OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Adaptive multi-criteria-based load balancing technique for resource allocation in fog-cloud environments
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2024
Year: 2024

Recently, to deliver services directly to the network edge, fog computing, an emerging and developing technology, acts as a layer between the cloud and the IoT worlds. The cloud or fog computing nodes could be selected by IoTs applications to meet their resource needs. Due to the scarce resources of fog devices that are available, as well as the need to meet user demands for low latency and quick reaction times, resource allocation in the fog-cloud environment becomes a difficult problem. In this problem, the load balancing between several fog devices is the most important element in achieving resource efficiency and preventing overload on fog devices. In this paper, a new adaptive resource allocation technique for load balancing in a fog-cloud environment is proposed. The proposed technique ranks each fog device using hybrid multi-criteria decision-making approaches Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and Fuzzy Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution (FTOPSIS), then selects the most effective fog device based on the resulting ranking set. The simulation results show that the proposed technique outperforms existing techniques in terms of load balancing, response time, resource utilization, and energy consumption. The proposed technique decreases the number of fog nodes by 11%, load balancing variance by 69% and increases resource utilization to 90% which is comparatively higher than the comparable methods.
What Makes Medical Claims (Un)Verifiable? Analyzing Entity and Relation Properties for Fact Verification
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Biomedical claim verification fails if no evidence can be discovered. In these cases, the fact-checking verdict remains unknown and the claim is unverifiable. To improve upon this, we have to understand if there are any claim properties that impact its verifiability. In this work we assume that entities and relations define the core variables in a biomedical claim's anatomy and analyze if their properties help us to differentiate verifiable from unverifiable claims. In a study with trained annotation experts we prompt them to find evidence for biomedical claims, and observe how they refine search queries for their evidence search. This leads to the first corpus for scientific fact verification annotated with subject-relation-object triplets, evidence documents, and fact-checking verdicts (the BEAR-Fact corpus). We find (1) that discovering evidence for negated claims (e.g., X-does-not-cause-Y) is particularly challenging. Further, we see that annotators process queries mostly by adding constraints to the search and by normalizing entities to canonical names. (2) We compare our in-house annotations with a small crowdsourcing setting where we employ medical experts and laypeople. We find that domain expertise does not have a substantial effect on the reliability of annotations. Finally, (3), we demonstrate that it is possible to reliably estimate the success of evidence retrieval purely from the claim text~(.82\F), whereas identifying unverifiable claims proves more challenging (.27\F). The dataset is available at http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/data/bioclaim.
Continual Learning for Large Language Models: A Survey
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Large language models (LLMs) are not amenable to frequent re-training, due to high training costs arising from their massive scale. However, updates are necessary to endow LLMs with new skills and keep them up-to-date with rapidly evolving human knowledge. This paper surveys recent works on continual learning for LLMs. Due to the unique nature of LLMs, we catalog continue learning techniques in a novel multi-staged categorization scheme, involving continual pretraining, instruction tuning, and alignment. We contrast continual learning for LLMs with simpler adaptation methods used in smaller models, as well as with other enhancement strategies like retrieval-augmented generation and model editing. Moreover, informed by a discussion of benchmarks and evaluation, we identify several challenges and future work directions for this crucial task.
EmoSpeaker: One-shot Fine-grained Emotion-Controlled Talking Face Generation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Implementing fine-grained emotion control is crucial for emotion generation tasks because it enhances the expressive capability of the generative model, allowing it to accurately and comprehensively capture and express various nuanced emotional states, thereby improving the emotional quality and personalization of generated content. Generating fine-grained facial animations that accurately portray emotional expressions using only a portrait and an audio recording presents a challenge. In order to address this challenge, we propose a visual attribute-guided audio decoupler. This enables the obtention of content vectors solely related to the audio content, enhancing the stability of subsequent lip movement coefficient predictions. To achieve more precise emotional expression, we introduce a fine-grained emotion coefficient prediction module. Additionally, we propose an emotion intensity control method using a fine-grained emotion matrix. Through these, effective control over emotional expression in the generated videos and finer classification of emotion intensity are accomplished. Subsequently, a series of 3DMM coefficient generation networks are designed to predict 3D coefficients, followed by the utilization of a rendering network to generate the final video. Our experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method, EmoSpeaker, outperforms existing emotional talking face generation methods in terms of expression variation and lip synchronization. Project page: https://peterfanfan.github.io/EmoSpeaker/
From Words to Molecules: A Survey of Large Language Models in Chemistry
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

