pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Semi-supervised Anomaly Detection using AutoEncoders
Authors: Manpreet Singh Minhas, John Zelek
Date: 2020-01-06 00:00:00
Proceeding: Journal of Computational Vision and Imaging Systems 2020 1
Tasks: Anomaly Detection, Asset Management, Defect Detection, Management, Semi-supervised Anomaly Detection, Supervised Anomaly Detection

Anomaly detection refers to the task of finding unusual instances that stand out from the normal data. In several applications, these outliers or anomalous instances are of greater interest compared to the normal ones. Specifically in the case of industrial optical inspection and infrastructure asset management, finding these defects (anomalous regions) is of extreme importance. Traditionally and even today this process has been carried out manually. Humans rely on the saliency of the defects in comparison to the normal texture to detect the defects. However, manual inspection is slow, tedious, subjective and susceptible to human biases. Therefore, the automation of defect detection is desirable. But for defect detection lack of availability of a large number of anomalous instances and labelled data is a problem. In this paper, we present a convolutional auto-encoder architecture for anomaly detection that is trained only on the defect-free (normal) instances. For the test images, residual masks that are obtained by subtracting the original image from the auto-encoder output are thresholded to obtain the defect segmentation masks. The approach was tested on two data-sets and achieved an impressive average F1 score of 0.885. The network learnt to detect the actual shape of the defects even though no defected images were used during the training.
Understanding Graph Isomorphism Network for rs-fMRI Functional Connectivity Analysis
Authors: Byung-Hoon Kim, Jong Chul Ye
Date: 2020-01-10 00:00:00
Tasks: Functional Connectivity, General Classification, Graph Classification

Graph neural networks (GNN) rely on graph operations that include neural network training for various graph related tasks. Recently, several attempts have been made to apply the GNNs to functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI) data. Despite recent progresses, a common limitation is its difficulty to explain the classification results in a neuroscientifically explainable way. Here, we develop a framework for analyzing the fMRI data using the Graph Isomorphism Network (GIN), which was recently proposed as a powerful GNN for graph classification. One of the important contributions of this paper is the observation that the GIN is a dual representation of convolutional neural network (CNN) in the graph space where the shift operation is defined using the adjacency matrix. This understanding enables us to exploit CNN-based saliency map techniques for the GNN, which we tailor to the proposed GIN with one-hot encoding, to visualize the important regions of the brain. We validate our proposed framework using large-scale resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) data for classifying the sex of the subject based on the graph structure of the brain. The experiment was consistent with our expectation such that the obtained saliency map show high correspondence with previous neuroimaging evidences related to sex differences.
Stochastic Recursive Gradient Descent Ascent for Stochastic Nonconvex-Strongly-Concave Minimax Problems
Authors: Luo Luo, Haishan Ye, Zhichao Huang, Tong Zhang
Date: 2020-01-11 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2020 12

We consider nonconvex-concave minimax optimization problems of the form $\min_{\bf x}\max_{\bf y\in{\mathcal Y}} f({\bf x},{\bf y})$, where $f$ is strongly-concave in $\bf y$ but possibly nonconvex in $\bf x$ and ${\mathcal Y}$ is a convex and compact set. We focus on the stochastic setting, where we can only access an unbiased stochastic gradient estimate of $f$ at each iteration. This formulation includes many machine learning applications as special cases such as robust optimization and adversary training. We are interested in finding an ${\mathcal O}(\varepsilon)$-stationary point of the function $\Phi(\cdot)=\max_{\bf y\in{\mathcal Y}} f(\cdot, {\bf y})$. The most popular algorithm to solve this problem is stochastic gradient decent ascent, which requires $\mathcal O(\kappa^3\varepsilon^{-4})$ stochastic gradient evaluations, where $\kappa$ is the condition number. In this paper, we propose a novel method called Stochastic Recursive gradiEnt Descent Ascent (SREDA), which estimates gradients more efficiently using variance reduction. This method achieves the best known stochastic gradient complexity of ${\mathcal O}(\kappa^3\varepsilon^{-3})$, and its dependency on $\varepsilon$ is optimal for this problem.
SympNets: Intrinsic structure-preserving symplectic networks for identifying Hamiltonian systems
Authors: Pengzhan Jin, Zhen Zhang, Aiqing Zhu, Yifa Tang, George Em. Karniadakis
Date: 2020-01-11 00:00:00

