OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
INSPIRED2: An Improved Dataset for Sociable Conversational Recommendation
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2022
Year: 2022

Conversational recommender systems (CRS) that are able to interact with users in natural language often utilize recommendation dialogs which were previously collected with the help of paired humans, where one plays the role of a seeker and the other as a recommender. These recommendation dialogs include items and entities that indicate the users' preferences. In order to precisely model the seekers' preferences and respond consistently, CRS typically rely on item and entity annotations. A recent example of such a dataset is INSPIRED, which consists of recommendation dialogs for sociable conversational recommendation, where items and entities were annotated using automatic keyword or pattern matching techniques. An analysis of this dataset unfortunately revealed that there is a substantial number of cases where items and entities were either wrongly annotated or annotations were missing at all. This leads to the question to what extent automatic techniques for annotations are effective. Moreover, it is important to study impact of annotation quality on the overall effectiveness of a CRS in terms of the quality of the system's responses. To study these aspects, we manually fixed the annotations in INSPIRED. We then evaluated the performance of several benchmark CRS using both versions of the dataset. Our analyses suggest that the improved version of the dataset, i.e., INSPIRED2, helped increase the performance of several benchmark CRS, emphasizing the importance of data quality both for end-to-end learning and retrieval-based approaches to conversational recommendation. We release our improved dataset (INSPIRED2) publicly at https://github.com/ahtsham58/INSPIRED2.
UFNRec: Utilizing False Negative Samples for Sequential Recommendation
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2022
Year: 2022

Sequential recommendation models are primarily optimized to distinguish positive samples from negative ones during training in which negative sampling serves as an essential component in learning the evolving user preferences through historical records. Except for randomly sampling negative samples from a uniformly distributed subset, many delicate methods have been proposed to mine negative samples with high quality. However, due to the inherent randomness of negative sampling, false negative samples are inevitably collected in model training. Current strategies mainly focus on removing such false negative samples, which leads to overlooking potential user interests, lack of recommendation diversity, less model robustness, and suffering from exposure bias. To this end, we propose a novel method that can Utilize False Negative samples for sequential Recommendation (UFNRec) to improve model performance. We first devise a simple strategy to extract false negative samples and then transfer these samples to positive samples in the following training process. Furthermore, we construct a teacher model to provide soft labels for false negative samples and design a consistency loss to regularize the predictions of these samples from the student model and the teacher model. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to utilize false negative samples instead of simply removing them for the sequential recommendation. Experiments on three benchmark public datasets are conducted using three widely applied SOTA models. The experiment results demonstrate that our proposed UFNRec can effectively draw information from false negative samples and further improve the performance of SOTA models. The code is available at https://github.com/UFNRec-code/UFNRec.
Hybrid Serverless Computing: Opportunities and Challenges
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2022
Year: 2022

In recent years, there has been a surge in the adoption of serverless computing due to the ease of deployment, attractive pay-per-use pricing, and transparent horizontal auto-scaling. At the same time, infrastructure advancements such as the emergence of 5G networks and the explosion of devices connected to Internet known as Internet of Things (IoT), as well as new application requirements that constrain where computation and data can happen, will expand the reach of Cloud computing beyond traditional data centers into Hybrid Cloud. Digital transformation due to the pandemic, which accelerated changes to the workforce and spurred further adoption of AI, is expected to accelerate and the emergent Hybrid Cloud market could potentially expand to over trillion dollars. In the Hybrid Cloud environment, driven by the serverless tenants there will be an increased need to focus on enabling productive work for application builders that are using a distributed platform including public clouds, private clouds, and edge systems. In this chapter we investigate how far serverless computing can be extended to become Hybrid Serverless Computing.
A Multi-label Continual Learning Framework to Scale Deep Learning Approaches for Packaging Equipment Monitoring
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Continual Learning aims to learn from a stream of tasks, being able to remember at the same time both new and old tasks. While many approaches were proposed for single-class classification, multi-label classification in the continual scenario remains a challenging problem. For the first time, we study multi-label classification in the Domain Incremental Learning scenario. Moreover, we propose an efficient approach that has a logarithmic complexity with regard to the number of tasks, and can be applied also in the Class Incremental Learning scenario. We validate our approach on a real-world multi-label Alarm Forecasting problem from the packaging industry. For the sake of reproducibility, the dataset and the code used for the experiments are publicly available.
Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Long-Term Network Resource Allocation through Auction: a V2X Application
Venue: arXiv cs.MA 2022
Year: 2022

