OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Integrating Hyperparameter Search into Model-Free AutoML with Context-Free Grammars
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) has become increasingly popular in recent years due to its ability to reduce the amount of time and expertise required to design and develop machine learning systems. This is very important for the practice of machine learning, as it allows building strong baselines quickly, improving the efficiency of the data scientists, and reducing the time to production. However, despite the advantages of AutoML, it faces several challenges, such as defining the solutions space and exploring it efficiently. Recently, some approaches have been shown to be able to do it using tree-based search algorithms and context-free grammars. In particular, GramML presents a model-free reinforcement learning approach that leverages pipeline configuration grammars and operates using Monte Carlo tree search. However, one of the limitations of GramML is that it uses default hyperparameters, limiting the search problem to finding optimal pipeline structures for the available data preprocessors and models. In this work, we propose an extension to GramML that supports larger search spaces including hyperparameter search. We evaluated the approach using an OpenML benchmark and found significant improvements compared to other state-of-the-art techniques.
Edisum: Summarizing and Explaining Wikipedia Edits at Scale
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

An edit summary is a succinct comment written by a Wikipedia editor explaining the nature of, and reasons for, an edit to a Wikipedia page. Edit summaries are crucial for maintaining the encyclopedia: they are the first thing seen by content moderators and they help them decide whether to accept or reject an edit. Additionally, edit summaries constitute a valuable data source for researchers. Unfortunately, as we show, for many edits, summaries are either missing or incomplete. To overcome this problem and help editors write useful edit summaries, we propose a model for recommending edit summaries generated by a language model trained to produce good edit summaries given the representation of an edit diff. To overcome the challenges of mixed-quality training data and efficiency requirements imposed by the scale of Wikipedia, we fine-tune a small generative language model on a curated mix of human and synthetic data. Our model performs on par with human editors. Commercial large language models are able to solve this task better than human editors, but are not well suited for Wikipedia, while open-source ones fail on this task. More broadly, we showcase how language modeling technology can be used to support humans in maintaining one of the largest and most visible projects on the Web.
Knowledge Graph Representation for Political Information Sources
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

With the rise of computational social science, many scholars utilize data analysis and natural language processing tools to analyze social media, news articles, and other accessible data sources for examining political and social discourse. Particularly, the study of the emergence of echo-chambers due to the dissemination of specific information has become a topic of interest in mixed methods research areas. In this paper, we analyze data collected from two news portals, Breitbart News (BN) and New York Times (NYT) to prove the hypothesis that the formation of echo-chambers can be partially explained on the level of an individual information consumption rather than a collective topology of individuals' social networks. Our research findings are presented through knowledge graphs, utilizing a dataset spanning 11.5 years gathered from BN and NYT media portals. We demonstrate that the application of knowledge representation techniques to the aforementioned news streams highlights, contrary to common assumptions, shows relative "internal" neutrality of both sources and polarizing attitude towards a small fraction of entities. Additionally, we argue that such characteristics in information sources lead to fundamental disparities in audience worldviews, potentially acting as a catalyst for the formation of echo-chambers.
A Reduction from Multi-Parameter to Single-Parameter Bayesian Contract Design
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2024
Year: 2024

The main result of this paper is an almost approximation-preserving polynomial-time reduction from the most general multi-parameter Bayesian contract design (BCD) to single-parameter BCD. That is, for any multi-parameter BCD instance $I^M$, we construct a single-parameter instance $I^S$ such that any $β$-approximate contract (resp. menu of contracts) of $I^S$ can in turn be converted to a $(β-ε)$-approximate contract (resp. menu of contracts) of $I^M$. The reduction is in time polynomial in the input size and $\log(\frac{1}ε)$; moreover, when $β= 1$ (i.e., the given single-parameter solution is exactly optimal), the dependence on $\frac{1}ε$ can be removed, leading to a polynomial-time exact reduction. This efficient reduction is somewhat surprising because in the closely related problem of Bayesian mechanism design, a polynomial-time reduction from multi-parameter to single-parameter setting is believed to not exist. Our result demonstrates the intrinsic difficulty of addressing moral hazard in Bayesian contract design, regardless of being single-parameter or multi-parameter. As byproducts, our reduction answers two open questions in recent literature of algorithmic contract design: (a) it implies that optimal contract design in single-parameter BCD is not in APX unless P=NP even when the agent's type distribution is regular, answering the open question of [Alon et al. 2021] in the negative; (b) it implies that the principal's (order-wise) tight utility gap between using a menu of contracts and a single contract is $Θ(n)$ where $n$ is the number of actions, answering the major open question of [Guruganesh et al. 2021] for the single-parameter case.
A Methodology to Study the Impact of Spiking Neural Network Parameters considering Event-Based Automotive Data
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2024
Year: 2024

