OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
KITE: A Kernel-based Improved Transferability Estimation Method
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Transferability estimation has emerged as an important problem in transfer learning. A transferability estimation method takes as inputs a set of pre-trained models and decides which pre-trained model can deliver the best transfer learning performance. Existing methods tackle this problem by analyzing the output of the pre-trained model or by comparing the pre-trained model with a probe model trained on the target dataset. However, neither is sufficient to provide reliable and efficient transferability estimations. In this paper, we present a novel perspective and introduce Kite, as a Kernel-based Improved Transferability Estimation method. Kite is based on the key observations that the separability of the pre-trained features and the similarity of the pre-trained features to random features are two important factors for estimating transferability. Inspired by kernel methods, Kite adopts centered kernel alignment as an effective way to assess feature separability and feature similarity. Kite is easy to interpret, fast to compute, and robust to the target dataset size. We evaluate the performance of Kite on a recently introduced large-scale model selection benchmark. The benchmark contains 8 source dataset, 6 target datasets and 4 architectures with a total of 32 pre-trained models. Extensive results show that Kite outperforms existing methods by a large margin for transferability estimation.
Q-learning-based Opportunistic Communication for Real-time Mobile Air Quality Monitoring Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2024
Year: 2024

We focus on real-time air quality monitoring systems that rely on devices installed on automobiles in this research. We investigate an opportunistic communication model in which devices can send the measured data directly to the air quality server through a 4G communication channel or via Wi-Fi to adjacent devices or the so-called Road Side Units deployed along the road. We aim to reduce 4G costs while assuring data latency, where the data latency is defined as the amount of time it takes for data to reach the server. We propose an offloading scheme that leverages Q-learning to accomplish the purpose. The experiment results show that our offloading method significantly cuts down around 40-50% of the 4G communication cost while keeping the latency of 99.5% packets smaller than the required threshold.
An Explainable and Conformal AI Model to Detect Temporomandibular Joint Involvement in Children Suffering from Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is the most common rheumatic disease during childhood and adolescence. The temporomandibular joints (TMJ) are among the most frequently affected joints in patients with JIA, and mandibular growth is especially vulnerable to arthritic changes of the TMJ in children. A clinical examination is the most cost-effective method to diagnose TMJ involvement, but clinicians find it difficult to interpret and inaccurate when used only on clinical examinations. This study implemented an explainable artificial intelligence (AI) model that can help clinicians assess TMJ involvement. The classification model was trained using Random Forest on 6154 clinical examinations of 1035 pediatric patients (67% female, 33% male) and evaluated on its ability to correctly classify TMJ involvement or not on a separate test set. Most notably, the results show that the model can classify patients within two years of their first examination as having TMJ involvement with a precision of 0.86 and a sensitivity of 0.7. The results show promise for an AI model in the assessment of TMJ involvement in children and as a decision support tool.
Matter: IoT Interoperability for Smart Homes
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2024
Year: 2024

The smart home is a major Internet of Things (IoT) application domain with tremendous market expectations. However, communication solutions for smart home devices have exhibited a lack of interoperability, challenging the success of the smart home concept. Aiming to overcome this problem, crucial industry organizations have collaborated to produce Matter, a connectivity solution intended as a universal smart home standard. This paper overviews, evaluates and discusses Matter, focusing on its design, features, performance, and future directions.
Explainable AI (XAI) in Image Segmentation in Medicine, Industry, and Beyond: A Survey
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Artificial Intelligence (XAI) has found numerous applications in computer vision. While image classification-based explainability techniques have garnered significant attention, their counterparts in semantic segmentation have been relatively neglected. Given the prevalent use of image segmentation, ranging from medical to industrial deployments, these techniques warrant a systematic look. In this paper, we present the first comprehensive survey on XAI in semantic image segmentation. This work focuses on techniques that were either specifically introduced for dense prediction tasks or were extended for them by modifying existing methods in classification. We analyze and categorize the literature based on application categories and domains, as well as the evaluation metrics and datasets used. We also propose a taxonomy for interpretable semantic segmentation, and discuss potential challenges and future research directions.
Out-of-distribution detection based on subspace projection of high-dimensional features output by the last convolutional layer
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Out-of-distribution (OOD) detection, crucial for reliable pattern classification, discerns whether a sample originates outside the training distribution. This paper concentrates on the high-dimensional features output by the final convolutional layer, which contain rich image features. Our key idea is to project these high-dimensional features into two specific feature subspaces, leveraging the dimensionality reduction capacity of the network's linear layers, trained with Predefined Evenly-Distribution Class Centroids (PEDCC)-Loss. This involves calculating the cosines of three projection angles and the norm values of features, thereby identifying distinctive information for in-distribution (ID) and OOD data, which assists in OOD detection. Building upon this, we have modified the batch normalization (BN) and ReLU layer preceding the fully connected layer, diminishing their impact on the output feature distributions and thereby widening the distribution gap between ID and OOD data features. Our method requires only the training of the classification network model, eschewing any need for input pre-processing or specific OOD data pre-tuning. Extensive experiments on several benchmark datasets demonstrates that our approach delivers state-of-the-art performance. Our code is available at https://github.com/Hewell0/ProjOOD.
1-Diffractor: Efficient and Utility-Preserving Text Obfuscation Leveraging Word-Level Metric Differential Privacy
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

