OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
(Debiased) Contrastive Learning Loss for Recommendation (Technical Report)
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

In this paper, we perform a systemic examination of the recommendation losses, including listwise (softmax), pairwise(BPR), and pointwise (mean-squared error, MSE, and Cosine Contrastive Loss, CCL) losses through the lens of contrastive learning. We introduce and study both debiased InfoNCE and mutual information neural estimator (MINE), for the first time, under the recommendation setting. We also relate and differentiate these two losses with the BPR loss through the lower bound analysis. Furthermore, we present the debiased pointwise loss (for both MSE and CCL) and theoretically certify both iALS and EASE, two of the most popular linear models, are inherently debiased. The empirical experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the debiased losses and newly introduced mutual-information losses outperform the existing (biased) ones.
MaxK-GNN: Extremely Fast GPU Kernel Design for Accelerating Graph Neural Networks Training
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

In the acceleration of deep neural network training, the GPU has become the mainstream platform. GPUs face substantial challenges on GNNs, such as workload imbalance and memory access irregularities, leading to underutilized hardware. Existing solutions such as PyG, DGL with cuSPARSE, and GNNAdvisor frameworks partially address these challenges but memory traffic is still significant. We argue that drastic performance improvements can only be achieved by the vertical optimization of algorithm and system innovations, rather than treating the speedup optimization as an "after-thought" (i.e., (i) given a GNN algorithm, designing an accelerator, or (ii) given hardware, mainly optimizing the GNN algorithm). In this paper, we present MaxK-GNN, an advanced high-performance GPU training system integrating algorithm and system innovation. (i) We introduce the MaxK nonlinearity and provide a theoretical analysis of MaxK nonlinearity as a universal approximator, and present the Compressed Balanced Sparse Row (CBSR) format, designed to store the data and index of the feature matrix after nonlinearity; (ii) We design a coalescing enhanced forward computation with row-wise product-based SpGEMM Kernel using CBSR for input feature matrix fetching and strategic placement of a sparse output accumulation buffer in shared memory; (iii) We develop an optimized backward computation with outer product-based and SSpMM Kernel. We conduct extensive evaluations of MaxK-GNN and report the end-to-end system run-time. Experiments show that MaxK-GNN system could approach the theoretical speedup limit according to Amdahl's law. We achieve comparable accuracy to SOTA GNNs, but at a significantly increased speed: 3.22/4.24 times speedup (vs. theoretical limits, 5.52/7.27 times) on Reddit compared to DGL and GNNAdvisor implementations.
All-to-all reconfigurability with sparse and higher-order Ising machines
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2024
Year: 2024

Domain-specific hardware to solve computationally hard optimization problems has generated tremendous excitement. Here, we evaluate probabilistic bit (p-bit) based Ising Machines (IM) on the 3-regular 3-Exclusive OR Satisfiability (3R3X), as a representative hard optimization problem. We first introduce a multiplexed architecture that emulates all-to-all network functionality while maintaining highly parallelized chromatic Gibbs sampling. We implement this architecture in single Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and show that running the adaptive parallel tempering algorithm demonstrates competitive algorithmic and prefactor advantages over alternative IMs by D-Wave, Toshiba, and Fujitsu. We also implement higher-order interactions that lead to better prefactors without changing algorithmic scaling for the XORSAT problem. Even though FPGA implementations of p-bits are still not quite as fast as the best possible greedy algorithms accelerated on Graphics Processing Units (GPU), scaled magnetic versions of p-bit IMs could lead to orders of magnitude improvements over the state of the art for generic optimization.
Local Conditional Controlling for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Diffusion models have exhibited impressive prowess in the text-to-image task. Recent methods add image-level structure controls, e.g., edge and depth maps, to manipulate the generation process together with text prompts to obtain desired images. This controlling process is globally operated on the entire image, which limits the flexibility of control regions. In this paper, we explore a novel and practical task setting: local control. It focuses on controlling specific local region according to user-defined image conditions, while the remaining regions are only conditioned by the original text prompt. However, it is non-trivial to achieve local conditional controlling. The naive manner of directly adding local conditions may lead to the local control dominance problem, which forces the model to focus on the controlled region and neglect object generation in other regions. To mitigate this problem, we propose Regional Discriminate Loss to update the noised latents, aiming at enhanced object generation in non-control regions. Furthermore, the proposed Focused Token Response suppresses weaker attention scores which lack the strongest response to enhance object distinction and reduce duplication. Lastly, we adopt Feature Mask Constraint to reduce quality degradation in images caused by information differences across the local control region. All proposed strategies are operated at the inference stage. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method can synthesize high-quality images aligned with the text prompt under local control conditions.
Toward General-Purpose Robots via Foundation Models: A Survey and Meta-Analysis
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Building general-purpose robots that operate seamlessly in any environment, with any object, and utilizing various skills to complete diverse tasks has been a long-standing goal in Artificial Intelligence. However, as a community, we have been constraining most robotic systems by designing them for specific tasks, training them on specific datasets, and deploying them within specific environments. These systems require extensively-labeled data and task-specific models. When deployed in real-world scenarios, such systems face several generalization issues and struggle to remain robust to distribution shifts. Motivated by the impressive open-set performance and content generation capabilities of web-scale, large-capacity pre-trained models (i.e., foundation models) in research fields such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computer Vision (CV), we devote this survey to exploring (i) how these existing foundation models from NLP and CV can be applied to the field of general-purpose robotics, and also exploring (ii) what a robotics-specific foundation model would look like. We begin by providing a generalized formulation of how foundation models are used in robotics, and the fundamental barriers to making generalist robots universally applicable. Next, we establish a taxonomy to discuss current work exploring ways to leverage existing foundation models for robotics and develop ones catered to robotics. Finally, we discuss key challenges and promising future directions in using foundation models for enabling general-purpose robotic systems. We encourage readers to view our living GitHub repository 2 of resources, including papers reviewed in this survey, as well as related projects and repositories for developing foundation models for robotics.
Evaluating Large Language Models for Health-related Queries with Presuppositions
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