We propose new symplectic networks (SympNets) for identifying Hamiltonian systems from data based on a composition of linear, activation and gradient modules. In particular, we define two classes of SympNets: the LA-SympNets composed of linear and activation modules, and the G-SympNets composed of gradient modules. Correspondingly, we prove two new universal approximation theorems that demonstrate that SympNets can approximate arbitrary symplectic maps based on appropriate activation functions. We then perform several experiments including the pendulum, double pendulum and three-body problems to investigate the expressivity and the generalization ability of SympNets. The simulation results show that even very small size SympNets can generalize well, and are able to handle both separable and non-separable Hamiltonian systems with data points resulting from short or long time steps. In all the test cases, SympNets outperform the baseline models, and are much faster in training and prediction. We also develop an extended version of SympNets to learn the dynamics from irregularly sampled data. This extended version of SympNets can be thought of as a universal model representing the solution to an arbitrary Hamiltonian system.
Confidence Scores Make Instance-dependent Label-noise Learning Possible
Authors: Antonin Berthon, Bo Han, Gang Niu, Tongliang Liu, Masashi Sugiyama
Date: 2020-01-11 00:00:00
Tasks: Learning with noisy labels

In learning with noisy labels, for every instance, its label can randomly walk to other classes following a transition distribution which is named a noise model. Well-studied noise models are all instance-independent, namely, the transition depends only on the original label but not the instance itself, and thus they are less practical in the wild. Fortunately, methods based on instance-dependent noise have been studied, but most of them have to rely on strong assumptions on the noise models. To alleviate this issue, we introduce confidence-scored instance-dependent noise (CSIDN), where each instance-label pair is equipped with a confidence score. We find with the help of confidence scores, the transition distribution of each instance can be approximately estimated. Similarly to the powerful forward correction for instance-independent noise, we propose a novel instance-level forward correction for CSIDN. We demonstrate the utility and effectiveness of our method through multiple experiments under synthetic label noise and real-world unknown noise.
Intelligence, physics and information -- the tradeoff between accuracy and simplicity in machine learning
Authors: Tailin Wu
Date: 2020-01-11 00:00:00
Tasks: BIG-bench Machine Learning, Causal Discovery, Few-Shot Learning, Representation Learning, Time Series Analysis

How can we enable machines to make sense of the world, and become better at learning? To approach this goal, I believe viewing intelligence in terms of many integral aspects, and also a universal two-term tradeoff between task performance and complexity, provides two feasible perspectives. In this thesis, I address several key questions in some aspects of intelligence, and study the phase transitions in the two-term tradeoff, using strategies and tools from physics and information. Firstly, how can we make the learning models more flexible and efficient, so that agents can learn quickly with fewer examples? Inspired by how physicists model the world, we introduce a paradigm and an AI Physicist agent for simultaneously learning many small specialized models (theories) and the domain they are accurate, which can then be simplified, unified and stored, facilitating few-shot learning in a continual way. Secondly, for representation learning, when can we learn a good representation, and how does learning depend on the structure of the dataset? We approach this question by studying phase transitions when tuning the tradeoff hyperparameter. In the information bottleneck, we theoretically show that these phase transitions are predictable and reveal structure in the relationships between the data, the model, the learned representation and the loss landscape. Thirdly, how can agents discover causality from observations? We address part of this question by introducing an algorithm that combines prediction and minimizing information from the input, for exploratory causal discovery from observational time series. Fourthly, to make models more robust to label noise, we introduce Rank Pruning, a robust algorithm for classification with noisy labels. I believe that building on the work of my thesis we will be one step closer to enable more intelligent machines that can make sense of the world.
Fundamental Limits of Prediction, Generalization, and Recursion: An Entropic-Innovations Perspective
Authors: Song Fang, Quanyan Zhu
Date: 2020-01-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Prediction, valid

In this paper, we examine the fundamental performance limits of prediction, with or without side information. More specifically, we derive generic lower bounds on the $\mathcal{L}_p$ norms of the prediction errors that are valid for any prediction algorithms and for any data distributions. Meanwhile, we combine the entropic analysis from information theory and the innovations approach from prediction/estimation theory to characterize the conditions (in terms of, e.g., directed information or mutual information) to achieve the bounds. We also investigate the implications of the results in analyzing the fundamental limits of generalization in fitting (learning) problems from the perspective of prediction with side information, as well as the fundamental limits of recursive algorithms by viewing them as generalized prediction problems.
Deep Reinforcement Learning for Complex Manipulation Tasks with Sparse Feedback
Authors: Binyamin Manela
Date: 2020-01-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Reinforcement Learning, Multi-Goal Reinforcement Learning, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning, Reinforcement Learning (RL)

