OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
The role of alcohol outlet visits derived from mobile phone location data in enhancing domestic violence prediction at the neighborhood level
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2022
Year: 2022

Domestic violence (DV) is a serious public health issue, with 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men experiencing some form of partner-related violence every year. Existing research has shown a strong association between alcohol use and DV at the individual level. Accordingly, alcohol use could also be a predictor for DV at the neighborhood level, helping identify the neighborhoods where DV is more likely to happen. However, it is difficult and costly to collect data that can represent neighborhood-level alcohol use especially for a large geographic area. In this study, we propose to derive information about the alcohol outlet visits of the residents of different neighborhoods from anonymized mobile phone location data, and investigate whether the derived visits can help better predict DV at the neighborhood level. We use mobile phone data from the company SafeGraph, which is freely available to researchers and which contains information about how people visit various points-of-interest including alcohol outlets. In such data, a visit to an alcohol outlet is identified based on the GPS point location of the mobile phone and the building footprint (a polygon) of the alcohol outlet. We present our method for deriving neighborhood-level alcohol outlet visits, and experiment with four different statistical and machine learning models to investigate the role of the derived visits in enhancing DV prediction based on an empirical dataset about DV in Chicago. Our results reveal the effectiveness of the derived alcohol outlets visits in helping identify neighborhoods that are more likely to suffer from DV, and can inform policies related to DV intervention and alcohol outlet licensing.
Contrastive Enhancement Using Latent Prototype for Few-Shot Segmentation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

Few-shot segmentation enables the model to recognize unseen classes with few annotated examples. Most existing methods adopt prototype learning architecture, where support prototype vectors are expanded and concatenated with query features to perform conditional segmentation. However, such framework potentially focuses more on query features while may neglect the similarity between support and query features. This paper proposes a contrastive enhancement approach using latent prototypes to leverage latent classes and raise the utilization of similarity information between prototype and query features. Specifically, a latent prototype sampling module is proposed to generate pseudo-mask and novel prototypes based on features similarity. The module conveniently conducts end-to-end learning and has no strong dependence on clustering numbers like cluster-based method. Besides, a contrastive enhancement module is developed to drive models to provide different predictions with the same query features. Our method can be used as an auxiliary module to flexibly integrate into other baselines for a better segmentation performance. Extensive experiments show our approach remarkably improves the performance of state-of-the-art methods for 1-shot and 5-shot segmentation, especially outperforming baseline by 5.9% and 7.3% for 5-shot task on Pascal-5^i and COCO-20^i. Source code is available at https://github.com/zhaoxiaoyu1995/CELP-Pytorch
Explaining Classifiers by Constructing Familiar Concepts
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

Interpreting a large number of neurons in deep learning is difficult. Our proposed `CLAssifier-DECoder' architecture (ClaDec) facilitates the understanding of the output of an arbitrary layer of neurons or subsets thereof. It uses a decoder that transforms the incomprehensible representation of the given neurons to a representation that is more similar to the domain a human is familiar with. In an image recognition problem, one can recognize what information (or concepts) a layer maintains by contrasting reconstructed images of ClaDec with those of a conventional auto-encoder(AE) serving as reference. An extension of ClaDec allows trading comprehensibility and fidelity. We evaluate our approach for image classification using convolutional neural networks. We show that reconstructed visualizations using encodings from a classifier capture more relevant classification information than conventional AEs. This holds although AEs contain more information on the original input. Our user study highlights that even non-experts can identify a diverse set of concepts contained in images that are relevant (or irrelevant) for the classifier. We also compare against saliency based methods that focus on pixel relevance rather than concepts. We show that ClaDec tends to highlight more relevant input areas to classification though outcomes depend on classifier architecture. Code is at \url{https://github.com/JohnTailor/ClaDec}
Cybersecurity Playbook Sharing with STIX 2.1
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2022
Year: 2022

Understanding that interoperable security playbooks will become a fundamental component of defenders' arsenal to decrease attack detection and response times, it is time to consider their position in structured sharing efforts. This report documents the process of extending Structured Threat Information eXpression (STIX) version 2.1, using the available extension definition mechanism, to enable sharing security playbooks, including Collaborative Automated Course of Action Operations (CACAO) playbooks.
Runtime Enforcement of Hyperproperties
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2022
Year: 2022

