mtybilly/Instruct2DS huggingface dataset:
Partial Multi-View Multi-Label Classification via Semantic Invariance Learning and Prototype Modeling
Authors: Liu, Chengliang and Xu, Gehui and Wen, Jie and Liu, Yabo and Huang, Chao and Xu, Yong
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: The difficulty of partial multi-view multi-label learning lies in coupling the consensus of multi-view data with the task relevance of multi-label classification, under the condition where partial views and labels are unavailable. In this paper, we seek to compress cross-view representation to maximize the proportion of shared information to better predict semantic tags. To achieve this, we establish a model consistent with the information bottleneck theory for learning cross-view shared representation, minimizing non-shared information while maintaining feature validity to help increase the purity of task-relevant information. Furthermore, we model multi-label prototype instances in the latent space and learn label correlations in a data-driven manner. Our method outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods on multiple public datasets while exhibiting good compatibility with both partial and complete data. Finally, we experimentally reveal the importance of condensing shared information under the premise of information balancing, in the process of multi-view information encoding and compression.
Building Socially-Equitable Public Models
Authors: Liu, Yejia and Yang, Jianyi and Li, Pengfei and Li, Tongxin and Ren, Shaolei
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Public models offer predictions to a variety of downstream tasks and have played a crucial role in various AI applications, showcasing their proficiency in accurate predictions. However, the exclusive emphasis on prediction accuracy may not align with the diverse end objectives of downstream agents. Recognizing the public model’s predictions as a service, we advocate for integrating the objectives of downstream agents into the optimization process. Concretely, to address performance disparities and foster fairness among heterogeneous agents in training, we propose a novel Equitable Objective. This objective, coupled with a policy gradient algorithm, is crafted to train the public model to produce a more equitable/uniform performance distribution across downstream agents, each with their unique concerns. Both theoretical analysis and empirical case studies have proven the effectiveness of our method in advancing performance equity across diverse downstream agents utilizing the public model for their decision-making. Codes and datasets are released at https://github.com/Ren-Research/Socially-Equitable-Public-Models.
In-context Vectors: Making In Context Learning More Effective and Controllable Through Latent Space Steering
Authors: Liu, Sheng and Ye, Haotian and Xing, Lei and Zou, James Y.
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate emergent in-context learning capabilities, where they adapt to new tasks based on example demonstrations. However, in-context learning has seen limited effectiveness in many settings, is difficult to quantitatively control and takes up context window space. To overcome these limitations, we propose an alternative approach that recasts in-context learning as in-context vectors (ICV). Using ICV has two steps. We first use a forward pass on demonstration examples to create the in-context vector from the latent embedding of the LLM. This vector captures essential information about the intended task. On a new query, instead of adding demonstrations to the prompt, we shift the latent states of the LLM using the ICV. The ICV approach has several benefits: 1) it enables the LLM to more effectively follow the demonstration examples; 2) it’s easy to control by adjusting the magnitude of the ICV; 3) it reduces the length of the prompt by removing the in-context demonstrations; 4) ICV is computationally much more efficient than fine-tuning. We demonstrate that ICV achieves better performance compared to standard in-context learning and fine-tuning on diverse tasks including safety, style transfer, role-playing and formatting. Moreover, we show that we can flexibly teach LLM to simultaneously follow different types of instructions by simple vector arithmetics on the corresponding ICVs.
Minimizing $f$-Divergences by Interpolating Velocity Fields
Authors: Liu, Song and Yu, Jiahao and Simons, Jack and Yi, Mingxuan and Beaumont, Mark
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Many machine learning problems can be seen as approximating a <em>target</em> distribution using a <em>particle</em> distribution by minimizing their statistical discrepancy. Wasserstein Gradient Flow can move particles along a path that minimizes the $f$-divergence between the target and particle distributions. To move particles, we need to calculate the corresponding velocity fields derived from a density ratio function between these two distributions. Previous works estimated such density ratio functions and then differentiated the estimated ratios. These approaches may suffer from overfitting, leading to a less accurate estimate of the velocity fields. Inspired by non-parametric curve fitting, we directly estimate these velocity fields using interpolation techniques. We prove that our estimators are consistent under mild conditions. We validate their effectiveness using novel applications on domain adaptation and missing data imputation. The code for reproducing our results can be found at https://github.com/anewgithubname/gradest2.