As corporations rush to integrate large language models (LLMs) to their search offerings, it is critical that they provide factually accurate information that is robust to any presuppositions that a user may express. In this work, we introduce UPHILL, a dataset consisting of health-related queries with varying degrees of presuppositions. Using UPHILL, we evaluate the factual accuracy and consistency of InstructGPT, ChatGPT, and BingChat models. We find that while model responses rarely disagree with true health claims (posed as questions), they often fail to challenge false claims: responses from InstructGPT agree with 32% of the false claims, ChatGPT 26% and BingChat 23%. As we increase the extent of presupposition in input queries, the responses from InstructGPT and ChatGPT agree with the claim considerably more often, regardless of its veracity. Responses from BingChat, which rely on retrieved webpages, are not as susceptible. Given the moderate factual accuracy, and the inability of models to consistently correct false assumptions, our work calls for a careful assessment of current LLMs for use in high-stakes scenarios.
Planning and Rendering: Towards Product Poster Generation with Diffusion Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Product poster generation significantly optimizes design efficiency and reduces production costs. Prevailing methods predominantly rely on image-inpainting methods to generate clean background images for given products. Subsequently, poster layout generation methods are employed to produce corresponding layout results. However, the background images may not be suitable for accommodating textual content due to their complexity, and the fixed location of products limits the diversity of layout results. To alleviate these issues, we propose a novel product poster generation framework based on diffusion models named P\&R. The P\&R draws inspiration from the workflow of designers in creating posters, which consists of two stages: Planning and Rendering. At the planning stage, we propose a PlanNet to generate the layout of the product and other visual components considering both the appearance features of the product and semantic features of the text, which improves the diversity and rationality of the layouts. At the rendering stage, we propose a RenderNet to generate the background for the product while considering the generated layout, where a spatial fusion module is introduced to fuse the layout of different visual components. To foster the advancement of this field, we propose the first product poster generation dataset PPG30k, comprising 30k exquisite product poster images along with comprehensive image and text annotations. Our method outperforms the state-of-the-art product poster generation methods on PPG30k. The PPG30k will be released soon.
Global Rewards in Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Mobility on Demand Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

We study vehicle dispatching in autonomous mobility on demand (AMoD) systems, where a central operator assigns vehicles to customer requests or rejects these with the aim of maximizing its total profit. Recent approaches use multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL) to realize scalable yet performant algorithms, but train agents based on local rewards, which distorts the reward signal with respect to the system-wide profit, leading to lower performance. We therefore propose a novel global-rewards-based MADRL algorithm for vehicle dispatching in AMoD systems, which resolves so far existing goal conflicts between the trained agents and the operator by assigning rewards to agents leveraging a counterfactual baseline. Our algorithm shows statistically significant improvements across various settings on real-world data compared to state-of-the-art MADRL algorithms with local rewards. We further provide a structural analysis which shows that the utilization of global rewards can improve implicit vehicle balancing and demand forecasting abilities. Our code is available at https://github.com/tumBAIS/GR-MADRL-AMoD.
Read Between the Layers: Leveraging Multi-Layer Representations for Rehearsal-Free Continual Learning with Pre-Trained Models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