Learning optimal policies from sparse feedback is a known challenge in reinforcement learning. Hindsight Experience Replay (HER) is a multi-goal reinforcement learning algorithm that comes to solve such tasks. The algorithm treats every failure as a success for an alternative (virtual) goal that has been achieved in the episode and then generalizes from that virtual goal to real goals. HER has known flaws and is limited to relatively simple tasks. In this thesis, we present three algorithms based on the existing HER algorithm that improves its performances. First, we prioritize virtual goals from which the agent will learn more valuable information. We call this property the \textit{instructiveness} of the virtual goal and define it by a heuristic measure, which expresses how well the agent will be able to generalize from that virtual goal to actual goals. Secondly, we designed a filtering process that detects and removes misleading samples that may induce bias throughout the learning process. Lastly, we enable the learning of complex, sequential, tasks using a form of curriculum learning combined with HER. We call this algorithm \textit{Curriculum HER}. To test our algorithms, we built three challenging manipulation environments with sparse reward functions. Each environment has three levels of complexity. Our empirical results show vast improvement in the final success rate and sample efficiency when compared to the original HER algorithm.
Stepwise Model Selection for Sequence Prediction via Deep Kernel Learning
Authors: Yao Zhang, Daniel Jarrett, Mihaela van der Schaar
Date: 2020-01-12 00:00:00
Tasks: AutoML, Bayesian Optimization, Model Selection

An essential problem in automated machine learning (AutoML) is that of model selection. A unique challenge in the sequential setting is the fact that the optimal model itself may vary over time, depending on the distribution of features and labels available up to each point in time. In this paper, we propose a novel Bayesian optimization (BO) algorithm to tackle the challenge of model selection in this setting. This is accomplished by treating the performance at each time step as its own black-box function. In order to solve the resulting multiple black-box function optimization problem jointly and efficiently, we exploit potential correlations among black-box functions using deep kernel learning (DKL). To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to formulate the problem of stepwise model selection (SMS) for sequence prediction, and to design and demonstrate an efficient joint-learning algorithm for this purpose. Using multiple real-world datasets, we verify that our proposed method outperforms both standard BO and multi-objective BO algorithms on a variety of sequence prediction tasks.
Channel Assignment in Uplink Wireless Communication using Machine Learning Approach
Authors: Guangyu Jia, Zhaohui Yang, Hak-Keung Lam, Jianfeng Shi, Mohammad Shikh-Bahaei
Date: 2020-01-12 00:00:00
Tasks: BIG-bench Machine Learning

This letter investigates a channel assignment problem in uplink wireless communication systems. Our goal is to maximize the sum rate of all users subject to integer channel assignment constraints. A convex optimization based algorithm is provided to obtain the optimal channel assignment, where the closed-form solution is obtained in each step. Due to high computational complexity in the convex optimization based algorithm, machine learning approaches are employed to obtain computational efficient solutions. More specifically, the data are generated by using convex optimization based algorithm and the original problem is converted to a regression problem which is addressed by the integration of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), feed-forward neural networks (FNNs), random forest and gated recurrent unit networks (GRUs). The results demonstrate that the machine learning method largely reduces the computation time with slightly compromising of prediction accuracy.
Aggregated Learning: A Vector-Quantization Approach to Learning Neural Network Classifiers
Authors: Masoumeh Soflaei, Hongyu Guo, Ali Al-Bashabsheh, Yongyi Mao, Richong Zhang
Date: 2020-01-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Classification, General Classification, Quantization, Representation Learning, text-classification, Text Classification

We consider the problem of learning a neural network classifier. Under the information bottleneck (IB) principle, we associate with this classification problem a representation learning problem, which we call "IB learning". We show that IB learning is, in fact, equivalent to a special class of the quantization problem. The classical results in rate-distortion theory then suggest that IB learning can benefit from a "vector quantization" approach, namely, simultaneously learning the representations of multiple input objects. Such an approach assisted with some variational techniques, result in a novel learning framework, "Aggregated Learning", for classification with neural network models. In this framework, several objects are jointly classified by a single neural network. The effectiveness of this framework is verified through extensive experiments on standard image recognition and text classification tasks.
Unbiased and Efficient Log-Likelihood Estimation with Inverse Binomial Sampling
Authors: Bas van Opheusden, Luigi Acerbi, Wei Ji Ma
Date: 2020-01-12 00:00:00
Tasks: parameter estimation

The fate of scientific hypotheses often relies on the ability of a computational model to explain the data, quantified in modern statistical approaches by the likelihood function. The log-likelihood is the key element for parameter estimation and model evaluation. However, the log-likelihood of complex models in fields such as computational biology and neuroscience is often intractable to compute analytically or numerically. In those cases, researchers can often only estimate the log-likelihood by comparing observed data with synthetic observations generated by model simulations. Standard techniques to approximate the likelihood via simulation either use summary statistics of the data or are at risk of producing severe biases in the estimate. Here, we explore another method, inverse binomial sampling (IBS), which can estimate the log-likelihood of an entire data set efficiently and without bias. For each observation, IBS draws samples from the simulator model until one matches the observation. The log-likelihood estimate is then a function of the number of samples drawn. The variance of this estimator is uniformly bounded, achieves the minimum variance for an unbiased estimator, and we can compute calibrated estimates of the variance. We provide theoretical arguments in favor of IBS and an empirical assessment of the method for maximum-likelihood estimation with simulation-based models. As case studies, we take three model-fitting problems of increasing complexity from computational and cognitive neuroscience. In all problems, IBS generally produces lower error in the estimated parameters and maximum log-likelihood values than alternative sampling methods with the same average number of samples. Our results demonstrate the potential of IBS as a practical, robust, and easy to implement method for log-likelihood evaluation when exact techniques are not available.
Domain Adaptive Bootstrap Aggregating
Authors: Meimei Liu, David B. Dunson
Date: 2020-01-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Domain Adaptation, Medical Diagnosis

