pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Unsupervised Discovery, Control, and Disentanglement of Semantic Attributes with Applications to Anomaly Detection
Authors: William Paul, I-Jeng Wang, Fady Alajaji, Philippe Burlina
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Anomaly Detection, Attribute, Disentanglement, Image Generation, LEMMA, Representation Learning, Style Transfer

Our work focuses on unsupervised and generative methods that address the following goals: (a) learning unsupervised generative representations that discover latent factors controlling image semantic attributes, (b) studying how this ability to control attributes formally relates to the issue of latent factor disentanglement, clarifying related but dissimilar concepts that had been confounded in the past, and (c) developing anomaly detection methods that leverage representations learned in (a). For (a), we propose a network architecture that exploits the combination of multiscale generative models with mutual information (MI) maximization. For (b), we derive an analytical result (Lemma 1) that brings clarity to two related but distinct concepts: the ability of generative networks to control semantic attributes of images they generate, resulting from MI maximization, and the ability to disentangle latent space representations, obtained via total correlation minimization. More specifically, we demonstrate that maximizing semantic attribute control encourages disentanglement of latent factors. Using Lemma 1 and adopting MI in our loss function, we then show empirically that, for image generation tasks, the proposed approach exhibits superior performance as measured in the quality and disentanglement trade space, when compared to other state of the art methods, with quality assessed via the Frechet Inception Distance (FID), and disentanglement via mutual information gap. For (c), we design several systems for anomaly detection exploiting representations learned in (a), and demonstrate their performance benefits when compared to state-of-the-art generative and discriminative algorithms. The above contributions in representation learning have potential applications in addressing other important problems in computer vision, such as bias and privacy in AI.
Data-driven super-parameterization using deep learning: Experimentation with multi-scale Lorenz 96 systems and transfer-learning
Authors: Ashesh Chattopadhyay, Adam Subel, Pedram Hassanzadeh
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Transfer Learning

To make weather/climate modeling computationally affordable, small-scale processes are usually represented in terms of the large-scale, explicitly-resolved processes using physics-based or semi-empirical parameterization schemes. Another approach, computationally more demanding but often more accurate, is super-parameterization (SP), which involves integrating the equations of small-scale processes on high-resolution grids embedded within the low-resolution grids of large-scale processes. Recently, studies have used machine learning (ML) to develop data-driven parameterization (DD-P) schemes. Here, we propose a new approach, data-driven SP (DD-SP), in which the equations of the small-scale processes are integrated data-drivenly using ML methods such as recurrent neural networks. Employing multi-scale Lorenz 96 systems as testbed, we compare the cost and accuracy (in terms of both short-term prediction and long-term statistics) of parameterized low-resolution (LR), SP, DD-P, and DD-SP models. We show that with the same computational cost, DD-SP substantially outperforms LR, and is better than DD-P, particularly when scale separation is lacking. DD-SP is much cheaper than SP, yet its accuracy is the same in reproducing long-term statistics and often comparable in short-term forecasting. We also investigate generalization, finding that when models trained on data from one system are applied to a system with different forcing (e.g., more chaotic), the models often do not generalize, particularly when the short-term prediction accuracy is examined. But we show that transfer-learning, which involves re-training the data-driven model with a small amount of data from the new system, significantly improves generalization. Potential applications of DD-SP and transfer-learning in climate/weather modeling and the expected challenges are discussed.
Topologically sensitive metaheuristics
Authors: Aleksandar Kartelj, Vladimir Filipović, Siniša Vrećica, Rade Živaljević
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00

This paper proposes topologically sensitive metaheuristics, and describes conceptual design of topologically sensitive Variable Neighborhood Search method (TVNS) and topologically sensitive Electromagnetism Metaheuristic (TEM).
Smoothing Graphons for Modelling Exchangeable Relational Data
Authors: Xuhui Fan, Yaqiong Li, Ling Chen, Bin Li, Scott A. Sisson
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Link Prediction, Stochastic Block Model

