OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
eFedLLM: Efficient LLM Inference Based on Federated Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Large Language Models (LLMs) herald a transformative era in artificial intelligence (AI). However, the expansive scale of data and parameters of LLMs requires high-demand computational and memory resources, restricting their accessibility to a broader range of users and researchers. This paper introduces an effective approach that enhances the operational efficiency and affordability of LLM inference. By utilizing transformer-based federated learning (FL) with model-parallel distributed training, our model efficiently distributes the computational loads and memory requirements across a network of participants. This strategy permits users, especially those with limited resources to train state-of-the-art LLMs collaboratively. We also innovate an incentive mechanism within the FL framework, rewarding constructive contributions and filtering out malicious activities, thereby safeguarding the integrity and reliability of the training process. Concurrently, we leverage memory hierarchy strategies and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) on weight matrices to boost computational and memory efficiencies further. Our results, derived from formulaic analyses and numerical calculations, demonstrate significant optimization of resource use and democratize access to cutting-edge LLMs, ensuring that a wide scale of users can both contribute to and benefit from these advanced models.
Establishing Design Routines for Efficient Control of Automated Robots
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

With continual advancements in technology, efforts to develop robots simulating human behavior have intensified. Cognitive robotics, combined with artificial intelligence (AI), has proven effective in surveying and research analysis. However, despite progress, human intervention remains necessary, and incorporating AI into robotic systems continues to pose challenges. This paper explores methodologies to integrate AI into robotic designs, aiming to enhance human-robot interactions. Several approaches are proposed to improve robotic performance, including routines for efficient control in varied environments and the incorporation of digital image processing for enhanced line-of-sight capabilities. A key contribution of this work is testing robotic systems in real-time environments to assess efficiency relative to existing models. Additionally, the paper introduces a robotic system with universal control capabilities, suitable for industrial applications, developed and programmed on the Arduino platform. Features such as GPS control for safe operations and progressive memory algorithms for efficient memory management are presented, offering advancements in both industrial and research applications.
Boosting 3D Object Generation through PBR Materials
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Automatic 3D content creation has gained increasing attention recently, due to its potential in various applications such as video games, film industry, and AR/VR. Recent advancements in diffusion models and multimodal models have notably improved the quality and efficiency of 3D object generation given a single RGB image. However, 3D objects generated even by state-of-the-art methods are still unsatisfactory compared to human-created assets. Considering only textures instead of materials makes these methods encounter challenges in photo-realistic rendering, relighting, and flexible appearance editing. And they also suffer from severe misalignment between geometry and high-frequency texture details. In this work, we propose a novel approach to boost the quality of generated 3D objects from the perspective of Physics-Based Rendering (PBR) materials. By analyzing the components of PBR materials, we choose to consider albedo, roughness, metalness, and bump maps. For albedo and bump maps, we leverage Stable Diffusion fine-tuned on synthetic data to extract these values, with novel usages of these fine-tuned models to obtain 3D consistent albedo UV and bump UV for generated objects. In terms of roughness and metalness maps, we adopt a semi-automatic process to provide room for interactive adjustment, which we believe is more practical. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our model is generally beneficial for various state-of-the-art generation methods, significantly boosting the quality and realism of their generated 3D objects, with natural relighting effects and substantially improved geometry.
Exploring the Generalization Capabilities of AID-based Bi-level Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Bi-level optimization has achieved considerable success in contemporary machine learning applications, especially for given proper hyperparameters. However, due to the two-level optimization structure, commonly, researchers focus on two types of bi-level optimization methods: approximate implicit differentiation (AID)-based and iterative differentiation (ITD)-based approaches. ITD-based methods can be readily transformed into single-level optimization problems, facilitating the study of their generalization capabilities. In contrast, AID-based methods cannot be easily transformed similarly but must stay in the two-level structure, leaving their generalization properties enigmatic. In this paper, although the outer-level function is nonconvex, we ascertain the uniform stability of AID-based methods, which achieves similar results to a single-level nonconvex problem. We conduct a convergence analysis for a carefully chosen step size to maintain stability. Combining the convergence and stability results, we give the generalization ability of AID-based bi-level optimization methods. Furthermore, we carry out an ablation study of the parameters and assess the performance of these methods on real-world tasks. Our experimental results corroborate the theoretical findings, demonstrating the effectiveness and potential applications of these methods.
Bot-Driven Development: From Simple Automation to Autonomous Software Development Bots
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