We formulate offloading of computational tasks from a dynamic group of mobile agents (e.g., cars) as decentralized decision making among autonomous agents. We design an interaction mechanism that incentivizes such agents to align private and system goals by balancing between competition and cooperation. In the static case, the mechanism provably has Nash equilibria with optimal resource allocation. In a dynamic environment, this mechanism's requirement of complete information is impossible to achieve. For such environments, we propose a novel multi-agent online learning algorithm that learns with partial, delayed and noisy state information, thus greatly reducing information need. Our algorithm is also capable of learning from long-term and sparse reward signals with varying delay. Empirical results from the simulation of a V2X application confirm that through learning, agents with the learning algorithm significantly improve both system and individual performance, reducing up to 30% of offloading failure rate, communication overhead and load variation, increasing computation resource utilization and fairness. Results also confirm the algorithm's good convergence and generalization property in different environments.
Integrated Sensing and Communications: A Mutual Information-Based Framework
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2022
Year: 2022

Integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) is potentially capable of circumventing the limitations of existing frequency-division sensing and communications (FDSAC) techniques. Hence, it has recently attracted significant attention. This article aims to propose a unified analytical framework for ISAC from a mutual information (MI) perspective. Based on the proposed framework, the sensing performance and the communication performance are evaluated by the sensing MI and the communication MI, respectively. The unity of this framework is originated from the fact that the sensing and communication (S\&C) performance metrics, i.e., the S\&C MI, have the similar physical and mathematical properties as well as the same unit of measurement. Based on this framework, the S\&C performance of downlink and uplink ISAC systems is investigated and compared with that of FDSAC systems. Along each considered system settings, numerical results are provided to demonstrate the superiority of ISAC over conventional FDSAC designs. Finally, promising open research directions are provided in the context of MI-based ISAC.
Continual Reinforcement Learning with TELLA
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Training reinforcement learning agents that continually learn across multiple environments is a challenging problem. This is made more difficult by a lack of reproducible experiments and standard metrics for comparing different continual learning approaches. To address this, we present TELLA, a tool for the Test and Evaluation of Lifelong Learning Agents. TELLA provides specified, reproducible curricula to lifelong learning agents while logging detailed data for evaluation and standardized analysis. Researchers can define and share their own curricula over various learning environments or run against a curriculum created under the DARPA Lifelong Learning Machines (L2M) Program.
LargeNetVis: Visual Exploration of Large Temporal Networks Based on Community Taxonomies
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2022
Year: 2022

Temporal (or time-evolving) networks are commonly used to model complex systems and the evolution of their components throughout time. Although these networks can be analyzed by different means, visual analytics stands out as an effective way for a pre-analysis before doing quantitative/statistical analyses to identify patterns, anomalies, and other behaviors in the data, thus leading to new insights and better decision-making. However, the large number of nodes, edges, and/or timestamps in many real-world networks may lead to polluted layouts that make the analysis inefficient or even infeasible. In this paper, we propose LargeNetVis, a web-based visual analytics system designed to assist in analyzing small and large temporal networks. It successfully achieves this goal by leveraging three taxonomies focused on network communities to guide the visual exploration process. The system is composed of four interactive visual components: the first (Taxonomy Matrix) presents a summary of the network characteristics, the second (Global View) gives an overview of the network evolution, the third (a node-link diagram) enables community- and node-level structural analysis, and the fourth (a Temporal Activity Map -- TAM) shows the community- and node-level activity under a temporal perspective.
Semi-Supervised Cross-Modal Salient Object Detection with U-Structure Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

Salient Object Detection (SOD) is a popular and important topic aimed at precise detection and segmentation of the interesting regions in the images. We integrate the linguistic information into the vision-based U-Structure networks designed for salient object detection tasks. The experiments are based on the newly created DUTS Cross Modal (DUTS-CM) dataset, which contains both visual and linguistic labels. We propose a new module called efficient Cross-Modal Self-Attention (eCMSA) to combine visual and linguistic features and improve the performance of the original U-structure networks. Meanwhile, to reduce the heavy burden of labeling, we employ a semi-supervised learning method by training an image caption model based on the DUTS-CM dataset, which can automatically label other datasets like DUT-OMRON and HKU-IS. The comprehensive experiments show that the performance of SOD can be improved with the natural language input and is competitive compared with other SOD methods.
Gradient Flows for L2 Support Vector Machine Training
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