Modelling exchangeable relational data can be described by \textit{graphon theory}. Most Bayesian methods for modelling exchangeable relational data can be attributed to this framework by exploiting different forms of graphons. However, the graphons adopted by existing Bayesian methods are either piecewise-constant functions, which are insufficiently flexible for accurate modelling of the relational data, or are complicated continuous functions, which incur heavy computational costs for inference. In this work, we introduce a smoothing procedure to piecewise-constant graphons to form {\em smoothing graphons}, which permit continuous intensity values for describing relations, but without impractically increasing computational costs. In particular, we focus on the Bayesian Stochastic Block Model (SBM) and demonstrate how to adapt the piecewise-constant SBM graphon to the smoothed version. We initially propose the Integrated Smoothing Graphon (ISG) which introduces one smoothing parameter to the SBM graphon to generate continuous relational intensity values. We then develop the Latent Feature Smoothing Graphon (LFSG), which improves on the ISG by introducing auxiliary hidden labels to decompose the calculation of the ISG intensity and enable efficient inference. Experimental results on real-world data sets validate the advantages of applying smoothing strategies to the Stochastic Block Model, demonstrating that smoothing graphons can greatly improve AUC and precision for link prediction without increasing computational complexity.
Fundamental Issues Regarding Uncertainties in Artificial Neural Networks
Authors: Neil A. Thacker, Carole J. Twining, Paul D. Tar, Scott Notley, Visvanathan Ramesh
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) implement a specific form of multi-variate extrapolation and will generate an output for any input pattern, even when there is no similar training pattern. Extrapolations are not necessarily to be trusted, and in order to support safety critical systems, we require such systems to give an indication of the training sample related uncertainty associated with their output. Some readers may think that this is a well known issue which is already covered by the basic principles of pattern recognition. We will explain below how this is not the case and how the conventional (Likelihood estimate of) conditional probability of classification does not correctly assess this uncertainty. We provide a discussion of the standard interpretations of this problem and show how a quantitative approach based upon long standing methods can be practically applied. The methods are illustrated on the task of early diagnosis of dementing diseases using Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
TxSim:Modeling Training of Deep Neural Networks on Resistive Crossbar Systems
Authors: Sourjya Roy, Shrihari Sridharan, Shubham Jain, Anand Raghunathan
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Computational Efficiency

Resistive crossbars have attracted significant interest in the design of Deep Neural Network (DNN) accelerators due to their ability to natively execute massively parallel vector-matrix multiplications within dense memory arrays. However, crossbar-based computations face a major challenge due to a variety of device and circuit-level non-idealities, which manifest as errors in the vector-matrix multiplications and eventually degrade DNN accuracy. To address this challenge, there is a need for tools that can model the functional impact of non-idealities on DNN training and inference. Existing efforts towards this goal are either limited to inference, or are too slow to be used for large-scale DNN training. We propose TxSim, a fast and customizable modeling framework to functionally evaluate DNN training on crossbar-based hardware considering the impact of non-idealities. The key features of TxSim that differentiate it from prior efforts are: (i) It comprehensively models non-idealities during all training operations (forward propagation, backward propagation, and weight update) and (ii) it achieves computational efficiency by mapping crossbar evaluations to well-optimized BLAS routines and incorporates speedup techniques to further reduce simulation time with minimal impact on accuracy. TxSim achieves orders-of-magnitude improvement in simulation speed over prior works, and thereby makes it feasible to evaluate training of large-scale DNNs on crossbars. Our experiments using TxSim reveal that the accuracy degradation in DNN training due to non-idealities can be substantial (3%-10%) for large-scale DNNs, underscoring the need for further research in mitigation techniques. We also analyze the impact of various device and circuit-level parameters and the associated non-idealities to provide key insights that can guide the design of crossbar-based DNN training accelerators.
End-to-End Entity Linking and Disambiguation leveraging Word and Knowledge Graph Embeddings
Authors: Rostislav Nedelchev, Debanjan Chaudhuri, Jens Lehmann, Asja Fischer
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Entity Disambiguation, Entity Linking, Knowledge Graph Embeddings, Question Answering, Relation, Relation Linking, Word Embeddings

Entity linking - connecting entity mentions in a natural language utterance to knowledge graph (KG) entities is a crucial step for question answering over KGs. It is often based on measuring the string similarity between the entity label and its mention in the question. The relation referred to in the question can help to disambiguate between entities with the same label. This can be misleading if an incorrect relation has been identified in the relation linking step. However, an incorrect relation may still be semantically similar to the relation in which the correct entity forms a triple within the KG; which could be captured by the similarity of their KG embeddings. Based on this idea, we propose the first end-to-end neural network approach that employs KG as well as word embeddings to perform joint relation and entity classification of simple questions while implicitly performing entity disambiguation with the help of a novel gating mechanism. An empirical evaluation shows that the proposed approach achieves a performance comparable to state-of-the-art entity linking while requiring less post-processing.
Dynamic Incentive-aware Learning: Robust Pricing in Contextual Auctions
Authors: Negin Golrezaei, Adel Javanmard, Vahab Mirrokni
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2019 12