Autonomous Driving (AD) systems are considered as the future of human mobility and transportation. Solving computer vision tasks such as image classification and object detection/segmentation, with high accuracy and low power/energy consumption, is highly needed to realize AD systems in real life. These requirements can potentially be satisfied by Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs). However, the state-of-the-art works in SNN-based AD systems still focus on proposing network models that can achieve high accuracy, and they have not systematically studied the roles of SNN parameters when used for learning event-based automotive data. Therefore, we still lack understanding of how to effectively develop SNN models for AD systems. Toward this, we propose a novel methodology to systematically study and analyze the impact of SNN parameters considering event-based automotive data, then leverage this analysis for enhancing SNN developments. To do this, we first explore different settings of SNN parameters that directly affect the learning mechanism (i.e., batch size, learning rate, neuron threshold potential, and weight decay), then analyze the accuracy results. Afterward, we propose techniques that jointly improve SNN accuracy and reduce training time. Experimental results show that our methodology can improve the SNN models for AD systems than the state-of-the-art, as it achieves higher accuracy (i.e., 86%) for the NCARS dataset, and it can also achieve iso-accuracy (i.e., ~85% with standard deviation less than 0.5%) while speeding up the training time by 1.9x. In this manner, our research work provides a set of guidelines for SNN parameter enhancements, thereby enabling the practical developments of SNN-based AD systems.
Comprehensible Artificial Intelligence on Knowledge Graphs: A survey
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

Artificial Intelligence applications gradually move outside the safe walls of research labs and invade our daily lives. This is also true for Machine Learning methods on Knowledge Graphs, which has led to a steady increase in their application since the beginning of the 21st century. However, in many applications, users require an explanation of the Artificial Intelligences decision. This led to increased demand for Comprehensible Artificial Intelligence. Knowledge Graphs epitomize fertile soil for Comprehensible Artificial Intelligence, due to their ability to display connected data, i.e. knowledge, in a human- as well as machine-readable way. This survey gives a short history to Comprehensible Artificial Intelligence on Knowledge Graphs. Furthermore, we contribute by arguing that the concept Explainable Artificial Intelligence is overloaded and overlapping with Interpretable Machine Learning. By introducing the parent concept Comprehensible Artificial Intelligence, we provide a clear-cut distinction of both concepts while accounting for their similarities. Thus, we provide in this survey a case for Comprehensible Artificial Intelligence on Knowledge Graphs consisting of Interpretable Machine Learning on Knowledge Graphs and Explainable Artificial Intelligence on Knowledge Graphs. This leads to the introduction of a novel taxonomy for Comprehensible Artificial Intelligence on Knowledge Graphs. In addition, a comprehensive overview of the research on Comprehensible Artificial Intelligence on Knowledge Graphs is presented and put into the context of the taxonomy. Finally, research gaps in the field of Comprehensible Artificial Intelligence on Knowledge Graphs are identified for future research.
Improved Total Domination and Total Roman Domination in Unit Disk Graphs
Venue: arXiv cs.CG 2024
Year: 2024

Let $G=(V, E)$ be a simple undirected graph with no isolated vertex. A set $D_t\subseteq V$ is a total dominating set of $G$ if $(i)$ $D_t$ is a dominating set, and $(ii)$ the set $D_t$ induces a subgraph with no isolated vertex. The total dominating set of minimum cardinality is called the minimum total dominating set, and the size of the minimum total dominating set is called the total domination number ($γ_t(G)$). Given a graph $G$, the total dominating set (TDS) problem is to find a total dominating set of minimum cardinality. A Roman dominating function (RDF) on a graph $G$ is a function $f:V\rightarrow \{0,1,2\}$ such that each vertex $v\in V$ with $f(v)=0$ is adjacent to at least one vertex $u\in V$ with $f(u)=2$. A RDF $f$ of a graph $G$ is said to be a total Roman dominating function (TRDF) if the induced subgraph of $V_1\cup V_2$ does not contain any isolated vertex, where $V_i=\{u\in V|f(u)=i\}$. Given a graph $G$, the total Roman dominating set (TRDS) problem is to minimize the weight, $W(f)=\sum_{u\in V} f(u)$, called the total Roman domination number ($γ_{tR}(G)$). In this paper, we are the first to show that the TRDS problem is NP-complete in unit disk graphs (UDGs). Furthermore, we propose a $7.17\operatorname{-}$ factor approximation algorithm for the TDS problem and a $6.03\operatorname{-}$ factor approximation algorithm for the TRDS problem in geometric unit disk graphs. The running time for both algorithms is notably bounded by $O(n\log{k})$, where $n$ represents the number of vertices in the given UDG and $k$ represents the size of the independent set in (i.e., $D$ and $V_2$ in TDS and TRDS problems, respectively) the given UDG.
Robot Safety Monitoring using Programmable Light Curtains
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