In recent years, Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved significant success in natural language processing (NLP) and various interdisciplinary areas. However, applying LLMs to chemistry is a complex task that requires specialized domain knowledge. This paper provides a thorough exploration of the nuanced methodologies employed in integrating LLMs into the field of chemistry, delving into the complexities and innovations at this interdisciplinary juncture. Specifically, our analysis begins with examining how molecular information is fed into LLMs through various representation and tokenization methods. We then categorize chemical LLMs into three distinct groups based on the domain and modality of their input data, and discuss approaches for integrating these inputs for LLMs. Furthermore, this paper delves into the pretraining objectives with adaptations to chemical LLMs. After that, we explore the diverse applications of LLMs in chemistry, including novel paradigms for their application in chemistry tasks. Finally, we identify promising research directions, including further integration with chemical knowledge, advancements in continual learning, and improvements in model interpretability, paving the way for groundbreaking developments in the field.
FRENETIX: A High-Performance and Modular Motion Planning Framework for Autonomous Driving
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Our research introduces a modular motion planning framework for autonomous vehicles using a sampling-based trajectory planning algorithm. This approach effectively tackles the challenges of solution space construction and optimization in path planning. The algorithm is applicable to both real vehicles and simulations, offering a robust solution for complex autonomous navigation. Our method employs a multi-objective optimization strategy for efficient navigation in static and highly dynamic environments, focusing on optimizing trajectory comfort, safety, and path precision. The algorithm is used to analyze the algorithm performance and success rate in 1750 virtual complex urban and highway scenarios. Our results demonstrate fast calculation times (8ms for 800 trajectories), a high success rate in complex scenarios (88%), and easy adaptability with different modules presented. The most noticeable difference exhibited was the fast trajectory sampling, feasibility check, and cost evaluation step across various trajectory counts. We demonstrate the integration and execution of the framework on real vehicles by evaluating deviations from the controller using a test track. This evaluation highlights the algorithm's robustness and reliability, ensuring it meets the stringent requirements of real-world autonomous driving scenarios. The code and the additional modules used in this research are publicly available as open-source software and can be accessed at the following link: https://github.com/TUM-AVS/Frenetix-Motion-Planner.
Mission Critical -- Satellite Data is a Distinct Modality in Machine Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Satellite data has the potential to inspire a seismic shift for machine learning -- one in which we rethink existing practices designed for traditional data modalities. As machine learning for satellite data (SatML) gains traction for its real-world impact, our field is at a crossroads. We can either continue applying ill-suited approaches, or we can initiate a new research agenda that centers around the unique characteristics and challenges of satellite data. This position paper argues that satellite data constitutes a distinct modality for machine learning research and that we must recognize it as such to advance the quality and impact of SatML research across theory, methods, and deployment. We outline critical discussion questions and actionable suggestions to transform SatML from merely an intriguing application area to a dedicated research discipline that helps move the needle on big challenges for machine learning and society.
Improving importance estimation in covariate shift for providing accurate prediction error
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

In traditional Machine Learning, the algorithms predictions are based on the assumption that the data follows the same distribution in both the training and the test datasets. However, in real world data this condition does not hold and, for instance, the distribution of the covariates changes whereas the conditional distribution of the targets remains unchanged. This situation is called covariate shift problem where standard error estimation may be no longer accurate. In this context, the importance is a measure commonly used to alleviate the influence of covariate shift on error estimations. The main drawback is that it is not easy to compute. The Kullback-Leibler Importance Estimation Procedure (KLIEP) is capable of estimating importance in a promising way. Despite its good performance, it fails to ignore target information, since it only includes the covariates information for computing the importance. In this direction, this paper explores the potential performance improvement if target information is considered in the computation of the importance. Then, a redefinition of the importance arises in order to be generalized in this way. Besides the potential improvement in performance, including target information make possible the application to a real application about plankton classification that motivates this research and characterized by its great dimensionality, since considering targets rather than covariates reduces the computation and the noise in the covariates. The impact of taking target information is also explored when Logistic Regression (LR), Kernel Mean Matching (KMM), Ensemble Kernel Mean Matching (EKMM) and the naive predecessor of KLIEP called Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) methods estimate the importance. The experimental results lead to a more accurate error estimation using target information, especially in case of the more promising method KLIEP.
Selenium-Jupiter: A JUnit 5 extension for Selenium WebDriver
Venue: arXiv cs.OH 2024
Year: 2024

