pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
On the Difference Between the Information Bottleneck and the Deep Information Bottleneck
Authors: Aleksander Wieczorek, Volker Roth
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00

Combining the Information Bottleneck model with deep learning by replacing mutual information terms with deep neural nets has proved successful in areas ranging from generative modelling to interpreting deep neural networks. In this paper, we revisit the Deep Variational Information Bottleneck and the assumptions needed for its derivation. The two assumed properties of the data $X$, $Y$ and their latent representation $T$ take the form of two Markov chains $T-X-Y$ and $X-T-Y$. Requiring both to hold during the optimisation process can be limiting for the set of potential joint distributions $P(X,Y,T)$. We therefore show how to circumvent this limitation by optimising a lower bound for $I(T;Y)$ for which only the latter Markov chain has to be satisfied. The actual mutual information consists of the lower bound which is optimised in DVIB and cognate models in practice and of two terms measuring how much the former requirement $T-X-Y$ is violated. Finally, we propose to interpret the family of information bottleneck models as directed graphical models and show that in this framework the original and deep information bottlenecks are special cases of a fundamental IB model.
Revisiting Landscape Analysis in Deep Neural Networks: Eliminating Decreasing Paths to Infinity
Authors: Shiyu Liang, Ruoyu Sun, R. Srikant
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00

Traditional landscape analysis of deep neural networks aims to show that no sub-optimal local minima exist in some appropriate sense. From this, one may be tempted to conclude that descent algorithms which escape saddle points will reach a good local minimum. However, basic optimization theory tell us that it is also possible for a descent algorithm to diverge to infinity if there are paths leading to infinity, along which the loss function decreases. It is not clear whether for non-linear neural networks there exists one setting that no bad local-min and no decreasing paths to infinity can be simultaneously achieved. In this paper, we give the first positive answer to this question. More specifically, for a large class of over-parameterized deep neural networks with appropriate regularizers, the loss function has no bad local minima and no decreasing paths to infinity. The key mathematical trick is to show that the set of regularizers which may be undesirable can be viewed as the image of a Lipschitz continuous mapping from a lower-dimensional Euclidean space to a higher-dimensional Euclidean space, and thus has zero measure.
OneGAN: Simultaneous Unsupervised Learning of Conditional Image Generation, Foreground Segmentation, and Fine-Grained Clustering
Authors: Yaniv Benny, Lior Wolf
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00
Proceeding: ECCV 2020 8
Tasks: Clustering, Conditional Image Generation, Foreground Segmentation, Generative Adversarial Network, Image Generation

We present a method for simultaneously learning, in an unsupervised manner, (i) a conditional image generator, (ii) foreground extraction and segmentation, (iii) clustering into a two-level class hierarchy, and (iv) object removal and background completion, all done without any use of annotation. The method combines a Generative Adversarial Network and a Variational Auto-Encoder, with multiple encoders, generators and discriminators, and benefits from solving all tasks at once. The input to the training scheme is a varied collection of unlabeled images from the same domain, as well as a set of background images without a foreground object. In addition, the image generator can mix the background from one image, with a foreground that is conditioned either on that of a second image or on the index of a desired cluster. The method obtains state of the art results in comparison to the literature methods, when compared to the current state of the art in each of the tasks.
GraspNet: A Large-Scale Clustered and Densely Annotated Dataset for Object Grasping
Authors: Hao-Shu Fang, Chenxi Wang, Minghao Gou, Cewu Lu
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00

Object grasping is critical for many applications, which is also a challenging computer vision problem. However, for the clustered scene, current researches suffer from the problems of insufficient training data and the lacking of evaluation benchmarks. In this work, we contribute a large-scale grasp pose detection dataset with a unified evaluation system. Our dataset contains 87,040 RGBD images with over 370 million grasp poses. Meanwhile, our evaluation system directly reports whether a grasping is successful or not by analytic computation, which is able to evaluate any kind of grasp poses without exhausted labeling pose ground-truth. We conduct extensive experiments to show that our dataset and evaluation system can align well with real-world experiments. Our dataset, source code and models will be made publicly available.
Reward-Conditioned Policies
Authors: Aviral Kumar, Xue Bin Peng, Sergey Levine
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Imitation Learning, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning, Reinforcement Learning (RL)

