Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
Analysis and implementation of nanotargeting on LinkedIn based on publicly available non-PII

A body of literature has shown multiple times that combining a few non-Personal Identifiable Information (non-PII) items is enough to make a user unique in a dataset including millions or even hundreds of millions of users. This work extends this area of research, demonstrating that a combination of a few non-PII publicly available attributes can be activated by a third party to individually target a user with hyper-personalized messages. This paper first implements a methodology demonstrating that the combination of the location and 6 rare (or 14 random) professional skills reported by a user in their LinkedIn profile is enough to become unique in a user base formed by $\sim$800M users with a probability of 75\%. A novel feature in this case, compared to previous works in the literature, is that the location and skills reported in a LinkedIn profile are publicly accessible to any other user or company registered in the platform and, in addition, can be activated through advertising campaigns. We ran a proof of concept experiment targeting three of the paper's authors. We demonstrated that all the ad campaigns configured with the location and $\geq$13 random professional skills retrieved from the authors' LinkedIn profiles successfully delivered ads exclusively to the targeted user. This practice is referred to as nanotargeting and may expose LinkedIn users to potential privacy and security risks such as malvertising or manipulation.
PAC Learning Linear Thresholds from Label Proportions

Learning from label proportions (LLP) is a generalization of supervised learning in which the training data is available as sets or bags of feature-vectors (instances) along with the average instance-label of each bag. The goal is to train a good instance classifier. While most previous works on LLP have focused on training models on such training data, computational learnability of LLP was only recently explored by [Saket'21, Saket'22] who showed worst case intractability of properly learning linear threshold functions (LTFs) from label proportions. However, their work did not rule out efficient algorithms for this problem on natural distributions. In this work we show that it is indeed possible to efficiently learn LTFs using LTFs when given access to random bags of some label proportion in which feature-vectors are, conditioned on their labels, independently sampled from a Gaussian distribution $N(\mathbf{\mu}, \mathbf{\Sigma})$. Our work shows that a certain matrix -- formed using covariances of the differences of feature-vectors sampled from the bags with and without replacement -- necessarily has its principal component, after a transformation, in the direction of the normal vector of the LTF. Our algorithm estimates the means and covariance matrices using subgaussian concentration bounds which we show can be applied to efficiently sample bags for approximating the normal direction. Using this in conjunction with novel generalization error bounds in the bag setting, we show that a low error hypothesis LTF can be identified. For some special cases of the $N(\mathbf{0}, \mathbf{I})$ distribution we provide a simpler mean estimation based algorithm. We include an experimental evaluation of our learning algorithms along with a comparison with those of [Saket'21, Saket'22] and random LTFs, demonstrating the effectiveness of our techniques.
KAKURENBO: Adaptively Hiding Samples in Deep Neural Network Training

This paper proposes a method for hiding the least-important samples during the training of deep neural networks to increase efficiency, i.e., to reduce the cost of training. Using information about the loss and prediction confidence during training, we adaptively find samples to exclude in a given epoch based on their contribution to the overall learning process, without significantly degrading accuracy. We explore the converge properties when accounting for the reduction in the number of SGD updates. Empirical results on various large-scale datasets and models used directly in image classification and segmentation show that while the with-replacement importance sampling algorithm performs poorly on large datasets, our method can reduce total training time by up to 22% impacting accuracy only by 0.4% compared to the baseline. Code available at https://github.com/TruongThaoNguyen/kakurenbo
Generalizing Medical Image Representations via Quaternion Wavelet Networks

Neural network generalizability is becoming a broad research field due to the increasing availability of datasets from different sources and for various tasks. This issue is even wider when processing medical data, where a lack of methodological standards causes large variations being provided by different imaging centers or acquired with various devices and cofactors. To overcome these limitations, we introduce a novel, generalizable, data- and task-agnostic framework able to extract salient features from medical images. The proposed quaternion wavelet network (QUAVE) can be easily integrated with any pre-existing medical image analysis or synthesis task, and it can be involved with real, quaternion, or hypercomplex-valued models, generalizing their adoption to single-channel data. QUAVE first extracts different sub-bands through the quaternion wavelet transform, resulting in both low-frequency/approximation bands and high-frequency/fine-grained features. Then, it weighs the most representative set of sub-bands to be involved as input to any other neural model for image processing, replacing standard data samples. We conduct an extensive experimental evaluation comprising different datasets, diverse image analysis, and synthesis tasks including reconstruction, segmentation, and modality translation. We also evaluate QUAVE in combination with both real and quaternion-valued models. Results demonstrate the effectiveness and the generalizability of the proposed framework that improves network performance while being flexible to be adopted in manifold scenarios and robust to domain shifts. The full code is available at: https://github.com/ispamm/QWT.
Hardware requirements for realizing a quantum advantage with deterministic single-photon sources

