OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Unveiling the Role of Expert Guidance: A Comparative Analysis of User-centered Imitation Learning and Traditional Reinforcement Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Integration of human feedback plays a key role in improving the learning capabilities of intelligent systems. This comparative study delves into the performance, robustness, and limitations of imitation learning compared to traditional reinforcement learning methods within these systems. Recognizing the value of human-in-the-loop feedback, we investigate the influence of expert guidance and suboptimal demonstrations on the learning process. Through extensive experimentation and evaluations conducted in a pre-existing simulation environment using the Unity platform, we meticulously analyze the effectiveness and limitations of these learning approaches. The insights gained from this study contribute to the advancement of human-centered artificial intelligence by highlighting the benefits and challenges associated with the incorporation of human feedback into the learning process. Ultimately, this research promotes the development of models that can effectively address complex real-world problems.
CT2C-QA: Multimodal Question Answering over Chinese Text, Table and Chart
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Multimodal Question Answering (MMQA) is crucial as it enables comprehensive understanding and accurate responses by integrating insights from diverse data representations such as tables, charts, and text. Most existing researches in MMQA only focus on two modalities such as image-text QA, table-text QA and chart-text QA, and there remains a notable scarcity in studies that investigate the joint analysis of text, tables, and charts. In this paper, we present C$\text{T}^2$C-QA, a pioneering Chinese reasoning-based QA dataset that includes an extensive collection of text, tables, and charts, meticulously compiled from 200 selectively sourced webpages. Our dataset simulates real webpages and serves as a great test for the capability of the model to analyze and reason with multimodal data, because the answer to a question could appear in various modalities, or even potentially not exist at all. Additionally, we present AED (\textbf{A}llocating, \textbf{E}xpert and \textbf{D}esicion), a multi-agent system implemented through collaborative deployment, information interaction, and collective decision-making among different agents. Specifically, the Assignment Agent is in charge of selecting and activating expert agents, including those proficient in text, tables, and charts. The Decision Agent bears the responsibility of delivering the final verdict, drawing upon the analytical insights provided by these expert agents. We execute a comprehensive analysis, comparing AED with various state-of-the-art models in MMQA, including GPT-4. The experimental outcomes demonstrate that current methodologies, including GPT-4, are yet to meet the benchmarks set by our dataset.
Improving DeFi Mechanisms with Dynamic Games and Optimal Control: A Case Study in Stablecoins
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2024
Year: 2024

Stablecoins are a class of cryptocurrencies which aim at providing consistency and predictability, typically by pegging the token's value to that of a real world asset. Designing resilient decentralized stablecoins is a challenge, and prominent stablecoins today either (i) give up on decentralization, or (ii) rely on user-owned cryptocurrencies as collateral, exposing the token to exogenous price fluctuations. In this latter category, it is increasingly common to employ algorithmic mechanisms to automate risk management, helping maintain the peg. One example of this is Reflexer's RAI, which adapts its system-internal exchange rate (redemption price) to secondary market conditions according to a proportional control law. In this paper, we take this idea of active management a step further, and introduce a new kind of control scheme based on a Stackelberg game model between the token protocol and its users. By doing so, we show that (i) we can mitigate adverse depeg events that inevitably arise in a fixed-redemption scheme such as MakerDao's DAI and (ii) generally outperform a simpler, adaptive-redemption scheme such as RAI in the task of targeting a desired market price. We demonstrate these results through extensive simulations over a range of market conditions.
Constrained Transformer-Based Porous Media Generation to Spatial Distribution of Rock Properties
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Pore-scale modeling of rock images based on information in 3D micro-computed tomography data is crucial for studying complex subsurface processes such as CO2 and brine multiphase flow during Geologic Carbon Storage (GCS). While deep learning models can generate 3D rock microstructures that match static rock properties, they have two key limitations: they don't account for the spatial distribution of rock properties that can have an important influence on the flow and transport characteristics (such as permeability and relative permeability) of the rock and they generate structures below the representative elementary volume (REV) scale for those transport properties. Addressing these issues is crucial for building a consistent workflow between pore-scale analysis and field-scale modeling. To address these challenges, we propose a two-stage modeling framework that combines a Vector Quantized Variational Autoencoder (VQVAE) and a transformer model for spatial upscaling and arbitrary-size 3D porous media reconstruction in an autoregressive manner. The VQVAE first compresses and quantizes sub-volume training images into low-dimensional tokens, while we train a transformer to spatially assemble these tokens into larger images following specific spatial order. By employing a multi-token generation strategy, our approach preserves both sub-volume integrity and spatial relationships among these sub-image patches. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our multi-token transformer generation approach and validate it using real data from a test well, showcasing its potential to generate models for the porous media at the well scale using only a spatial porosity model. The interpolated representative porous media that reflect field-scale geological properties accurately model transport properties, including permeability and multiphase flow relative permeability of CO2 and brine.
Discovery of Endianness and Instruction Size Characteristics in Binary Programs from Unknown Instruction Set Architectures
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