KIVI: A Tuning-Free Asymmetric 2bit Quantization for KV Cache
Authors: Liu, Zirui and Yuan, Jiayi and Jin, Hongye and Zhong, Shaochen and Xu, Zhaozhuo and Braverman, Vladimir and Chen, Beidi and Hu, Xia
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Efficiently serving large language models (LLMs) requires batching many requests together to reduce the cost per request. Yet, the key-value (KV) cache, which stores attention keys and values to avoid re-computations, significantly increases memory demands and becomes the new bottleneck in speed and memory usage. This memory demand increases with larger batch sizes and longer context lengths. Additionally, the inference speed is limited by the size of KV cache, as the GPU’s SRAM must load the entire KV cache from the main GPU memory for each token generated, causing the computational core to be idle during this process. A straightforward and effective solution to reduce KV cache size is quantization, which decreases the total bytes taken by KV cache. However, there is a lack of in-depth studies that explore the element distribution of KV cache to understand the hardness and limitation of KV cache quantization. To fill the gap, we conducted a comprehensive study on the element distribution in KV cache of popular LLMs. Our findings indicate that the key cache should be quantized per-channel, i.e., group elements along the channel dimension and quantize them together. In contrast, the value cache should be quantized per-token. From this analysis, we developed a tuning-free 2bit KV cache quantization algorithm, named KIVI. With the hardware-friendly implementation, KIVI can enable Llama (Llama-2), Falcon, and Mistral models to maintain almost the same quality while using 2.6$\times$ less peak memory usage (including the model weight). This reduction in memory usage enables up to 4x larger batch size, bringing $2.35 \times ∼ 3.47 \times$ throughput on real LLM inference workload.
Efficient Policy Evaluation with Offline Data Informed Behavior Policy Design
Authors: Liu, Shuze and Zhang, Shangtong
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Most reinforcement learning practitioners evaluate their policies with online Monte Carlo estimators for either hyperparameter tuning or testing different algorithmic design choices, where the policy is repeatedly executed in the environment to get the average outcome. Such massive interactions with the environment are prohibitive in many scenarios. In this paper, we propose novel methods that improve the data efficiency of online Monte Carlo estimators while maintaining their unbiasedness. We first propose a tailored closed-form behavior policy that provably reduces the variance of an online Monte Carlo estimator. We then design efficient algorithms to learn this closed-form behavior policy from previously collected offline data. Theoretical analysis is provided to characterize how the behavior policy learning error affects the amount of reduced variance. Compared with previous works, our method achieves better empirical performance in a broader set of environments, with fewer requirements for offline data.
Timer: Generative Pre-trained Transformers Are Large Time Series Models
Authors: Liu, Yong and Zhang, Haoran and Li, Chenyu and Huang, Xiangdong and Wang, Jianmin and Long, Mingsheng
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Deep learning has contributed remarkably to the advancement of time series analysis. Still, deep models can encounter performance bottlenecks in real-world data-scarce scenarios, which can be concealed due to the performance saturation with small models on current benchmarks. Meanwhile, large models have demonstrated great powers in these scenarios through large-scale pre-training. Continuous progress has been achieved with the emergence of large language models, exhibiting unprecedented abilities such as few-shot generalization, scalability, and task generality, which are however absent in small deep models. To change the status quo of training scenario-specific small models from scratch, this paper aims at the early development of large time series models (LTSM). During pre-training, we curate large-scale datasets with up to 1 billion time points, unify heterogeneous time series into single-series sequence (S3) format, and develop the GPT-style architecture toward LTSMs. To meet diverse application needs, we convert forecasting, imputation, and anomaly detection of time series into a unified generative task. The outcome of this study is a Time Series Transformer (Timer), which is generative pre-trained by next token prediction and adapted to various downstream tasks with promising capabilities as an LTSM. Code and datasets are available at: https://github.com/thuml/Large-Time-Series-Model.
SPHINX-X: Scaling Data and Parameters for a Family of Multi-modal Large Language Models
Authors: Liu, Dongyang and Zhang, Renrui and Qiu, Longtian and Huang, Siyuan and Lin, Weifeng and Zhao, Shitian and Geng, Shijie and Lin, Ziyi and Jin, Peng and Zhang, Kaipeng and Shao, Wenqi and Xu, Chao and He, Conghui and He, Junjun and Shao, Hao and Lu, Pan and Qiao, Yu and Li, Hongsheng and Gao, Peng
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: We propose SPHINX-X, an extensive Multi-modality Large Language Model (MLLM) series developed upon SPHINX. To improve the architecture and training efficiency, we modify the SPHINX framework by removing redundant visual encoders, bypassing fully-padded sub-images with skip tokens, and simplifying multi-stage training into a one-stage all-in-one paradigm. To fully unleash the potential of MLLMs, we assemble a comprehensive multi-domain and multi-modal dataset covering publicly available resources in language, vision, and vision-language tasks. We further enrich this collection with our curated OCR intensive and Set-of-Mark datasets, extending the diversity and generality. By training over different base LLMs including TinyLlama-1.1B, InternLM2-7B, LLaMA2-13B, and Mixtral-8$\times$7B, we obtain a spectrum of MLLMs that vary in parameter size and multilingual capabilities. Comprehensive benchmarking reveals a strong correlation between the multi-modal performance with the data and parameter scales. Code and models are released at https://github.com/Alpha-VLLM/LLaMA2-Accessory.
