OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Tasks Integrated Networks: Joint Detection and Retrieval for Image Search
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

The traditional object retrieval task aims to learn a discriminative feature representation with intra-similarity and inter-dissimilarity, which supposes that the objects in an image are manually or automatically pre-cropped exactly. However, in many real-world searching scenarios (e.g., video surveillance), the objects (e.g., persons, vehicles, etc.) are seldom accurately detected or annotated. Therefore, object-level retrieval becomes intractable without bounding-box annotation, which leads to a new but challenging topic, i.e. image-level search. In this paper, to address the image search issue, we first introduce an end-to-end Integrated Net (I-Net), which has three merits: 1) A Siamese architecture and an on-line pairing strategy for similar and dissimilar objects in the given images are designed. 2) A novel on-line pairing (OLP) loss is introduced with a dynamic feature dictionary, which alleviates the multi-task training stagnation problem, by automatically generating a number of negative pairs to restrict the positives. 3) A hard example priority (HEP) based softmax loss is proposed to improve the robustness of classification task by selecting hard categories. With the philosophy of divide and conquer, we further propose an improved I-Net, called DC-I-Net, which makes two new contributions: 1) two modules are tailored to handle different tasks separately in the integrated framework, such that the task specification is guaranteed. 2) A class-center guided HEP loss (C2HEP) by exploiting the stored class centers is proposed, such that the intra-similarity and inter-dissimilarity can be captured for ultimate retrieval. Extensive experiments on famous image-level search oriented benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed DC-I-Net outperforms the state-of-the-art tasks-integrated and tasks-separated image search models.
Learning to Infer User Hidden States for Online Sequential Advertising
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2020
Year: 2020

To drive purchase in online advertising, it is of the advertiser's great interest to optimize the sequential advertising strategy whose performance and interpretability are both important. The lack of interpretability in existing deep reinforcement learning methods makes it not easy to understand, diagnose and further optimize the strategy. In this paper, we propose our Deep Intents Sequential Advertising (DISA) method to address these issues. The key part of interpretability is to understand a consumer's purchase intent which is, however, unobservable (called hidden states). In this paper, we model this intention as a latent variable and formulate the problem as a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) where the underlying intents are inferred based on the observable behaviors. Large-scale industrial offline and online experiments demonstrate our method's superior performance over several baselines. The inferred hidden states are analyzed, and the results prove the rationality of our inference.
Fixed-Time Cooperative Tracking Control for Double-Integrator Multi-Agent Systems: A Time-Based Generator Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.MA 2020
Year: 2020

In this paper, both the fixed-time distributed consensus tracking and the fixed-time distributed average tracking problems for double-integrator-type multi-agent systems with bounded input disturbances are studied, respectively. Firstly, a new practical robust fixed-time sliding mode control method based on the time-based generator is proposed. Secondly, a fixed-time distributed consensus tracking observer for double-integrator-type multi-agent systems is designed to estimate the state disagreements between the leader and the followers under undirected and directed communication, respectively. Thirdly, a fixed-time distributed average tracking observer for double-integrator-type multi-agent systems is designed to measure the average value of reference signals under undirected communication. Note that both the observers for the distributed consensus tracking and the distributed average tracking are devised based on time-based generators and can be extended to that of high-order multi-agent systems trivially. Furthermore, by combing the fixed-time sliding mode control with the fixed-time observers, the fixed-time controllers are designed to solve the distributed consensus tracking and the distributed average tracking problems. Finally, a few numerical simulations are shown to verify the results.
Towards a Methodology for the Development of Routing Algorithms in Opportunistic Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2020
Year: 2020

This paper introduces a methodology for the development of routing algorithms that takes into consideration opportunistic networking. The proposal focus on the rationale behind the methodology, and highlights its most important stages and components. It also discusses the importance of two core elements in the process of protocol designing: the scenario selection, based on essential characteristics, and the choice of standard evaluation metrics. As of now, there has been no common methodology for developing new routing algorithms, and this has led to proposals difficult to compare, to evaluate, and lacking a rigorous objectivity ensuring fairness. Thus, there is the urgent need to propose, agree, and use a common methodology for the development of routing algorithms.
Fast Byzantine Gathering with Visibility in Graphs
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2020
Year: 2020

