OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
MAS4POI: a Multi-Agents Collaboration System for Next POI Recommendation
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2024
Year: 2024

LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems have potential benefits of complex decision-making tasks management across various domains but their applications in the next Point-of-Interest (POI) recommendation remain underexplored. This paper proposes a novel MAS4POI system designed to enhance next POI recommendations through multi-agent interactions. MAS4POI supports Large Language Models (LLMs) specializing in distinct agents such as DataAgent, Manager, Analyst, and Navigator with each contributes to a collaborative process of generating the next POI recommendations.The system is examined by integrating six distinct LLMs and evaluated by two real-world datasets for recommendation accuracy improvement in real-world scenarios. Our code is available at https://github.com/yuqian2003/MAS4POI.
Shaping the Future of Endangered and Low-Resource Languages -- Our Role in the Age of LLMs: A Keynote at ECIR 2024
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Isidore of Seville is credited with the adage that it is language that gives birth to a people, and not the other way around , underlining the profound role played by language in the formation of cultural and social identity. Today, of the more than 7100 languages listed, a significant number are endangered. Since the 1970s, linguists, information seekers and enthusiasts have helped develop digital resources and automatic tools to support a wide range of languages, including endangered ones. The advent of Large Language Model (LLM) technologies holds both promise and peril. They offer unprecedented possibilities for the translation and generation of content and resources, key elements in the preservation and revitalisation of languages. They also present threat of homogenisation, cultural oversimplification and the further marginalisation of already vulnerable languages. The talk this paper is based on has proposed an initiatory journey, exploring the potential paths and partnerships between technology and tradition, with a particular focus on the Occitan language. Occitan is a language from Southern France, parts of Spain and Italy that played a major cultural and economic role, particularly in the Middle Ages. It is now endangered according to UNESCO. The talk critically has examined how human expertise and artificial intelligence can work together to offer hope for preserving the linguistic diversity that forms the foundation of our global and especially our European heritage while addressing some of the ethical and practical challenges that accompany the use of these powerful technologies. This paper is based on the keynote I gave at the 46th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2024). As an alternative to reading this paper, a video talk is available online. 1 Date: 26 March 2024.
Rule Extrapolation in Language Models: A Study of Compositional Generalization on OOD Prompts
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

LLMs show remarkable emergent abilities, such as inferring concepts from presumably out-of-distribution prompts, known as in-context learning. Though this success is often attributed to the Transformer architecture, our systematic understanding is limited. In complex real-world data sets, even defining what is out-of-distribution is not obvious. To better understand the OOD behaviour of autoregressive LLMs, we focus on formal languages, which are defined by the intersection of rules. We define a new scenario of OOD compositional generalization, termed rule extrapolation. Rule extrapolation describes OOD scenarios, where the prompt violates at least one rule. We evaluate rule extrapolation in formal languages with varying complexity in linear and recurrent architectures, the Transformer, and state space models to understand the architectures' influence on rule extrapolation. We also lay the first stones of a normative theory of rule extrapolation, inspired by the Solomonoff prior in algorithmic information theory.
Enhancing Kurdish Text-to-Speech with Native Corpus Training: A High-Quality WaveGlow Vocoder Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

The ability to synthesize spoken language from text has greatly facilitated access to digital content with the advances in text-to-speech technology. However, effective TTS development for low-resource languages, such as Central Kurdish (CKB), still faces many challenges due mainly to the lack of linguistic information and dedicated resources. In this paper, we improve the Kurdish TTS system based on Tacotron by training the Kurdish WaveGlow vocoder on a 21-hour central Kurdish speech corpus instead of using a pre-trained English vocoder WaveGlow. Vocoder training on the target language corpus is required to accurately and fluently adapt phonetic and prosodic changes in Kurdish language. The effectiveness of these enhancements is that our model is significantly better than the baseline system with English pretrained models. In particular, our adaptive WaveGlow model achieves an impressive MOS of 4.91, which sets a new benchmark for Kurdish speech synthesis. On one hand, this study empowers the advanced features of the TTS system for Central Kurdish, and on the other hand, it opens the doors for other dialects in Kurdish and other related languages to further develop.
Clarke Transform and Clarke Coordinates -- A New Kid on the Block for State Representation of Continuum Robots
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