As software development increasingly adopts automation, bot-driven development (BotDD) represents a transformative shift where bots assume proactive roles in coding, testing, and project management. In bot-driven development, bots go beyond support tasks, actively driving development workflows by making autonomous decisions, performing independent assessments, and managing code quality and dependencies. This paper explores how bot-driven development impacts traditional development roles, particularly in redefining driver-navigator dynamics, and aligns with DevOps goals for faster feedback, continuous learning, and efficiency. We propose a research agenda addressing challenges in bot-driven development, including skill development for developers, human-bot trust dynamics, optimal interruption frequency, and ethical considerations. Through empirical studies and prototype systems, our aim is to define best practices and governance structures for integrating bot-driven development into modern software engineering.
End-to-End Steering for Autonomous Vehicles via Conditional Imitation Co-Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

Autonomous driving involves complex tasks such as data fusion, object and lane detection, behavior prediction, and path planning. As opposed to the modular approach which dedicates individual subsystems to tackle each of those tasks, the end-to-end approach treats the problem as a single learnable task using deep neural networks, reducing system complexity and minimizing dependency on heuristics. Conditional imitation learning (CIL) trains the end-to-end model to mimic a human expert considering the navigational commands guiding the vehicle to reach its destination, CIL adopts specialist network branches dedicated to learn the driving task for each navigational command. Nevertheless, the CIL model lacked generalization when deployed to unseen environments. This work introduces the conditional imitation co-learning (CIC) approach to address this issue by enabling the model to learn the relationships between CIL specialist branches via a co-learning matrix generated by gated hyperbolic tangent units (GTUs). Additionally, we propose posing the steering regression problem as classification, we use a classification-regression hybrid loss to bridge the gap between regression and classification, we also propose using co-existence probability to consider the spatial tendency between the steering classes. Our model is demonstrated to improve autonomous driving success rate in unseen environment by 62% on average compared to the CIL method.
TreeFormer: Single-view Plant Skeleton Estimation via Tree-constrained Graph Generation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Accurate estimation of plant skeletal structure (e.g., branching structure) from images is essential for smart agriculture and plant science. Unlike human skeletons with fixed topology, plant skeleton estimation presents a unique challenge, i.e., estimating arbitrary tree graphs from images. While recent graph generation methods successfully infer thin structures from images, it is challenging to constrain the output graph strictly to a tree structure. To this problem, we present TreeFormer, a plant skeleton estimator via tree-constrained graph generation. Our approach combines learning-based graph generation with traditional graph algorithms to impose the constraints during the training loop. Specifically, our method projects an unconstrained graph onto a minimum spanning tree (MST) during the training loop and incorporates this prior knowledge into the gradient descent optimization by suppressing unwanted feature values. Experiments show that our method accurately estimates target plant skeletal structures for multiple domains: Synthetic tree patterns, real botanical roots, and grapevine branches. Our implementations are available at https://github.com/huntorochi/TreeFormer/.
The Critical Canvas--How to regain information autonomy in the AI era
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

In the era of AI, recommendation algorithms and generative AI challenge information autonomy by creating echo chambers and blurring the line between authentic and fabricated content. The Critical Canvas addresses these challenges with a novel information exploration platform designed to restore balance between algorithmic efficiency and human agency. It employs three key mechanisms: multi-dimensional exploration across logical, temporal, and geographical perspectives; dynamic knowledge entry generation to capture complex relationships between concepts; and a phase space to evaluate the credibility of both the content and its sources. Particularly relevant to technical AI governance, where stakeholders must navigate intricate specifications and safety frameworks, the platform transforms overwhelming technical information into actionable insights. The Critical Canvas empowers users to regain autonomy over their information consumption through structured yet flexible exploration pathways, creative visualization, human-centric navigation, and transparent source evaluation. It fosters a comprehensive understanding of nuanced topics, enabling more informed decision-making and effective policy development in the age of AI.
Iterative Gradient Descent Decoding for Real Number LDPC Codes
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2024
Year: 2024