DFD: Distilling the Feature Disparity Differently for Detectors
Authors: Liu, Kang and Zhang, Yingyi and Zhang, Jingyun and Li, Jinmin and Wang, Jun and Wang, Shaoming and Yuan, Chun and Guo, Rizen
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Knowledge distillation is a widely adopted model compression technique that has been successfully applied to object detection. In feature distillation, it is common practice for the student model to imitate the feature responses of the teacher model, with the underlying objective of improving its own abilities by reducing the disparity with the teacher. However, it is crucial to recognize that the disparities between the student and teacher are inconsistent, highlighting their varying abilities. In this paper, we explore the inconsistency in the disparity between teacher and student feature maps and analyze their impact on the efficiency of the distillation. We find that regions with varying degrees of difference should be treated separately, with different distillation constraints applied accordingly. We introduce our distillation method called Disparity Feature Distillation(DFD). The core idea behind DFD is to apply different treatments to regions with varying learning difficulties, simultaneously incorporating leniency and strictness. It enables the student to better assimilate the teacher’s knowledge. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed DFD in achieving significant improvements. For instance, when applied to detectors based on ResNet50 such as RetinaNet, FasterRCNN, and RepPoints, our method enhances their mAP from 37.4%, 38.4%, 38.6% to 41.7%, 42.4%, 42.7%, respectively. Our approach also demonstrates substantial improvements on YOLO and ViT-based models. The code is available at https://github.com/luckin99/DFD.
MobileLLM: Optimizing Sub-billion Parameter Language Models for On-Device Use Cases
Authors: Liu, Zechun and Zhao, Changsheng and Iandola, Forrest and Lai, Chen and Tian, Yuandong and Fedorov, Igor and Xiong, Yunyang and Chang, Ernie and Shi, Yangyang and Krishnamoorthi, Raghuraman and Lai, Liangzhen and Chandra, Vikas
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: This paper addresses the growing need for efficient large language models (LLMs) on mobile devices, driven by increasing cloud costs and latency concerns. We focus on designing top-quality LLMs with fewer than a billion parameters, a practical choice for mobile deployment. Contrary to prevailing belief emphasizing the pivotal role of data and parameter quantity in determining model quality, our investigation underscores the significance of model architecture for sub-billion scale LLMs. Leveraging deep and thin architectures, coupled with embedding sharing and grouped-query attention mechanisms, we establish a strong baseline network denoted as MobileLLM, which attains a remarkable 2.7%/4.3% accuracy boost over preceding 125M/350M state-of-the-art models. Additionally, we propose an immediate block-wise weight-sharing approach with no increase in model size and only marginal latency overhead. The resultant models, denoted as MobileLLM-LS, demonstrate a further accuracy enhancement of 0.7%/0.8% than MobileLLM 125M/350M. Moreover, MobileLLM model family shows significant improvements compared to previous sub-billion models on chat benchmarks, and demonstrates close correctness to LLaMA-v2 7B in API calling tasks, highlighting the capability of small models for common on-device use cases.
Reducing Item Discrepancy via Differentially Private Robust Embedding Alignment for Privacy-Preserving Cross Domain Recommendation
Authors: Liu, Weiming and Zheng, Xiaolin and Chen, Chaochao and Xu, Jiahe and Liao, Xinting and Wang, Fan and Tan, Yanchao and Ong, Yew-Soon
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Cross-Domain Recommendation (CDR) have become increasingly appealing by leveraging useful information to tackle the data sparsity problem across domains. Most of latest CDR models assume that domain-shareable user-item information (e.g., rating and review on overlapped users or items) are accessible across domains. However, these assumptions become impractical due to the strict data privacy protection policy. In this paper, we propose Reducing Item Discrepancy (RidCDR) model on solving Privacy-Preserving Cross-Domain Recommendation (PPCDR) problem. Specifically, we aim to enhance the model performance on both source and target domains without overlapped users and items while protecting the data privacy. We innovatively propose private-robust embedding alignment module in RidCDR for knowledge sharing across domains while avoiding negative transfer privately. Our empirical study on Amazon and Douban datasets demonstrates that RidCDR significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art models under the PPCDR without overlapped users and items.
