OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Procurement Auctions via Approximately Optimal Submodular Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2024
Year: 2024

We study procurement auctions, where an auctioneer seeks to acquire services from strategic sellers with private costs. The quality of services is measured by a submodular function known to the auctioneer. Our goal is to design computationally efficient procurement auctions that (approximately) maximize the difference between the quality of the acquired services and the total cost of the sellers, while ensuring incentive compatibility (IC), individual rationality (IR) for sellers, and non-negative surplus (NAS) for the auctioneer. Our contributions are twofold: (i) we provide an improved analysis of existing algorithms for non-positive submodular function maximization, and (ii) we design efficient frameworks that transform submodular optimization algorithms into mechanisms that are IC, IR, NAS, and approximation-preserving. These frameworks apply to both the offline setting, where all sellers' bids and services are available simultaneously, and the online setting, where sellers arrive in an adversarial order, requiring the auctioneer to make irrevocable decisions. We also explore whether state-of-the-art submodular optimization algorithms can be converted into descending auctions in adversarial settings, where the schedule of descending prices is determined by an adversary. We show that a submodular optimization algorithm satisfying bi-criteria $(1/2, 1)$-approximation in welfare can be effectively adapted to a descending auction. Additionally, we establish a connection between descending auctions and online submodular optimization. Finally, we demonstrate the practical applications of our frameworks by instantiating them with state-of-the-art submodular optimization algorithms and empirically comparing their welfare performance on publicly available datasets with thousands of sellers.
Geometric Algebra Planes: Convex Implicit Neural Volumes
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Volume parameterizations abound in recent literature, from the classic voxel grid to the implicit neural representation and everything in between. While implicit representations have shown impressive capacity and better memory efficiency compared to voxel grids, to date they require training via nonconvex optimization. This nonconvex training process can be slow to converge and sensitive to initialization and hyperparameter choices that affect the final converged result. We introduce a family of models, GA-Planes, that is the first class of implicit neural volume representations that can be trained by convex optimization. GA-Planes models include any combination of features stored in tensor basis elements, followed by a neural feature decoder. They generalize many existing representations and can be adapted for convex, semiconvex, or nonconvex training as needed for different inverse problems. In the 2D setting, we prove that GA-Planes is equivalent to a low-rank plus low-resolution matrix factorization; we show that this approximation outperforms the classic low-rank plus sparse decomposition for fitting a natural image. In 3D, we demonstrate GA-Planes' competitive performance in terms of expressiveness, model size, and optimizability across three volume fitting tasks: radiance field reconstruction, 3D segmentation, and video segmentation.
Entropy Bootstrapping for Weakly Supervised Nuclei Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Microscopy structure segmentation, such as detecting cells or nuclei, generally requires a human to draw a ground truth contour around each instance. Weakly supervised approaches (e.g. consisting of only single point labels) have the potential to reduce this workload significantly. Our approach uses individual point labels for an entropy estimation to approximate an underlying distribution of cell pixels. We infer full cell masks from this distribution, and use Mask-RCNN to produce an instance segmentation output. We compare this point--annotated approach with training on the full ground truth masks. We show that our method achieves a comparatively good level of performance, despite a 95% reduction in pixel labels.
AMSnet-KG: A Netlist Dataset for LLM-based AMS Circuit Auto-Design Using Knowledge Graph RAG
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

High-performance analog and mixed-signal (AMS) circuits are mainly full-custom designed, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive. A significant portion of the effort is experience-driven, which makes the automation of AMS circuit design a formidable challenge. Large language models (LLMs) have emerged as powerful tools for Electronic Design Automation (EDA) applications, fostering advancements in the automatic design process for large-scale AMS circuits. However, the absence of high-quality datasets has led to issues such as model hallucination, which undermines the robustness of automatically generated circuit designs. To address this issue, this paper introduces AMSnet-KG, a dataset encompassing various AMS circuit schematics and netlists. We construct a knowledge graph with annotations on detailed functional and performance characteristics. Facilitated by AMSnet-KG, we propose an automated AMS circuit generation framework that utilizes the comprehensive knowledge embedded in LLMs. We first formulate a design strategy (e.g., circuit architecture using a number of circuit components) based on required specifications. Next, matched circuit components are retrieved and assembled into a complete topology, and transistor sizing is obtained through Bayesian optimization. Simulation results of the netlist are fed back to the LLM for further topology refinement, ensuring the circuit design specifications are met. We perform case studies of operational amplifier and comparator design to verify the automatic design flow from specifications to netlists with minimal human effort. The dataset used in this paper will be open-sourced upon publishing of this paper.
Browser Extension for Fake URL Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