For almost all tendon-driven continuum robots, a segment is actuated by three or four tendons constrained by its mechanical design. For both cases, methods to account for the constraints are known. However, for an arbitrary number of tendons, a disentanglement method has yet to be formulated. Motivated by this unsolved general case, we explored state representations and exploited the two-dimensional manifold. We found that the Clarke transformation, a mathematical transformation used in vector control, can be generalized to address this problem. We present the Clarke transform and Clarke coordinates, which can be used to overcome the troublesome interdependency between the tendons, simplify modeling, and unify different improved state representations. Further connection to arc parameters leads to the possibility to derive more generalizable approaches applicable to a wider range of robot types.
Adaptive Robot Perception in Construction Environments using 4D BIM
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) is a pivotal component of robot perception for physical Human Robot Interaction (pHRI) tasks. In construction robotics, it is vital that robots have an accurate and robust perception of worker activities. This enhanced perception is the foundation of trustworthy and safe Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) in an industrial setting. Many developed HAR algorithms lack the robustness and adaptability to ensure seamless HRC. Recent works have employed multi-modal approaches to increase feature considerations. This paper further expands previous research to include 4D building information modeling (BIM) schedule data. We created a pipeline that transforms high-level BIM schedule activities into a set of low-level tasks in real-time. The framework then utilizes this subset as a tool to restrict the solution space that the HAR algorithm can predict activities from. By limiting this subspace through 4D BIM schedule data, the algorithm has a higher chance of predicting the true possible activities from a smaller pool of possibilities in a localized setting as compared to calculating all global possibilities at every point. Results indicate that the proposed approach achieves higher confidence predictions over the base model without leveraging the BIM data.
"I Never Said That": A dataset, taxonomy and baselines on response clarity classification
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Equivocation and ambiguity in public speech are well-studied discourse phenomena, especially in political science and analysis of political interviews. Inspired by the well-grounded theory on equivocation, we aim to resolve the closely related problem of response clarity in questions extracted from political interviews, leveraging the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) and human expertise. To this end, we introduce a novel taxonomy that frames the task of detecting and classifying response clarity and a corresponding clarity classification dataset which consists of question-answer (QA) pairs drawn from political interviews and annotated accordingly. Our proposed two-level taxonomy addresses the clarity of a response in terms of the information provided for a given question (high-level) and also provides a fine-grained taxonomy of evasion techniques that relate to unclear, ambiguous responses (lower-level). We combine ChatGPT and human annotators to collect, validate and annotate discrete QA pairs from political interviews, to be used for our newly introduced response clarity task. We provide a detailed analysis and conduct several experiments with different model architectures, sizes and adaptation methods to gain insights and establish new baselines over the proposed dataset and task.
Measuring Error Alignment for Decision-Making Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

Given that AI systems are set to play a pivotal role in future decision-making processes, their trustworthiness and reliability are of critical concern. Due to their scale and complexity, modern AI systems resist direct interpretation, and alternative ways are needed to establish trust in those systems, and determine how well they align with human values. We argue that good measures of the information processing similarities between AI and humans, may be able to achieve these same ends. While Representational alignment (RA) approaches measure similarity between the internal states of two systems, the associated data can be expensive and difficult to collect for human systems. In contrast, Behavioural alignment (BA) comparisons are cheaper and easier, but questions remain as to their sensitivity and reliability. We propose two new behavioural alignment metrics misclassification agreement which measures the similarity between the errors of two systems on the same instances, and class-level error similarity which measures the similarity between the error distributions of two systems. We show that our metrics correlate well with RA metrics, and provide complementary information to another BA metric, within a range of domains, and set the scene for a new approach to value alignment.
Tactile Neural De-rendering
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Tactile sensing has proven to be an invaluable tool for enhancing robotic perception, particularly in scenarios where visual data is limited or unavailable. However, traditional methods for pose estimation using tactile data often rely on intricate modeling of sensor mechanics or estimation of contact patches, which can be cumbersome and inherently deterministic. In this work, we introduce Tactile Neural De-rendering, a novel approach that leverages a generative model to reconstruct a local 3D representation of an object based solely on its tactile signature. By rendering the object as though perceived by a virtual camera embedded at the fingertip, our method provides a more intuitive and flexible representation of the tactile data. This 3D reconstruction not only facilitates precise pose estimation but also allows for the quantification of uncertainty, providing a robust framework for tactile-based perception in robotics.
CUS3D :CLIP-based Unsupervised 3D Segmentation via Object-level Denoise
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