On the Last-Iterate Convergence of Shuffling Gradient Methods
Authors: Liu, Zijian and Zhou, Zhengyuan
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Shuffling gradient methods are widely used in modern machine learning tasks and include three popular implementations: Random Reshuffle (RR), Shuffle Once (SO), and Incremental Gradient (IG). Compared to the empirical success, the theoretical guarantee of shuffling gradient methods was not well-understood for a long time. Until recently, the convergence rates had just been established for the average iterate for convex functions and the last iterate for strongly convex problems (using squared distance as the metric). However, when using the function value gap as the convergence criterion, existing theories cannot interpret the good performance of the last iterate in different settings (e.g., constrained optimization). To bridge this gap between practice and theory, we prove the first last-iterate convergence rates for shuffling gradient methods with respect to the objective value even without strong convexity. Our new results either (nearly) match the existing last-iterate lower bounds or are as fast as the previous best upper bounds for the average iterate.
FedLMT: Tackling System Heterogeneity of Federated Learning via Low-Rank Model Training with Theoretical Guarantees
Authors: Liu, Jiahao and Zhou, Yipeng and Wu, Di and Hu, Miao and Guizani, Mohsen and Sheng, Quan Z.
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Federated learning (FL) is an emerging machine learning paradigm for preserving data privacy. However, diverse client hardware often has varying computation resources. Such system heterogeneity limits the participation of resource-constrained clients in FL, and hence degrades the global model accuracy. To enable heterogeneous clients to participate in and contribute to FL training, previous works tackle this problem by assigning customized sub-models to individual clients with model pruning, distillation, or low-rank based techniques. Unfortunately, the global model trained by these methods still encounters performance degradation due to heterogeneous sub-model aggregation. Besides, most methods are heuristic-based and lack convergence analysis. In this work, we propose the FedLMT framework to bridge the performance gap, by assigning clients with a homogeneous pre-factorized low-rank model to substantially reduce resource consumption without conducting heterogeneous aggregation. We theoretically prove that the convergence of the low-rank model can guarantee the convergence of the original full model. To further meet clients’ personalized resource needs, we extend FedLMT to pFedLMT, by separating model parameters into common and custom ones. Finally, extensive experiments are conducted to verify our theoretical analysis and show that FedLMT and pFedLMT outperform other baselines with much less communication and computation costs.
Pairwise Alignment Improves Graph Domain Adaptation
Authors: Liu, Shikun and Zou, Deyu and Zhao, Han and Li, Pan
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Graph-based methods, pivotal for label inference over interconnected objects in many real-world applications, often encounter generalization challenges, if the graph used for model training differs significantly from the graph used for testing. This work delves into Graph Domain Adaptation (GDA) to address the unique complexities of distribution shifts over graph data, where interconnected data points experience shifts in features, labels, and in particular, connecting patterns. We propose a novel, theoretically principled method, Pairwise Alignment (Pair-Align) to counter graph structure shift by mitigating conditional structure shift (CSS) and label shift (LS). Pair-Align uses edge weights to recalibrate the influence among neighboring nodes to handle CSS and adjusts the classification loss with label weights to handle LS. Our method demonstrates superior performance in real-world applications, including node classification with region shift in social networks, and the pileup mitigation task in particle colliding experiments. For the first application, we also curate the largest dataset by far for GDA studies. Our method shows strong performance in synthetic and other existing benchmark datasets.
Neural Operators with Localized Integral and Differential Kernels
Authors: Liu-Schiaffini, Miguel and Berner, Julius and Bonev, Boris and Kurth, Thorsten and Azizzadenesheli, Kamyar and Anandkumar, Anima
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Neural operators learn mappings between function spaces, which is practical for learning solution operators of PDEs and other scientific modeling applications. Among them, the Fourier neural operator (FNO) is a popular architecture that performs global convolutions in the Fourier space. However, such global operations are often prone to over-smoothing and may fail to capture local details. In contrast, convolutional neural networks (CNN) can capture local features but are limited to training and inference at a single resolution. In this work, we present a principled approach to operator learning that can capture local features under two frameworks by learning differential operators and integral operators with locally supported kernels. Specifically, inspired by stencil methods, we prove that we obtain differential operators under an appropriate scaling of the kernel values of CNNs. To obtain local integral operators, we utilize suitable basis representations for the kernels based on discrete-continuous convolutions. Both these approaches preserve the properties of operator learning and, hence, the ability to predict at any resolution. Adding our layers to FNOs significantly improves their performance, reducing the relative L2-error by 34-72% in our experiments, which include a turbulent 2D Navier-Stokes and the spherical shallow water equations.