We explore the merits of training of support vector machines for binary classification by means of solving systems of ordinary differential equations. We thus assume a continuous time perspective on a machine learning problem which may be of interest for implementations on (re)emerging hardware platforms such as analog- or quantum computers.
Soft Sensors and Process Control using AI and Dynamic Simulation
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2022
Year: 2022

During the operation of a chemical plant, product quality must be consistently maintained, and the production of off-specification products should be minimized. Accordingly, process variables related to the product quality, such as the temperature and composition of materials at various parts of the plant must be measured, and appropriate operations (that is, control) must be performed based on the measurements. Some process variables, such as temperature and flow rate, can be measured continuously and instantaneously. However, other variables, such as composition and viscosity, can only be obtained through time-consuming analysis after sampling substances from the plant. Soft sensors have been proposed for estimating process variables that cannot be obtained in real time from easily measurable variables. However, the estimation accuracy of conventional statistical soft sensors, which are constructed from recorded measurements, can be very poor in unrecorded situations (extrapolation). In this study, we estimate the internal state variables of a plant by using a dynamic simulator that can estimate and predict even unrecorded situations on the basis of chemical engineering knowledge and an artificial intelligence (AI) technology called reinforcement learning, and propose to use the estimated internal state variables of a plant as soft sensors. In addition, we describe the prospects for plant operation and control using such soft sensors and the methodology to obtain the necessary prediction models (i.e., simulators) for the proposed system.
A note on independent sets in sparse-dense graphs
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2022
Year: 2022

Sparse-dense partitions was introduced by Feder, Hell, Klein, and Motwani [STOC 1999, SIDMA 2003] as a tool to solve partitioning problems. In this paper, the following result concerning independent sets in graphs having sparse-dense partitions is presented: if a $n$-vertex graph $G$ admits a sparse-dense partition concerning classes $\mathcal S$ and $\mathcal D$, where $\mathcal D$ is a subclass of the complement of $K_t$-free graphs (for some ~$t$), and graphs in $\mathcal S$ can be recognized in polynomial time, then: enumerate all maximal independent sets of $G$ (or find its maximum) can be performed in $n^{O(1)}$ time whenever it can be done in polynomial time for graphs in the class $\mathcal S$. This result has the following interesting implications: A P versus NP-hard dichotomy for Max. Independent Set on graphs whose vertex set can be partitioned into $k$ independent sets and $\ell$ cliques, so-called $(k, \ell)$-graphs. concerning the values of $k$ and $\ell$ of $(k, \ell)$-graphs. A P-time algorithm that does not require $(1,\ell)$-partitions for determining whether a $(1,\ell)$-graph $G$ is well-covered. Well-covered graphs are graphs in which every maximal independent set has the same cardinality. The characterization of conflict graph classes for which the conflict version of a P-time graph problem is still in P assuming such classes. Conflict versions of graph problems ask for solutions avoiding pairs of conflicting elements (vertices or edges) described in conflict graphs.
Multi Purpose Routing: New Perspectives and Approximation Algorithms
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2022
Year: 2022

The cost due to delay in services may be intrinsically different for various applications of vehicle routing such as medical emergencies, logistical operations, and ride-sharing. We study a fundamental generalization of the Traveling Salesman Problem, namely $L_p$ TSP, where the objective is to minimize an aggregated measure of the delay in services, quantified by the Minkowski $p$-norm of the delay vector. We present efficient combinatorial and Linear Programming algorithms for approximating $L_p$ TSP on general metrics. We provide several approximation algorithms for the $L_p$ TSP problem, including $4.27$ & $10.92$-approximation algorithms for single & multi vehicle $L_2$ TSP, called the Traveling Firefighter Problem. Among other contributions, we provide an $8$-approximation and a $1.78$ inapproximability for All-Norm TSP problem, addressing scenarios where one does not know the ideal cost function, or is seeking simultaneous approximation with respect to any cost function.
Bayesian Pseudo Labels: Expectation Maximization for Robust and Efficient Semi-Supervised Segmentation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

This paper concerns pseudo labelling in segmentation. Our contribution is fourfold. Firstly, we present a new formulation of pseudo-labelling as an Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm for clear statistical interpretation. Secondly, we propose a semi-supervised medical image segmentation method purely based on the original pseudo labelling, namely SegPL. We demonstrate SegPL is a competitive approach against state-of-the-art consistency regularisation based methods on semi-supervised segmentation on a 2D multi-class MRI brain tumour segmentation task and a 3D binary CT lung vessel segmentation task. The simplicity of SegPL allows less computational cost comparing to prior methods. Thirdly, we demonstrate that the effectiveness of SegPL may originate from its robustness against out-of-distribution noises and adversarial attacks. Lastly, under the EM framework, we introduce a probabilistic generalisation of SegPL via variational inference, which learns a dynamic threshold for pseudo labelling during the training. We show that SegPL with variational inference can perform uncertainty estimation on par with the gold-standard method Deep Ensemble.
Good locally repairable codes via propagation rules
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2022
Year: 2022

