OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Duet: efficient and scalable hybriD neUral rElation undersTanding
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2023
Year: 2023

Learned cardinality estimation methods have achieved high precision compared to traditional methods. Among learned methods, query-driven approaches have faced the workload drift problem for a long time. Although both data-driven and hybrid methods are proposed to avoid this problem, most of them suffer from high training and estimation costs, limited scalability, instability, and long-tail distribution problems on high-dimensional tables, which seriously affects the practical application of learned cardinality estimators. In this paper, we prove that most of these problems are directly caused by the widely used progressive sampling. We solve this problem by introducing predicate information into the autoregressive model and propose Duet, a stable, efficient, and scalable hybrid method to estimate cardinality directly without sampling or any non-differentiable process, which can not only reduce the inference complexity from $O(n)$ to $O(1)$ compared to Naru and UAE but also achieve higher accuracy on high cardinality and high-dimensional tables. Experimental results show that Duet can achieve all the design goals above and be much more practical. Besides, Duet even has a lower inference cost on CPU than that of most learned methods on GPU.
Finding Money Launderers Using Heterogeneous Graph Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

Current anti-money laundering (AML) systems, predominantly rule-based, exhibit notable shortcomings in efficiently and precisely detecting instances of money laundering. As a result, there has been a recent surge toward exploring alternative approaches, particularly those utilizing machine learning. Since criminals often collaborate in their money laundering endeavors, accounting for diverse types of customer relations and links becomes crucial. In line with this, the present paper introduces a graph neural network (GNN) approach to identify money laundering activities within a large heterogeneous network constructed from real-world bank transactions and business role data belonging to DNB, Norway's largest bank. Specifically, we extend the homogeneous GNN method known as the Message Passing Neural Network (MPNN) to operate effectively on a heterogeneous graph. As part of this procedure, we propose a novel method for aggregating messages across different edges of the graph. Our findings highlight the importance of using an appropriate GNN architecture when combining information in heterogeneous graphs. The performance results of our model demonstrate great potential in enhancing the quality of electronic surveillance systems employed by banks to detect instances of money laundering. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first published work applying GNN on a large real-world heterogeneous network for anti-money laundering purposes.
Preliminary Design of the Dragonfly Navigation Filter
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2023
Year: 2023

Dragonfly is scheduled to begin exploring Titan by 2034 using a series of multi-kilometer surface flights. This paper outlines the preliminary design of the navigation filter for the Dragonfly Mobility subsystem. The software architecture and filter formulation for lidar, visual odometry, pressure sensors, and redundant IMUs are described in detail. Special discussion is given to developments to achieve multi-kilometer surface flights, including optimizing sequential image baselines, modeling correlating image processing errors, and an efficient approximation to the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) problem.
Group Activity Recognition in Computer Vision: A Comprehensive Review, Challenges, and Future Perspectives
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Group activity recognition is a hot topic in computer vision. Recognizing activities through group relationships plays a vital role in group activity recognition. It holds practical implications in various scenarios, such as video analysis, surveillance, automatic driving, and understanding social activities. The model's key capabilities encompass efficiently modeling hierarchical relationships within a scene and accurately extracting distinctive spatiotemporal features from groups. Given this technology's extensive applicability, identifying group activities has garnered significant research attention. This work examines the current progress in technology for recognizing group activities, with a specific focus on global interactivity and activities. Firstly, we comprehensively review the pertinent literature and various group activity recognition approaches, from traditional methodologies to the latest methods based on spatial structure, descriptors, non-deep learning, hierarchical recurrent neural networks (HRNN), relationship models, and attention mechanisms. Subsequently, we present the relational network and relational architectures for each module. Thirdly, we investigate methods for recognizing group activity and compare their performance with state-of-the-art technologies. We summarize the existing challenges and provide comprehensive guidance for newcomers to understand group activity recognition. Furthermore, we review emerging perspectives in group activity recognition to explore new directions and possibilities.
On Solving the Rubik's Cube with Domain-Independent Planners Using Standard Representations
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2023
Year: 2023

