OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Morphological Typology in BPE Subword Productivity and Language Modeling
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

This study investigates the impact of morphological typology on tokenization and language modeling performance. We focus on languages with synthetic and analytical morphological structures and examine their productivity when tokenized using the byte-pair encoding (BPE) algorithm. We compare the performance of models trained with similar amounts of data in different languages. Our experiments reveal that languages with synthetic features exhibit greater subword regularity and productivity with BPE tokenization and achieve better results in language modeling tasks. We also observe that the typological continuum from linguistic theory is reflected in several experiments. These findings suggest a correlation between morphological typology and BPE tokenization efficiency.
Projected Neural Differential Equations for Learning Constrained Dynamics
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Neural differential equations offer a powerful approach for learning dynamics from data. However, they do not impose known constraints that should be obeyed by the learned model. It is well-known that enforcing constraints in surrogate models can enhance their generalizability and numerical stability. In this paper, we introduce projected neural differential equations (PNDEs), a new method for constraining neural differential equations based on projection of the learned vector field to the tangent space of the constraint manifold. In tests on several challenging examples, including chaotic dynamical systems and state-of-the-art power grid models, PNDEs outperform existing methods while requiring fewer hyperparameters. The proposed approach demonstrates significant potential for enhancing the modeling of constrained dynamical systems, particularly in complex domains where accuracy and reliability are essential.
Argumentation and Machine Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

This chapter provides an overview of research works that present approaches with some degree of cross-fertilisation between Computational Argumentation and Machine Learning. Our review of the literature identified two broad themes representing the purpose of the interaction between these two areas: argumentation for machine learning and machine learning for argumentation. Across these two themes, we systematically evaluate the spectrum of works across various dimensions, including the type of learning and the form of argumentation framework used. Further, we identify three types of interaction between these two areas: synergistic approaches, where the Argumentation and Machine Learning components are tightly integrated; segmented approaches, where the two are interleaved such that the outputs of one are the inputs of the other; and approximated approaches, where one component shadows the other at a chosen level of detail. We draw conclusions about the suitability of certain forms of Argumentation for supporting certain types of Machine Learning, and vice versa, with clear patterns emerging from the review. Whilst the reviewed works provide inspiration for successfully combining the two fields of research, we also identify and discuss limitations and challenges that ought to be addressed in order to ensure that they remain a fruitful pairing as AI advances.
An Empirical Analysis of GPT-4V's Performance on Fashion Aesthetic Evaluation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Fashion aesthetic evaluation is the task of estimating how well the outfits worn by individuals in images suit them. In this work, we examine the zero-shot performance of GPT-4V on this task for the first time. We show that its predictions align fairly well with human judgments on our datasets, and also find that it struggles with ranking outfits in similar colors. The code is available at https://github.com/st-tech/gpt4v-fashion-aesthetic-evaluation.
Static Analysis Framework for Detecting Use-After-Free Bugs in C++
Venue: arXiv cs.FL 2024
Year: 2024

Pointers are a powerful, but dangerous feature provided by the C and C++ programming languages, and incorrect use of pointers is a common source of bugs and security vulnerabilities. Making secure software is crucial, as vulnerabilities exploited by malicious actors not only lead to monetary losses, but possibly loss of human lives. Fixing these vulnerabilities is costly if they are found at the end of development, and the cost will be even higher if found after deployment. That is why it is desirable to find the bugs as early in the development process as possible. We propose a framework that can statically find use-after-free bugs at compile-time and report the errors to the users. It works by tracking the lifetime of objects and memory locations pointers might point to and, using this information, a possibly invalid dereferencing of a pointer can be detected. The framework was tested on over 100 handwritten small tests, as well as 5 real-world projects, and has shown good results detecting errors, while at the same time highlighting some scenarios where false positive reports may occur. Based on the results, it was concluded that our framework achieved its goals, as it is able to detect multiple patterns of use-after-free bugs, and correctly report the errors to the programmer.
Disentangling Interactions and Dependencies in Feature Attribution
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

In explainable machine learning, global feature importance methods try to determine how much each individual feature contributes to predicting the target variable, resulting in one importance score for each feature. But often, predicting the target variable requires interactions between several features (such as in the XOR function), and features might have complex statistical dependencies that allow to partially replace one feature with another one. In commonly used feature importance scores these cooperative effects are conflated with the features' individual contributions, making them prone to misinterpretations. In this work, we derive DIP, a new mathematical decomposition of individual feature importance scores that disentangles three components: the standalone contribution and the contributions stemming from interactions and dependencies. We prove that the DIP decomposition is unique and show how it can be estimated in practice. Based on these results, we propose a new visualization of feature importance scores that clearly illustrates the different contributions.
Improving snore detection under limited dataset through harmonic/percussive source separation and convolutional neural networks
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2024
Year: 2024