To ease the difficulty of acquiring annotation labels in 3D data, a common method is using unsupervised and open-vocabulary semantic segmentation, which leverage 2D CLIP semantic knowledge. In this paper, unlike previous research that ignores the ``noise'' raised during feature projection from 2D to 3D, we propose a novel distillation learning framework named CUS3D. In our approach, an object-level denosing projection module is designed to screen out the ``noise'' and ensure more accurate 3D feature. Based on the obtained features, a multimodal distillation learning module is designed to align the 3D feature with CLIP semantic feature space with object-centered constrains to achieve advanced unsupervised semantic segmentation. We conduct comprehensive experiments in both unsupervised and open-vocabulary segmentation, and the results consistently showcase the superiority of our model in achieving advanced unsupervised segmentation results and its effectiveness in open-vocabulary segmentation.
Cycle-Consistency Uncertainty Estimation for Visual Prompting based One-Shot Defect Segmentation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Industrial defect detection traditionally relies on supervised learning models trained on fixed datasets of known defect types. While effective within a closed set, these models struggle with new, unseen defects, necessitating frequent re-labeling and re-training. Recent advances in visual prompting offer a solution by allowing models to adaptively infer novel categories based on provided visual cues. However, a prevalent issue in these methods is the over-confdence problem, where models can mis-classify unknown objects as known objects with high certainty. To addresssing the fundamental concerns about the adaptability, we propose a solution to estimate uncertainty of the visual prompting process by cycle-consistency. We designed to check whether it can accurately restore the original prompt from its predictions. To quantify this, we measure the mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) between the restored prompt mask and the originally provided prompt mask. Without using complex designs or ensemble methods with multiple networks, our approach achieved a yield rate of 0.9175 in the VISION24 one-shot industrial challenge.
GAInS: Gradient Anomaly-aware Biomedical Instance Segmentation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Instance segmentation plays a vital role in the morphological quantification of biomedical entities such as tissues and cells, enabling precise identification and delineation of different structures. Current methods often address the challenges of touching, overlapping or crossing instances through individual modeling, while neglecting the intrinsic interrelation between these conditions. In this work, we propose a Gradient Anomaly-aware Biomedical Instance Segmentation approach (GAInS), which leverages instance gradient information to perceive local gradient anomaly regions, thus modeling the spatial relationship between instances and refining local region segmentation. Specifically, GAInS is firstly built on a Gradient Anomaly Mapping Module (GAMM), which encodes the radial fields of instances through window sliding to obtain instance gradient anomaly maps. To efficiently refine boundaries and regions with gradient anomaly attention, we propose an Adaptive Local Refinement Module (ALRM) with a gradient anomaly-aware loss function. Extensive comparisons and ablation experiments in three biomedical scenarios demonstrate that our proposed GAInS outperforms other state-of-the-art (SOTA) instance segmentation methods. The code is available at https://github.com/DeepGAInS/GAInS.
Integrated Decision Making and Trajectory Planning for Autonomous Driving Under Multimodal Uncertainties: A Bayesian Game Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Modeling the interaction between traffic agents is a key issue in designing safe and non-conservative maneuvers in autonomous driving. This problem can be challenging when multi-modality and behavioral uncertainties are engaged. Existing methods either fail to plan interactively or consider unimodal behaviors that could lead to catastrophic results. In this paper, we introduce an integrated decision-making and trajectory planning framework based on Bayesian game (i.e., game of incomplete information). Human decisions inherently exhibit discrete characteristics and therefore are modeled as types of players in the game. A general solver based on no-regret learning is introduced to obtain a corresponding Bayesian Coarse Correlated Equilibrium, which captures the interaction between traffic agents in the multimodal context. With the attained equilibrium, decision-making and trajectory planning are performed simultaneously, and the resulting interactive strategy is shown to be optimal over the expectation of rivals' driving intentions. Closed-loop simulations on different traffic scenarios are performed to illustrate the generalizability and the effectiveness of the proposed framework.
Contrastive Learning for Knowledge-Based Question Generation in Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, especially the increasingly widespread application of question-and-answer systems, high-quality question generation has become a key component in supporting the development of these systems. This article focuses on knowledge-based question generation technology, which aims to enable computers to simulate the human questioning process based on understanding specific texts or knowledge bases. In light of the issues of hallucination and knowledge gaps present in large-scale language models when applied to knowledge-intensive tasks, this paper proposes an enhanced question generation method that incorporates contrastive learning. This method utilizes multiple models to jointly mine domain knowledge and uses contrastive learning to guide the model in reducing noise and hallucinations in generation. Experimental results show that by designing prompts containing contrasting examples, the model's performance in question generation improves considerably, particularly when contrasting instructions and examples are used simultaneously, leading to the highest quality of generated questions and improved accuracy. These results demonstrate that the method proposed in this study, which combines contrasting context and chain-of-thought prompts, can effectively improve both the quality and the practicality of question generation.
Graph Neural Network Framework for Sentiment Analysis Using Syntactic Feature
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Amidst the swift evolution of social media platforms and e-commerce ecosystems, the domain of opinion mining has surged as a pivotal area of exploration within natural language processing. A specialized segment within this field focuses on extracting nuanced evaluations tied to particular elements within textual contexts. This research advances a composite framework that amalgamates the positional cues of topical descriptors. The proposed system converts syntactic structures into a matrix format, leveraging convolutions and attention mechanisms within a graph to distill salient characteristics. Incorporating the positional relevance of descriptors relative to lexical items enhances the sequential integrity of the input. Trials have substantiated that this integrated graph-centric scheme markedly elevates the efficacy of evaluative categorization, showcasing preeminence.
Digital Advertising in a Post-Cookie World: Charting the Impact of Google's Topics API
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2024
Year: 2024