In recent years, Cyber attacks have increased in number, and with them, the intensity of the attacks and their potential to damage the user have also increased significantly. In an ever-advancing world, users find it difficult to keep up with the latest developments in technology, which can leave them vulnerable to attacks. To avoid such situations we need tools to deter such attacks, for this machine learning models are among the best options. This paper presents a Browser Extension that uses machine learning models to enhance online security by integrating three crucial functionalities: Malicious URL detection, Spam Email detection and Network logs analysis. The proposed solution uses LGBM classifier for classification of Phishing websites, the model has been trained on a dataset with 87 features, this model achieved an accuracy of 96.5% with a precision of 96.8% and F1 score of 96.49%. The Model for Spam email detection uses Multinomial NB algorithm which has been trained on a dataset with over 5500 messages, this model achieved an accuracy of 97.09% with a precision of 100%. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of using machine learning models for cyber security.
Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity: Building Resilient Cyber Diplomacy Frameworks
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

This paper explores how automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming U.S. cyber diplomacy. Leveraging these technologies helps the U.S. manage the complexity and urgency of cyber diplomacy, improving decision-making, efficiency, and security. As global inter connectivity grows, cyber diplomacy, managing national interests in the digital space has become vital. The ability of AI and automation to quickly process vast data volumes enables timely responses to cyber threats and opportunities. This paper underscores the strategic integration of these tools to maintain U.S. competitive advantage and secure national interests. Automation enhances diplomatic communication and data processing, freeing diplomats to focus on strategic decisions. AI supports predictive analytics and real time decision making, offering critical insights and proactive measures during high stakes engagements. Case studies show AIs effectiveness in monitoring cyber activities and managing international cyber policy. Challenges such as ethical concerns, security vulnerabilities, and reliance on technology are also addressed, emphasizing human oversight and strong governance frameworks. Ensuring proper ethical guidelines and cybersecurity measures allows the U.S. to harness the benefits of automation and AI while mitigating risks. By adopting these technologies, U.S. cyber diplomacy can become more proactive and effective, navigating the evolving digital landscape with greater agility.
Deep learning waterways for rural infrastructure development
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Surprisingly a number of Earth's waterways remain unmapped, with a significant number in low and middle income countries. Here we build a computer vision model (WaterNet) to learn the location of waterways in the United States, based on high resolution satellite imagery and digital elevation models, and then deploy this in novel environments in the African continent. Our outputs provide detail of waterways structures hereto unmapped. When assessed against community needs requests for rural bridge building related to access to schools, health care facilities and agricultural markets, we find these newly generated waterways capture on average 93% (country range: 88-96%) of these requests whereas Open Street Map, and the state of the art data from TDX-Hydro, capture only 36% (5-72%) and 62% (37%-85%), respectively. Because these new machine learning enabled maps are built on public and operational data acquisition this approach offers promise for capturing humanitarian needs and planning for social development in places where cartographic efforts have so far failed to deliver. The improved performance in identifying community needs missed by existing data suggests significant value for rural infrastructure development and better targeting of development interventions.
VioPose: Violin Performance 4D Pose Estimation by Hierarchical Audiovisual Inference
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Musicians delicately control their bodies to generate music. Sometimes, their motions are too subtle to be captured by the human eye. To analyze how they move to produce the music, we need to estimate precise 4D human pose (3D pose over time). However, current state-of-the-art (SoTA) visual pose estimation algorithms struggle to produce accurate monocular 4D poses because of occlusions, partial views, and human-object interactions. They are limited by the viewing angle, pixel density, and sampling rate of the cameras and fail to estimate fast and subtle movements, such as in the musical effect of vibrato. We leverage the direct causal relationship between the music produced and the human motions creating them to address these challenges. We propose VioPose: a novel multimodal network that hierarchically estimates dynamics. High-level features are cascaded to low-level features and integrated into Bayesian updates. Our architecture is shown to produce accurate pose sequences, facilitating precise motion analysis, and outperforms SoTA. As part of this work, we collected the largest and the most diverse calibrated violin-playing dataset, including video, sound, and 3D motion capture poses. Code and dataset can be found in our project page \url{https://sj-yoo.info/viopose/}.
FabuLight-ASD: Unveiling Speech Activity via Body Language
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Active speaker detection (ASD) in multimodal environments is crucial for various applications, from video conferencing to human-robot interaction. This paper introduces FabuLight-ASD, an advanced ASD model that integrates facial, audio, and body pose information to enhance detection accuracy and robustness. Our model builds upon the existing Light-ASD framework by incorporating human pose data, represented through skeleton graphs, which minimises computational overhead. Using the Wilder Active Speaker Detection (WASD) dataset, renowned for reliable face and body bounding box annotations, we demonstrate FabuLight-ASD's effectiveness in real-world scenarios. Achieving an overall mean average precision (mAP) of 94.3%, FabuLight-ASD outperforms Light-ASD, which has an overall mAP of 93.7% across various challenging scenarios. The incorporation of body pose information shows a particularly advantageous impact, with notable improvements in mAP observed in scenarios with speech impairment, face occlusion, and human voice background noise. Furthermore, efficiency analysis indicates only a modest increase in parameter count (27.3%) and multiply-accumulate operations (up to 2.4%), underscoring the model's efficiency and feasibility. These findings validate the efficacy of FabuLight-ASD in enhancing ASD performance through the integration of body pose data. FabuLight-ASD's code and model weights are available at https://github.com/knowledgetechnologyuhh/FabuLight-ASD.
Towards Query Optimizer as a Service (QOaaS) in a Unified LakeHouse Ecosystem: Can One QO Rule Them All?
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2024
Year: 2024