Snoring, an acoustic biomarker commonly observed in individuals with Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Syndrome (OSAS), holds significant potential for diagnosing and monitoring this recognized clinical disorder. Irrespective of snoring types, most snoring instances exhibit identifiable harmonic patterns manifested through distinctive energy distributions over time. In this work, we propose a novel method to differentiate monaural snoring from non-snoring sounds by analyzing the harmonic content of the input sound using harmonic/percussive sound source separation (HPSS). The resulting feature, based on the harmonic spectrogram from HPSS, is employed as input data for conventional neural network architectures, aiming to enhance snoring detection performance even under a limited data learning framework. To evaluate the performance of our proposal, we studied two different scenarios: 1) using a large dataset of snoring and interfering sounds, and 2) using a reduced training set composed of around 1% of the data material. In the former scenario, the proposed HPSS-based feature provides competitive results compared to other input features from the literature. However, the key advantage of the proposed method lies in the superior performance of the harmonic spectrogram derived from HPSS in a limited data learning context. In this particular scenario, using the proposed harmonic feature significantly enhances the performance of all the studied architectures in comparison to the classical input features documented in the existing literature. This finding clearly demonstrates that incorporating harmonic content enables more reliable learning of the essential time-frequency characteristics that are prevalent in most snoring sounds, even in scenarios where the amount of training data is limited.
Reducing Oversmoothing through Informed Weight Initialization in Graph Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

In this work, we generalize the ideas of Kaiming initialization to Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) and propose a new scheme (G-Init) that reduces oversmoothing, leading to very good results in node and graph classification tasks. GNNs are commonly initialized using methods designed for other types of Neural Networks, overlooking the underlying graph topology. We analyze theoretically the variance of signals flowing forward and gradients flowing backward in the class of convolutional GNNs. We then simplify our analysis to the case of the GCN and propose a new initialization method. Our results indicate that the new method (G-Init) reduces oversmoothing in deep GNNs, facilitating their effective use. Experimental validation supports our theoretical findings, demonstrating the advantages of deep networks in scenarios with no feature information for unlabeled nodes (i.e., ``cold start'' scenario).
Deterministic Exploration via Stationary Bellman Error Maximization
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Exploration is a crucial and distinctive aspect of reinforcement learning (RL) that remains a fundamental open problem. Several methods have been proposed to tackle this challenge. Commonly used methods inject random noise directly into the actions, indirectly via entropy maximization, or add intrinsic rewards that encourage the agent to steer to novel regions of the state space. Another previously seen idea is to use the Bellman error as a separate optimization objective for exploration. In this paper, we introduce three modifications to stabilize the latter and arrive at a deterministic exploration policy. Our separate exploration agent is informed about the state of the exploitation, thus enabling it to account for previous experiences. Further components are introduced to make the exploration objective agnostic toward the episode length and to mitigate instability introduced by far-off-policy learning. Our experimental results show that our approach can outperform $\varepsilon$-greedy in dense and sparse reward settings.
Commonsense Knowledge Editing Based on Free-Text in LLMs
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Knowledge editing technology is crucial for maintaining the accuracy and timeliness of large language models (LLMs) . However, the setting of this task overlooks a significant portion of commonsense knowledge based on free-text in the real world, characterized by broad knowledge scope, long content and non instantiation. The editing objects of previous methods (e.g., MEMIT) were single token or entity, which were not suitable for commonsense knowledge in free-text form. To address the aforementioned challenges, we conducted experiments from two perspectives: knowledge localization and knowledge editing. Firstly, we introduced Knowledge Localization for Free-Text(KLFT) method, revealing the challenges associated with the distribution of commonsense knowledge in MLP and Attention layers, as well as in decentralized distribution. Next, we propose a Dynamics-aware Editing Method(DEM), which utilizes a Dynamics-aware Module to locate the parameter positions corresponding to commonsense knowledge, and uses Knowledge Editing Module to update knowledge. The DEM method fully explores the potential of the MLP and Attention layers, and successfully edits commonsense knowledge based on free-text. The experimental results indicate that the DEM can achieve excellent editing performance.
Noise as a Double-Edged Sword: Reinforcement Learning Exploits Randomized Defenses in Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