This paper proposes a new iterative gradient descent decoding method for real number parity codes. The proposed decoder, named Gradient Descent Symbol Update (GDSU), is used for a class of low-density parity-check (LDPC) real-number codes that can be defined with parity check matrices which are similar to those of the binary LDPC from communication standards such as WiFi (IEEE 802.11), 5G. These codes have a simple and efficient two stage encoding that is especially appealing for the real number field. The Gradient optimization based decoding has been a relatively simple and fast decoding technique for codes over finite fields. We show that the GDSU decoder outperforms the gradient descent bit-flipping (GDBF) decoder for rates $1/2$, $2/3$, and has similar decoding performance for the $3/4$ rate of the IEEE 802.11 codes standard.
Mixed Degradation Image Restoration via Local Dynamic Optimization and Conditional Embedding
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Multiple-in-one image restoration (IR) has made significant progress, aiming to handle all types of single degraded image restoration with a single model. However, in real-world scenarios, images often suffer from combinations of multiple degradation factors. Existing multiple-in-one IR models encounter challenges related to degradation diversity and prompt singularity when addressing this issue. In this paper, we propose a novel multiple-in-one IR model that can effectively restore images with both single and mixed degradations. To address degradation diversity, we design a Local Dynamic Optimization (LDO) module which dynamically processes degraded areas of varying types and granularities. To tackle the prompt singularity issue, we develop an efficient Conditional Feature Embedding (CFE) module that guides the decoder in leveraging degradation-type-related features, significantly improving the model's performance in mixed degradation restoration scenarios. To validate the effectiveness of our model, we introduce a new dataset containing both single and mixed degradation elements. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed model achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance not only on mixed degradation tasks but also on classic single-task restoration benchmarks.
The SVASR System for Text-dependent Speaker Verification (TdSV) AAIC Challenge 2024
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2024
Year: 2024

This paper introduces an efficient and accurate pipeline for text-dependent speaker verification (TDSV), designed to address the need for high-performance biometric systems. The proposed system incorporates a Fast-Conformer-based ASR module to validate speech content, filtering out Target-Wrong (TW) and Impostor-Wrong (IW) trials. For speaker verification, we propose a feature fusion approach that combines speaker embeddings extracted from wav2vec-BERT and ReDimNet models to create a unified speaker representation. This system achieves competitive results on the TDSV 2024 Challenge test set, with a normalized min-DCF of 0.0452 (rank 2), highlighting its effectiveness in balancing accuracy and robustness.
A Graph Neural Architecture Search Approach for Identifying Bots in Social Media
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Social media platforms, including X, Facebook, and Instagram, host millions of daily users, giving rise to bots-automated programs disseminating misinformation and ideologies with tangible real-world consequences. While bot detection in platform X has been the area of many deep learning models with adequate results, most approaches neglect the graph structure of social media relationships and often rely on hand-engineered architectures. Our work introduces the implementation of a Neural Architecture Search (NAS) technique, namely Deep and Flexible Graph Neural Architecture Search (DFG-NAS), tailored to Relational Graph Convolutional Neural Networks (RGCNs) in the task of bot detection in platform X. Our model constructs a graph that incorporates both the user relationships and their metadata. Then, DFG-NAS is adapted to automatically search for the optimal configuration of Propagation and Transformation functions in the RGCNs. Our experiments are conducted on the TwiBot-20 dataset, constructing a graph with 229,580 nodes and 227,979 edges. We study the five architectures with the highest performance during the search and achieve an accuracy of 85.7%, surpassing state-of-the-art models. Our approach not only addresses the bot detection challenge but also advocates for the broader implementation of NAS models in neural network design automation.
Can AI grade your essays? A comparative analysis of large language models and teacher ratings in multidimensional essay scoring
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

The manual assessment and grading of student writing is a time-consuming yet critical task for teachers. Recent developments in generative AI, such as large language models, offer potential solutions to facilitate essay-scoring tasks for teachers. In our study, we evaluate the performance and reliability of both open-source and closed-source LLMs in assessing German student essays, comparing their evaluations to those of 37 teachers across 10 pre-defined criteria (i.e., plot logic, expression). A corpus of 20 real-world essays from Year 7 and 8 students was analyzed using five LLMs: GPT-3.5, GPT-4, o1, LLaMA 3-70B, and Mixtral 8x7B, aiming to provide in-depth insights into LLMs' scoring capabilities. Closed-source GPT models outperform open-source models in both internal consistency and alignment with human ratings, particularly excelling in language-related criteria. The novel o1 model outperforms all other LLMs, achieving Spearman's $r = .74$ with human assessments in the overall score, and an internal consistency of $ICC=.80$. These findings indicate that LLM-based assessment can be a useful tool to reduce teacher workload by supporting the evaluation of essays, especially with regard to language-related criteria. However, due to their tendency for higher scores, the models require further refinement to better capture aspects of content quality.
Human-Calibrated Automated Testing and Validation of Generative Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