Integrating Google's Topics API into the digital advertising ecosystem represents a significant shift toward privacy-conscious advertising practices. This article analyses the implications of implementing Topics API on ad networks, focusing on competition dynamics and ad space accessibility. Through simulations based on extensive datasets capturing user behavior and market share data for ad networks, we evaluate metrics such as Ad Placement Eligibility, Low Competition Rate, and solo competitor. The findings reveal a noticeable impact on ad networks, with larger players strengthening their dominance and smaller networks facing challenges securing ad spaces and competing effectively. Moreover, the study explores the potential environmental implications of Google's actions, highlighting the need to carefully consider policy and regulatory measures to ensure fair competition and privacy protection. Overall, this research contributes valuable insights into the evolving dynamics of digital advertising and highlights the importance of balancing privacy with competition and innovation in the online advertising landscape.
PTD-SQL: Partitioning and Targeted Drilling with LLMs in Text-to-SQL
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as powerful tools for Text-to-SQL tasks, exhibiting remarkable reasoning capabilities. Different from tasks such as math word problems and commonsense reasoning, SQL solutions have a relatively fixed pattern. This facilitates the investigation of whether LLMs can benefit from categorical thinking, mirroring how humans acquire knowledge through inductive reasoning based on comparable examples. In this study, we propose that employing query group partitioning allows LLMs to focus on learning the thought processes specific to a single problem type, consequently enhancing their reasoning abilities across diverse difficulty levels and problem categories. Our experiments reveal that multiple advanced LLMs, when equipped with PTD-SQL, can either surpass or match previous state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods on the Spider and BIRD datasets. Intriguingly, models with varying initial performances have exhibited significant improvements, mainly at the boundary of their capabilities after targeted drilling, suggesting a parallel with human progress. Code is available at https://github.com/lrlbbzl/PTD-SQL.
IPF-HMGNN: A novel integrative prediction framework for metro passenger flow
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

The operation and management of the metro system in urban areas rely on accurate predictions of future passenger flow. While using all the available information can potentially improve on the accuracy of the flow prediction, there has been little attention to the hierarchical relationship between the type of tickets collected from the passengers entering/exiting a station and its resulting passenger flow. To this end, we propose a novel Integrative Prediction Framework with the Hierarchical Message-Passing Graph Neural Network (IPF-HMGNN). The proposed framework consists of three components: initial prediction, task judgment and hierarchical coordination modules. Using the Wuxi, China metro network as an example, we study two prediction approaches (i) traditional prediction approach where the model directly predicts passenger flow at the station, and (ii) hierarchical prediction approach where the prediction of ticket type and station passenger flow are performed simultaneously considering the hierarchical constraints (i.e., the sum of predicted passenger flow per ticket type equals the predicted station aggregated passenger flow). Experimental results indicate that in the traditional prediction approach, our IPF-HMGNN can significantly reduce the mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE) of the GNN prediction model by 49.56% and 53.88%, respectively. In the hierarchical prediction approach, IPF-HMGNN can achieve a maximum reduction of 35.32% in MAE and 36.18% in RMSE, while satisfying the hierarchical constraint.