We consider the gathering task by a team of $m$ synchronous mobile robots in a graph of $n$ nodes. Each robot has an identifier (ID) and runs its own deterministic algorithm, i.e., there is no centralized coordinator. We consider a particularly challenging scenario: there are $f$ Byzantine robots in the team that can behave arbitrarily, and even have the ability to change their IDs to any value at any time. There is no way to distinguish these robots from non-faulty robots, other than perhaps observing strange or unexpected behaviour. The goal of the gathering task is to eventually have all non-faulty robots located at the same node in the same round. It is known that no algorithm can solve this task unless there at least $f+1$ non-faulty robots in the team. In this paper, we design an algorithm that runs in polynomial time with respect to $n$ and $m$ that matches this bound, i.e., it works in a team that has exactly $f+1$ non-faulty robots. In our model, we have equipped the robots with sensors that enable each robot to see the subgraph (including robots) within some distance $H$ of its current node. We prove that the gathering task is solvable if this visibility range $H$ is at least the radius of the graph, and not solvable if $H$ is any fixed constant.
Remote Joint Strong Coordination and Reliable Communication
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2020
Year: 2020

We consider a three-node network, in which two agents wish to communicate over a noisy channel, while controlling the distribution observed by a third external agent. We use strong coordination to constrain the distribution, and we provide a complete characterization of the "remote strong coordination and reliable communication" region.
ScalAna: Automating Scaling Loss Detection with Graph Analysis
Venue: arXiv cs.PF 2020
Year: 2020

Scaling a parallel program to modern supercomputers is challenging due to inter-process communication, Amdahl's law, and resource contention. Performance analysis tools for finding such scaling bottlenecks either base on profiling or tracing. Profiling incurs low overheads but does not capture detailed dependencies needed for root-cause analysis. Tracing collects all information at prohibitive overheads. In this work, we design ScalAna that uses static analysis techniques to achieve the best of both worlds - it enables the analyzability of traces at a cost similar to profiling. ScalAna first leverages static compiler techniques to build a Program Structure Graph, which records the main computation and communication patterns as well as the program's control structures. At runtime, we adopt lightweight techniques to collect performance data according to the graph structure and generate a Program Performance Graph. With this graph, we propose a novel approach, called backtracking root cause detection, which can automatically and efficiently detect the root cause of scaling loss. We evaluate ScalAna with real applications. Results show that our approach can effectively locate the root cause of scaling loss for real applications and incurs 1.73% overhead on average for up to 2,048 processes. We achieve up to 11.11% performance improvement by fixing the root causes detected by ScalAna on 2,048 processes.
Grounded Language Learning Fast and Slow
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2020
Year: 2020

Recent work has shown that large text-based neural language models, trained with conventional supervised learning objectives, acquire a surprising propensity for few- and one-shot learning. Here, we show that an embodied agent situated in a simulated 3D world, and endowed with a novel dual-coding external memory, can exhibit similar one-shot word learning when trained with conventional reinforcement learning algorithms. After a single introduction to a novel object via continuous visual perception and a language prompt ("This is a dax"), the agent can re-identify the object and manipulate it as instructed ("Put the dax on the bed"). In doing so, it seamlessly integrates short-term, within-episode knowledge of the appropriate referent for the word "dax" with long-term lexical and motor knowledge acquired across episodes (i.e. "bed" and "putting"). We find that, under certain training conditions and with a particular memory writing mechanism, the agent's one-shot word-object binding generalizes to novel exemplars within the same ShapeNet category, and is effective in settings with unfamiliar numbers of objects. We further show how dual-coding memory can be exploited as a signal for intrinsic motivation, stimulating the agent to seek names for objects that may be useful for later executing instructions. Together, the results demonstrate that deep neural networks can exploit meta-learning, episodic memory and an explicitly multi-modal environment to account for 'fast-mapping', a fundamental pillar of human cognitive development and a potentially transformative capacity for agents that interact with human users.
Max-value Entropy Search for Multi-Objective Bayesian Optimization with Constraints
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

We consider the problem of constrained multi-objective blackbox optimization using expensive function evaluations, where the goal is to approximate the true Pareto set of solutions satisfying a set of constraints while minimizing the number of function evaluations. For example, in aviation power system design applications, we need to find the designs that trade-off total energy and the mass while satisfying specific thresholds for motor temperature and voltage of cells. This optimization requires performing expensive computational simulations to evaluate designs. In this paper, we propose a new approach referred as {\em Max-value Entropy Search for Multi-objective Optimization with Constraints (MESMOC)} to solve this problem. MESMOC employs an output-space entropy based acquisition function to efficiently select the sequence of inputs for evaluation to uncover high-quality pareto-set solutions while satisfying constraints. We apply MESMOC to two real-world engineering design applications to demonstrate its effectiveness over state-of-the-art algorithms.
How to evaluate data visualizations across different levels of understanding
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2020
Year: 2020

