OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Ensembled Cold-Diffusion Restorations for Unsupervised Anomaly Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Unsupervised Anomaly Detection (UAD) methods aim to identify anomalies in test samples comparing them with a normative distribution learned from a dataset known to be anomaly-free. Approaches based on generative models offer interpretability by generating anomaly-free versions of test images, but are typically unable to identify subtle anomalies. Alternatively, approaches using feature modelling or self-supervised methods, such as the ones relying on synthetically generated anomalies, do not provide out-of-the-box interpretability. In this work, we present a novel method that combines the strengths of both strategies: a generative cold-diffusion pipeline (i.e., a diffusion-like pipeline which uses corruptions not based on noise) that is trained with the objective of turning synthetically-corrupted images back to their normal, original appearance. To support our pipeline we introduce a novel synthetic anomaly generation procedure, called DAG, and a novel anomaly score which ensembles restorations conditioned with different degrees of abnormality. Our method surpasses the prior state-of-the art for unsupervised anomaly detection in three different Brain MRI datasets.
Early Detection of Network Service Degradation: An Intra-Flow Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2024
Year: 2024

This research presents a novel method for predicting service degradation (SD) in computer networks by leveraging early flow features. Our approach focuses on the observable (O) segments of network flows, particularly analyzing Packet Inter-Arrival Time (PIAT) values and other derived metrics, to infer the behavior of non-observable (NO) segments. Through a comprehensive evaluation, we identify an optimal O/NO split threshold of 10 observed delay samples, balancing prediction accuracy and resource utilization. Evaluating models including Logistic Regression, XGBoost, and Multi-Layer Perceptron, we find XGBoost outperforms others, achieving an F1-score of 0.74, balanced accuracy of 0.84, and AUROC of 0.97. Our findings highlight the effectiveness of incorporating comprehensive early flow features and the potential of our method to offer a practical solution for monitoring network traffic in resource-constrained environments. This approach ensures enhanced user experience and network performance by preemptively addressing potential SD, providing the basis for a robust framework for maintaining high-quality network services.
Teacher agency in the age of generative AI: towards a framework of hybrid intelligence for learning design
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

Generative AI (genAI) is being used in education for different purposes. From the teachers' perspective, genAI can support activities such as learning design. However, there is a need to study the impact of genAI on the teachers' agency. While GenAI can support certain processes of idea generation and co-creation, GenAI has the potential to negatively affect professional agency due to teachers' limited power to (i) act, (ii) affect matters, and (iii) make decisions or choices, as well as the possibility to (iv) take a stance. Agency is identified in the learning sciences studies as being one of the factors in teachers' ability to trust AI. This paper aims to introduce a dual perspective. First, educational technology, as opposed to other computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools, has two distinctly different user groups and different user needs, in the form of learners and teachers, to cater for. Second, the design of educational technology often prioritises learner agency and engagement, thereby limiting the opportunities for teachers to influence the technology and take action. This study aims to analyse the way GenAI is influencing teachers' agency. After identifying the current limits of GenAI, a solution based on the combination of human intelligence and artificial intelligence through a hybrid intelligence approach is proposed. This combination opens up the discussion of a collaboration between teacher and genAI being able to open up new practices in learning design in which they HI support the extension of the teachers' activity.
A Predictive Model Based on Transformer with Statistical Feature Embedding in Manufacturing Sensor Dataset
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

In the manufacturing process, sensor data collected from equipment is crucial for building predictive models to manage processes and improve productivity. However, in the field, it is challenging to gather sufficient data to build robust models. This study proposes a novel predictive model based on the Transformer, utilizing statistical feature embedding and window positional encoding. Statistical features provide an effective representation of sensor data, and the embedding enables the Transformer to learn both time- and sensor-related information. Window positional encoding captures precise time details from the feature embedding. The model's performance is evaluated in two problems: fault detection and virtual metrology, showing superior results compared to baseline models. This improvement is attributed to the efficient use of parameters, which is particularly beneficial for sensor data that often has limited sample sizes. The results support the model's applicability across various manufacturing industries, demonstrating its potential for enhancing process management and yield.
PSPU: Enhanced Positive and Unlabeled Learning by Leveraging Pseudo Supervision
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Positive and Unlabeled (PU) learning, a binary classification model trained with only positive and unlabeled data, generally suffers from overfitted risk estimation due to inconsistent data distributions. To address this, we introduce a pseudo-supervised PU learning framework (PSPU), in which we train the PU model first, use it to gather confident samples for the pseudo supervision, and then apply these supervision to correct the PU model's weights by leveraging non-PU objectives. We also incorporate an additional consistency loss to mitigate noisy sample effects. Our PSPU outperforms recent PU learning methods significantly on MNIST, CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 in both balanced and imbalanced settings, and enjoys competitive performance on MVTecAD for industrial anomaly detection.
Modeling configuration-performance relation in a mobile network: a data-driven approach
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2024
Year: 2024