Customer demand, regulatory pressure, and engineering efficiency are the driving forces behind the industry-wide trend of moving from siloed engines and services that are optimized in isolation to highly integrated solutions. This is confirmed by the wide adoption of open formats, shared component libraries, and the meteoric success of integrated data lake experiences such as Microsoft Fabric. In this paper, we study the implications of this trend to Query Optimizer (QO) and discuss our experience of building Calcite and extending Cascades into QO components of Microsoft SQL Server, Fabric Data Warehouse (DW), and SCOPE. We weigh the pros and cons of a drastic change in direction: moving from bespoke QOs or library-sharing (à la Calcite) to rewriting the QO stack and fully embracing Query Optimizer as a Service (QOaaS). We report on some early successes and stumbles as we explore these ideas with prototypes compatible with Fabric DW and Spark. The benefits include centralized workload-level optimizations, multi-engine federation, and accelerated feature creation, but the challenges are equally daunting. We plan to engage CIDR audience in a debate on this exciting topic.
Comments on "$\mathcal{O}(m\cdot n)$ algorithms for the recognition and isomorphism problems on circular-arc graphs"
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2024
Year: 2024

In the work [$\mathcal{O}(m\cdot n)$ algorithms for the recognition and isomorphism problems on circular-arc graphs, SIAM J. Comput. 24(3), 411--439, (1995)], Wen-Lian Hsu claims three results concerning the class of circular-arc graphs: - the design of so-called \emph{decomposition trees} that represent the structure of all normalized intersection models of circular-arc graphs, - an $\mathcal{O}(m\cdot n)$ recognition algorithm for circular-arc graphs, - an $\mathcal{O}(m\cdot n)$ isomorphism algorithm for circular-arc graphs. In [Discrete Math. Theor. Comput. Sci., 15(1), 157--182, 2013] Curtis, Lin, McConnell, Nussbaum, Soulignac, Spinrad, and Szwarcfiter showed that Hsu's isomorphism algorithm is incorrect. In this note, we show that the other two results -- namely, the construction of decomposition trees and the recognition algorithm -- are also flawed.
Replicable Online Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

We investigate the concept of algorithmic replicability introduced by Impagliazzo et al. 2022, Ghazi et al. 2021, Ahn et al. 2024 in an online setting. In our model, the input sequence received by the online learner is generated from time-varying distributions chosen by an adversary (obliviously). Our objective is to design low-regret online algorithms that, with high probability, produce the exact same sequence of actions when run on two independently sampled input sequences generated as described above. We refer to such algorithms as adversarially replicable. Previous works (such as Esfandiari et al. 2022) explored replicability in the online setting under inputs generated independently from a fixed distribution; we term this notion as iid-replicability. Our model generalizes to capture both adversarial and iid input sequences, as well as their mixtures, which can be modeled by setting certain distributions as point-masses. We demonstrate adversarially replicable online learning algorithms for online linear optimization and the experts problem that achieve sub-linear regret. Additionally, we propose a general framework for converting an online learner into an adversarially replicable one within our setting, bounding the new regret in terms of the original algorithm's regret. We also present a nearly optimal (in terms of regret) iid-replicable online algorithm for the experts problem, highlighting the distinction between the iid and adversarial notions of replicability. Finally, we establish lower bounds on the regret (in terms of the replicability parameter and time) that any replicable online algorithm must incur.
DCSim: Computing and Networking Integration based Container Scheduling Simulator for Data Centers
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2024
Year: 2024