This paper introduces a comprehensive framework for the evaluation and validation of generative language models (GLMs), with a focus on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems deployed in high-stakes domains such as banking. GLM evaluation is challenging due to open-ended outputs and subjective quality assessments. Leveraging the structured nature of RAG systems, where generated responses are grounded in a predefined document collection, we propose the Human-Calibrated Automated Testing (HCAT) framework. HCAT integrates a) automated test generation using stratified sampling, b) embedding-based metrics for explainable assessment of functionality, risk and safety attributes, and c) a two-stage calibration approach that aligns machine-generated evaluations with human judgments through probability calibration and conformal prediction. In addition, the framework includes robustness testing to evaluate model performance against adversarial, out-of-distribution, and varied input conditions, as well as targeted weakness identification using marginal and bivariate analysis to pinpoint specific areas for improvement. This human-calibrated, multi-layered evaluation framework offers a scalable, transparent, and interpretable approach to GLM assessment, providing a practical and reliable solution for deploying GLMs in applications where accuracy, transparency, and regulatory compliance are paramount.
Turbofan Engine Remaining Useful Life (RUL) Prediction Based on Bi-Directional Long Short-Term Memory (BLSTM)
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

The aviation industry is rapidly evolving, driven by advancements in technology. Turbofan engines used in commercial aerospace are very complex systems. The majority of turbofan engine components are susceptible to degradation over the life of their operation. Turbofan engine degradation has an impact to engine performance, operability, and reliability. Predicting accurate remaining useful life (RUL) of a commercial turbofan engine based on a variety of complex sensor data is of paramount importance for the safety of the passengers, safety of flight, and for cost effective operations. That is why it is essential for turbofan engines to be monitored, controlled, and maintained. RUL predictions can either come from model-based or data-based approaches. The model-based approach can be very expensive due to the complexity of the mathematical models and the deep expertise that is required in the domain of physical systems. The data-based approach is more frequently used nowadays thanks to the high computational complexity of computers, the advancements in Machine Learning (ML) models, and advancements in sensors. This paper is going to be focused on Bi-Directional Long Short-Term Memory (BLSTM) models but will also provide a benchmark of several RUL prediction databased models. The proposed RUL prediction models are going to be evaluated based on engine failure prediction benchmark dataset Commercial Modular Aero-Propulsion System Simulation (CMAPSS). The CMAPSS dataset is from NASA which contains turbofan engine run to failure events.
Finding Structure in Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

When we speak, write or listen, we continuously make predictions based on our knowledge of a language's grammar. Remarkably, children acquire this grammatical knowledge within just a few years, enabling them to understand and generalise to novel constructions that have never been uttered before. Language models are powerful tools that create representations of language by incrementally predicting the next word in a sentence, and they have had a tremendous societal impact in recent years. The central research question of this thesis is whether these models possess a deep understanding of grammatical structure similar to that of humans. This question lies at the intersection of natural language processing, linguistics, and interpretability. To address it, we will develop novel interpretability techniques that enhance our understanding of the complex nature of large-scale language models. We approach our research question from three directions. First, we explore the presence of abstract linguistic information through structural priming, a key paradigm in psycholinguistics for uncovering grammatical structure in human language processing. Next, we examine various linguistic phenomena, such as adjective order and negative polarity items, and connect a model's comprehension of these phenomena to the data distribution on which it was trained. Finally, we introduce a controlled testbed for studying hierarchical structure in language models using various synthetic languages of increasing complexity and examine the role of feature interactions in modelling this structure. Our findings offer a detailed account of the grammatical knowledge embedded in language model representations and provide several directions for investigating fundamental linguistic questions using computational methods.
Efficient Video Face Enhancement with Enhanced Spatial-Temporal Consistency
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

As a very common type of video, face videos often appear in movies, talk shows, live broadcasts, and other scenes. Real-world online videos are often plagued by degradations such as blurring and quantization noise, due to the high compression ratio caused by high communication costs and limited transmission bandwidth. These degradations have a particularly serious impact on face videos because the human visual system is highly sensitive to facial details. Despite the significant advancement in video face enhancement, current methods still suffer from $i)$ long processing time and $ii)$ inconsistent spatial-temporal visual effects (e.g., flickering). This study proposes a novel and efficient blind video face enhancement method to overcome the above two challenges, restoring high-quality videos from their compressed low-quality versions with an effective de-flickering mechanism. In particular, the proposed method develops upon a 3D-VQGAN backbone associated with spatial-temporal codebooks recording high-quality portrait features and residual-based temporal information. We develop a two-stage learning framework for the model. In Stage \Rmnum{1}, we learn the model with a regularizer mitigating the codebook collapse problem. In Stage \Rmnum{2}, we learn two transformers to lookup code from the codebooks and further update the encoder of low-quality videos. Experiments conducted on the VFHQ-Test dataset demonstrate that our method surpasses the current state-of-the-art blind face video restoration and de-flickering methods on both efficiency and effectiveness. Code is available at \url{https://github.com/Dixin-Lab/BFVR-STC}.