Mobile network performance modeling typically assumes either a fixed cell's configuration or only considers a limited number of parameters. This prohibits the exploration of multidimensional, diverse configuration space for, e.g., optimization purposes. This paper presents a method for performance predictions based on a network cell's configuration and network conditions, which utilizes neural network architecture. We evaluate the idea by extensive experiments, with data from more than 50,000 5G cells. The assessment included a comparison of the proposed method against models developed for fixed configuration. Results show that combined configuration-performance modeling outperforms single-configuration models and allows for performance prediction of unknown configurations, i.e., it is not used for model training. A substantially lower mean absolute error was achieved (0.25 vs. 0.45 for fixed-configuration MLP-based models).
Top-K Pairwise Ranking: Bridging the Gap Among Ranking-Based Measures for Multi-Label Classification
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Multi-label ranking, which returns multiple top-ranked labels for each instance, has a wide range of applications for visual tasks. Due to its complicated setting, prior arts have proposed various measures to evaluate model performances. However, both theoretical analysis and empirical observations show that a model might perform inconsistently on different measures. To bridge this gap, this paper proposes a novel measure named Top-K Pairwise Ranking (TKPR), and a series of analyses show that TKPR is compatible with existing ranking-based measures. In light of this, we further establish an empirical surrogate risk minimization framework for TKPR. On one hand, the proposed framework enjoys convex surrogate losses with the theoretical support of Fisher consistency. On the other hand, we establish a sharp generalization bound for the proposed framework based on a novel technique named data-dependent contraction. Finally, empirical results on benchmark datasets validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.
Generalizing and Unifying Gray-box Combinatorial Optimization Operators
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2024
Year: 2024

Gray-box optimization leverages the information available about the mathematical structure of an optimization problem to design efficient search operators. Efficient hill climbers and crossover operators have been proposed in the domain of pseudo-Boolean optimization and also in some permutation problems. However, there is no general rule on how to design these efficient operators in different representation domains. This paper proposes a general framework that encompasses all known gray-box operators for combinatorial optimization problems. The framework is general enough to shed light on the design of new efficient operators for new problems and representation domains. We also unify the proofs of efficiency for gray-box hill climbers and crossovers and show that the mathematical property explaining the speed-up of gray-box crossover operators, also explains the efficient identification of improving moves in gray-box hill climbers. We illustrate the power of the new framework by proposing an efficient hill climber and crossover for two related permutation problems: the Linear Ordering Problem and the Single Machine Total Weighted Tardiness Problem.
A Comparison of Vulnerability Feature Extraction Methods from Textual Attack Patterns
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

Nowadays, threat reports from cybersecurity vendors incorporate detailed descriptions of attacks within unstructured text. Knowing vulnerabilities that are related to these reports helps cybersecurity researchers and practitioners understand and adjust to evolving attacks and develop mitigation plans. This paper aims to aid cybersecurity researchers and practitioners in choosing attack extraction methods to enhance the monitoring and sharing of threat intelligence. In this work, we examine five feature extraction methods (TF-IDF, LSI, BERT, MiniLM, RoBERTa) and find that Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) outperforms the other four methods with a precision of 75\% and an F1 score of 64\%. The findings offer valuable insights to the cybersecurity community, and our research can aid cybersecurity researchers in evaluating and comparing the effectiveness of upcoming extraction methods.
On the Importance of Reproducibility of Experimental Results Especially in the Domain of Security
Venue: arXiv cs.AR 2024
Year: 2024

Security especially in the fields of IoT, industrial automation and critical infrastructure is paramount nowadays and a hot research topic. In order to ensure confidence in research results they need to be reproducible. In the past we reported [18] that in many publications important information such as details about the equipment used are missing. In this paper we report on our own experiments that we run to verify the parameters reported in the datasheets that came along with our experimental equipment. Our results show that there are significant discrepancies between the datasheets and the real world data. These deviations concern accuracy of positions, movements, duration of laser shots etc. In order to improve reproducibility of results we therefore argue on the one hand that research groups verify the data given in datasheets of equipment they use and on the other hand that they provide measurement set-up parameters in globally accepted units such as cm, seconds, etc.
AstroSpy: On detecting Fake Images in Astronomy via Joint Image-Spectral Representations
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