A Tensor Decomposition Perspective on Second-order RNNs
Authors: Lizaire, Maude and Rizvi-Martel, Michael and Gamal, Marawan and Rabusseau, Guillaume
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Second-order Recurrent Neural Networks (2RNNs) extend RNNs by leveraging second-order interactions for sequence modelling. These models are provably more expressive than their first-order counterparts and have connections to well-studied models from formal language theory. However, their large parameter tensor makes computations intractable. To circumvent this issue, one approach known as MIRNN consists in limiting the type of interactions used by the model. Another is to leverage tensor decomposition to diminish the parameter count. In this work, we study the model resulting from parameterizing 2RNNs using the CP decomposition, which we call CPRNN. Intuitively, the rank of the decomposition should reduce expressivity. We analyze how rank and hidden size affect model capacity and show the relationships between RNNs, 2RNNs, MIRNNs, and CPRNNs based on these parameters. We support these results empirically with experiments on the Penn Treebank dataset which demonstrate that, with a fixed parameter budget, CPRNNs outperforms RNNs, 2RNNs, and MIRNNs with the right choice of rank and hidden size.
Coarse-To-Fine Tensor Trains for Compact Visual Representations
Authors: Loeschcke, Sebastian Bugge and Wang, Dan and Leth-Espensen, Christian Munklinde and Belongie, Serge and Kastoryano, Michael and Benaim, Sagie
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: The ability to learn compact, high-quality, and easy-to-optimize representations for visual data is paramount to many applications such as novel view synthesis and 3D reconstruction. Recent work has shown substantial success in using tensor networks to design such compact and high-quality representations. However, the ability to optimize tensor-based representations, and in particular, the highly compact tensor train representation, is still lacking. This has prevented practitioners from deploying the full potential of tensor networks for visual data. To this end, we propose ’Prolongation Upsampling Tensor Train (PuTT)’, a novel method for learning tensor train representations in a coarse-to-fine manner. Our method involves the prolonging or ‘upsampling’ of a learned tensor train representation, creating a sequence of ’coarse-to-fine’ tensor trains that are incrementally refined. We evaluate our representation along three axes: (1). compression, (2). denoising capability, and (3). image completion capability. To assess these axes, we consider the tasks of image fitting, 3D fitting, and novel view synthesis, where our method shows an improved performance compared to state-of-the-art tensor-based methods.
Restoring balance: principled under/oversampling of data for optimal classification
Authors: Loffredo, Emanuele and Pastore, Mauro and Cocco, Simona and Monasson, Remi
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Class imbalance in real-world data poses a common bottleneck for machine learning tasks, since achieving good generalization on under-represented examples is often challenging. Mitigation strategies, such as under or oversampling the data depending on their abundances, are routinely proposed and tested empirically, but how they should adapt to the data statistics remains poorly understood. In this work, we determine exact analytical expressions of the generalization curves in the high-dimensional regime for linear classifiers (Support Vector Machines). We also provide a sharp prediction of the effects of under/oversampling strategies depending on class imbalance, first and second moments of the data, and the metrics of performance considered. We show that mixed strategies involving under and oversampling of data lead to performance improvement. Through numerical experiments, we show the relevance of our theoretical predictions on real datasets, on deeper architectures and with sampling strategies based on unsupervised probabilistic models.
Position: The Causal Revolution Needs Scientific Pragmatism
Authors: Loftus, Joshua R.
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Causal models and methods have great promise, but their progress has been stalled. Proposals using causality get squeezed between two opposing worldviews. Scientific perfectionism–an insistence on only using “correct” models–slows the adoption of causal methods in knowledge generating applications. Pushing in the opposite direction, the academic discipline of computer science prefers algorithms with no or few assumptions, and technologies based on automation and scalability are often selected for economic and business applications. We argue that these system-centric inductive biases should be replaced with a human-centric philosophy we refer to as scientific pragmatism. The machine learning community must strike the right balance to make space for the causal revolution to prosper.
Reparameterized Importance Sampling for Robust Variational Bayesian Neural Networks
Authors: Long, Yunfei and Tian, Zilin and Zhang, Liguo and Xu, Huosheng
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Mean-field variational inference (MFVI) methods provide computationally cheap approximations to the posterior of Bayesian Neural Networks (BNNs) when compared to alternatives like MCMC. However, applying MFVI to BNNs encounters limitations due to the Monte Carlo sampling problem. This problem stems from two main issues. <em>First</em>, most samples do not accurately represent the most probable weights. <em>Second</em>, random sampling from variational distributions introduces high variance in gradient estimates, which can hinder the optimization process, leading to slow convergence or even failure. In this paper, we introduce a novel sampling method called <em>Reparameterized Importance Sampling</em> (RIS) to estimate the first moment in neural networks, reducing variance during feed-forward propagation. We begin by analyzing the generalized form of the optimal proposal distribution and presenting an inexpensive approximation. Next, we describe the sampling process from the proposal distribution as a transformation that combines exogenous randomness with the variational parameters. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed RIS method in three critical aspects: improved convergence, enhanced predictive performance, and successful uncertainty estimation for out-of-distribution data.