Rubik's Cube (RC) is a well-known and computationally challenging puzzle that has motivated AI researchers to explore efficient alternative representations and problem-solving methods. The ideal situation for planning here is that a problem be solved optimally and efficiently represented in a standard notation using a general-purpose solver and heuristics. The fastest solver today for RC is DeepCubeA with a custom representation, and another approach is with Scorpion planner with State-Action-Space+ (SAS+) representation. In this paper, we present the first RC representation in the popular PDDL language so that the domain becomes more accessible to PDDL planners, competitions, and knowledge engineering tools, and is more human-readable. We then bridge across existing approaches and compare performance. We find that in one comparable experiment, DeepCubeA (trained with 12 RC actions) solves all problems with varying complexities, albeit only 78.5% are optimal plans. For the same problem set, Scorpion with SAS+ representation and pattern database heuristics solves 61.50% problems optimally, while FastDownward with PDDL representation and FF heuristic solves 56.50% problems, out of which 79.64% of the plans generated were optimal. Our study provides valuable insights into the trade-offs between representational choice and plan optimality that can help researchers design future strategies for challenging domains combining general-purpose solving methods (planning, reinforcement learning), heuristics, and representations (standard or custom).
Contributions to the Improvement of Question Answering Systems in the Biomedical Domain
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2023
Year: 2023

This thesis work falls within the framework of question answering (QA) in the biomedical domain where several specific challenges are addressed, such as specialized lexicons and terminologies, the types of treated questions, and the characteristics of targeted documents. We are particularly interested in studying and improving methods that aim at finding accurate and short answers to biomedical natural language questions from a large scale of biomedical textual documents in English. QA aims at providing inquirers with direct, short and precise answers to their natural language questions. In this Ph.D. thesis, we propose four contributions to improve the performance of QA in the biomedical domain. In our first contribution, we propose a machine learning-based method for question type classification to determine the types of given questions which enable to a biomedical QA system to use the appropriate answer extraction method. We also propose an another machine learning-based method to assign one or more topics (e.g., pharmacological, test, treatment, etc.) to given questions in order to determine the semantic types of the expected answers which are very useful in generating specific answer retrieval strategies. In the second contribution, we first propose a document retrieval method to retrieve a set of relevant documents that are likely to contain the answers to biomedical questions from the MEDLINE database. We then present a passage retrieval method to retrieve a set of relevant passages to questions. In the third contribution, we propose specific answer extraction methods to generate both exact and ideal answers. Finally, in the fourth contribution, we develop a fully automated semantic biomedical QA system called SemBioNLQA which is able to deal with a variety of natural language questions and to generate appropriate answers by providing both exact and ideal answers.
ARB: Advanced Reasoning Benchmark for Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2023
Year: 2023

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable performance on various quantitative reasoning and knowledge benchmarks. However, many of these benchmarks are losing utility as LLMs get increasingly high scores, despite not yet reaching expert performance in these domains. We introduce ARB, a novel benchmark composed of advanced reasoning problems in multiple fields. ARB presents a more challenging test than prior benchmarks, featuring problems in mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, and law. As a subset of ARB, we introduce a challenging set of math and physics problems which require advanced symbolic reasoning and domain knowledge. We evaluate recent models such as GPT-4 and Claude on ARB and demonstrate that current models score well below 50% on more demanding tasks. In order to improve both automatic and assisted evaluation capabilities, we introduce a rubric-based evaluation approach, allowing GPT-4 to score its own intermediate reasoning steps. Further, we conduct a human evaluation of the symbolic subset of ARB, finding promising agreement between annotators and GPT-4 rubric evaluation scores.
$\text{EFO}_{k}$-CQA: Towards Knowledge Graph Complex Query Answering beyond Set Operation
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2023
Year: 2023

To answer complex queries on knowledge graphs, logical reasoning over incomplete knowledge is required due to the open-world assumption. Learning-based methods are essential because they are capable of generalizing over unobserved knowledge. Therefore, an appropriate dataset is fundamental to both obtaining and evaluating such methods under this paradigm. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive framework for data generation, model training, and method evaluation that covers the combinatorial space of Existential First-order Queries with multiple variables ($\text{EFO}_{k}$). The combinatorial query space in our framework significantly extends those defined by set operations in the existing literature. Additionally, we construct a dataset, $\text{EFO}_{k}$-CQA, with 741 types of query for empirical evaluation, and our benchmark results provide new insights into how query hardness affects the results. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the existing dataset construction process is systematically biased that hinders the appropriate development of query-answering methods, highlighting the importance of our work. Our code and data are provided in~\url{https://github.com/HKUST-KnowComp/EFOK-CQA}.
Control and Monitoring of Artificial Intelligence Algorithms
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