Reinforcement learning offers the promise of automating the acquisition of complex behavioral skills. However, compared to commonly used and well-understood supervised learning methods, reinforcement learning algorithms can be brittle, difficult to use and tune, and sensitive to seemingly innocuous implementation decisions. In contrast, imitation learning utilizes standard and well-understood supervised learning methods, but requires near-optimal expert data. Can we learn effective policies via supervised learning without demonstrations? The main idea that we explore in this work is that non-expert trajectories collected from sub-optimal policies can be viewed as optimal supervision, not for maximizing the reward, but for matching the reward of the given trajectory. By then conditioning the policy on the numerical value of the reward, we can obtain a policy that generalizes to larger returns. We show how such an approach can be derived as a principled method for policy search, discuss several variants, and compare the method experimentally to a variety of current reinforcement learning methods on standard benchmarks.
Model Inversion Networks for Model-Based Optimization
Authors: Aviral Kumar, Sergey Levine
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2020 12
Tasks: Bayesian Optimization, model, valid

In this work, we aim to solve data-driven optimization problems, where the goal is to find an input that maximizes an unknown score function given access to a dataset of inputs with corresponding scores. When the inputs are high-dimensional and valid inputs constitute a small subset of this space (e.g., valid protein sequences or valid natural images), such model-based optimization problems become exceptionally difficult, since the optimizer must avoid out-of-distribution and invalid inputs. We propose to address such problem with model inversion networks (MINs), which learn an inverse mapping from scores to inputs. MINs can scale to high-dimensional input spaces and leverage offline logged data for both contextual and non-contextual optimization problems. MINs can also handle both purely offline data sources and active data collection. We evaluate MINs on tasks from the Bayesian optimization literature, high-dimensional model-based optimization problems over images and protein designs, and contextual bandit optimization from logged data.
Some compact notations for concentration inequalities and user-friendly results
Authors: Kaizheng Wang
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00

This paper presents compact notations for concentration inequalities and convenient results to streamline probabilistic analysis. The new expressions describe the typical sizes and tails of random variables, allowing for simple operations without heavy use of inessential constants. They bridge classical asymptotic notations and modern non-asymptotic tail bounds together. Examples of different kinds demonstrate their efficacy.
Face X-ray for More General Face Forgery Detection
Authors: Lingzhi Li, Jianmin Bao, Ting Zhang, Hao Yang, Dong Chen, Fang Wen, Baining Guo
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00
Proceeding: CVPR 2020 6
Tasks: DeepFake Detection, Face Swapping

In this paper we propose a novel image representation called face X-ray for detecting forgery in face images. The face X-ray of an input face image is a greyscale image that reveals whether the input image can be decomposed into the blending of two images from different sources. It does so by showing the blending boundary for a forged image and the absence of blending for a real image. We observe that most existing face manipulation methods share a common step: blending the altered face into an existing background image. For this reason, face X-ray provides an effective way for detecting forgery generated by most existing face manipulation algorithms. Face X-ray is general in the sense that it only assumes the existence of a blending step and does not rely on any knowledge of the artifacts associated with a specific face manipulation technique. Indeed, the algorithm for computing face X-ray can be trained without fake images generated by any of the state-of-the-art face manipulation methods. Extensive experiments show that face X-ray remains effective when applied to forgery generated by unseen face manipulation techniques, while most existing face forgery detection or deepfake detection algorithms experience a significant performance drop.
FaceShifter: Towards High Fidelity And Occlusion Aware Face Swapping
Authors: Lingzhi Li, Jianmin Bao, Hao Yang, Dong Chen, Fang Wen
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Face Generation, Face Swapping, Vocal Bursts Intensity Prediction

In this work, we propose a novel two-stage framework, called FaceShifter, for high fidelity and occlusion aware face swapping. Unlike many existing face swapping works that leverage only limited information from the target image when synthesizing the swapped face, our framework, in its first stage, generates the swapped face in high-fidelity by exploiting and integrating the target attributes thoroughly and adaptively. We propose a novel attributes encoder for extracting multi-level target face attributes, and a new generator with carefully designed Adaptive Attentional Denormalization (AAD) layers to adaptively integrate the identity and the attributes for face synthesis. To address the challenging facial occlusions, we append a second stage consisting of a novel Heuristic Error Acknowledging Refinement Network (HEAR-Net). It is trained to recover anomaly regions in a self-supervised way without any manual annotations. Extensive experiments on wild faces demonstrate that our face swapping results are not only considerably more perceptually appealing, but also better identity preserving in comparison to other state-of-the-art methods.
Essential Sentences for Navigating Stack Overflow Answers
Authors: Sarah Nadi, Christoph Treude
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Sentence