Understanding a visualization is a multi-level process. A reader must extract and extrapolate from numeric facts, understand how those facts apply to both the context of the data and other potential contexts, and draw or evaluate conclusions from the data. A well-designed visualization should support each of these levels of understanding. We diagnose levels of understanding of visualized data by adapting Bloom's taxonomy, a common framework from the education literature. We describe each level of the framework and provide examples for how it can be applied to evaluate the efficacy of data visualizations along six levels of knowledge acquisition - knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. We present three case studies showing that this framework expands on existing methods to comprehensively measure how a visualization design facilitates a viewer's understanding of visualizations. Although Bloom's original taxonomy suggests a strong hierarchical structure for some domains, we found few examples of dependent relationships between performance at different levels for our three case studies. If this level-independence holds across new tested visualizations, the taxonomy could serve to inspire more targeted evaluations of levels of understanding that are relevant to a communication goal.
A small-step approach to multi-trace checking against interactions
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2020
Year: 2020

Interaction models describe the exchange of messages between the different components of distributed systems. We have previously defined a small-step operational semantics for interaction models. The paper extends this work by presenting an approach for checking the validity of multi-traces against interaction models. A multi-trace is a collection of traces (sequences of emissions and receptions), each representing a local view of the same global execution of the distributed system. We have formally proven our approach, studied its complexity, and implemented it in a prototype tool. Finally, we discuss some observability issues when testing distributed systems via the analysis of multi-traces.
The Pace of Artificial Intelligence Innovations: Speed, Talent, and Trial-and-Error
Venue: arXiv cs.DL 2020
Year: 2020

Innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) are occurring at speeds faster than ever witnessed before. However, few studies have managed to measure or depict this increasing velocity of innovations in the field of AI. In this paper, we combine data on AI from arXiv and Semantic Scholar to explore the pace of AI innovations from three perspectives: AI publications, AI players, and AI updates (trial and error). A research framework and three novel indicators, Average Time Interval (ATI), Innovation Speed (IS) and Update Speed (US), are proposed to measure the pace of innovations in the field of AI. The results show that: (1) in 2019, more than 3 AI preprints were submitted to arXiv per hour, over 148 times faster than in 1994. Furthermore, there was one deep learning-related preprint submitted to arXiv every 0.87 hours in 2019, over 1,064 times faster than in 1994. (2) For AI players, 5.26 new researchers entered into the field of AI each hour in 2019, more than 175 times faster than in the 1990s. (3) As for AI updates (trial and error), one updated AI preprint was submitted to arXiv every 41 days, with around 33% of AI preprints having been updated at least twice in 2019. In addition, as reported in 2019, it took, on average, only around 0.2 year for AI preprints to receive their first citations, which is 5 times faster than 2000-2007. This swift pace in AI illustrates the increase in popularity of AI innovation. The systematic and fine-grained analysis of the AI field enabled to portrait the pace of AI innovation and demonstrated that the proposed approach can be adopted to understand other fast-growing fields such as cancer research and nano science.
Sum-of-Squares Lower Bounds for Sherrington-Kirkpatrick via Planted Affine Planes
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2020
Year: 2020

The Sum-of-Squares (SoS) hierarchy is a semi-definite programming meta-algorithm that captures state-of-the-art polynomial time guarantees for many optimization problems such as Max-$k$-CSPs and Tensor PCA. On the flip side, a SoS lower bound provides evidence of hardness, which is particularly relevant to average-case problems for which NP-hardness may not be available. In this paper, we consider the following average case problem, which we call the \emph{Planted Affine Planes} (PAP) problem: Given $m$ random vectors $d_1,\ldots,d_m$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$, can we prove that there is no vector $v \in \mathbb{R}^n$ such that for all $u \in [m]$, $\langle v, d_u\rangle^2 = 1$? In other words, can we prove that $m$ random vectors are not all contained in two parallel hyperplanes at equal distance from the origin? We prove that for $m \leq n^{3/2-ε}$, with high probability, degree-$n^{Ω(ε)}$ SoS fails to refute the existence of such a vector $v$. When the vectors $d_1,\ldots,d_m$ are chosen from the multivariate normal distribution, the PAP problem is equivalent to the problem of proving that a random $n$-dimensional subspace of $\mathbb{R}^m$ does not contain a boolean vector. As shown by Mohanty--Raghavendra--Xu [STOC 2020], a lower bound for this problem implies a lower bound for the problem of certifying energy upper bounds on the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Hamiltonian, and so our lower bound implies a degree-$n^{Ω(ε)}$ SoS lower bound for the certification version of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick problem.
Frequency-Dependent Material Motion Benchmarks for Radiative Transfer
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2020
Year: 2020