We study the problem of streamlining reverse engineering (RE) of binary programs from unknown instruction set architectures (ISA). We focus on two fundamental ISA characteristics to beginning the RE process: identification of endianness and whether the instruction width is a fixed or variable. For ISAs with a fixed instruction width, we also present methods for estimating the width. In addition to advancing research in software RE, our work can also be seen as a first step in hardware reverse engineering, because endianness and instruction format describe intrinsic characteristics of the underlying ISA. We detail our efforts at feature engineering and perform experiments using a variety of machine learning models on two datasets of architectures using Leave-One-Group-Out-Cross-Validation to simulate conditions where the tested ISA is unknown during model training. We use bigram-based features for endianness detection and the autocorrelation function, commonly used in signal processing applications, for differentiation between fixed- and variable-width instruction sizes. A collection of classifiers from the machine learning library scikit-learn are used in the experiments to research these features. Initial results are promising, with accuracy of endianness detection at 99.4%, fixed- versus variable-width instruction size at 86.0%, and detection of fixed instruction sizes at 88.0%.
Audio Classification of Low Feature Spectrograms Utilizing Convolutional Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2024
Year: 2024

Modern day audio signal classification techniques lack the ability to classify low feature audio signals in the form of spectrographic temporal frequency data representations. Additionally, currently utilized techniques rely on full diverse data sets that are often not representative of real-world distributions. This paper derives several first-of-its-kind machine learning methodologies to analyze these low feature audio spectrograms given data distributions that may have normalized, skewed, or even limited training sets. In particular, this paper proposes several novel customized convolutional architectures to extract identifying features using binary, one-class, and siamese approaches to identify the spectrographic signature of a given audio signal. Utilizing these novel convolutional architectures as well as the proposed classification methods, these experiments demonstrate state-of-the-art classification accuracy and improved efficiency than traditional audio classification methods.
The Toxicity Phenomenon Across Social Media
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2024
Year: 2024

Social media platforms have evolved rapidly in modernity without strong regulation. One clear obstacle faced by current users is that of toxicity. Toxicity on social media manifests through a number of forms, including harassment, negativity, misinformation or other means of divisiveness. In this paper, we characterize literature surrounding toxicity, formalize a definition of toxicity, propose a novel cycle of internet extremism, list current approaches to toxicity detection, outline future directions to minimize toxicity in future social media endeavors, and identify current gaps in research space. We present a novel perspective of the negative impacts of social media platforms and fill a gap in literature to help improve the future of social media platforms.
Graph Sparsification for Enhanced Conformal Prediction in Graph Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Conformal Prediction is a robust framework that ensures reliable coverage across machine learning tasks. Although recent studies have applied conformal prediction to graph neural networks, they have largely emphasized post-hoc prediction set generation. Improving conformal prediction during the training stage remains unaddressed. In this work, we tackle this challenge from a denoising perspective by introducing SparGCP, which incorporates graph sparsification and a conformal prediction-specific objective into GNN training. SparGCP employs a parameterized graph sparsification module to filter out task-irrelevant edges, thereby improving conformal prediction efficiency. Extensive experiments on real-world graph datasets demonstrate that SparGCP outperforms existing methods, reducing prediction set sizes by an average of 32\% and scaling seamlessly to large networks on commodity GPUs.
MCPDial: A Minecraft Persona-driven Dialogue Dataset
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

We propose a novel approach that uses large language models (LLMs) to generate persona-driven conversations between Players and Non-Player Characters (NPC) in games. Showcasing the application of our methodology, we introduce the Minecraft Persona-driven Dialogue dataset (MCPDial). Starting with a small seed of expert-written conversations, we employ our method to generate hundreds of additional conversations. Each conversation in the dataset includes rich character descriptions of the player and NPC. The conversations are long, allowing for in-depth and extensive interactions between the player and NPC. MCPDial extends beyond basic conversations by incorporating canonical function calls (e.g. "Call find a resource on iron ore") between the utterances. Finally, we conduct a qualitative analysis of the dataset to assess its quality and characteristics.
Partial Orders in Rate-Matched Polar Codes
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2024
Year: 2024