Motivated by pricing in ad exchange markets, we consider the problem of robust learning of reserve prices against strategic buyers in repeated contextual second-price auctions. Buyers' valuations for an item depend on the context that describes the item. However, the seller is not aware of the relationship between the context and buyers' valuations, i.e., buyers' preferences. The seller's goal is to design a learning policy to set reserve prices via observing the past sales data, and her objective is to minimize her regret for revenue, where the regret is computed against a clairvoyant policy that knows buyers' heterogeneous preferences. Given the seller's goal, utility-maximizing buyers have the incentive to bid untruthfully in order to manipulate the seller's learning policy. We propose learning policies that are robust to such strategic behavior. These policies use the outcomes of the auctions, rather than the submitted bids, to estimate the preferences while controlling the long-term effect of the outcome of each auction on the future reserve prices. When the market noise distribution is known to the seller, we propose a policy called Contextual Robust Pricing (CORP) that achieves a T-period regret of $O(d\log(Td) \log (T))$, where $d$ is the dimension of {the} contextual information. When the market noise distribution is unknown to the seller, we propose two policies whose regrets are sublinear in $T$.
CausalML: Python Package for Causal Machine Learning
Authors: Huigang Chen, Totte Harinen, Jeong-Yoon Lee, Mike Yung, Zhenyu Zhao
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Tasks: BIG-bench Machine Learning, Causal Inference

CausalML is a Python implementation of algorithms related to causal inference and machine learning. Algorithms combining causal inference and machine learning have been a trending topic in recent years. This package tries to bridge the gap between theoretical work on methodology and practical applications by making a collection of methods in this field available in Python. This paper introduces the key concepts, scope, and use cases of this package.
Benchmarking Network Embedding Models for Link Prediction: Are We Making Progress?
Authors: Alexandru Mara, Jefrey Lijffijt, Tijl De Bie
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Benchmarking, Link Prediction, Network Embedding, Prediction, Representation Learning

Network embedding methods map a network's nodes to vectors in an embedding space, in such a way that these representations are useful for estimating some notion of similarity or proximity between pairs of nodes in the network. The quality of these node representations is then showcased through results of downstream prediction tasks. Commonly used benchmark tasks such as link prediction, however, present complex evaluation pipelines and an abundance of design choices. This, together with a lack of standardized evaluation setups can obscure the real progress in the field. In this paper, we aim to shed light on the state-of-the-art of network embedding methods for link prediction and show, using a consistent evaluation pipeline, that only thin progress has been made over the last years. The newly conducted benchmark that we present here, including 17 embedding methods, also shows that many approaches are outperformed even by simple heuristics. Finally, we argue that standardized evaluation tools can repair this situation and boost future progress in this field.
IoT Device Identification Using Deep Learning
Authors: Jaidip Kotak, Yuval Elovici
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Learning, Feature Engineering, IoT Device Identification

The growing use of IoT devices in organizations has increased the number of attack vectors available to attackers due to the less secure nature of the devices. The widely adopted bring your own device (BYOD) policy which allows an employee to bring any IoT device into the workplace and attach it to an organization's network also increases the risk of attacks. In order to address this threat, organizations often implement security policies in which only the connection of white-listed IoT devices is permitted. To monitor adherence to such policies and protect their networks, organizations must be able to identify the IoT devices connected to their networks and, more specifically, to identify connected IoT devices that are not on the white-list (unknown devices). In this study, we applied deep learning on network traffic to automatically identify IoT devices connected to the network. In contrast to previous work, our approach does not require that complex feature engineering be applied on the network traffic, since we represent the communication behavior of IoT devices using small images built from the IoT devices network traffic payloads. In our experiments, we trained a multiclass classifier on a publicly available dataset, successfully identifying 10 different IoT devices and the traffic of smartphones and computers, with over 99% accuracy. We also trained multiclass classifiers to detect unauthorized IoT devices connected to the network, achieving over 99% overall average detection accuracy.
Relaxed Scheduling for Scalable Belief Propagation
Authors: Vitaly Aksenov, Dan Alistarh, Janne H. Korhonen
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Tasks: BIG-bench Machine Learning, Scheduling