Position: A Safe Harbor for AI Evaluation and Red Teaming
Authors: Longpre, Shayne and Kapoor, Sayash and Klyman, Kevin and Ramaswami, Ashwin and Bommasani, Rishi and Blili-Hamelin, Borhane and Huang, Yangsibo and Skowron, Aviya and Yong, Zheng Xin and Kotha, Suhas and Zeng, Yi and Shi, Weiyan and Yang, Xianjun and Southen, Reid and Robey, Alexander and Chao, Patrick and Yang, Diyi and Jia, Ruoxi and Kang, Daniel and Pentland, Alex and Narayanan, Arvind and Liang, Percy and Henderson, Peter
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Independent evaluation and red teaming are critical for identifying the risks posed by generative AI systems. However, the terms of service and enforcement strategies used by prominent AI companies to deter model misuse have disincentives on good faith safety evaluations. This causes some researchers to fear that conducting such research or releasing their findings will result in account suspensions or legal reprisal. Although some companies offer researcher access programs, they are an inadequate substitute for independent research access, as they have limited community representation, receive inadequate funding, and lack independence from corporate incentives. We propose that major generative AI developers commit to providing a legal and technical safe harbor, protecting public interest safety research and removing the threat of account suspensions or legal reprisal. These proposals emerged from our collective experience conducting safety, privacy, and trustworthiness research on generative AI systems, where norms and incentives could be better aligned with public interests, without exacerbating model misuse. We believe these commitments are a necessary step towards more inclusive and unimpeded community efforts to tackle the risks of generative AI.
Position: Data Authenticity, Consent, & Provenance for AI are all broken: what will it take to fix them?
Authors: Longpre, Shayne and Mahari, Robert and Obeng-Marnu, Naana and Brannon, William and South, Tobin and Gero, Katy Ilonka and Pentland, Alex and Kabbara, Jad
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: New capabilities in foundation models are owed in large part to massive, widely-sourced, and under-documented training data collections. Existing practices in data collection have led to challenges in tracing authenticity, verifying consent, preserving privacy, addressing representation and bias, respecting copyright, and overall developing ethical and trustworthy foundation models. In response, regulation is emphasizing the need for training data transparency to understand foundation models’ limitations. Based on a large-scale analysis of the foundation model training data landscape and existing solutions, we identify the missing infrastructure to facilitate responsible foundation model development practices. We examine the current shortcomings of common tools for tracing data authenticity, consent, and documentation, and outline how policymakers, developers, and data creators can facilitate responsible foundation model development by adopting universal data provenance standards.
Latent Noise Segmentation: How Neural Noise Leads to the Emergence of Segmentation and Grouping
Authors: Lonnqvist, Ben and Wu, Zhengqing and Herzog, Michael
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Humans are able to segment images effortlessly without supervision using perceptual grouping. Here, we propose a counter-intuitive computational approach to solving unsupervised perceptual grouping and segmentation: that they arise <em>because</em> of neural noise, rather than in spite of it. We (1) mathematically demonstrate that under realistic assumptions, neural noise can be used to separate objects from each other; (2) that adding noise in a DNN enables the network to segment images even though it was never trained on any segmentation labels; and (3) that segmenting objects using noise results in segmentation performance that aligns with the perceptual grouping phenomena observed in humans, and is sample-efficient. We introduce the Good Gestalt (GG) datasets — six datasets designed to specifically test perceptual grouping, and show that our DNN models reproduce many important phenomena in human perception, such as illusory contours, closure, continuity, proximity, and occlusion. Finally, we (4) show that our model improves performance on our GG datasets compared to other tested unsupervised models by $24.9$%. Together, our results suggest a novel unsupervised segmentation method requiring few assumptions, a new explanation for the formation of perceptual grouping, and a novel potential benefit of neural noise.
Large Scale Dataset Distillation with Domain Shift
Authors: Loo, Noel and Maalouf, Alaa and Hasani, Ramin and Lechner, Mathias and Amini, Alexander and Rus, Daniela
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Dataset Distillation seeks to summarize a large dataset by generating a reduced set of synthetic samples. While there has been much success at distilling small datasets such as CIFAR-10 on smaller neural architectures, Dataset Distillation methods fail to scale to larger high-resolution datasets and architectures. In this work, we introduce <b>D</b>ataset <b>D</b>istillation with <b>D</b>omain <b>S</b>hift (<b>D3S</b>), a scalable distillation algorithm, made by reframing the dataset distillation problem as a <em>domain shift</em> one. In doing so, we derive a universal bound on the distillation loss, and provide a method for efficiently approximately optimizing it. We achieve state-of-the-art results on Tiny-ImageNet, ImageNet-1k, and ImageNet-21K over a variety of recently proposed baselines, including high cross-architecture generalization. Additionally, our ablation studies provide lessons on the importance of validation-time hyperparameters on distillation performance, motivating the need for standardization.