In this paper, we establish the partial order (POs) for both the binary erasure channel (BEC) and the binary memoryless symmetric channel (BMSC) under any block rate-matched polar codes. Firstly, we define the POs in the sense of rate-matched polar codes as a sequential block version. Furthermore, we demonstrate the persistence of POs after block rate matching in the BEC. Finally, leveraging the existing POs in the BEC, we obtain more POs in the BMSC under block rate matching. Simulations show that the PW sequence constructed from β-expansion can be improved by the tool of POs. Actually, any fixed reliable sequence in the mother polar codes can be improved by POs for rate matching.
Two Criteria for Performance Analysis of Optimization Algorithms
Venue: arXiv cs.PF 2024
Year: 2024

Performance analysis is crucial in optimization research, especially when addressing black-box problems through nature-inspired algorithms. Current practices often rely heavily on statistical methods, which can lead to various logical paradoxes. To address this challenge, this paper introduces two criteria to ensure that performance analysis is unaffected by irrelevant factors. The first is the isomorphism criterion, which asserts that performance evaluation should remain unaffected by the modeling approach. The second is the IIA criterion,stating that comparisons between two algorithms should not be influenced by irrelevant third-party algorithms. Additionally, we conduct a comprehensive examination of the underlying causes of these paradoxes, identify conditions for checking the criteria, and propose ideas to tackle these issues. The criteria presented offer a framework for researchers to critically assess the performance metrics or ranking methods, ultimately aiming to enhance the rigor of evaluation metrics and ranking methods.
Generating Realistic Tabular Data with Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

While most generative models show achievements in image data generation, few are developed for tabular data generation. Recently, due to success of large language models (LLM) in diverse tasks, they have also been used for tabular data generation. However, these methods do not capture the correct correlation between the features and the target variable, hindering their applications in downstream predictive tasks. To address this problem, we propose a LLM-based method with three important improvements to correctly capture the ground-truth feature-class correlation in the real data. First, we propose a novel permutation strategy for the input data in the fine-tuning phase. Second, we propose a feature-conditional sampling approach to generate synthetic samples. Finally, we generate the labels by constructing prompts based on the generated samples to query our fine-tuned LLM. Our extensive experiments show that our method significantly outperforms 10 SOTA baselines on 20 datasets in downstream tasks. It also produces highly realistic synthetic samples in terms of quality and diversity. More importantly, classifiers trained with our synthetic data can even compete with classifiers trained with the original data on half of the benchmark datasets, which is a significant achievement in tabular data generation.
DiffSTR: Controlled Diffusion Models for Scene Text Removal
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

To prevent unauthorized use of text in images, Scene Text Removal (STR) has become a crucial task. It focuses on automatically removing text and replacing it with a natural, text-less background while preserving significant details such as texture, color, and contrast. Despite its importance in privacy protection, STR faces several challenges, including boundary artifacts, inconsistent texture and color, and preserving correct shadows. Most STR approaches estimate a text region mask to train a model, solving for image translation or inpainting to generate a text-free image. Thus, the quality of the generated image depends on the accuracy of the inpainting mask and the generator's capability. In this work, we leverage the superior capabilities of diffusion models in generating high-quality, consistent images to address the STR problem. We introduce a ControlNet diffusion model, treating STR as an inpainting task. To enhance the model's robustness, we develop a mask pretraining pipeline to condition our diffusion model. This involves training a masked autoencoder (MAE) using a combination of box masks and coarse stroke masks, and fine-tuning it using masks derived from our novel segmentation-based mask refinement framework. This framework iteratively refines an initial mask and segments it using the SLIC and Hierarchical Feature Selection (HFS) algorithms to produce an accurate final text mask. This improves mask prediction and utilizes rich textural information in natural scene images to provide accurate inpainting masks. Experiments on the SCUT-EnsText and SCUT-Syn datasets demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art techniques.
Edge Arrival Online Matching: The Power of Free Disposal on Acyclic Graphs
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2024
Year: 2024