As factories continue to evolve into collaborative spaces with multiple robots working together with human supervisors in the loop, ensuring safety for all actors involved becomes critical. Currently, laser-based light curtain sensors are widely used in factories for safety monitoring. While these conventional safety sensors meet high accuracy standards, they are difficult to reconfigure and can only monitor a fixed user-defined region of space. Furthermore, they are typically expensive. Instead, we leverage a controllable depth sensor, programmable light curtains (PLC), to develop an inexpensive and flexible real-time safety monitoring system for collaborative robot workspaces. Our system projects virtual dynamic safety envelopes that tightly envelop the moving robot at all times and detect any objects that intrude the envelope. Furthermore, we develop an instrumentation algorithm that optimally places (multiple) PLCs in a workspace to maximize the visibility coverage of robots. Our work enables fence-less human-robot collaboration, while scaling to monitor multiple robots with few sensors. We analyze our system in a real manufacturing testbed with four robot arms and demonstrate its capabilities as a fast, accurate, and inexpensive safety monitoring solution.
Anticipate & Collab: Data-driven Task Anticipation and Knowledge-driven Planning for Human-robot Collaboration
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

An agent assisting humans in daily living activities can collaborate more effectively by anticipating upcoming tasks. Data-driven methods represent the state of the art in task anticipation, planning, and related problems, but these methods are resource-hungry and opaque. Our prior work introduced a proof of concept framework that used an LLM to anticipate 3 high-level tasks that served as goals for a classical planning system that computed a sequence of low-level actions for the agent to achieve these goals. This paper describes DaTAPlan, our framework that significantly extends our prior work toward human-robot collaboration. Specifically, DaTAPlan planner computes actions for an agent and a human to collaboratively and jointly achieve the tasks anticipated by the LLM, and the agent automatically adapts to unexpected changes in human action outcomes and preferences. We evaluate DaTAPlan capabilities in a realistic simulation environment, demonstrating accurate task anticipation, effective human-robot collaboration, and the ability to adapt to unexpected changes. Project website: https://dataplan-hrc.github.io
Laser Learning Environment: A new environment for coordination-critical multi-agent tasks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

We introduce the Laser Learning Environment (LLE), a collaborative multi-agent reinforcement learning environment in which coordination is central. In LLE, agents depend on each other to make progress (interdependence), must jointly take specific sequences of actions to succeed (perfect coordination), and accomplishing those joint actions does not yield any intermediate reward (zero-incentive dynamics). The challenge of such problems lies in the difficulty of escaping state space bottlenecks caused by interdependence steps since escaping those bottlenecks is not rewarded. We test multiple state-of-the-art value-based MARL algorithms against LLE and show that they consistently fail at the collaborative task because of their inability to escape state space bottlenecks, even though they successfully achieve perfect coordination. We show that Q-learning extensions such as prioritized experience replay and n-steps return hinder exploration in environments with zero-incentive dynamics, and find that intrinsic curiosity with random network distillation is not sufficient to escape those bottlenecks. We demonstrate the need for novel methods to solve this problem and the relevance of LLE as cooperative MARL benchmark.
DeViDe: Faceted medical knowledge for improved medical vision-language pre-training
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Vision-language pre-training for chest X-rays has made significant strides, primarily by utilizing paired radiographs and radiology reports. However, existing approaches often face challenges in encoding medical knowledge effectively. While radiology reports provide insights into the current disease manifestation, medical definitions (as used by contemporary methods) tend to be overly abstract, creating a gap in knowledge. To address this, we propose DeViDe, a novel transformer-based method that leverages radiographic descriptions from the open web. These descriptions outline general visual characteristics of diseases in radiographs, and when combined with abstract definitions and radiology reports, provide a holistic snapshot of knowledge. DeViDe incorporates three key features for knowledge-augmented vision language alignment: First, a large-language model-based augmentation is employed to homogenise medical knowledge from diverse sources. Second, this knowledge is aligned with image information at various levels of granularity. Third, a novel projection layer is proposed to handle the complexity of aligning each image with multiple descriptions arising in a multi-label setting. In zero-shot settings, DeViDe performs comparably to fully supervised models on external datasets and achieves state-of-the-art results on three large-scale datasets. Additionally, fine-tuning DeViDe on four downstream tasks and six segmentation tasks showcases its superior performance across data from diverse distributions.
Benchmarking formalisms for dynamic structure system Modeling and Simulation
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