The prevalence of AI-generated imagery has raised concerns about the authenticity of astronomical images, especially with advanced text-to-image models like Stable Diffusion producing highly realistic synthetic samples. Existing detection methods, primarily based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) or spectral analysis, have limitations when used independently. We present AstroSpy, a hybrid model that integrates both spectral and image features to distinguish real from synthetic astronomical images. Trained on a unique dataset of real NASA images and AI-generated fakes (approximately 18k samples), AstroSpy utilizes a dual-pathway architecture to fuse spatial and spectral information. This approach enables AstroSpy to achieve superior performance in identifying authentic astronomical images. Extensive evaluations demonstrate AstroSpy's effectiveness and robustness, significantly outperforming baseline models in both in-domain and cross-domain tasks, highlighting its potential to combat misinformation in astronomy.
HTD-Mamba: Efficient Hyperspectral Target Detection with Pyramid State Space Model
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Hyperspectral target detection (HTD) identifies objects of interest from complex backgrounds at the pixel level, playing a vital role in Earth observation. However, HTD faces challenges due to limited prior knowledge and spectral variation, leading to underfitting models and unreliable performance. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an efficient self-supervised HTD method with a pyramid state space model (SSM), named HTD-Mamba, which employs spectrally contrastive learning to distinguish between target and background based on the similarity measurement of intrinsic features. Specifically, to obtain sufficient training samples and leverage spatial contextual information, we propose a spatial-encoded spectral augmentation technique that encodes all surrounding pixels within a patch into a transformed view of the center pixel. Additionally, to explore global band correlations, we divide pixels into continuous group-wise spectral embeddings and introduce Mamba to HTD for the first time to model long-range dependencies of the spectral sequence with linear complexity. Furthermore, to alleviate spectral variation and enhance robust representation, we propose a pyramid SSM as a backbone to capture and fuse multiresolution spectral-wise intrinsic features. Extensive experiments conducted on four public datasets demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods in both quantitative and qualitative evaluations. Code is available at \url{https://github.com/shendb2022/HTD-Mamba}.
Coinductive Techniques for Checking Satisfiability of Generalized Nested Conditions
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2024
Year: 2024

We study nested conditions, a generalization of first-order logic to a categorical setting, and provide a tableau-based (semi-decision) procedure for checking (un)satisfiability and finite model generation. This generalizes earlier results on graph conditions. Furthermore we introduce a notion of witnesses, allowing the detection of infinite models in some cases. To ensure completeness, paths in a tableau must be fair, where fairness requires that all parts of a condition are processed eventually. Since the correctness arguments are non-trivial, we rely on coinductive proof methods and up-to techniques that structure the arguments. We distinguish between two types of categories: categories where all sections are isomorphisms, allowing for a simpler tableau calculus that includes finite model generation; in categories where this requirement does not hold, model generation does not work, but we still obtain a sound and complete calculus.
Meerkat: A Distributed Reactive Programming Language with Live Updates
Venue: arXiv cs.PL 2024
Year: 2024

We propose a novel type-safe reactive programming language with live updates that extends an existing work to support multiple distributed evolution queues. Dependency sets of definitions are incorporated in the type system to protect the interaction between the frontend user interface and the backend database. Distributed live updates submitted by multiple programmers are ensured strong consistency based on an existing framework for distributed reactive propagation.
A Complete Set of Quadratic Constraints for Repeated ReLU and Generalizations
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

This paper derives a complete set of quadratic constraints (QCs) for the repeated ReLU. The complete set of QCs is described by a collection of matrix copositivity conditions. We also show that only two functions satisfy all QCs in our complete set: the repeated ReLU and flipped ReLU. Thus our complete set of QCs bounds the repeated ReLU as tight as possible up to the sign invariance inherent in quadratic forms. We derive a similar complete set of incremental QCs for repeated ReLU, which can potentially lead to less conservative Lipschitz bounds for ReLU networks than the standard LipSDP approach. The basic constructions are also used to derive the complete sets of QCs for other piecewise linear activation functions such as leaky ReLU, MaxMin, and HouseHolder. Finally, we illustrate the use of the complete set of QCs to assess stability and performance for recurrent neural networks with ReLU activation functions. We rely on a standard copositivity relaxation to formulate the stability/performance condition as a semidefinite program. Simple examples are provided to illustrate that the complete sets of QCs and incremental QCs can yield less conservative bounds than existing sets.
Differentially Private Algorithms for Graph Cuts: A Shifting Mechanism Approach and More
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