Online matching is a fundamental problem in the study of online algorithms. We study the problem under a very general arrival model: the edge arrival model. Free disposal is an important notion in the online matching literature, which allows the algorithm to dispose of the previously matched edges. Without free disposal, we cannot achieve any bounded ratio, even with randomized algorithms, when edges are weighted. Our paper focuses on clarifying the power of free disposal in both the unweighted and the weighted setting. As far as we know, it's still uncertain if free disposal can give us extra leverage to enhance the competitive ratio in the unweighted scenario, even in specific instances such as Growing Trees, where every new edge adds a new leaf to the graph. Our study serves as a valuable initial exploration of this open question. The results are listed as follows: 1. With free disposal, we improve the competitive ratio for unweighted online matching on Growing Trees from $5/9$ to $2/3 \approx 0.66$, and show that the ratio is tight. For Forests, a more general setting where the underlying graph is a forest and edges may arrive in arbitrary order, we improve the competitive ratio from $5/9$ to $5/8 = 0.625$. 2. Both the ratios of $2/3$ and $0.625$ show a separation to the upper bound of the competitive ratio without free disposal on Growing Trees ($0.5914$). Therefore, we demonstrate the additional power of free disposal for the unweighted setting for the first time, at least in the special setting of Growing Trees and Forests. 3. We improve the competitive ratio for weighted online matching on Growing Trees from $1/3$ to $1/2$ using a very simple ordinal algorithm, and show that it is optimal among ordinal algorithms.
MotionGPT-2: A General-Purpose Motion-Language Model for Motion Generation and Understanding
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Generating lifelike human motions from descriptive texts has experienced remarkable research focus in the recent years, propelled by the emerging requirements of digital humans.Despite impressive advances, existing approaches are often constrained by limited control modalities, task specificity, and focus solely on body motion representations.In this paper, we present MotionGPT-2, a unified Large Motion-Language Model (LMLM) that addresses these limitations. MotionGPT-2 accommodates multiple motion-relevant tasks and supporting multimodal control conditions through pre-trained Large Language Models (LLMs). It quantizes multimodal inputs-such as text and single-frame poses-into discrete, LLM-interpretable tokens, seamlessly integrating them into the LLM's vocabulary. These tokens are then organized into unified prompts, guiding the LLM to generate motion outputs through a pretraining-then-finetuning paradigm. We also show that the proposed MotionGPT-2 is highly adaptable to the challenging 3D holistic motion generation task, enabled by the innovative motion discretization framework, Part-Aware VQVAE, which ensures fine-grained representations of body and hand movements. Extensive experiments and visualizations validate the effectiveness of our method, demonstrating the adaptability of MotionGPT-2 across motion generation, motion captioning, and generalized motion completion tasks.
Fast-OMRA: Fast Online Motion Resolution Adaptation for Neural B-Frame Coding
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Most learned B-frame codecs with hierarchical temporal prediction suffer from the domain shift issue caused by the discrepancy in the Group-of-Pictures (GOP) size used for training and test. As such, the motion estimation network may fail to predict large motion properly. One effective strategy to mitigate this domain shift issue is to downsample video frames for motion estimation. However, finding the optimal downsampling factor involves a time-consuming rate-distortion optimization process. This work introduces lightweight classifiers to determine the downsampling factor. To strike a good rate-distortion-complexity trade-off, our classifiers observe simple state signals, including only the coding and reference frames, to predict the best downsampling factor. We present two variants that adopt binary and multi-class classifiers, respectively. The binary classifier adopts the Focal Loss for training, classifying between motion estimation at high and low resolutions. Our multi-class classifier is trained with novel soft labels incorporating the knowledge of the rate-distortion costs of different downsampling factors. Both variants operate as add-on modules without the need to re-train the B-frame codec. Experimental results confirm that they achieve comparable coding performance to the brute-force search methods while greatly reducing computational complexity.
Online Mirror Descent for Tchebycheff Scalarization in Multi-Objective Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

The goal of multi-objective optimization (MOO) is to learn under multiple, potentially conflicting, objectives. One widely used technique to tackle MOO is through linear scalarization, where one fixed preference vector is used to combine the objectives into a single scalar value for optimization. However, recent work (Hu et al., 2024) has shown linear scalarization often fails to capture the non-convex regions of the Pareto Front, failing to recover the complete set of Pareto optimal solutions. In light of the above limitations, this paper focuses on Tchebycheff scalarization that optimizes for the worst-case objective. In particular, we propose an online mirror descent algorithm for Tchebycheff scalarization, which we call OMD-TCH. We show that OMD-TCH enjoys a convergence rate of $O(\sqrt{\log m/T})$ where $m$ is the number of objectives and $T$ is the number of iteration rounds. We also propose a novel adaptive online-to-batch conversion scheme that significantly improves the practical performance of OMD-TCH while maintaining the same convergence guarantees. We demonstrate the effectiveness of OMD-TCH and the adaptive conversion scheme on both synthetic problems and federated learning tasks under fairness constraints, showing state-of-the-art performance.