Attention Meets Post-hoc Interpretability: A Mathematical Perspective
Authors: Lopardo, Gianluigi and Precioso, Frederic and Garreau, Damien
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Attention-based architectures, in particular transformers, are at the heart of a technological revolution. Interestingly, in addition to helping obtain state-of-the-art results on a wide range of applications, the attention mechanism intrinsically provides meaningful insights on the internal behavior of the model. Can these insights be used as explanations? Debate rages on. In this paper, we mathematically study a simple attention-based architecture and pinpoint the differences between post-hoc and attention-based explanations. We show that they provide quite different results, and that, despite their limitations, post-hoc methods are capable of capturing more useful insights than merely examining the attention weights.
Non-Vacuous Generalization Bounds for Large Language Models
Authors: Lotfi, Sanae and Finzi, Marc Anton and Kuang, Yilun and Rudner, Tim G. J. and Goldblum, Micah and Wilson, Andrew Gordon
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Modern language models can contain billions of parameters, raising the question of whether they can generalize beyond the training data or simply parrot their training corpora. We provide the first non-vacuous generalization bounds for pretrained large language models (LLMs), indicating that language models are capable of discovering regularities that generalize to unseen data. In particular, we derive a compression bound that is valid for the unbounded log-likelihood loss using prediction smoothing, and we extend the bound to handle subsampling, making bound computation 900 times faster on massive datasets. To achieve the extreme level of compression required for non-vacuous bounds, we devise SubLoRA, a simple low-dimensional nonlinear parameterization that leads to non-vacuous generalization bounds for very large models with up to 849 million parameters. Finally, we use our bounds to understand LLM generalization and find that larger models have better generalization bounds and are more compressible than smaller models.
Discrete Diffusion Modeling by Estimating the Ratios of the Data Distribution
Authors: Lou, Aaron and Meng, Chenlin and Ermon, Stefano
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Despite their groundbreaking performance for many generative modeling tasks, diffusion models have fallen short on discrete data domains such as natural language. Crucially, standard diffusion models rely on the well-established theory of score matching, but efforts to generalize this to discrete structures have not yielded the same empirical gains. In this work, we bridge this gap by proposing score entropy, a novel loss that naturally extends score matching to discrete spaces, integrates seamlessly to build discrete diffusion models, and significantly boosts performance. Experimentally, we test our Score Entropy Discrete Diffusion models (SEDD) on standard language modeling tasks. For comparable model sizes, SEDD beats existing language diffusion paradigms (reducing perplexity by $25$-$75$%) and is competitive with autoregressive models, in particular outperforming GPT-2. Furthermore, compared to autoregressive mdoels, SEDD generates faithful text without requiring distribution annealing techniques like temperature scaling (around $6$-$8\times$ better generative perplexity than un-annealed GPT-2), can trade compute and quality (similar quality with $32\times$ fewer network evaluations), and enables controllable infilling (matching nucleus sampling quality while enabling other strategies besides left to right prompting).
Optimal Differentially Private Model Training with Public Data
Authors: Lowy, Andrew and Li, Zeman and Huang, Tianjian and Razaviyayn, Meisam
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Differential privacy (DP) ensures that training a machine learning model does not leak private data. In practice, we may have access to auxiliary public data that is free of privacy concerns. In this work, we assume access to a given amount of public data and settle the following fundamental open questions: 1. What is the optimal (worst-case) error of a DP model trained over a private data set while having access to side public data? 2. How can we harness public data to improve DP model training in practice? We consider these questions in both the local and central models of pure and approximate DP. To answer the first question, we prove tight (up to log factors) lower and upper bounds that characterize the optimal error rates of three fundamental problems: mean estimation, empirical risk minimization, and stochastic convex optimization. We show that the optimal error rates can be attained (up to log factors) by either discarding private data and training a public model, or treating public data like it is private and using an optimal DP algorithm. To address the second question, we develop novel algorithms that are "even more optimal" (i.e. better constants) than the asymptotically optimal approaches described above. For local DP mean estimation, our algorithm is optimal including constants. Empirically, our algorithms show benefits over the state-of-the-art.