This study investigates a counterintuitive phenomenon in adversarial machine learning: the potential for noise-based defenses to inadvertently aid evasion attacks in certain scenarios. While randomness is often employed as a defensive strategy against adversarial examples, our research reveals that this approach can sometimes backfire, particularly when facing adaptive attackers using reinforcement learning (RL). Our findings show that in specific cases, especially with visually noisy classes, the introduction of noise in the classifier's confidence values can be exploited by the RL attacker, leading to a significant increase in evasion success rates. In some instances, the noise-based defense scenario outperformed other strategies by up to 20\% on a subset of classes. However, this effect was not consistent across all classifiers tested, highlighting the complexity of the interaction between noise-based defenses and different models. These results suggest that in some cases, noise-based defenses can inadvertently create an adversarial training loop beneficial to the RL attacker. Our study emphasizes the need for a more nuanced approach to defensive strategies in adversarial machine learning, particularly in safety-critical applications. It challenges the assumption that randomness universally enhances defense against evasion attacks and highlights the importance of considering adaptive, RL-based attackers when designing robust defense mechanisms.
GEPS: Boosting Generalization in Parametric PDE Neural Solvers through Adaptive Conditioning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Solving parametric partial differential equations (PDEs) presents significant challenges for data-driven methods due to the sensitivity of spatio-temporal dynamics to variations in PDE parameters. Machine learning approaches often struggle to capture this variability. To address this, data-driven approaches learn parametric PDEs by sampling a very large variety of trajectories with varying PDE parameters. We first show that incorporating conditioning mechanisms for learning parametric PDEs is essential and that among them, $\textit{adaptive conditioning}$, allows stronger generalization. As existing adaptive conditioning methods do not scale well with respect to the number of parameters to adapt in the neural solver, we propose GEPS, a simple adaptation mechanism to boost GEneralization in Pde Solvers via a first-order optimization and low-rank rapid adaptation of a small set of context parameters. We demonstrate the versatility of our approach for both fully data-driven and for physics-aware neural solvers. Validation performed on a whole range of spatio-temporal forecasting problems demonstrates excellent performance for generalizing to unseen conditions including initial conditions, PDE coefficients, forcing terms and solution domain. $\textit{Project page}$: https://geps-project.github.io
Manipulating Vehicle 3D Shapes through Latent Space Editing
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Although 3D object editing has the potential to significantly influence various industries, recent research in 3D generation and editing has primarily focused on converting text and images into 3D models, often overlooking the need for fine-grained control over the editing of existing 3D objects. This paper introduces a framework that employs a pre-trained regressor, enabling continuous, precise, attribute-specific modifications to both the stylistic and geometric attributes of vehicle 3D models. Our method not only preserves the inherent identity of vehicle 3D objects, but also supports multi-attribute editing, allowing for extensive customization without compromising the model's structural integrity. Experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of our approach in achieving detailed edits on various vehicle 3D models.
Image Synthesis with Class-Aware Semantic Diffusion Models for Surgical Scene Segmentation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Surgical scene segmentation is essential for enhancing surgical precision, yet it is frequently compromised by the scarcity and imbalance of available data. To address these challenges, semantic image synthesis methods based on generative adversarial networks and diffusion models have been developed. However, these models often yield non-diverse images and fail to capture small, critical tissue classes, limiting their effectiveness. In response, we propose the Class-Aware Semantic Diffusion Model (CASDM), a novel approach which utilizes segmentation maps as conditions for image synthesis to tackle data scarcity and imbalance. Novel class-aware mean squared error and class-aware self-perceptual loss functions have been defined to prioritize critical, less visible classes, thereby enhancing image quality and relevance. Furthermore, to our knowledge, we are the first to generate multi-class segmentation maps using text prompts in a novel fashion to specify their contents. These maps are then used by CASDM to generate surgical scene images, enhancing datasets for training and validating segmentation models. Our evaluation, which assesses both image quality and downstream segmentation performance, demonstrates the strong effectiveness and generalisability of CASDM in producing realistic image-map pairs, significantly advancing surgical scene segmentation across diverse and challenging datasets.
Simultaneous Control of Human Hand Joint Positions and Grip Force via HD-EMG and Deep Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2024
Year: 2024