An enforcement mechanism monitors a reactive system for undesired behavior at runtime and corrects the system's output in case it violates the given specification. In this paper, we study the enforcement problem for hyperproperties, i.e., properties that relate multiple computation traces to each other. We elaborate the notion of sound and transparent enforcement mechanisms for hyperproperties in two trace input models: 1) the parallel trace input model, where the number of traces is known a-priori and all traces are produced and processed in parallel and 2) the sequential trace input model, where traces are processed sequentially and no a-priori bound on the number of traces is known. For both models, we study enforcement algorithms for specifications given as formulas in universally quantified HyperLTL, a temporal logic for hyperproperties. For the parallel model, we describe an enforcement mechanism based on parity games. For the sequential model, we show that enforcement is in general undecidable and present algorithms for reasonable simplifications of the problem (partial guarantees or the restriction to safety properties). Furthermore, we report on experimental results of our prototype implementation for the parallel model.
AI for Next Generation Computing: Emerging Trends and Future Directions
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2022
Year: 2022

Autonomic computing investigates how systems can achieve (user) specified control outcomes on their own, without the intervention of a human operator. Autonomic computing fundamentals have been substantially influenced by those of control theory for closed and open-loop systems. In practice, complex systems may exhibit a number of concurrent and inter-dependent control loops. Despite research into autonomic models for managing computer resources, ranging from individual resources (e.g., web servers) to a resource ensemble (e.g., multiple resources within a data center), research into integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to improve resource autonomy and performance at scale continues to be a fundamental challenge. The integration of AI/ML to achieve such autonomic and self-management of systems can be achieved at different levels of granularity, from full to human-in-the-loop automation. In this article, leading academics, researchers, practitioners, engineers, and scientists in the fields of cloud computing, AI/ML, and quantum computing join to discuss current research and potential future directions for these fields. Further, we discuss challenges and opportunities for leveraging AI and ML in next generation computing for emerging computing paradigms, including cloud, fog, edge, serverless and quantum computing environments.
Enhancing Mechanical Metamodels with a Generative Model-Based Augmented Training Dataset
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Modeling biological soft tissue is complex in part due to material heterogeneity. Microstructural patterns, which play a major role in defining the mechanical behavior of these tissues, are both challenging to characterize, and difficult to simulate. Recently, machine learning-based methods to predict the mechanical behavior of heterogeneous materials have made it possible to more thoroughly explore the massive input parameter space associated with heterogeneous blocks of material. Specifically, we can train machine learning (ML) models to closely approximate computationally expensive heterogeneous material simulations where the ML model is trained on a dataset of simulations that capture the range of spatial heterogeneity present in the material of interest. However, when it comes to applying these techniques to biological tissue more broadly, there is a major limitation: the relevant microstructural patterns are both challenging to obtain and difficult to analyze. Consequently, the number of useful examples available to characterize the input domain under study is limited. In this work, we investigate the efficacy of ML-based generative models as well as procedural methods as a tool for augmenting limited input pattern datasets. We find that a Style-based Generative Adversarial Network with adaptive discriminator augmentation is able to successfully leverage just 1,000 example patterns to create the most authentic generated patterns. In general, diverse generated patterns with adequate resemblance to the real patterns can be used as inputs to finite element simulations to meaningfully augment the training dataset. To enable this methodological contribution, we have created an open access dataset of Finite Element Analysis simulations based on Cahn-Hilliard patterns. We anticipate that future researchers will be able to leverage this dataset and build on the work presented here.
Reward-Biased Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Neural Contextual Bandits
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Reward-biased maximum likelihood estimation (RBMLE) is a classic principle in the adaptive control literature for tackling explore-exploit trade-offs. This paper studies the stochastic contextual bandit problem with general bounded reward functions and proposes NeuralRBMLE, which adapts the RBMLE principle by adding a bias term to the log-likelihood to enforce exploration. NeuralRBMLE leverages the representation power of neural networks and directly encodes exploratory behavior in the parameter space, without constructing confidence intervals of the estimated rewards. We propose two variants of NeuralRBMLE algorithms: The first variant directly obtains the RBMLE estimator by gradient ascent, and the second variant simplifies RBMLE to a simple index policy through an approximation. We show that both algorithms achieve $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(\sqrt{T})$ regret. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that the NeuralRBMLE algorithms achieve comparable or better empirical regrets than the state-of-the-art methods on real-world datasets with non-linear reward functions.
A Gating Model for Bias Calibration in Generalized Zero-shot Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Generalized zero-shot learning (GZSL) aims at training a model that can generalize to unseen class data by only using auxiliary information. One of the main challenges in GZSL is a biased model prediction toward seen classes caused by overfitting on only available seen class data during training. To overcome this issue, we propose a two-stream autoencoder-based gating model for GZSL. Our gating model predicts whether the query data is from seen classes or unseen classes, and utilizes separate seen and unseen experts to predict the class independently from each other. This framework avoids comparing the biased prediction scores for seen classes with the prediction scores for unseen classes. In particular, we measure the distance between visual and attribute representations in the latent space and the cross-reconstruction space of the autoencoder. These distances are utilized as complementary features to characterize unseen classes at different levels of data abstraction. Also, the two-stream autoencoder works as a unified framework for the gating model and the unseen expert, which makes the proposed method computationally efficient. We validate our proposed method in four benchmark image recognition datasets. In comparison with other state-of-the-art methods, we achieve the best harmonic mean accuracy in SUN and AWA2, and the second best in CUB and AWA1. Furthermore, our base model requires at least 20% less number of model parameters than state-of-the-art methods relying on generative models.
Lower Bounds for the Reachability Problem in Fixed Dimensional VASSes
Venue: arXiv cs.FL 2022
Year: 2022