Selenium WebDriver is a library that allows controlling web browsers (e.g., Chrome, Firefox, etc.) programmatically. It provides a cross-browser programming interface in several languages used primarily to implement end-to-end tests for web applications. JUnit is a popular unit testing framework for Java. Its latest version (i.e., JUnit 5) provides a programming and extension model called Jupiter. This paper presents Selenium-Jupiter, an open-source JUnit 5 extension for Selenium WebDriver. Selenium-Jupiter aims to ease the development of Selenium WebDriver tests thanks to an automated driver management process implemented in conjunction with the Jupiter parameter resolution mechanism. Moreover, Selenium-Jupiter provides seamless integration with Docker, allowing the use of different web browsers in Docker containers out of the box. This feature enables cross-browser testing, load testing, and troubleshooting (e.g., configurable session recordings). This paper presents an example case in which Selenium-Jupiter is used to evaluate the performance of video conferencing systems based on WebRTC. This example case shows that Selenium-Jupiter can build and maintain the required infrastructure for complex tests effortlessly.
Simulation-based optimization of a production system topology -- a neural network-assisted genetic algorithm
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2024
Year: 2024

There is an abundance of prior research on the optimization of production systems, but there is a research gap when it comes to optimizing which components should be included in a design, and how they should be connected. To overcome this gap, a novel approach is presented for topology optimization of production systems using a genetic algorithm (GA). This GA employs similarity-based mutation and recombination for the creation of offspring, and discrete-event simulation for fitness evaluation. To reduce computational cost, an extension to the GA is presented in which a neural network functions as a surrogate model for simulation. Three types of neural networks are compared, and the type most effective as a surrogate model is chosen based on its optimization performance and computational cost. Both the unassisted GA and neural network-assisted GA are applied to an industrial case study and a scalability case study. These show that both approaches are effective at finding the optimal solution in industrial settings, and both scale well as the number of potential solutions increases, with the neural network-assisted GA having the better scalability of the two.
Privacy-Preserving Distributed Learning for Residential Short-Term Load Forecasting
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

In the realm of power systems, the increasing involvement of residential users in load forecasting applications has heightened concerns about data privacy. Specifically, the load data can inadvertently reveal the daily routines of residential users, thereby posing a risk to their property security. While federated learning (FL) has been employed to safeguard user privacy by enabling model training without the exchange of raw data, these FL models have shown vulnerabilities to emerging attack techniques, such as Deep Leakage from Gradients and poisoning attacks. To counteract these, we initially employ a Secure-Aggregation (SecAgg) algorithm that leverages multiparty computation cryptographic techniques to mitigate the risk of gradient leakage. However, the introduction of SecAgg necessitates the deployment of additional sub-center servers for executing the multiparty computation protocol, thereby escalating computational complexity and reducing system robustness, especially in scenarios where one or more sub-centers are unavailable. To address these challenges, we introduce a Markovian Switching-based distributed training framework, the convergence of which is substantiated through rigorous theoretical analysis. The Distributed Markovian Switching (DMS) topology shows strong robustness towards the poisoning attacks as well. Case studies employing real-world power system load data validate the efficacy of our proposed algorithm. It not only significantly minimizes communication complexity but also maintains accuracy levels comparable to traditional FL methods, thereby enhancing the scalability of our load forecasting algorithm.
Efficient and Interaction-Aware Trajectory Planning for Autonomous Vehicles with Particle Swarm Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

This paper introduces a novel numerical approach to achieving smooth lane-change trajectories in autonomous driving scenarios. Our trajectory generation approach leverages particle swarm optimization (PSO) techniques, incorporating Neural Network (NN) predictions for trajectory refinement. The generation of smooth and dynamically feasible trajectories for the lane change maneuver is facilitated by combining polynomial curve fitting with particle propagation, which can account for vehicle dynamics. The proposed planning algorithm is capable of determining feasible trajectories with real-time computation capability. We conduct comparative analyses with two baseline methods for lane changing, involving analytic solutions and heuristic techniques in numerical simulations. The simulation results validate the efficacy and effectiveness of our proposed approach.
Runtime phylogenetic analysis enables extreme subsampling for test-based problems
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2024
Year: 2024