In classical coding theory, it is common to construct new codes via propagation rules. There are various propagation rules to construct classical block codes. However, propagation rules have not been extensively explored for constructions of locally repairable codes. In this paper, we introduce a few propagation rules to construct good locally repairable codes. To our surprise, these simple propagation rules produce a few interesting results. Firstly, by concatenating a locally repairable code as an inner code with a classical block code as an outer code, we obtain quite a few dimension-optimal binary locally repairable codes. Secondly, from this concatenation, we explicitly build a family of locally repairable codes that exceeds the Zyablov-type bound. Thirdly, by a lengthening propagation rule that adds some rows and columns from a parity-check matrix of a given linear code, we are able to produce a family of dimension-optimal binary locally repairable codes from the extended Hamming codes, and to convert a classical maximum distance separable (MDS) code into a Singleton-optimal locally repairable code. Furthermore, via the lengthening propagation rule, we greatly simplify the construction of a family of locally repairable codes in \cite[Theorem 5]{MX20} that breaks the asymptotic Gilbert-Varshamov bound. In addition, we make use of three other propagation rules to produce more dimension-optimal binary locally repairable codes. Finally, one of phenomena that we observe in this paper is that some trivial propagation rules in classical block codes do not hold anymore for locally repairable codes.
A Time-to-first-spike Coding and Conversion Aware Training for Energy-Efficient Deep Spiking Neural Network Processor Design
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2022
Year: 2022

In this paper, we present an energy-efficient SNN architecture, which can seamlessly run deep spiking neural networks (SNNs) with improved accuracy. First, we propose a conversion aware training (CAT) to reduce ANN-to-SNN conversion loss without hardware implementation overhead. In the proposed CAT, the activation function developed for simulating SNN during ANN training, is efficiently exploited to reduce the data representation error after conversion. Based on the CAT technique, we also present a time-to-first-spike coding that allows lightweight logarithmic computation by utilizing spike time information. The SNN processor design that supports the proposed techniques has been implemented using 28nm CMOS process. The processor achieves the top-1 accuracies of 91.7%, 67.9% and 57.4% with inference energy of 486.7uJ, 503.6uJ, and 1426uJ to process CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and Tiny-ImageNet, respectively, when running VGG-16 with 5bit logarithmic weights.
Attribute Controllable Beautiful Caucasian Face Generation by Aesthetics Driven Reinforcement Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

In recent years, image generation has made great strides in improving the quality of images, producing high-fidelity ones. Also, quite recently, there are architecture designs, which enable GAN to unsupervisedly learn the semantic attributes represented in different layers. However, there is still a lack of research on generating face images more consistent with human aesthetics. Based on EigenGAN [He et al., ICCV 2021], we build the techniques of reinforcement learning into the generator of EigenGAN. The agent tries to figure out how to alter the semantic attributes of the generated human faces towards more preferable ones. To accomplish this, we trained an aesthetics scoring model that can conduct facial beauty prediction. We also can utilize this scoring model to analyze the correlation between face attributes and aesthetics scores. Empirically, using off-the-shelf techniques from reinforcement learning would not work well. So instead, we present a new variant incorporating the ingredients emerging in the reinforcement learning communities in recent years. Compared to the original generated images, the adjusted ones show clear distinctions concerning various attributes. Experimental results using the MindSpore, show the effectiveness of the proposed method. Altered facial images are commonly more attractive, with significantly improved aesthetic levels.
Positively transitioned sentiment dialogue corpus for developing emotion-affective open-domain chatbots
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2022
Year: 2022

In this paper, we describe a data enhancement method for developing Emily, an emotion-affective open-domain chatbot. The proposed method is based on explicitly modeling positively transitioned (PT) sentiment data from multi-turn dialogues. We construct a dialogue corpus with PT sentiment data and will release it for public use. By fine-tuning a pretrained dialogue model using the produced PT-enhanced dialogues, we are able to develop an emotion-affective open-domain chatbot exhibiting close-to-human performance in various emotion-affective metrics. We evaluate Emily against a few state-of-the-art (SOTA) open-domain chatbots and show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The corpus is made publicly available.