The study of privacy-preserving Natural Language Processing (NLP) has gained rising attention in recent years. One promising avenue studies the integration of Differential Privacy in NLP, which has brought about innovative methods in a variety of application settings. Of particular note are $\textit{word-level Metric Local Differential Privacy (MLDP)}$ mechanisms, which work to obfuscate potentially sensitive input text by performing word-by-word $\textit{perturbations}$. Although these methods have shown promising results in empirical tests, there are two major drawbacks: (1) the inevitable loss of utility due to addition of noise, and (2) the computational expensiveness of running these mechanisms on high-dimensional word embeddings. In this work, we aim to address these challenges by proposing $\texttt{1-Diffractor}$, a new mechanism that boasts high speedups in comparison to previous mechanisms, while still demonstrating strong utility- and privacy-preserving capabilities. We evaluate $\texttt{1-Diffractor}$ for utility on several NLP tasks, for theoretical and task-based privacy, and for efficiency in terms of speed and memory. $\texttt{1-Diffractor}$ shows significant improvements in efficiency, while still maintaining competitive utility and privacy scores across all conducted comparative tests against previous MLDP mechanisms. Our code is made available at: https://github.com/sjmeis/Diffractor.
Requirements-driven Slicing of Simulink Models Using LLMs
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

Model slicing is a useful technique for identifying a subset of a larger model that is relevant to fulfilling a given requirement. Notable applications of slicing include reducing inspection effort when checking design adequacy to meet requirements of interest and when conducting change impact analysis. In this paper, we present a method based on large language models (LLMs) for extracting model slices from graphical Simulink models. Our approach converts a Simulink model into a textual representation, uses an LLM to identify the necessary Simulink blocks for satisfying a specific requirement, and constructs a sound model slice that incorporates the blocks identified by the LLM. We explore how different levels of granularity (verbosity) in transforming Simulink models into textual representations, as well as the strategy used to prompt the LLM, impact the accuracy of the generated slices. Our preliminary findings suggest that prompts created by textual representations that retain the syntax and semantics of Simulink blocks while omitting visual rendering information of Simulink models yield the most accurate slices. Furthermore, the chain-of-thought and zero-shot prompting strategies result in the largest number of accurate model slices produced by our approach.
Interpretable Vital Sign Forecasting with Model Agnostic Attention Maps
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Sepsis is a leading cause of mortality in intensive care units (ICUs), representing a substantial medical challenge. The complexity of analyzing diverse vital signs to predict sepsis further aggravates this issue. While deep learning techniques have been advanced for early sepsis prediction, their 'black-box' nature obscures the internal logic, impairing interpretability in critical settings like ICUs. This paper introduces a framework that combines a deep learning model with an attention mechanism that highlights the critical time steps in the forecasting process, thus improving model interpretability and supporting clinical decision-making. We show that the attention mechanism could be adapted to various black box time series forecasting models such as N-HiTS and N-BEATS. Our method preserves the accuracy of conventional deep learning models while enhancing interpretability through attention-weight-generated heatmaps. We evaluated our model on the eICU-CRD dataset, focusing on forecasting vital signs for sepsis patients. We assessed its performance using mean squared error (MSE) and dynamic time warping (DTW) metrics. We explored the attention maps of N-HiTS and N-BEATS, examining the differences in their performance and identifying crucial factors influencing vital sign forecasting.
ATTAXONOMY: Unpacking Differential Privacy Guarantees Against Practical Adversaries
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