Boson sampling is a specialised algorithm native to the quantum photonic platform developed for near-term demonstrations of quantum advantage over classical computers. While clear useful applications for such near-term pre-fault-tolerance devices are not currently known, reaching a quantum advantage regime serves as a useful benchmark for the hardware. Here, we analyse and detail hardware requirements needed to reach quantum advantage with deterministic quantum emitters, a promising platform for photonic quantum computing. We elucidate key steps that can be taken in experiments to overcome practical constraints and establish quantitative hardware-level requirements. We find that quantum advantage is within reach using quantum emitters with an efficiency of 60%-70% and interferometers constructed according to a hybrid-mode-encoding architecture, constituted of Mach-Zehnder interferometers with an insertion loss of 0.0035 (a transmittance of 99.92%) per component.
Charged particle reconstruction for future high energy colliders with Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm

Usage of cutting-edge artificial intelligence will be the baseline at future high energy colliders such as the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, to cope with the enormously increasing demand of the computing resources. The rapid development of quantum machine learning could bring in further paradigm-shifting improvement to this challenge. One of the two highest CPU-consuming components, the charged particle reconstruction, the so-called track reconstruction, can be considered as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem. The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) is one of the most promising algorithms to solve such combinatorial problems and to seek for a quantum advantage in the era of the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum computers. It is found that the QAOA shows promising performance and demonstrated itself as one of the candidates for the track reconstruction using quantum computers.
Leveraging Topological Maps in Deep Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Object Navigation

This work addresses the challenge of navigating expansive spaces with sparse rewards through Reinforcement Learning (RL). Using topological maps, we elevate elementary actions to object-oriented macro actions, enabling a simple Deep Q-Network (DQN) agent to solve otherwise practically impossible environments.
Mask wearing object detection algorithm based on improved YOLOv5

Wearing a mask is one of the important measures to prevent infectious diseases. However, it is difficult to detect people's mask-wearing situation in public places with high traffic flow. To address the above problem, this paper proposes a mask-wearing face detection model based on YOLOv5l. Firstly, Multi-Head Attentional Self-Convolution not only improves the convergence speed of the model but also enhances the accuracy of the model detection. Secondly, the introduction of Swin Transformer Block is able to extract more useful feature information, enhance the detection ability of small targets, and improve the overall accuracy of the model. Our designed I-CBAM module can improve target detection accuracy. In addition, using enhanced feature fusion enables the model to better adapt to object detection tasks of different scales. In the experimentation on the MASK dataset, the results show that the model proposed in this paper achieved a 1.1% improvement in mAP(0.5) and a 1.3% improvement in mAP(0.5:0.95) compared to the YOLOv5l model. Our proposed method significantly enhances the detection capability of mask-wearing.
Enhancing Interpretability using Human Similarity Judgements to Prune Word Embeddings

Interpretability methods in NLP aim to provide insights into the semantics underlying specific system architectures. Focusing on word embeddings, we present a supervised-learning method that, for a given domain (e.g., sports, professions), identifies a subset of model features that strongly improve prediction of human similarity judgments. We show this method keeps only 20-40% of the original embeddings, for 8 independent semantic domains, and that it retains different feature sets across domains. We then present two approaches for interpreting the semantics of the retained features. The first obtains the scores of the domain words (co-hyponyms) on the first principal component of the retained embeddings, and extracts terms whose co-occurrence with the co-hyponyms tracks these scores' profile. This analysis reveals that humans differentiate e.g. sports based on how gender-inclusive and international they are. The second approach uses the retained sets as variables in a probing task that predicts values along 65 semantically annotated dimensions for a dataset of 535 words. The features retained for professions are best at predicting cognitive, emotional and social dimensions, whereas features retained for fruits or vegetables best predict the gustation (taste) dimension. We discuss implications for alignment between AI systems and human knowledge.
Attribution Patching Outperforms Automated Circuit Discovery