We study the complexity of the reachability problem for Vector Addition Systems with States (VASSes) in fixed dimensions. We provide four lower bounds improving the currently known state-of-the-art: 1) \np-hardness for unary flat $4$-VASSes (VASSes in dimension 4), 2) \pspace-hardness for unary $5$-VASSes, 3) \expspace-hardness for binary $6$-VASSes and 4) \tower-hardness for unary $8$-VASSes.
From the Lab to People's Home: Lessons from Accessing Blind Participants' Interactions via Smart Glasses in Remote Studies
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2022
Year: 2022

Researchers have adopted remote methods, such as online surveys and video conferencing, to overcome challenges in conducting in-person usability testing, such as participation, user representation, and safety. However, remote user evaluation on hardware testbeds is limited, especially for blind participants, as such methods restrict access to observations of user interactions. We employ smart glasses in usability testing with blind people and share our lessons from a case study conducted in blind participants' homes (N=12), where the experimenter can access participants' activities via dual video conferencing: a third-person view via a laptop camera and a first-person view via smart glasses worn by the participant. We show that smart glasses hold potential for observing participants' interactions with smartphone testbeds remotely; on average 58.7% of the interactions were fully captured via the first-person view compared to 3.7% via the third-person. However, this gain is not uniform across participants as it is susceptible to head movements orienting the ear towards a sound source, which highlights the need for a more inclusive camera form factor. We also share our lessons learned when it comes to dealing with lack of screen reader support in smart glasses, a rapidly draining battery, and Internet connectivity in remote studies with blind participants.
Multi-trial Neural Architecture Search with Lottery Tickets
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Neural architecture search (NAS) has brought significant progress in recent image recognition tasks. Most existing NAS methods apply restricted search spaces, which limits the upper-bound performance of searched models. To address this issue, we propose a new search space named MobileNet3-MT. By reducing human-prior knowledge in omni dimensions of networks, MobileNet3-MT accommodates more potential candidates. For searching in this challenging search space, we present an efficient Multi-trial Evolution-based NAS method termed MENAS. Specifically, we accelerate the evolutionary search process by gradually pruning models in the population. Each model is trained with an early stop and replaced by its Lottery Tickets (the explored optimal pruned network).In this way, the full training pipeline of cumbersome networks is prevented and more efficient networks are automatically generated. Extensive experimental results on ImageNet-1K, CIFAR-10, and CIFAR-100 demonstrate that MENAS achieves state-of-the-art performance.
Policy Regularization for Legible Behavior
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2022
Year: 2022