Differential Privacy (DP) is a mathematical framework that is increasingly deployed to mitigate privacy risks associated with machine learning and statistical analyses. Despite the growing adoption of DP, its technical privacy parameters do not lend themselves to an intelligible description of the real-world privacy risks associated with that deployment: the guarantee that most naturally follows from the DP definition is protection against membership inference by an adversary who knows all but one data record and has unlimited auxiliary knowledge. In many settings, this adversary is far too strong to inform how to set real-world privacy parameters. One approach for contextualizing privacy parameters is via defining and measuring the success of technical attacks, but doing so requires a systematic categorization of the relevant attack space. In this work, we offer a detailed taxonomy of attacks, showing the various dimensions of attacks and highlighting that many real-world settings have been understudied. Our taxonomy provides a roadmap for analyzing real-world deployments and developing theoretical bounds for more informative privacy attacks. We operationalize our taxonomy by using it to analyze a real-world case study, the Israeli Ministry of Health's recent release of a birth dataset using DP, showing how the taxonomy enables fine-grained threat modeling and provides insight towards making informed privacy parameter choices. Finally, we leverage the taxonomy towards defining a more realistic attack than previously considered in the literature, namely a distributional reconstruction attack: we generalize Balle et al.'s notion of reconstruction robustness to a less-informed adversary with distributional uncertainty, and extend the worst-case guarantees of DP to this average-case setting.
Explainability Guided Adversarial Evasion Attacks on Malware Detectors
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

As the focus on security of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming paramount, research on crafting and inserting optimal adversarial perturbations has become increasingly critical. In the malware domain, this adversarial sample generation relies heavily on the accuracy and placement of crafted perturbation with the goal of evading a trained classifier. This work focuses on applying explainability techniques to enhance the adversarial evasion attack on a machine-learning-based Windows PE malware detector. The explainable tool identifies the regions of PE malware files that have the most significant impact on the decision-making process of a given malware detector, and therefore, the same regions can be leveraged to inject the adversarial perturbation for maximum efficiency. Profiling all the PE malware file regions based on their impact on the malware detector's decision enables the derivation of an efficient strategy for identifying the optimal location for perturbation injection. The strategy should incorporate the region's significance in influencing the malware detector's decision and the sensitivity of the PE malware file's integrity towards modifying that region. To assess the utility of explainable AI in crafting an adversarial sample of Windows PE malware, we utilize the DeepExplainer module of SHAP for determining the contribution of each region of PE malware to its detection by a CNN-based malware detector, MalConv. Furthermore, we analyzed the significance of SHAP values at a more granular level by subdividing each section of Windows PE into small subsections. We then performed an adversarial evasion attack on the subsections based on the corresponding SHAP values of the byte sequences.
Rings with common division, common meadows and their conditional equational theories
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2024
Year: 2024

We examine the consequences of having a total division operation $\frac{x}{y}$ on commutative rings. We consider two forms of binary division, one derived from a unary inverse, the other defined directly as a general operation; each are made total by setting $1/0$ equal to an error value $\bot$, which is added to the ring. Such totalised divisions we call common divisions. In a field the two forms are equivalent and we have a finite equational axiomatisation $E$ that is complete for the equational theory of fields equipped with common division, called common meadows. These equational axioms $E$ turn out to be true of commutative rings with common division but only when defined via inverses. We explore these axioms $E$ and their role in seeking a completeness theorem for the conditional equational theory of common meadows. We prove they are complete for the conditional equational theory of commutative rings with inverse based common division. By adding a new proof rule, we can prove a completeness theorem for the conditional equational theory of common meadows. Although, the equational axioms $E$ fail with common division defined directly, we observe that the direct division does satisfies the equations in $E$ under a new congruence for partial terms called eager equality.
Addressing Privacy Concerns in Joint Communication and Sensing for 6G Networks: Challenges and Prospects
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2024
Year: 2024