Automated interpretability research has recently attracted attention as a potential research direction that could scale explanations of neural network behavior to large models. Existing automated circuit discovery work applies activation patching to identify subnetworks responsible for solving specific tasks (circuits). In this work, we show that a simple method based on attribution patching outperforms all existing methods while requiring just two forward passes and a backward pass. We apply a linear approximation to activation patching to estimate the importance of each edge in the computational subgraph. Using this approximation, we prune the least important edges of the network. We survey the performance and limitations of this method, finding that averaged over all tasks our method has greater AUC from circuit recovery than other methods.
Scene Graph Conditioning in Latent Diffusion

Diffusion models excel in image generation but lack detailed semantic control using text prompts. Additional techniques have been developed to address this limitation. However, conditioning diffusion models solely on text-based descriptions is challenging due to ambiguity and lack of structure. In contrast, scene graphs offer a more precise representation of image content, making them superior for fine-grained control and accurate synthesis in image generation models. The amount of image and scene-graph data is sparse, which makes fine-tuning large diffusion models challenging. We propose multiple approaches to tackle this problem using ControlNet and Gated Self-Attention. We were able to show that using out proposed methods it is possible to generate images from scene graphs with much higher quality, outperforming previous methods. Our source code is publicly available on https://github.com/FrankFundel/SGCond
A Survey on Quantum Machine Learning: Current Trends, Challenges, Opportunities, and the Road Ahead

Quantum Computing (QC) claims to improve the efficiency of solving complex problems, compared to classical computing. When QC is applied to Machine Learning (ML) applications, it forms a Quantum Machine Learning (QML) system. After discussing the basic concepts of QC and its advantages over classical computing, this paper reviews the key aspects of QML in a comprehensive manner. We discuss different QML algorithms and their domain applicability, quantum datasets, hardware technologies, software tools, simulators, and applications. In this survey, we provide valuable information and resources for readers to jumpstart into the current state-of-the-art techniques in the QML field.
Looping LOCI: Developing Object Permanence from Videos

Recent compositional scene representation learning models have become remarkably good in segmenting and tracking distinct objects within visual scenes. Yet, many of these models require that objects are continuously, at least partially, visible. Moreover, they tend to fail on intuitive physics tests, which infants learn to solve over the first months of their life. Our goal is to advance compositional scene representation algorithms with an embedded algorithm that fosters the progressive learning of intuitive physics, akin to infant development. As a fundamental component for such an algorithm, we introduce Loci-Looped, which advances a recently published unsupervised object location, identification, and tracking neural network architecture (Loci, Traub et al., ICLR 2023) with an internal processing loop. The loop is designed to adaptively blend pixel-space information with anticipations yielding information-fused activities as percepts. Moreover, it is designed to learn compositional representations of both individual object dynamics and between-objects interaction dynamics. We show that Loci-Looped learns to track objects through extended periods of object occlusions, indeed simulating their hidden trajectories and anticipating their reappearance, without the need for an explicit history buffer. We even find that Loci-Looped surpasses state-of-the-art models on the ADEPT and the CLEVRER dataset, when confronted with object occlusions or temporary sensory data interruptions. This indicates that Loci-Looped is able to learn the physical concepts of object permanence and inertia in a fully unsupervised emergent manner. We believe that even further architectural advancements of the internal loop - also in other compositional scene representation learning models - can be developed in the near future.
Towards Fair and Calibrated Models

Recent literature has seen a significant focus on building machine learning models with specific properties such as fairness, i.e., being non-biased with respect to a given set of attributes, calibration i.e., model confidence being aligned with its predictive accuracy, and explainability, i.e., ability to be understandable to humans. While there has been work focusing on each of these aspects individually, researchers have shied away from simultaneously addressing more than one of these dimensions. In this work, we address the problem of building models which are both fair and calibrated. We work with a specific definition of fairness, which closely matches [Biswas et. al. 2019], and has the nice property that Bayes optimal classifier has the maximum possible fairness under our definition. We show that an existing negative result towards achieving a fair and calibrated model [Kleinberg et. al. 2017] does not hold for our definition of fairness. Further, we show that ensuring group-wise calibration with respect to the sensitive attributes automatically results in a fair model under our definition. Using this result, we provide a first cut approach for achieving fair and calibrated models, via a simple post-processing technique based on temperature scaling. We then propose modifications of existing calibration losses to perform group-wise calibration, as a way of achieving fair and calibrated models in a variety of settings. Finally, we perform extensive experimentation of these techniques on a diverse benchmark of datasets, and present insights on the pareto-optimality of the resulting solutions.
GTA: A Geometry-Aware Attention Mechanism for Multi-View Transformers