Stack Overflow (SO) has become an essential resource for software development. Despite its success and prevalence, navigating SO remains a challenge. Ideally, SO users could benefit from highlighted navigational cues that help them decide if an answer is relevant to their task and context. Such navigational cues could be in the form of essential sentences that help the searcher decide whether they want to read the answer or skip over it. In this paper, we compare four potential approaches for identifying essential sentences. We adopt two existing approaches and develop two new approaches based on the idea that contextual information in a sentence (e.g., "if using windows") could help identify essential sentences. We compare the four techniques using a survey of 43 participants. Our participants indicate that it is not always easy to figure out what the best solution for their specific problem is, given the options, and that they would indeed like to easily spot contextual information that may narrow down the search. Our quantitative comparison of the techniques shows that there is no single technique sufficient for identifying essential sentences that can serve as navigational cues, while our qualitative analysis shows that participants valued explanations and specific conditions, and did not value filler sentences or speculations. Our work sheds light on the importance of navigational cues, and our findings can be used to guide future research to find the best combination of techniques to identify such cues.
BIRL: Benchmark on Image Registration methods with Landmark validation
Authors: Jiri Borovec
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00
Tasks: BIRL, Image Registration, Medical Image Registration

This report presents a generic image registration benchmark with automatic evaluation using landmark annotations. The key features of the BIRL framework are: easily extendable, performance evaluation, parallel experimentation, simple visualisations, experiment's time-out limit, resuming unfinished experiments. From the research practice, we identified and focused on these two main use-cases: (a) comparison of user's (newly developed) method with some State-of-the-Art (SOTA) methods on a common dataset and (b) experimenting SOTA methods on user's custom dataset (which should contain landmark annotation). Moreover, we present an integration of several standard image registration methods aiming at biomedical imaging into the BIRL framework. This report also contains experimental results of these SOTA methods on the CIMA dataset, which is a dataset of Whole Slice Imaging (WSI) from histology/pathology containing several multi-stain tissue samples from three tissue kinds. Source and results: https://borda.github.io/BIRL
Robust Aggregation for Federated Learning
Authors: Krishna Pillutla, Sham M. Kakade, Zaid Harchaoui
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00
Proceeding: arXiv preprint 2019 12
Tasks: Additive models, Federated Learning, Privacy Preserving

Federated learning is the centralized training of statistical models from decentralized data on mobile devices while preserving the privacy of each device. We present a robust aggregation approach to make federated learning robust to settings when a fraction of the devices may be sending corrupted updates to the server. The approach relies on a robust aggregation oracle based on the geometric median, which returns a robust aggregate using a constant number of iterations of a regular non-robust averaging oracle. The robust aggregation oracle is privacy-preserving, similar to the non-robust secure average oracle it builds upon. We establish its convergence for least squares estimation of additive models. We provide experimental results with linear models and deep networks for three tasks in computer vision and natural language processing. The robust aggregation approach is agnostic to the level of corruption; it outperforms the classical aggregation approach in terms of robustness when the level of corruption is high, while being competitive in the regime of low corruption. Two variants, a faster one with one-step robust aggregation and another one with on-device personalization, round off the paper.
Approximate Inference for Fully Bayesian Gaussian Process Regression
Authors: Vidhi Lalchand, Carl Edward Rasmussen
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00
Proceeding: pproximateinference AABI Symposium 2019 12
Tasks: GPR, regression, Variational Inference

Learning in Gaussian Process models occurs through the adaptation of hyperparameters of the mean and the covariance function. The classical approach entails maximizing the marginal likelihood yielding fixed point estimates (an approach called \textit{Type II maximum likelihood} or ML-II). An alternative learning procedure is to infer the posterior over hyperparameters in a hierarchical specification of GPs we call \textit{Fully Bayesian Gaussian Process Regression} (GPR). This work considers two approximation schemes for the intractable hyperparameter posterior: 1) Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) yielding a sampling-based approximation and 2) Variational Inference (VI) where the posterior over hyperparameters is approximated by a factorized Gaussian (mean-field) or a full-rank Gaussian accounting for correlations between hyperparameters. We analyze the predictive performance for fully Bayesian GPR on a range of benchmark data sets.
Towards Neural-Guided Program Synthesis for Linear Temporal Logic Specifications
Authors: Alberto Camacho, Sheila A. McIlraith
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Program Synthesis

Synthesizing a program that realizes a logical specification is a classical problem in computer science. We examine a particular type of program synthesis, where the objective is to synthesize a strategy that reacts to a potentially adversarial environment while ensuring that all executions satisfy a Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) specification. Unfortunately, exact methods to solve so-called LTL synthesis via logical inference do not scale. In this work, we cast LTL synthesis as an optimization problem. We employ a neural network to learn a Q-function that is then used to guide search, and to construct programs that are subsequently verified for correctness. Our method is unique in combining search with deep learning to realize LTL synthesis. In our experiments the learned Q-function provides effective guidance for synthesis problems with relatively small specifications.
Learning Wavefront Coding for Extended Depth of Field Imaging
Authors: Ugur Akpinar, Erdem Sahin, Monjurul Meem, Rajesh Menon, Atanas Gotchev
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Deblurring