We address the Continual Learning (CL) problem, wherein a model must learn a sequence of tasks from non-stationary distributions while preserving prior knowledge upon encountering new experiences. With the advancement of foundation models, CL research has pivoted from the initial learning-from-scratch paradigm towards utilizing generic features from large-scale pre-training. However, existing approaches to CL with pre-trained models primarily focus on separating class-specific features from the final representation layer and neglect the potential of intermediate representations to capture low- and mid-level features, which are more invariant to domain shifts. In this work, we propose LayUP, a new prototype-based approach to CL that leverages second-order feature statistics from multiple intermediate layers of a pre-trained network. Our method is conceptually simple, does not require access to prior data, and works out of the box with any foundation model. LayUP surpasses the state of the art in four of the seven class-incremental learning benchmarks, all three domain-incremental learning benchmarks and in six of the seven online continual learning benchmarks, while significantly reducing memory and computational requirements compared to existing baselines. Our results demonstrate that fully exhausting the representational capacities of pre-trained models in CL goes well beyond their final embeddings.
A Comparative Gas Cost Analysis of Proxy and Diamond Patterns in EVM Blockchains for Trusted Smart Contract Engineering
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

Blockchain applications are witnessing rapid evolution, necessitating the integration of upgradeable smart contracts. Software patterns have been proposed to summarize upgradeable smart contract best practices. However, research is missing on the comparison of these upgradeable smart contract patterns, especially regarding gas costs related to deployment and execution. This study aims to provide an in-depth analysis of gas costs associated with two prevalent upgradeable smart contract patterns: the Proxy and diamond patterns. The Proxy pattern utilizes a Proxy pointing to a logic contract, while the diamond pattern enables a Proxy to point to multiple logic contracts. We conduct a comparative analysis of gas costs for both patterns in contrast to a traditional non-upgradeable smart contract. We derive from this analysis a theoretical contribution in the form of two consolidated blockchain patterns and a corresponding decision model. By so doing we hope to contribute to the broader understanding of upgradeable smart contract patterns.
TAP4LLM: Table Provider on Sampling, Augmenting, and Packing Semi-structured Data for Large Language Model Reasoning
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Table reasoning tasks have shown remarkable progress with the development of large language models (LLMs), which involve interpreting and drawing conclusions from tabular data based on natural language (NL) questions. Existing solutions mainly tested on smaller tables face scalability issues and struggle with complex queries due to incomplete or dispersed data across different table sections. To alleviate these challenges, we propose TAP4LLM as a versatile pre-processor suite for leveraging LLMs in table-based tasks effectively. It covers several distinct components: (1) table sampling to decompose large tables into manageable sub-tables based on query semantics, (2) table augmentation to enhance tables with additional knowledge from external sources or models, and (3) table packing & serialization to convert tables into various formats suitable for LLMs' understanding. In each module, we design and compare several common methods under various usage scenarios, aiming to shed light on the best practices for leveraging LLMs for table-reasoning tasks. Our experiments show that our method improves LLMs' reasoning capabilities in various tabular tasks and enhances the interaction between LLMs and tabular data by employing effective pre-processing.
HiER: Highlight Experience Replay for Boosting Off-Policy Reinforcement Learning Agents
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Even though reinforcement-learning-based algorithms achieved superhuman performance in many domains, the field of robotics poses significant challenges as the state and action spaces are continuous, and the reward function is predominantly sparse. Furthermore, on many occasions, the agent is devoid of access to any form of demonstration. Inspired by human learning, in this work, we propose a method named highlight experience replay (HiER) that creates a secondary highlight replay buffer for the most relevant experiences. For the weights update, the transitions are sampled from both the standard and the highlight experience replay buffer. It can be applied with or without the techniques of hindsight experience replay (HER) and prioritized experience replay (PER). Our method significantly improves the performance of the state-of-the-art, validated on 8 tasks of three robotic benchmarks. Furthermore, to exploit the full potential of HiER, we propose HiER+ in which HiER is enhanced with an arbitrary data collection curriculum learning method. Our implementation, the qualitative results, and a video presentation are available on the project site: http://www.danielhorvath.eu/hier/.
Temporal Transfer Learning for Traffic Optimization with Coarse-grained Advisory Autonomy
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