As transformers are equivariant to the permutation of input tokens, encoding the positional information of tokens is necessary for many tasks. However, since existing positional encoding schemes have been initially designed for NLP tasks, their suitability for vision tasks, which typically exhibit different structural properties in their data, is questionable. We argue that existing positional encoding schemes are suboptimal for 3D vision tasks, as they do not respect their underlying 3D geometric structure. Based on this hypothesis, we propose a geometry-aware attention mechanism that encodes the geometric structure of tokens as relative transformation determined by the geometric relationship between queries and key-value pairs. By evaluating on multiple novel view synthesis (NVS) datasets in the sparse wide-baseline multi-view setting, we show that our attention, called Geometric Transform Attention (GTA), improves learning efficiency and performance of state-of-the-art transformer-based NVS models without any additional learned parameters and only minor computational overhead.
Object Detection in Aerial Images in Scarce Data Regimes

Most contributions on Few-Shot Object Detection (FSOD) evaluate their methods on natural images only, yet the transferability of the announced performance is not guaranteed for applications on other kinds of images. We demonstrate this with an in-depth analysis of existing FSOD methods on aerial images and observed a large performance gap compared to natural images. Small objects, more numerous in aerial images, are the cause for the apparent performance gap between natural and aerial images. As a consequence, we improve FSOD performance on small objects with a carefully designed attention mechanism. In addition, we also propose a scale-adaptive box similarity criterion, that improves the training and evaluation of FSOD methods, particularly for small objects. We also contribute to generic FSOD with two distinct approaches based on metric learning and fine-tuning. Impressive results are achieved with the fine-tuning method, which encourages tackling more complex scenarios such as Cross-Domain FSOD. We conduct preliminary experiments in this direction and obtain promising results. Finally, we address the deployment of the detection models inside COSE's systems. Detection must be done in real-time in extremely large images (more than 100 megapixels), with limited computation power. Leveraging existing optimization tools such as TensorRT, we successfully tackle this engineering challenge.
Efficiently matching random inhomogeneous graphs via degree profiles

In this paper, we study the problem of recovering the latent vertex correspondence between two correlated random graphs with vastly inhomogeneous and unknown edge probabilities between different pairs of vertices. Inspired by and extending the matching algorithm via degree profiles by Ding, Ma, Wu and Xu (2021), we obtain an efficient matching algorithm as long as the minimal average degree is at least $\Omega(\log^{2} n)$ and the minimal correlation is at least $1 - O(\log^{-2} n)$.
Taming the Sigmoid Bottleneck: Provably Argmaxable Sparse Multi-Label Classification

Sigmoid output layers are widely used in multi-label classification (MLC) tasks, in which multiple labels can be assigned to any input. In many practical MLC tasks, the number of possible labels is in the thousands, often exceeding the number of input features and resulting in a low-rank output layer. In multi-class classification, it is known that such a low-rank output layer is a bottleneck that can result in unargmaxable classes: classes which cannot be predicted for any input. In this paper, we show that for MLC tasks, the analogous sigmoid bottleneck results in exponentially many unargmaxable label combinations. We explain how to detect these unargmaxable outputs and demonstrate their presence in three widely used MLC datasets. We then show that they can be prevented in practice by introducing a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) output layer, which guarantees that all sparse label combinations with up to $k$ active labels are argmaxable. Our DFT layer trains faster and is more parameter efficient, matching the F1@k score of a sigmoid layer while using up to 50% fewer trainable parameters. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/andreasgrv/sigmoid-bottleneck.
A Geometric Insight into Equivariant Message Passing Neural Networks on Riemannian Manifolds

This work proposes a geometric insight into equivariant message passing on Riemannian manifolds. As previously proposed, numerical features on Riemannian manifolds are represented as coordinate-independent feature fields on the manifold. To any coordinate-independent feature field on a manifold comes attached an equivariant embedding of the principal bundle to the space of numerical features. We argue that the metric this embedding induces on the numerical feature space should optimally preserve the principal bundle's original metric. This optimality criterion leads to the minimization of a twisted form of the Polyakov action with respect to the graph of this embedding, yielding an equivariant diffusion process on the associated vector bundle. We obtain a message passing scheme on the manifold by discretizing the diffusion equation flow for a fixed time step. We propose a higher-order equivariant diffusion process equivalent to diffusion on the cartesian product of the base manifold. The discretization of the higher-order diffusion process on a graph yields a new general class of equivariant GNN, generalizing the ACE and MACE formalism to data on Riemannian manifolds.