This paper elucidates the importance of governing an artificial intelligence model post-deployment and overseeing potential fluctuations in the distribution of present data in contrast to the training data. The concepts of data drift and concept drift are explicated, along with their respective foundational distributions. Furthermore, a range of metrics is introduced, which can be utilized to scrutinize the model's performance concerning potential temporal variations.
What do we know about software development in startups?
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2023
Year: 2023

An impressive number of new startups are launched every day as a result of growing new markets, accessible technologies, and venture capital. New ventures such as Facebook, Supercell, Linkedin, Spotify, {WhatsApp}, and Dropbox, to name a few, are good examples of startups that evolved into successful businesses. However, despite many successful stories, the great majority of them fail prematurely. Operating in a chaotic and rapidly evolving domain conveys new uncharted challenges for startuppers. In this study, the authors characterize their context and identify common software development startup practices.
Foundational Models Defining a New Era in Vision: A Survey and Outlook
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Vision systems to see and reason about the compositional nature of visual scenes are fundamental to understanding our world. The complex relations between objects and their locations, ambiguities, and variations in the real-world environment can be better described in human language, naturally governed by grammatical rules and other modalities such as audio and depth. The models learned to bridge the gap between such modalities coupled with large-scale training data facilitate contextual reasoning, generalization, and prompt capabilities at test time. These models are referred to as foundational models. The output of such models can be modified through human-provided prompts without retraining, e.g., segmenting a particular object by providing a bounding box, having interactive dialogues by asking questions about an image or video scene or manipulating the robot's behavior through language instructions. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive review of such emerging foundational models, including typical architecture designs to combine different modalities (vision, text, audio, etc), training objectives (contrastive, generative), pre-training datasets, fine-tuning mechanisms, and the common prompting patterns; textual, visual, and heterogeneous. We discuss the open challenges and research directions for foundational models in computer vision, including difficulties in their evaluations and benchmarking, gaps in their real-world understanding, limitations of their contextual understanding, biases, vulnerability to adversarial attacks, and interpretability issues. We review recent developments in this field, covering a wide range of applications of foundation models systematically and comprehensively. A comprehensive list of foundational models studied in this work is available at \url{https://github.com/awaisrauf/Awesome-CV-Foundational-Models}.
UPREVE: An End-to-End Causal Discovery Benchmarking System
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

Discovering causal relationships in complex socio-behavioral systems is challenging but essential for informed decision-making. We present Upload, PREprocess, Visualize, and Evaluate (UPREVE), a user-friendly web-based graphical user interface (GUI) designed to simplify the process of causal discovery. UPREVE allows users to run multiple algorithms simultaneously, visualize causal relationships, and evaluate the accuracy of learned causal graphs. With its accessible interface and customizable features, UPREVE empowers researchers and practitioners in social computing and behavioral-cultural modeling (among others) to explore and understand causal relationships effectively. Our proposed solution aims to make causal discovery more accessible and user-friendly, enabling users to gain valuable insights for better decision-making.
Integration of Digital Twin and Federated Learning for Securing Vehicular Internet of Things
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2023
Year: 2023

In the present era of advanced technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) plays a crucial role in enabling smart connected environments. This includes various domains such as smart homes, smart healthcare, smart cities, smart vehicles, and many others.With ubiquitous smart connected devices and systems, a large amount of data associated with them is at a prime risk from malicious entities (e.g., users, devices, applications) in these systems. Innovative technologies, including cloud computing, Machine Learning (ML), and data analytics, support the development of anomaly detection models for the Vehicular Internet of Things (V-IoT), which encompasses collaborative automatic driving and enhanced transportation systems. However, traditional centralized anomaly detection models fail to provide better services for connected vehicles due to issues such as high latency, privacy leakage, performance overhead, and model drift. Recently, Federated Learning (FL) has gained significant recognition for its ability to address data privacy concerns in the IoT domain. Digital Twin (DT), proves beneficial in addressing uncertain crises and data security issues by creating a virtual replica that simulates various factors, including traffic trajectories, city policies, and vehicle utilization. However, the effectiveness of a V-IoT DT system heavily relies on the collection of long-term and high-quality data to make appropriate decisions. This paper introduces a Hierarchical Federated Learning (HFL) based anomaly detection model for V-IoT, aiming to enhance the accuracy of the model. Our proposed model integrates both DT and HFL approaches to create a comprehensive system for detecting malicious activities using an anomaly detection model. Additionally, real-world V-IoT use case scenarios are presented to demonstrate the application of the proposed model.
Gradient-Based Spectral Embeddings of Random Dot Product Graphs
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