How to Make the Gradients Small Privately: Improved Rates for Differentially Private Non-Convex Optimization
Authors: Lowy, Andrew and Ullman, Jonathan and Wright, Stephen
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: We provide a simple and flexible framework for designing differentially private algorithms to find approximate stationary points of non-convex loss functions. Our framework is based on using a private approximate risk minimizer to "warm start" another private algorithm for finding stationary points. We use this framework to obtain improved, and sometimes optimal, rates for several classes of non-convex loss functions. First, we obtain improved rates for finding stationary points of smooth non-convex empirical loss functions. Second, we specialize to quasar-convex functions, which generalize star-convex functions and arise in learning dynamical systems and training some neural nets. We achieve the optimal rate for this class. Third, we give an optimal algorithm for finding stationary points of functions satisfying the Kurdyka-Lojasiewicz (KL) condition. For example, over-parameterized neural networks often satisfy this condition. Fourth, we provide new state-of-the-art rates for stationary points of non-convex population loss functions. Fifth, we obtain improved rates for non-convex generalized linear models. A modification of our algorithm achieves nearly the same rates for second-order stationary points of functions with Lipschitz Hessian, improving over the previous state-of-the-art for each of the above problems.
Beyond Sole Strength: Customized Ensembles for Generalized Vision-Language Models
Authors: Lu, Zhihe and Bai, Jiawang and Li, Xin and Xiao, Zeyu and Wang, Xinchao
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Fine-tuning pre-trained vision-language models (VLMs), e.g., CLIP, for the open-world generalization has gained increasing popularity due to its practical value. However, performance advancements are limited when relying solely on intricate algorithmic designs for a single model, even one exhibiting strong performance, e.g., CLIP-ViT-B/16. This paper, for the first time, explores the collaborative potential of leveraging much weaker VLMs to enhance the generalization of a robust single model. The affirmative findings motivate us to address the generalization problem from a novel perspective, i.e., ensemble of pre-trained VLMs. We introduce three customized ensemble strategies, each tailored to one specific scenario. Firstly, we introduce the zero-shot ensemble, automatically adjusting the logits of different models based on their confidence when only pre-trained VLMs are available. Furthermore, for scenarios with extra few-shot samples, we propose the training-free and tuning ensemble, offering flexibility based on the availability of computing resources. The code is available at https://github.com/zhiheLu/Ensemble_VLM.git.
HumanTOMATO: Text-aligned Whole-body Motion Generation
Authors: Lu, Shunlin and Chen, Ling-Hao and Zeng, Ailing and Lin, Jing and Zhang, Ruimao and Zhang, Lei and Shum, Heung-Yeung
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: This work targets a novel text-driven <b>whole-body</b> motion generation task, which takes a given textual description as input and aims at generating high-quality, diverse, and coherent facial expressions, hand gestures, and body motions simultaneously. Previous works on text-driven motion generation tasks mainly have two limitations: they ignore the key role of fine-grained hand and face controlling in vivid whole-body motion generation, and lack a good alignment between text and motion. To address such limitations, we propose a Text-aligned whOle-body Motion generATiOn framework, named HumanTOMATO, which is the first attempt to our knowledge towards applicable holistic motion generation in this research area. To tackle this challenging task, our solution includes two key designs: (1) a Holistic Hierarchical VQ-VAE (aka H$^2$VQ) and a Hierarchical-GPT for fine-grained body and hand motion reconstruction and generation with two structured codebooks; and (2) a pre-trained text-motion-alignment model to help generated motion align with the input textual description explicitly. Comprehensive experiments verify that our model has significant advantages in both the quality of generated motions and their alignment with text.
Position: Exploring the Robustness of Pipeline-Parallelism-Based Decentralized Training
Authors: Lu, Lin and Dai, Chenxi and Tao, Wangcheng and Yuan, Binhang and Sun, Yanan and Zhou, Pan
Published in: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (Main Conference Track), 2024

Abstract: Modern machine learning applications increasingly demand greater computational resources for training large models. Decentralized training has emerged as an effective means to democratize this technology. However, the potential threats associated with this approach remain inadequately discussed, posing a hurdle to the development of decentralized training infrastructures. This paper aims to initiate discussion towards this end by exploring the robustness of decentralized training from three primary perspectives. Firstly, we articulate our position on establishing robust decentralized training by outlining potential threats and the corresponding countermeasures. Secondly, we illustrate a nascent poisoning attack targeting decentralized training frameworks, easily executable by malicious stages. To mitigate this security threat and ensure efficient training, we propose a robust training framework, integrating a 100% detection strategy and efficient training mechanisms. Finally, we demonstrate the severity of the proposed attack and the effectiveness of our robust training framework. This position paper emphasizes the urgency of exploring the robustness of decentralized training and proposes a feasible solution. The code is available at https://github.com/dcx001016/pipeline_attack.