results show that the model with a small chunk size of 100 without any overlap of the chunks achieves the best result and outperforms the models based on semantic segmentation using sentences. We discuss related QA examples and offer insight into how model performances are improved within the two-stage framework.
Introduction to AI Safety, Ethics, and Society
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly embedding itself within militaries, economies, and societies, reshaping their very foundations. Given the depth and breadth of its consequences, it has never been more pressing to understand how to ensure that AI systems are safe, ethical, and have a positive societal impact. This book aims to provide a comprehensive approach to understanding AI risk. Our primary goals include consolidating fragmented knowledge on AI risk, increasing the precision of core ideas, and reducing barriers to entry by making content simpler and more comprehensible. The book has been designed to be accessible to readers from diverse backgrounds. You do not need to have studied AI, philosophy, or other such topics. The content is skimmable and somewhat modular, so that you can choose which chapters to read. We introduce mathematical formulas in a few places to specify claims more precisely, but readers should be able to understand the main points without these.
MultiDepth: Multi-Sample Priors for Refining Monocular Metric Depth Estimations in Indoor Scenes
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Monocular metric depth estimation (MMDE) is a crucial task to solve for indoor scene reconstruction on edge devices. Despite this importance, existing models are sensitive to factors such as boundary frequency of objects in the scene and scene complexity, failing to fully capture many indoor scenes. In this work, we propose to close this gap through the task of monocular metric depth refinement (MMDR) by leveraging state-of-the-art MMDE models. MultiDepth proposes a solution by taking samples of the image along with the initial depth map prediction made by a pre-trained MMDE model. Compared to existing iterative depth refinement techniques, MultiDepth does not employ normal map prediction as part of its architecture, effectively lowering the model size and computation overhead while outputting impactful changes from refining iterations. MultiDepth implements a lightweight encoder-decoder architecture for the refinement network, processing multiple samples from the given image, including segmentation masking. We evaluate MultiDepth on four datasets and compare them to state-of-the-art methods to demonstrate its effective refinement with minimal overhead, displaying accuracy improvement upward of 45%.
BACSA: A Bias-Aware Client Selection Algorithm for Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning in Wireless Healthcare Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a transformative approach in healthcare, enabling collaborative model training across decentralized data sources while preserving user privacy. However, performance of FL rapidly degrades in practical scenarios due to the inherent bias in non Independent and Identically distributed (non-IID) data among participating clients, which poses significant challenges to model accuracy and generalization. Therefore, we propose the Bias-Aware Client Selection Algorithm (BACSA), which detects user bias and strategically selects clients based on their bias profiles. In addition, the proposed algorithm considers privacy preservation, fairness and constraints of wireless network environments, making it suitable for sensitive healthcare applications where Quality of Service (QoS), privacy and security are paramount. Our approach begins with a novel method for detecting user bias by analyzing model parameters and correlating them with the distribution of class-specific data samples. We then formulate a mixed-integer non-linear client selection problem leveraging the detected bias, alongside wireless network constraints, to optimize FL performance. We demonstrate that BACSA improves convergence and accuracy, compared to existing benchmarks, through evaluations on various data distributions, including Dirichlet and class-constrained scenarios. Additionally, we explore the trade-offs between accuracy, fairness, and network constraints, indicating the adaptability and robustness of BACSA to address diverse healthcare applications.
Infant Agent: A Tool-Integrated, Logic-Driven Agent with Cost-Effective API Usage
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

Despite the impressive capabilities of large language models (LLMs), they currently exhibit two primary limitations, \textbf{\uppercase\expandafter{\romannumeral 1}}: They struggle to \textbf{autonomously solve the real world engineering problem}. \textbf{\uppercase\expandafter{\romannumeral 2}}: They remain \textbf{challenged in reasoning through complex logic problems}. To address these challenges, we developed the \textsc{Infant Agent}, integrating task-aware functions, operators, a hierarchical management system, and a memory retrieval mechanism. Together, these components enable large language models to sustain extended reasoning processes and handle complex, multi-step tasks efficiently, all while significantly reducing API costs. Using the \textsc{Infant Agent}, GPT-4o's accuracy on the SWE-bench-lite dataset rises from $\mathbf{0.33\%}$ to $\mathbf{30\%}$, and in the AIME-2024 mathematics competition, it increases GPT-4o's accuracy from $\mathbf{13.3\%}$ to $\mathbf{37\%}$.
Test-Time Adaptation in Point Clouds: Leveraging Sampling Variation with Weight Averaging
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Test-Time Adaptation (TTA) addresses distribution shifts during testing by adapting a pretrained model without access to source data. In this work, we propose a novel TTA approach for 3D point cloud classification, combining sampling variation with weight averaging. Our method leverages Farthest Point Sampling (FPS) and K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) to create multiple point cloud representations, adapting the model for each variation using the TENT algorithm. The final model parameters are obtained by averaging the adapted weights, leading to improved robustness against distribution shifts. Extensive experiments on ModelNet40-C, ShapeNet-C, and ScanObjectNN-C datasets, with different backbones (Point-MAE, PointNet, DGCNN), demonstrate that our approach consistently outperforms existing methods while maintaining minimal resource overhead. The proposed method effectively enhances model generalization and stability in challenging real-world conditions.
Dictionary Insertion Prompting for Multilingual Reasoning on Multilingual Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