In Reinforcement Learning interpretability generally means to provide insight into the agent's mechanisms such that its decisions are understandable by an expert upon inspection. This definition, with the resulting methods from the literature, may however fall short for online settings where the fluency of interactions prohibits deep inspections of the decision-making algorithm. To support interpretability in online settings it is useful to borrow from the Explainable Planning literature methods that focus on the legibility of the agent, by making its intention easily discernable in an observer model. As we propose in this paper, injecting legible behavior inside an agent's policy doesn't require modify components of its learning algorithm. Rather, the agent's optimal policy can be regularized for legibility by evaluating how the policy may produce observations that would make an observer infer an incorrect policy. In our formulation, the decision boundary introduced by legibility impacts the states in which the agent's policy returns an action that has high likelihood also in other policies. In these cases, a trade-off between such action, and legible/sub-optimal action is made.
LSTMSPLIT: Effective SPLIT Learning based LSTM on Sequential Time-Series Data
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Federated learning (FL) and split learning (SL) are the two popular distributed machine learning (ML) approaches that provide some data privacy protection mechanisms. In the time-series classification problem, many researchers typically use 1D convolutional neural networks (1DCNNs) based on the SL approach with a single client to reduce the computational overhead at the client-side while still preserving data privacy. Another method, recurrent neural network (RNN), is utilized on sequentially partitioned data where segments of multiple-segment sequential data are distributed across various clients. However, to the best of our knowledge, it is still not much work done in SL with long short-term memory (LSTM) network, even the LSTM network is practically effective in processing time-series data. In this work, we propose a new approach, LSTMSPLIT, that uses SL architecture with an LSTM network to classify time-series data with multiple clients. The differential privacy (DP) is applied to solve the data privacy leakage. The proposed method, LSTMSPLIT, has achieved better or reasonable accuracy compared to the Split-1DCNN method using the electrocardiogram dataset and the human activity recognition dataset. Furthermore, the proposed method, LSTMSPLIT, can also achieve good accuracy after applying differential privacy to preserve the user privacy of the cut layer of the LSTMSPLIT.
Multi-Agent Broad Reinforcement Learning for Intelligent Traffic Light Control
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Intelligent Traffic Light Control System (ITLCS) is a typical Multi-Agent System (MAS), which comprises multiple roads and traffic lights.Constructing a model of MAS for ITLCS is the basis to alleviate traffic congestion. Existing approaches of MAS are largely based on Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning (MADRL). Although the Deep Neural Network (DNN) of MABRL is effective, the training time is long, and the parameters are difficult to trace. Recently, Broad Learning Systems (BLS) provided a selective way for learning in the deep neural networks by a flat network. Moreover, Broad Reinforcement Learning (BRL) extends BLS in Single Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning (SADRL) problem with promising results. However, BRL does not focus on the intricate structures and interaction of agents. Motivated by the feature of MADRL and the issue of BRL, we propose a Multi-Agent Broad Reinforcement Learning (MABRL) framework to explore the function of BLS in MAS. Firstly, unlike most existing MADRL approaches, which use a series of deep neural networks structures, we model each agent with broad networks. Then, we introduce a dynamic self-cycling interaction mechanism to confirm the "3W" information: When to interact, Which agents need to consider, What information to transmit. Finally, we do the experiments based on the intelligent traffic light control scenario. We compare the MABRL approach with six different approaches, and experimental results on three datasets verify the effectiveness of MABRL.
Beam Search for Feature Selection
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

In this paper, we present and prove some consistency results about the performance of classification models using a subset of features. In addition, we propose to use beam search to perform feature selection, which can be viewed as a generalization of forward selection. We apply beam search to both simulated and real-world data, by evaluating and comparing the performance of different classification models using different sets of features. The results demonstrate that beam search could outperform forward selection, especially when the features are correlated so that they have more discriminative power when considered jointly than individually. Moreover, in some cases classification models could obtain comparable performance using only ten features selected by beam search instead of hundreds of original features.
New Coresets for Projective Clustering and Applications
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

$(j,k)$-projective clustering is the natural generalization of the family of $k$-clustering and $j$-subspace clustering problems. Given a set of points $P$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$, the goal is to find $k$ flats of dimension $j$, i.e., affine subspaces, that best fit $P$ under a given distance measure. In this paper, we propose the first algorithm that returns an $L_\infty$ coreset of size polynomial in $d$. Moreover, we give the first strong coreset construction for general $M$-estimator regression. Specifically, we show that our construction provides efficient coreset constructions for Cauchy, Welsch, Huber, Geman-McClure, Tukey, $L_1-L_2$, and Fair regression, as well as general concave and power-bounded loss functions. Finally, we provide experimental results based on real-world datasets, showing the efficacy of our approach.
Code Red: The Business Impact of Code Quality -- A Quantitative Study of 39 Proprietary Production Codebases
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2022
Year: 2022

Code quality remains an abstract concept that fails to get traction at the business level. Consequently, software companies keep trading code quality for time-to-market and new features. The resulting technical debt is estimated to waste up to 42% of developers' time. At the same time, there is a global shortage of software developers, meaning that developer productivity is key to software businesses. Our overall mission is to make code quality a business concern, not just a technical aspect. Our first goal is to understand how code quality impacts 1) the number of reported defects, 2) the time to resolve issues, and 3) the predictability of resolving issues on time. We analyze 39 proprietary production codebases from a variety of domains using the CodeScene tool based on a combination of source code analysis, version-control mining, and issue information from Jira. By analyzing activity in 30,737 files, we find that low quality code contains 15 times more defects than high quality code. Furthermore, resolving issues in low quality code takes on average 124% more time in development. Finally, we report that issue resolutions in low quality code involve higher uncertainty manifested as 9 times longer maximum cycle times. This study provides evidence that code quality cannot be dismissed as a technical concern. With 15 times fewer defects, twice the development speed, and substantially more predictable issue resolution times, the business advantage of high quality code should be unmistakably clear.