In myoelectric control, simultaneous control of multiple degrees of freedom can be challenging due to the dexterity of the human hand. Numerous studies have focused on hand functionality, however, they only focused on a few degrees of freedom. In this paper, a 3DCNN-MLP model is proposed that uses high-density sEMG signals to estimate 20 hand joint positions and grip force simultaneously. The deep learning model maps the muscle activity to the hand kinematics and kinetics. The proposed models' performance is also evaluated in estimating grip forces with real-time resolution. This paper investigated three individual dynamic hand movements (2pinch, 3pinch, and fist closing and opening) while applying forces in 10% and 30% of the maximum voluntary contraction (MVC). The results demonstrated significant accuracy in estimating kinetics and kinematics. The average Euclidean distance across all joints and subjects was 11.01 $\pm$ 2.22 mm and the mean absolute error for offline and real-time force estimation were found to be 0.8 $\pm$ 0.33 N and 2.09 $\pm$ 0.9 N respectively. The results demonstrate that by leveraging high-density sEMG and deep learning, it is possible to estimate human hand dynamics (kinematics and kinetics), which is a step forward to practical prosthetic hands.
Localization, balance and affinity: a stronger multifaceted collaborative salient object detector in remote sensing images
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Despite significant advancements in salient object detection(SOD) in optical remote sensing images(ORSI), challenges persist due to the intricate edge structures of ORSIs and the complexity of their contextual relationships. Current deep learning approaches encounter difficulties in accurately identifying boundary features and lack efficiency in collaboratively modeling the foreground and background by leveraging contextual features. To address these challenges, we propose a stronger multifaceted collaborative salient object detector in ORSIs, termed LBA-MCNet, which incorporates aspects of localization, balance, and affinity. The network focuses on accurately locating targets, balancing detailed features, and modeling image-level global context information. Specifically, we design the Edge Feature Adaptive Balancing and Adjusting(EFABA) module for precise edge localization, using edge features to guide attention to boundaries and preserve spatial details. Moreover, we design the Global Distributed Affinity Learning(GDAL) module to model global context. It captures global context by generating an affinity map from the encoders final layer, ensuring effective modeling of global patterns. Additionally, deep supervision during deconvolution further enhances feature representation. Finally, we compared with 28 state of the art approaches on three publicly available datasets. The results clearly demonstrate the superiority of our method.
Unveiling Synthetic Faces: How Synthetic Datasets Can Expose Real Identities
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Synthetic data generation is gaining increasing popularity in different computer vision applications. Existing state-of-the-art face recognition models are trained using large-scale face datasets, which are crawled from the Internet and raise privacy and ethical concerns. To address such concerns, several works have proposed generating synthetic face datasets to train face recognition models. However, these methods depend on generative models, which are trained on real face images. In this work, we design a simple yet effective membership inference attack to systematically study if any of the existing synthetic face recognition datasets leak any information from the real data used to train the generator model. We provide an extensive study on 6 state-of-the-art synthetic face recognition datasets, and show that in all these synthetic datasets, several samples from the original real dataset are leaked. To our knowledge, this paper is the first work which shows the leakage from training data of generator models into the generated synthetic face recognition datasets. Our study demonstrates privacy pitfalls in synthetic face recognition datasets and paves the way for future studies on generating responsible synthetic face datasets.
Speech is More Than Words: Do Speech-to-Text Translation Systems Leverage Prosody?
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

The prosody of a spoken utterance, including features like stress, intonation and rhythm, can significantly affect the underlying semantics, and as a consequence can also affect its textual translation. Nevertheless, prosody is rarely studied within the context of speech-to-text translation (S2TT) systems. In particular, end-to-end (E2E) systems have been proposed as well-suited for prosody-aware translation because they have direct access to the speech signal when making translation decisions, but the understanding of whether this is successful in practice is still limited. A main challenge is the difficulty of evaluating prosody awareness in translation. To address this challenge, we introduce an evaluation methodology and a focused benchmark (named ContraProST) aimed at capturing a wide range of prosodic phenomena. Our methodology uses large language models and controllable text-to-speech (TTS) to generate contrastive examples. Through experiments in translating English speech into German, Spanish, and Japanese, we find that (a) S2TT models possess some internal representation of prosody, but the prosody signal is often not strong enough to affect the translations, (b) E2E systems outperform cascades of speech recognition and text translation systems, confirming their theoretical advantage in this regard, and (c) certain cascaded systems also capture prosodic information in the translation, but only to a lesser extent that depends on the particulars of the transcript's surface form.