In this paper, we address the challenge of differential privacy in the context of graph cuts, specifically focusing on the multiway cut and the minimum $k$-cut. We introduce edge-differentially private algorithms that achieve nearly optimal performance for these problems. Motivated by multiway cut, we propose the shifting mechanism, a general framework for private combinatorial optimization problems. This framework allows us to develop an efficient private algorithm with a multiplicative approximation ratio that matches the state-of-the-art non-private algorithm, improving over previous private algorithms that have provably worse multiplicative loss. We then provide a tight information-theoretic lower bound on the additive error, demonstrating that for constant $k$, our algorithm is optimal in terms of the privacy cost. The shifting mechanism also allows us to design private algorithm for the multicut and max-cut problems, with runtimes determined by the best non-private algorithms for these tasks. For the minimum $k$-cut problem we use a different approach, combining the exponential mechanism with bounds on the number of approximate $k$-cuts to get the first private algorithm with optimal additive error of $O(k\log n)$ (for a fixed privacy parameter). We also establish an information-theoretic lower bound that matches this additive error. Furthermore, we provide an efficient private algorithm even for non-constant $k$, including a polynomial-time 2-approximation with an additive error of $\tilde{O}(k^{1.5})$.
RoboCAS: A Benchmark for Robotic Manipulation in Complex Object Arrangement Scenarios
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Foundation models hold significant potential for enabling robots to perform long-horizon general manipulation tasks. However, the simplicity of tasks and the uniformity of environments in existing benchmarks restrict their effective deployment in complex scenarios. To address this limitation, this paper introduces the \textit{RoboCAS} benchmark, the first benchmark specifically designed for complex object arrangement scenarios in robotic manipulation. This benchmark employs flexible and concise scripted policies to efficiently collect a diverse array of demonstrations, showcasing scattered, orderly, and stacked object arrangements within a highly realistic physical simulation environment. It includes complex processes such as target retrieval, obstacle clearance, and robot manipulation, testing agents' abilities to perform long-horizon planning for spatial reasoning and predicting chain reactions under ambiguous instructions. Extensive experiments on multiple baseline models reveal their limitations in managing complex object arrangement scenarios, underscoring the urgent need for intelligent agents capable of performing long-horizon operations in practical deployments and providing valuable insights for future research directions. Project website: \url{https://github.com/notFoundThisPerson/RoboCAS-v0}.
PEER: Expertizing Domain-Specific Tasks with a Multi-Agent Framework and Tuning Methods
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

In domain-specific applications, GPT-4, augmented with precise prompts or Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), shows notable potential but faces the critical tri-lemma of performance, cost, and data privacy. High performance requires sophisticated processing techniques, yet managing multiple agents within a complex workflow often proves costly and challenging. To address this, we introduce the PEER (Plan, Execute, Express, Review) multi-agent framework. This systematizes domain-specific tasks by integrating precise question decomposition, advanced information retrieval, comprehensive summarization, and rigorous self-assessment. Given the concerns of cost and data privacy, enterprises are shifting from proprietary models like GPT-4 to custom models, striking a balance between cost, security, and performance. We developed industrial practices leveraging online data and user feedback for efficient model tuning. This study provides best practice guidelines for applying multi-agent systems in domain-specific problem-solving and implementing effective agent tuning strategies. Our empirical studies, particularly in the financial question-answering domain, demonstrate that our approach achieves 95.0% of GPT-4's performance, while effectively managing costs and ensuring data privacy.
A PSPACE Algorithm for Almost-Sure Rabin Objectives in Multi-Environment MDPs
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2024
Year: 2024

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) model systems with uncertain transition dynamics. Multiple-environment MDPs (MEMDPs) extend MDPs. They intuitively reflect finite sets of MDPs that share the same state and action spaces but differ in the transition dynamics. The key objective in MEMDPs is to find a single policy that satisfies a given objective in every associated MDP. The main result of this paper is PSPACE-completeness for almost-sure Rabin objectives in MEMDPs. This result clarifies the complexity landscape for MEMDPs and contrasts with results for the more general class of partially observable MDPs (POMDPs), where almost-sure reachability is already EXPTIME-complete, and almost-sure Rabin objectives are undecidable.
CAPformer: Compression-Aware Pre-trained Transformer for Low-Light Image Enhancement
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Low-Light Image Enhancement (LLIE) has advanced with the surge in phone photography demand, yet many existing methods neglect compression, a crucial concern for resource-constrained phone photography. Most LLIE methods overlook this, hindering their effectiveness. In this study, we investigate the effects of JPEG compression on low-light images and reveal substantial information loss caused by JPEG due to widespread low pixel values in dark areas. Hence, we propose the Compression-Aware Pre-trained Transformer (CAPformer), employing a novel pre-training strategy to learn lossless information from uncompressed low-light images. Additionally, the proposed Brightness-Guided Self-Attention (BGSA) mechanism enhances rational information gathering. Experiments demonstrate the superiority of our approach in mitigating compression effects on LLIE, showcasing its potential for improving LLIE in resource-constrained scenarios.