The Random Dot Product Graph (RDPG) is a generative model for relational data, where nodes are represented via latent vectors in low-dimensional Euclidean space. RDPGs crucially postulate that edge formation probabilities are given by the dot product of the corresponding latent positions. Accordingly, the embedding task of estimating these vectors from an observed graph is typically posed as a low-rank matrix factorization problem. The workhorse Adjacency Spectral Embedding (ASE) enjoys solid statistical properties, but it is formally solving a surrogate problem and can be computationally intensive. In this paper, we bring to bear recent advances in non-convex optimization and demonstrate their impact to RDPG inference. We advocate first-order gradient descent methods to better solve the embedding problem, and to organically accommodate broader network embedding applications of practical relevance. Notably, we argue that RDPG embeddings of directed graphs loose interpretability unless the factor matrices are constrained to have orthogonal columns. We thus develop a novel feasible optimization method in the resulting manifold. The effectiveness of the graph representation learning framework is demonstrated on reproducible experiments with both synthetic and real network data. Our open-source algorithm implementations are scalable, and unlike the ASE they are robust to missing edge data and can track slowly-varying latent positions from streaming graphs.
TeleBTC: Trustless Wrapped Bitcoin
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2023
Year: 2023

This paper introduces TeleBTC, a fully decentralized protocol designed to wrap Bitcoin (BTC) on programmable blockchains. The creation of a decentralized wrapped BTC presents challenges due to the non-programmable nature of Bitcoin, making it difficult to custody BTCs in a decentralized way. Existing solutions have addressed this challenge by introducing an external layer of validators who take custody of users' BTCs. However, the security and decentralization of this layer are inferior to the underlying blockchains on which wrapped BTC is built. Moreover, the process of joining or leaving for a validator has become overly complex and expensive. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel approach that eliminates the need for such an external layer by leveraging the light client bridge protocol. Additionally, we employ economic mechanisms such as incentivization and slashing, resulting in a secure and trust-minimized wrapped BTC solution. With TeleBTC, users can seamlessly transfer their BTC to other blockchains and utilize it within decentralized applications. Furthermore, they can unwrap their TeleBTC and reclaim the native BTC. To address the high costs associated with light client bridges, we present an optimistic approach that minimizes the cost. This approach significantly reduces the operational expenses of running the protocol.
Dynamic Grouping for Climate Change Negotiation: Facilitating Cooperation and Balancing Interests through Effective Strategies
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2023
Year: 2023

The current framework for climate change negotiation models presents several limitations that warrant further research and development. In this track, we discuss mainly two key areas for improvement, focusing on the geographical impacts and utility framework. In the aspects of geographical impacts, We explore five critical aspects: (1) the shift from local to global impact, (2) variability in climate change effects across regions, (3) heterogeneity in geographical location and political structures, and (4) collaborations between adjacent nations, (5) the importance of including historical and cultural factors influencing climate negotiations. Furthermore, we emphasize the need to refine the utility and rewards framework to reduce the homogeneity and the level of overestimating the climate mitigation by integrating the positive effects of saving rates into the reward function and heterogeneity among all regions. By addressing these limitations, we hope to enhance the accuracy and effectiveness of climate change negotiation models, enabling policymakers and stakeholders to devise targeted and appropriate strategies to tackle climate change at both regional and global levels.
Low-Parameter Federated Learning with Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2023
Year: 2023

We study few-shot Natural Language Understanding (NLU) tasks with Large Language Models (LLMs) in federated learning (FL) scenarios. It is a challenging task due to limited labeled data and communication capacities in FL, especially with mobile devices. Recent studies show LLMs can be prompted to perform few-shot NLU tasks like sentiment analysis and arithmetic reasoning. However, the huge sizes of LLMs result in high computation and communication costs, making classical FL schemes impractical. To address these challenges, we propose Low-Parameter Federated Learning (LP-FL). LP-FL combines few-shot prompt learning from LLMs with efficient communication and federating techniques. Our approach enables federated clients to assign soft labels to unlabeled data using gradually learned knowledge from the global model. Through iterative soft-label assigning, we continually expand the labeled set during the FL process. Additionally, to reduce computation and communication costs, LP-FL utilizes the Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) technique for compact learnable parameter construction, efficient local model fine-tuning, and affordable global model federation. LP-FL consistently outperforms Full-Parameter Federated Learning (FP-FL) in sentiment analysis tasks across various FL settings. Its resistance to overfitting allows LP-FL to equal or surpass centralized training in few-shot scenarios.