Depth of field is an important factor of imaging systems that highly affects the quality of the acquired spatial information. Extended depth of field (EDoF) imaging is a challenging ill-posed problem and has been extensively addressed in the literature. We propose a computational imaging approach for EDoF, where we employ wavefront coding via a diffractive optical element (DOE) and we achieve deblurring through a convolutional neural network. Thanks to the end-to-end differentiable modeling of optical image formation and computational post-processing, we jointly optimize the optical design, i.e., DOE, and the deblurring through standard gradient descent methods. Based on the properties of the underlying refractive lens and the desired EDoF range, we provide an analytical expression for the search space of the DOE, which is instrumental in the convergence of the end-to-end network. We achieve superior EDoF imaging performance compared to the state of the art, where we demonstrate results with minimal artifacts in various scenarios, including deep 3D scenes and broadband imaging.
Risk of the Least Squares Minimum Norm Estimator under the Spike Covariance Model
Authors: Yasaman Mahdaviyeh, Zacharie Naulet
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00

We study risk of the minimum norm linear least squares estimator in when the number of parameters $d$ depends on $n$, and $\frac{d}{n} \rightarrow \infty$. We assume that data has an underlying low rank structure by restricting ourselves to spike covariance matrices, where a fixed finite number of eigenvalues grow with $n$ and are much larger than the rest of the eigenvalues, which are (asymptotically) in the same order. We show that in this setting risk of minimum norm least squares estimator vanishes in compare to risk of the null estimator. We give asymptotic and non asymptotic upper bounds for this risk, and also leverage the assumption of spike model to give an analysis of the bias that leads to tighter bounds in compare to previous works.
On the Role of Weight Sharing During Deep Option Learning
Authors: Matthew Riemer, Ignacio Cases, Clemens Rosenbaum, Miao Liu, Gerald Tesauro
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Atari Games, Reinforcement Learning

The options framework is a popular approach for building temporally extended actions in reinforcement learning. In particular, the option-critic architecture provides general purpose policy gradient theorems for learning actions from scratch that are extended in time. However, past work makes the key assumption that each of the components of option-critic has independent parameters. In this work we note that while this key assumption of the policy gradient theorems of option-critic holds in the tabular case, it is always violated in practice for the deep function approximation setting. We thus reconsider this assumption and consider more general extensions of option-critic and hierarchical option-critic training that optimize for the full architecture with each update. It turns out that not assuming parameter independence challenges a belief in prior work that training the policy over options can be disentangled from the dynamics of the underlying options. In fact, learning can be sped up by focusing the policy over options on states where options are actually likely to terminate. We put our new algorithms to the test in application to sample efficient learning of Atari games, and demonstrate significantly improved stability and faster convergence when learning long options.
Morphology-Agnostic Visual Robotic Control
Authors: Brian Yang, Dinesh Jayaraman, Glen Berseth, Alexei Efros, Sergey Levine
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00

Existing approaches for visuomotor robotic control typically require characterizing the robot in advance by calibrating the camera or performing system identification. We propose MAVRIC, an approach that works with minimal prior knowledge of the robot's morphology, and requires only a camera view containing the robot and its environment and an unknown control interface. MAVRIC revolves around a mutual information-based method for self-recognition, which discovers visual "control points" on the robot body within a few seconds of exploratory interaction, and these control points in turn are then used for visual servoing. MAVRIC can control robots with imprecise actuation, no proprioceptive feedback, unknown morphologies including novel tools, unknown camera poses, and even unsteady handheld cameras. We demonstrate our method on visually-guided 3D point reaching, trajectory following, and robot-to-robot imitation.
A Dynamic Sampling Adaptive-SGD Method for Machine Learning
Authors: Achraf Bahamou, Donald Goldfarb
Date: 2019-12-31 00:00:00
Tasks: BIG-bench Machine Learning, Stochastic Optimization

We propose a stochastic optimization method for minimizing loss functions, expressed as an expected value, that adaptively controls the batch size used in the computation of gradient approximations and the step size used to move along such directions, eliminating the need for the user to tune the learning rate. The proposed method exploits local curvature information and ensures that search directions are descent directions with high probability using an acute-angle test and can be used as a method that has a global linear rate of convergence on self-concordant functions with high probability. Numerical experiments show that this method is able to choose the best learning rates and compares favorably to fine-tuned SGD for training logistic regression and DNNs. We also propose an adaptive version of ADAM that eliminates the need to tune the base learning rate and compares favorably to fine-tuned ADAM on training DNNs. In our DNN experiments, we rarely encountered negative curvature at the current point along the step direction in DNNs.