A phylogeny describes the evolutionary history of an evolving population. Evolutionary search algorithms can perfectly track the ancestry of candidate solutions, illuminating a population's trajectory through the search space. However, phylogenetic analyses are typically limited to post-hoc studies of search performance. We introduce phylogeny-informed subsampling, a new class of subsampling methods that exploit runtime phylogenetic analyses for solving test-based problems. Specifically, we assess two phylogeny-informed subsampling methods -- individualized random subsampling and ancestor-based subsampling -- on three diagnostic problems and ten genetic programming (GP) problems from program synthesis benchmark suites. Overall, we found that phylogeny-informed subsampling methods enable problem-solving success at extreme subsampling levels where other subsampling methods fail. For example, phylogeny-informed subsampling methods more reliably solved program synthesis problems when evaluating just one training case per-individual, per-generation. However, at moderate subsampling levels, phylogeny-informed subsampling generally performed no better than random subsampling on GP problems. Our diagnostic experiments show that phylogeny-informed subsampling improves diversity maintenance relative to random subsampling, but its effects on a selection scheme's capacity to rapidly exploit fitness gradients varied by selection scheme. Continued refinements of phylogeny-informed subsampling techniques offer a promising new direction for scaling up evolutionary systems to handle problems with many expensive-to-evaluate fitness criteria.
Style Vectors for Steering Generative Large Language Model
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

This research explores strategies for steering the output of large language models (LLMs) towards specific styles, such as sentiment, emotion, or writing style, by adding style vectors to the activations of hidden layers during text generation. We show that style vectors can be simply computed from recorded layer activations for input texts in a specific style in contrast to more complex training-based approaches. Through a series of experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of activation engineering using such style vectors to influence the style of generated text in a nuanced and parameterisable way, distinguishing it from prompt engineering. The presented research constitutes a significant step towards developing more adaptive and effective AI-empowered interactive systems.
Informed AI Regulation: Comparing the Ethical Frameworks of Leading LLM Chatbots Using an Ethics-Based Audit to Assess Moral Reasoning and Normative Values
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

With the rise of individual and collaborative networks of autonomous agents, AI is deployed in more key reasoning and decision-making roles. For this reason, ethics-based audits play a pivotal role in the rapidly growing fields of AI safety and regulation. This paper undertakes an ethics-based audit to probe the 8 leading commercial and open-source Large Language Models including GPT-4. We assess explicability and trustworthiness by a) establishing how well different models engage in moral reasoning and b) comparing normative values underlying models as ethical frameworks. We employ an experimental, evidence-based approach that challenges the models with ethical dilemmas in order to probe human-AI alignment. The ethical scenarios are designed to require a decision in which the particulars of the situation may or may not necessitate deviating from normative ethical principles. A sophisticated ethical framework was consistently elicited in one model, GPT-4. Nonetheless, troubling findings include underlying normative frameworks with clear bias towards particular cultural norms. Many models also exhibit disturbing authoritarian tendencies. Code is available at https://github.com/jonchun/llm-sota-chatbots-ethics-based-audit.
User-Centric AI Analytics for Chronic Health Conditions Management
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

The use of AI analytics in health informatics has seen a rapid growth in recent years. In this talk, we look at AI analytics use in managing chronic health conditions such as diabetes, obesity, etc. We focus on the challenges in managing these conditions especially with drug-free approaches due to the variations in individual circumstances. These variations directed the research into user-centric approach leading to variety of research questions. In this short paper, we give examples from recent and current research work and conclude with what, in our opinion, to be the next steps and some remaining open research questions.
Child Impact Statements: Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Political Science and Computer Science
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

Child Impact Statements (CIS) are instrumental in helping to foreground the concerns and needs of minor community members who are too young to vote and often unable to advocate for themselves politically. While many politicians and policymakers assert they make decisions in the best interests of children, they often lack the necessary information to meaningfully accomplish this. CISs are akin to Environmental Impact Statements in that both give voice to constituents who are often under-represented in policymaking. This paper highlights an interdisciplinary collaboration between Social Science and Computer Science to create a CIS tool for policymakers and community members in Shelby County, TN. Furthermore, this type of collaboration is fruitful beyond the scope of the CIS tool. Social scientists and computer scientists can leverage their complementary skill sets in data management and data interpretation for the benefit of their communities, advance scientific knowledge, and bridge disciplinary divides within the academy.