When there is a distributional shift between data used to train a predictive algorithm and current data, performance can suffer. This is known as the domain adaptation problem. Bootstrap aggregating, or bagging, is a popular method for improving stability of predictive algorithms, while reducing variance and protecting against over-fitting. This article proposes a domain adaptive bagging method coupled with a new iterative nearest neighbor sampler. The key idea is to draw bootstrap samples from the training data in such a manner that their distribution equals that of new testing data. The proposed approach provides a general ensemble framework that can be applied to arbitrary classifiers. We further modify the method to allow anomalous samples in the test data corresponding to outliers in the training data. Theoretical support is provided, and the approach is compared to alternatives in simulations and real data applications.
Bag of Tricks for Retail Product Image Classification
Authors: Muktabh Mayank Srivastava
Date: 2020-01-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Classification, General Classification, image-classification, Image Classification

Retail Product Image Classification is an important Computer Vision and Machine Learning problem for building real world systems like self-checkout stores and automated retail execution evaluation. In this work, we present various tricks to increase accuracy of Deep Learning models on different types of retail product image classification datasets. These tricks enable us to increase the accuracy of fine tuned convnets for retail product image classification by a large margin. As the most prominent trick, we introduce a new neural network layer called Local-Concepts-Accumulation (LCA) layer which gives consistent gains across multiple datasets. Two other tricks we find to increase accuracy on retail product identification are using an instagram-pretrained Convnet and using Maximum Entropy as an auxiliary loss for classification.
Fast is better than free: Revisiting adversarial training
Authors: Eric Wong, Leslie Rice, J. Zico Kolter
Date: 2020-01-12 00:00:00
Proceeding: ICLR 2020 1

Adversarial training, a method for learning robust deep networks, is typically assumed to be more expensive than traditional training due to the necessity of constructing adversarial examples via a first-order method like projected gradient decent (PGD). In this paper, we make the surprising discovery that it is possible to train empirically robust models using a much weaker and cheaper adversary, an approach that was previously believed to be ineffective, rendering the method no more costly than standard training in practice. Specifically, we show that adversarial training with the fast gradient sign method (FGSM), when combined with random initialization, is as effective as PGD-based training but has significantly lower cost. Furthermore we show that FGSM adversarial training can be further accelerated by using standard techniques for efficient training of deep networks, allowing us to learn a robust CIFAR10 classifier with 45% robust accuracy to PGD attacks with $\epsilon=8/255$ in 6 minutes, and a robust ImageNet classifier with 43% robust accuracy at $\epsilon=2/255$ in 12 hours, in comparison to past work based on "free" adversarial training which took 10 and 50 hours to reach the same respective thresholds. Finally, we identify a failure mode referred to as "catastrophic overfitting" which may have caused previous attempts to use FGSM adversarial training to fail. All code for reproducing the experiments in this paper as well as pretrained model weights are at https://github.com/locuslab/fast_adversarial.
Universal Successor Features for Transfer Reinforcement Learning
Authors: Chen Ma, Dylan R. Ashley, Junfeng Wen, Yoshua Bengio
Date: 2020-01-05 00:00:00
Proceeding: ICLR 2019 5
Tasks: MuJoCo, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning, Reinforcement Learning (RL), Transfer Reinforcement Learning

Transfer in Reinforcement Learning (RL) refers to the idea of applying knowledge gained from previous tasks to solving related tasks. Learning a universal value function (Schaul et al., 2015), which generalizes over goals and states, has previously been shown to be useful for transfer. However, successor features are believed to be more suitable than values for transfer (Dayan, 1993; Barreto et al.,2017), even though they cannot directly generalize to new goals. In this paper, we propose (1) Universal Successor Features (USFs) to capture the underlying dynamics of the environment while allowing generalization to unseen goals and (2) a flexible end-to-end model of USFs that can be trained by interacting with the environment. We show that learning USFs is compatible with any RL algorithm that learns state values using a temporal difference method. Our experiments in a simple gridworld and with two MuJoCo environments show that USFs can greatly accelerate training when learning multiple tasks and can effectively transfer knowledge to new tasks.