We present a general solution for the radiation intensity in front of a purely absorbing slab moving toward an observer at constant speed and with a constant temperature. The solution is obtained by integrating the lab-frame radiation transport equation through the slab to the observer. We present comparisons between our benchmark and results from the Kull simulation code for an aluminum slab moving toward the observer at 2% the speed-of-light. We demonstrate that ignoring certain material motion correction terms in the transport equation can lead to 20-80% errors with the error magnitude growing as the frequency resolution is improved. Our results also indicate that our benchmark can identify potential errors in the implementation of material motion corrections.
CoNCRA: A Convolutional Neural Network Code Retrieval Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

Software developers routinely search for code using general-purpose search engines. However, these search engines cannot find code semantically unless it has an accompanying description. We propose a technique for semantic code search: A Convolutional Neural Network approach to code retrieval (CoNCRA). Our technique aims to find the code snippet that most closely matches the developer's intent, expressed in natural language. We evaluated our approach's efficacy on a dataset composed of questions and code snippets collected from Stack Overflow. Our preliminary results showed that our technique, which prioritizes local interactions (words nearby), improved the state-of-the-art (SOTA) by 5% on average, retrieving the most relevant code snippets in the top 3 (three) positions by almost 80% of the time. Therefore, our technique is promising and can improve the efficacy of semantic code retrieval.
S3NAS: Fast NPU-aware Neural Architecture Search Methodology
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

As the application area of convolutional neural networks (CNN) is growing in embedded devices, it becomes popular to use a hardware CNN accelerator, called neural processing unit (NPU), to achieve higher performance per watt than CPUs or GPUs. Recently, automated neural architecture search (NAS) emerges as the default technique to find a state-of-the-art CNN architecture with higher accuracy than manually-designed architectures for image classification. In this paper, we present a fast NPU-aware NAS methodology, called S3NAS, to find a CNN architecture with higher accuracy than the existing ones under a given latency constraint. It consists of three steps: supernet design, Single-Path NAS for fast architecture exploration, and scaling. To widen the search space of the supernet structure that consists of stages, we allow stages to have a different number of blocks and blocks to have parallel layers of different kernel sizes. For a fast neural architecture search, we apply a modified Single-Path NAS technique to the proposed supernet structure. In this step, we assume a shorter latency constraint than the required to reduce the search space and the search time. The last step is to scale up the network maximally within the latency constraint. For accurate latency estimation, an analytical latency estimator is devised, based on a cycle-level NPU simulator that runs an entire CNN considering the memory access overhead accurately. With the proposed methodology, we are able to find a network in 3 hours using TPUv3, which shows 82.72% top-1 accuracy on ImageNet with 11.66 ms latency. Code are released at https://github.com/cap-lab/S3NAS
Data Readiness for Natural Language Processing
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2020
Year: 2020

This document concerns data readiness in the context of machine learning and Natural Language Processing. It describes how an organization may proceed to identify, make available, validate, and prepare data to facilitate automated analysis methods. The contents of the document is based on the practical challenges and frequently asked questions we have encountered in our work as an applied research institute with helping organizations and companies, both in the public and private sectors, to use data in their business processes.
A Framework and DataSet for Bugs in Ethereum Smart Contracts
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2020
Year: 2020

Ethereum is the largest blockchain platform that supports smart contracts. Users deploy smart contracts by publishing the smart contract's bytecode to the blockchain. Since the data in the blockchain cannot be modified, even if these contracts contain bugs, it is not possible to patch deployed smart contracts with code updates. Moreover, there is currently neither a comprehensive classification framework for Ethereum smart contract bugs, nor detailed criteria for detecting bugs in smart contracts, making it difficult for developers to fully understand the negative effects of bugs and design new approaches to detect bugs. In this paper, to fill the gap, we first collect as many smart contract bugs as possible from multiple sources and divide these bugs into 9 categories by extending the IEEE Standard Classification for Software Anomalies. Then, we design the criteria for detecting each kind of bugs, and construct a dataset of smart contracts covering all kinds of bugs. With our framework and dataset, developers can learn smart contract bugs and develop new tools to detect and locate bugs in smart contracts. Moreover, we evaluate the state-of-the-art tools for smart contract analysis with our dataset and obtain some interesting findings: 1) Mythril, Slither and Remix are the most worthwhile combination of analysis tools. 2) There are still 10 kinds of bugs that cannot be detected by any analysis tool.