As current training data for Large Language Models (LLMs) are dominated by English corpus, they are English-centric and they present impressive performance on English reasoning tasks.\footnote{This paper primarily studies English-centric models, but our method could be universal by using the centric language in the dictionary for non-English-centric LLMs.} Yet, they usually suffer from lower performance in other languages. There are about 7,000 languages over the world, and many are low-resourced on English-centric LLMs. For the sake of people who primarily speak these languages, it is especially urgent to enable our LLMs in those languages. Model training is usually effective, but computationally expensive and requires experienced NLP practitioners. This paper presents a novel and simple yet effective method called \textbf{D}ictionary \textbf{I}nsertion \textbf{P}rompting (\textbf{DIP}). When providing a non-English prompt, DIP looks up a word dictionary and inserts words' English counterparts into the prompt for LLMs. It then enables better translation into English and better English model thinking steps which leads to obviously better results. We experiment with about 200 languages from FLORES-200. Since there are no adequate datasets, we use the NLLB translator to create synthetic multilingual benchmarks from the existing 4 English reasoning benchmarks such as GSM8K and AQuA. Despite the simplicity and computationally lightweight, we surprisingly found the effectiveness of DIP on math and commonsense reasoning tasks on multiple open-source and close-source LLMs.\footnote{Our dictionaries, code, and synthetic benchmarks will be open-sourced to facilitate future research.}
HG-Adapter: Improving Pre-Trained Heterogeneous Graph Neural Networks with Dual Adapters
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

The "pre-train, prompt-tuning'' paradigm has demonstrated impressive performance for tuning pre-trained heterogeneous graph neural networks (HGNNs) by mitigating the gap between pre-trained models and downstream tasks. However, most prompt-tuning-based works may face at least two limitations: (i) the model may be insufficient to fit the graph structures well as they are generally ignored in the prompt-tuning stage, increasing the training error to decrease the generalization ability; and (ii) the model may suffer from the limited labeled data during the prompt-tuning stage, leading to a large generalization gap between the training error and the test error to further affect the model generalization. To alleviate the above limitations, we first derive the generalization error bound for existing prompt-tuning-based methods, and then propose a unified framework that combines two new adapters with potential labeled data extension to improve the generalization of pre-trained HGNN models. Specifically, we design dual structure-aware adapters to adaptively fit task-related homogeneous and heterogeneous structural information. We further design a label-propagated contrastive loss and two self-supervised losses to optimize dual adapters and incorporate unlabeled nodes as potential labeled data. Theoretical analysis indicates that the proposed method achieves a lower generalization error bound than existing methods, thus obtaining superior generalization ability. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and generalization of the proposed method on different downstream tasks.
Fish-Speech: Leveraging Large Language Models for Advanced Multilingual Text-to-Speech Synthesis
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2024
Year: 2024

Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems face ongoing challenges in processing complex linguistic features, handling polyphonic expressions, and producing natural-sounding multilingual speech - capabilities that are crucial for future AI applications. In this paper, we present Fish-Speech, a novel framework that implements a serial fast-slow Dual Autoregressive (Dual-AR) architecture to enhance the stability of Grouped Finite Scalar Vector Quantization (GFSQ) in sequence generation tasks. This architecture improves codebook processing efficiency while maintaining high-fidelity outputs, making it particularly effective for AI interactions and voice cloning. Fish-Speech leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) for linguistic feature extraction, eliminating the need for traditional grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion and thereby streamlining the synthesis pipeline and enhancing multilingual support. Additionally, we developed FF-GAN through GFSQ to achieve superior compression ratios and near 100\% codebook utilization. Our approach addresses key limitations of current TTS systems while providing a foundation for more sophisticated, context-aware speech synthesis. Experimental results show that Fish-Speech significantly outperforms baseline models in handling complex linguistic scenarios and voice cloning tasks, demonstrating its potential to advance TTS technology in AI applications. The implementation is open source at \href{https://github.com/fishaudio/fish-speech}{https://github.com/fishaudio/fish-speech}.
Supervised Score-Based Modeling by Gradient Boosting
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Score-based generative models can effectively learn the distribution of data by estimating the gradient of the distribution. Due to the multi-step denoising characteristic, researchers have recently considered combining score-based generative models with the gradient boosting algorithm, a multi-step supervised learning algorithm, to solve supervised learning tasks. However, existing generative model algorithms are often limited by the stochastic nature of the models and the long inference time, impacting prediction performances. Therefore, we propose a Supervised Score-based Model (SSM), which can be viewed as a gradient boosting algorithm combining score matching. We provide a theoretical analysis of learning and sampling for SSM to balance inference time and prediction accuracy. Via the ablation experiment in selected examples, we demonstrate the outstanding performances of the proposed techniques. Additionally, we compare our model with other probabilistic models, including Natural Gradient Boosting (NGboost), Classification and Regression Diffusion Models (CARD), Diffusion Boosted Trees (DBT), and non-probabilistic GBM models. The experimental results show that our model outperforms existing models in both accuracy and inference time.
Guiding Multi-agent Multi-task Reinforcement Learning by a Hierarchical Framework with Logical Reward Shaping
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

Multi-agent hierarchical reinforcement learning (MAHRL) has been studied as an effective means to solve intelligent decision problems in complex and large-scale environments. However, most current MAHRL algorithms follow the traditional way of using reward functions in reinforcement learning, which limits their use to a single task. This study aims to design a multi-agent cooperative algorithm with logic reward shaping (LRS), which uses a more flexible way of setting the rewards, allowing for the effective completion of multi-tasks. LRS uses Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) to express the internal logic relation of subtasks within a complex task. Then, it evaluates whether the subformulae of the LTL expressions are satisfied based on a designed reward structure. This helps agents to learn to effectively complete tasks by adhering to the LTL expressions, thus enhancing the interpretability and credibility of their decisions. To enhance coordination and cooperation among multiple agents, a value iteration technique is designed to evaluate the actions taken by each agent. Based on this evaluation, a reward function is shaped for coordination, which enables each agent to evaluate its status and complete the remaining subtasks through experiential learning. Experiments have been conducted on various types of tasks in the Minecraft-like environment. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can improve the performance of multi-agents when learning to complete multi-tasks.