The increasing prevalence of cloud-native technologies, particularly containers, has led to the widespread adoption of containerized deployments in data centers. The advancement of deep neural network models has increased the demand for container-based distributed model training and inference, where frequent data transmission among nodes has emerged as a significant performance bottleneck. However, traditional container scheduling simulators often overlook the influence of network modeling on the efficiency of container scheduling, primarily concentrating on modeling computational resources. In this paper, we focus on a container scheduling simulator based on collaboration between computing and networking within data centers. We propose a new container scheduling simulator for data centers, named DCSim. The simulator consists of several modules: a data center module, a network simulation module, a container scheduling module, a discrete event-driven module, and a data collection and analysis module. Together, these modules provide heterogeneous computing power modeling and dynamic network simulation capabilities. We design a discrete event model using SimPy to represent various aspects of container processing, including container requests, scheduling, execution, pauses, communication, migration, and termination within data centers. Among these, lightweight virtualization technology based on Mininet is employed to construct a software-defined network. An experimental environment for container scheduling simulation was established, and functional and performance tests were conducted on the simulator to validate its scheduling simulation capabilities.
AutoMixQ: Self-Adjusting Quantization for High Performance Memory-Efficient Fine-Tuning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) under resource constraints is a significant challenge in deep learning. Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA), pruning, and quantization are all effective methods for improving resource efficiency. However, combining them directly often results in suboptimal performance, especially with uniform quantization across all model layers. This is due to the complex, uneven interlayer relationships introduced by pruning, necessitating more refined quantization strategies. To address this, we propose AutoMixQ, an end-to-end optimization framework that selects optimal quantization configurations for each LLM layer. AutoMixQ leverages lightweight performance models to guide the selection process, significantly reducing time and computational resources compared to exhaustive search methods. By incorporating Pareto optimality, AutoMixQ balances memory usage and performance, approaching the upper bounds of model capability under strict resource constraints. Our experiments on widely used benchmarks show that AutoMixQ reduces memory consumption while achieving superior performance. For example, at a 30\% pruning rate in LLaMA-7B, AutoMixQ achieved 66.21\% on BoolQ compared to 62.45\% for LoRA and 58.96\% for LoftQ, while reducing memory consumption by 35.5\% compared to LoRA and 27.5\% compared to LoftQ.
Asynchronous Federated Learning Using Outdated Local Updates Over TDMA Channel
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2024
Year: 2024

In this paper, we consider asynchronous federated learning (FL) over time-division multiple access (TDMA)-based communication networks. Considering TDMA for transmitting local updates can introduce significant delays to conventional synchronous FL, where all devices start local training from a common global model. In the proposed asynchronous FL approach, we partition devices into multiple TDMA groups, enabling simultaneous local computation and communication across different groups. This enhances time efficiency at the expense of staleness of local updates. We derive the relationship between the staleness of local updates and the size of the TDMA group in a training round. Moreover, our convergence analysis shows that although outdated local updates hinder appropriate global model updates, asynchronous FL over the TDMA channel converges even in the presence of data heterogeneity. Notably, the analysis identifies the impact of outdated local updates on convergence rate. Based on observations from our convergence rate, we refine asynchronous FL strategy by introducing an intentional delay in local training. This refinement accelerates the convergence by reducing the staleness of local updates. Our extensive simulation results demonstrate that asynchronous FL with the intentional delay can rapidly reduce global loss by lowering the staleness of local updates in resource-limited wireless communication networks.
Generative Fuzzy System for Sequence Generation
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

Generative Models (GMs), particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), have garnered significant attention in machine learning and artificial intelligence for their ability to generate new data by learning the statistical properties of training data and creating data that resemble the original. This capability offers a wide range of applications across various domains. However, the complex structures and numerous model parameters of GMs make the input-output processes opaque, complicating the understanding and control of outputs. Moreover, the purely data-driven learning mechanism limits GM's ability to acquire broader knowledge. There remains substantial potential for enhancing the robustness and generalization capabilities of GMs. In this work, we introduce the fuzzy system, a classical modeling method that combines data and knowledge-driven mechanisms, to generative tasks. We propose a novel Generative Fuzzy System framework, named GenFS, which integrates the deep learning capabilities of GM with the interpretability and dual-driven mechanisms of fuzzy systems. Specifically, we propose an end-to-end GenFS-based model for sequence generation, called FuzzyS2S. A series of experimental studies were conducted on 12 datasets, covering three distinct categories of generative tasks: machine translation, code generation, and summary generation. The results demonstrate that FuzzyS2S outperforms the Transformer in terms of accuracy and fluency. Furthermore, it exhibits better performance on some datasets compared to state-of-the-art models T5 and CodeT5.