The recent development of connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technologies has spurred investigations to optimize dense urban traffic to maximize vehicle speed and throughput. This paper explores advisory autonomy, in which real-time driving advisories are issued to the human drivers, thus achieving near-term performance of automated vehicles. Due to the complexity of traffic systems, recent studies of coordinating CAVs have resorted to leveraging deep reinforcement learning (RL). Coarse-grained advisory is formalized as zero-order holds, and we consider a range of hold duration from 0.1 to 40 seconds. However, despite the similarity of the higher frequency tasks on CAVs, a direct application of deep RL fails to be generalized to advisory autonomy tasks. To overcome this, we utilize zero-shot transfer, training policies on a set of source tasks--specific traffic scenarios with designated hold durations--and then evaluating the efficacy of these policies on different target tasks. We introduce Temporal Transfer Learning (TTL) algorithms to select source tasks for zero-shot transfer, systematically leveraging the temporal structure to solve the full range of tasks. TTL selects the most suitable source tasks to maximize the performance of the range of tasks. We validate our algorithms on diverse mixed-traffic scenarios, demonstrating that TTL more reliably solves the tasks than baselines. This paper underscores the potential of coarse-grained advisory autonomy with TTL in traffic flow optimization.
GraphAr: An Efficient Storage Scheme for Graph Data in Data Lakes
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2024
Year: 2024

Data lakes, increasingly adopted for their ability to store and analyze diverse types of data, commonly use columnar storage formats like Parquet and ORC for handling relational tables. However, these traditional setups fall short when it comes to efficiently managing graph data, particularly those conforming to the Labeled Property Graph (LPG) model. To address this gap, this paper introduces GraphAr, a specialized storage scheme designed to enhance existing data lakes for efficient graph data management. Leveraging the strengths of Parquet, GraphAr captures LPG semantics precisely and facilitates graph-specific operations such as neighbor retrieval and label filtering. Through innovative data organization, encoding, and decoding techniques, GraphAr dramatically improves performance. Our evaluations reveal that GraphAr outperforms conventional Parquet and Acero-based methods, achieving an average speedup of 4452x for neighbor retrieval, 14.8x for label filtering, and 29.5x for end-to-end workloads. These findings highlight GraphAr's potential to extend the utility of data lakes by enabling efficient graph data management.
The cost of artificial latency in the PBS context
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2024
Year: 2024

We present a comprehensive analysis of the implications of artificial latency in the Proposer-Builder Separation framework on the Ethereum network. Focusing on the MEV-Boost auction system, we analyze how strategic latency manipulation affects Maximum Extractable Value yields and network integrity. Our findings reveal both increased profitability for node operators and significant systemic challenges, including heightened network inefficiencies and centralization risks. We empirically validates these insights with a pilot that Chorus One has been operating on Ethereum mainnet. We demonstrate the nuanced effects of latency on bid selection and validator dynamics. Ultimately, this research underscores the need for balanced strategies that optimize Maximum Extractable Value capture while preserving the Ethereum network's decentralization ethos.
Silent Guardian: Protecting Text from Malicious Exploitation by Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

The rapid development of large language models (LLMs) has yielded impressive success in various downstream tasks. However, the vast potential and remarkable capabilities of LLMs also raise new security and privacy concerns if they are exploited for nefarious purposes due to their open-endedness. For example, LLMs may be used to plagiarize or imitate writing, thereby infringing the copyright of the original content, or to create indiscriminate fake information based on a certain source text. In some cases, LLMs can even analyze text from the Internet to infer personal privacy. Unfortunately, previous text protection research could not foresee the emergence of powerful LLMs, rendering it no longer effective in this new context. To bridge this gap, we introduce Silent Guardian (SG), a text protection mechanism against LLMs, which allows LLMs to refuse to generate response when receiving protected text, preventing the malicious use of text from the source. Specifically, we first propose the concept of Truncation Protection Examples (TPE). By carefully modifying the text to be protected, TPE can induce LLMs to first sample the end token, thus directly terminating the interaction. In addition, to efficiently construct TPE in the discrete space of text data, we propose a novel optimization algorithm called Super Tailored Protection (STP), which is not only highly efficient but also maintains the semantic consistency of the text during the optimization process. The comprehensive experimental evaluation demonstrates that SG can effectively protect the target text under various configurations and achieve almost 100% protection success rate in some cases. Notably, SG also exhibits relatively good transferability and robustness, making its application in practical scenarios possible. Our code is available at https://github.com/weiyezhimeng/Silent-Guardian.