The vision for 6G extends beyond mere communication, incorporating sensing capabilities to facilitate a diverse array of novel applications and services. However, the advent of joint communication and sensing (JCAS) technology introduces concerns regarding the handling of sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) pertaining to individuals and objects, along with external third-party data and disclosure. Consequently, JCAS-based applications are susceptible to privacy breaches, including location tracking, identity disclosure, profiling, and misuse of sensor data, raising significant implications under the European Union's general data protection regulation (GDPR) as well as other applicable standards. This paper critically examines emergent JCAS architectures and underscores the necessity for network functions to enable privacy-specific features in the 6G systems. We propose an enhanced JCAS architecture with additional network functions and interfaces, facilitating the management of sensing policies, consent information, and transparency guidelines, alongside the integration of sensing-specific functions and storage for sensing processing sessions. Furthermore, we conduct a comprehensive threat analysis for all interfaces, employing security threat model STRIDE and privacy threat model LINDDUN. We also summarise the identified threats using standard common weakness enumeration (CWE). Finally, we suggest the security and privacy controls as the mitigating strategies to counter the identified threats stemming from the JCAS architecture.
Creation of Novel Soft Robot Designs using Generative AI
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Soft robotics has emerged as a promising field with the potential to revolutionize industries such as healthcare and manufacturing. However, designing effective soft robots presents challenges, particularly in managing the complex interplay of material properties, structural design, and control strategies. Traditional design methods are often time-consuming and may not yield optimal designs. In this paper, we explore the use of generative AI to create 3D models of soft actuators. We create a dataset of over 70 text-shape pairings of soft pneumatic robot actuator designs, and adapt a latent diffusion model (SDFusion) to learn the data distribution and generate novel designs from it. By employing transfer learning and data augmentation techniques, we significantly improve the performance of the diffusion model. These findings highlight the potential of generative AI in designing complex soft robotic systems, paving the way for future advancements in the field.
A Novel Approach to Guard from Adversarial Attacks using Stable Diffusion
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Recent developments in adversarial machine learning have highlighted the importance of building robust AI systems to protect against increasingly sophisticated attacks. While frameworks like AI Guardian are designed to defend against these threats, they often rely on assumptions that can limit their effectiveness. For example, they may assume attacks only come from one direction or include adversarial images in their training data. Our proposal suggests a different approach to the AI Guardian framework. Instead of including adversarial examples in the training process, we propose training the AI system without them. This aims to create a system that is inherently resilient to a wider range of attacks. Our method focuses on a dynamic defense strategy using stable diffusion that learns continuously and models threats comprehensively. We believe this approach can lead to a more generalized and robust defense against adversarial attacks. In this paper, we outline our proposed approach, including the theoretical basis, experimental design, and expected impact on improving AI security against adversarial threats.
Tokenization of Real Estate Assets Using Blockchain
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2024
Year: 2024

Blockchain technology is one of the key technologies that have revolutionized various facets of society, such as the banking, healthcare, and other critical ecosystems. One area that can harness the usage of blockchain is the real estate sector. The most lucrative long-term investment is real estate, followed by gold, equities, mutual funds, and savings accounts. Nevertheless, it has administrative overheads such as lack of transparency, fraud, several intermediaries, title issues, paperwork, an increasing number of arbitrations, and the lack of liquidity. This paper proposes a framework that uses blockchain as an underlying technology. With the aid of blockchain and the suite of tools, it supports many of these problems that can be alleviated in the real estate investment ecosystem. These include smart contracts, immutable record management, tokenization, record tracking, and time-stamped storage. Tokenization of real estate lowers the entry barrier by fixing liquidity and interoperability and improving the interaction between various stakeholders.
Cyber Security in Energy Informatics: A Non-technical Perspective
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

Literature in cyber security including cyber security in energy informatics are tecnocentric focuses that may miss the chances of understanding a bigger picture of cyber security measures. This research thus aims to conduct a literature review focusing on non-technical issues in cyber security in the energy informatics field. The findings show that there are seven non-technical issues have been discussed in literature, including education, awareness, policy, standards, human, and risks, challenges, and solutions. These findings can be valuable for not only researchers, but also managers, policy makers, and educators.
DALLMi: Domain Adaption for LLM-based Multi-label Classifier
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Large language models (LLMs) increasingly serve as the backbone for classifying text associated with distinct domains and simultaneously several labels (classes). When encountering domain shifts, e.g., classifier of movie reviews from IMDb to Rotten Tomatoes, adapting such an LLM-based multi-label classifier is challenging due to incomplete label sets at the target domain and daunting training overhead. The existing domain adaptation methods address either image multi-label classifiers or text binary classifiers. In this paper, we design DALLMi, Domain Adaptation Large Language Model interpolator, a first-of-its-kind semi-supervised domain adaptation method for text data models based on LLMs, specifically BERT. The core of DALLMi is the novel variation loss and MixUp regularization, which jointly leverage the limited positively labeled and large quantity of unlabeled text and, importantly, their interpolation from the BERT word embeddings. DALLMi also introduces a label-balanced sampling strategy to overcome the imbalance between labeled and unlabeled data. We evaluate DALLMi against the partial-supervised and unsupervised approach on three datasets under different scenarios of label availability for the target domain. Our results show that DALLMi achieves higher mAP than unsupervised and partially-supervised approaches by 19.9% and 52.2%, respectively.