Modeling and simulation of complex systems is key to explore systems dynamics. Many scientific approaches were developed to represent dynamic structure systems but most of these approaches are efficient for some kinds of systems and inefficient for others. Which approach can be adopted for different dynamic structure systems categories is a topic of interest for many researchers and until now has not been fully resolved. Therefore it is essential to explore the existing approaches, understand them, and identify gaps. To fulfil this goal, we identified criteria at stake for a smooth flow from model creation to its simulation for dynamic structure systems. Using these criteria, we benchmark the existing modeling formalisms focusing more on DEVS extensions, and use the results to identify approaches gaps and discuss them.
Serial Parallel Reliability Redundancy Allocation Optimization for Energy Efficient and Fault Tolerant Cloud Computing
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2024
Year: 2024

Serial-parallel redundancy is a reliable way to ensure service and systems will be available in cloud computing. That method involves making copies of the same system or program, with only one remaining active. When an error occurs, the inactive copy can step in as a backup right away, this provides continuous performance and uninterrupted operation. This approach is called parallel redundancy, otherwise known as active-active redundancy, and its exceptional when it comes to strategy. It creates duplicates of a system or service that are all running at once. By doing this fault tolerance increases since if one copy fails, the workload can be distributed across any replica thats functioning properly. Reliability allocation depends on features in a system and the availability and fault tolerance you want from it. Serial redundancy or parallel redundancies can be applied to increase the dependability of systems and services. To demonstrate how well this concept works, we looked into fixed serial parallel reliability redundancy allocation issues followed by using an innovative hybrid optimization technique to find the best possible allocation for peak dependability. We then measured our findings against other research.
Neural Information Organizing and Processing -- Neural Machines
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2024
Year: 2024

The informational synthesis of neural structures, processes, parameters and characteristics that allow a unified description and modeling as neural machines of natural and artificial neural systems is presented. The general informational parameters as the global quantitative measure of the neural systems computing potential as absolute and relative neural power were proposed. Neural information organizing and processing follows the way in which nature manages neural information by developing functions, functionalities and circuits related to different internal or peripheral components and also to the whole system through a non-deterministic memorization, fragmentation and aggregation of afferent and efferent information, deep neural information processing representing multiple alternations of fragmentation and aggregation stages. The relevant neural characteristics were integrated into a neural machine type model that incorporates unitary also peripheral or interface components as the central ones. The proposed approach allows overcoming the technical constraints in artificial computational implementations of neural information processes and also provides a more relevant description of natural ones.
A Reinforcement Learning based Reset Policy for CDCL SAT Solvers
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2024
Year: 2024

Restart policy is an important technique used in modern Conflict-Driven Clause Learning (CDCL) solvers, wherein some parts of the solver state are erased at certain intervals during the run of the solver. In most solvers, variable activities are preserved across restart boundaries, resulting in solvers continuing to search parts of the assignment tree that are not far from the one immediately prior to a restart. To enable the solver to search possibly "distant" parts of the assignment tree, we study the effect of resets, a variant of restarts which not only erases the assignment trail, but also randomizes the activity scores of the variables of the input formula after reset, thus potentially enabling a better global exploration of the search space. In this paper, we model the problem of whether to trigger reset as a multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem, and propose two reinforcement learning (RL) based adaptive reset policies using the Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) and Thompson sampling algorithms. These two algorithms balance the exploration-exploitation tradeoff by adaptively choosing arms (reset vs. no reset) based on their estimated rewards during the solver's run. We implement our reset policies in four baseline SOTA CDCL solvers and compare the baselines against the reset versions on Satcoin benchmarks and SAT Competition instances. Our results show that RL-based reset versions outperform the corresponding baseline solvers on both Satcoin and the SAT competition instances, suggesting that our RL policy helps to dynamically and profitably adapt the reset frequency for any given input instance. We also introduce the concept of a partial reset, where at least a constant number of variable activities are retained across reset boundaries. Building on previous results, we show that there is an exponential separation between O(1) vs. $Ω(n)$-length partial resets.
A Bimanual Teleoperation Framework for Light Duty Underwater Vehicle-Manipulator Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

In an effort to lower the barrier to entry in underwater manipulation, this paper presents an open-source, user-friendly framework for bimanual teleoperation of a light-duty underwater vehicle-manipulator system (UVMS). This framework allows for the control of the vehicle along with two manipulators and their end-effectors using two low-cost haptic devices. The UVMS kinematics are derived in order to create an independent resolved motion rate controller for each manipulator, which optimally controls the joint positions to achieve a desired end-effector pose. This desired pose is computed in real-time using a teleoperation controller developed to process the dual haptic device input from the user. A physics-based simulation environment is used to implement this framework for two example tasks as well as provide data for error analysis of user commands. The first task illustrates the functionality of the framework through motion control of the vehicle and manipulators using only the haptic devices. The second task is to grasp an object using both manipulators simultaneously, demonstrating precision and coordination using the framework. The framework code is available at https://github.com/stevens-armlab/uvms_bimanual_sim.