The ability to leverage large-scale hardware parallelism has been one of the key enablers of the accelerated recent progress in machine learning. Consequently, there has been considerable effort invested into developing efficient parallel variants of classic machine learning algorithms. However, despite the wealth of knowledge on parallelization, some classic machine learning algorithms often prove hard to parallelize efficiently while maintaining convergence. In this paper, we focus on efficient parallel algorithms for the key machine learning task of inference on graphical models, in particular on the fundamental belief propagation algorithm. We address the challenge of efficiently parallelizing this classic paradigm by showing how to leverage scalable relaxed schedulers in this context. We present an extensive empirical study, showing that our approach outperforms previous parallel belief propagation implementations both in terms of scalability and in terms of wall-clock convergence time, on a range of practical applications.
Dual Graph Representation Learning
Authors: Huiling Zhu, Xin Luo, Hankz Hankui Zhuo
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Graph Representation Learning, Representation Learning

Graph representation learning embeds nodes in large graphs as low-dimensional vectors and is of great benefit to many downstream applications. Most embedding frameworks, however, are inherently transductive and unable to generalize to unseen nodes or learn representations across different graphs. Although inductive approaches can generalize to unseen nodes, they neglect different contexts of nodes and cannot learn node embeddings dually. In this paper, we present a context-aware unsupervised dual encoding framework, \textbf{CADE}, to generate representations of nodes by combining real-time neighborhoods with neighbor-attentioned representation, and preserving extra memory of known nodes. We exhibit that our approach is effective by comparing to state-of-the-art methods.
A Node Embedding Framework for Integration of Similarity-based Drug Combination Prediction
Authors: Liang Yu, Mingfei Xia, Lin Gao
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Network Embedding

Motivation: Drug combination is a sensible strategy for disease treatment by improving the efficacy and reducing concomitant side effects. Due to the large number of possible combinations among candidate compounds, exhaustive screening is prohibitive. Currently, a plenty of studies have focused on predicting potential drug combinations. However, these methods are not entirely satisfactory in performance and scalability. Results: In this paper, we proposed a Network Embedding framework in Multiplex Networks (NEMN) to predict synthetic drug combinations. Based on a multiplex drug similarity network, we offered alternative methods to integrate useful information from different aspects and to decide quantitative importance of each network. To explain the feasibility of NEMN, we applied our framework to the data of drug-drug interactions, on which it showed better performance in terms of AUPR and ROC. For Drug combination prediction, we found seven novel drug combinations which have been validated by external sources among the top-ranked predictions of our model.
Very simple statistical evidence that AlphaGo has exceeded human limits in playing GO game
Authors: Okyu Kwon
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Learning

Deep learning technology is making great progress in solving the challenging problems of artificial intelligence, hence machine learning based on artificial neural networks is in the spotlight again. In some areas, artificial intelligence based on deep learning is beyond human capabilities. It seemed extremely difficult for a machine to beat a human in a Go game, but AlphaGo has shown to beat a professional player in the game. By looking at the statistical distribution of the distance in which the Go stones are laid in succession, we find a clear trace that Alphago has surpassed human abilities. The AlphaGo than professional players and professional players than ordinary players shows the laying of stones in the distance becomes more frequent. In addition, AlphaGo shows a much more pronounced difference than that of ordinary players and professional players.
CookGAN: Meal Image Synthesis from Ingredients
Authors: Fangda Han, Ricardo Guerrero, Vladimir Pavlovic
Date: 2020-02-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Image Generation

In this work we propose a new computational framework, based on generative deep models, for synthesis of photo-realistic food meal images from textual list of its ingredients. Previous works on synthesis of images from text typically rely on pre-trained text models to extract text features, followed by generative neural networks (GAN) aimed to generate realistic images conditioned on the text features. These works mainly focus on generating spatially compact and well-defined categories of objects, such as birds or flowers, but meal images are significantly more complex, consisting of multiple ingredients whose appearance and spatial qualities are further modified by cooking methods. To generate real-like meal images from ingredients, we propose Cook Generative Adversarial Networks (CookGAN), CookGAN first builds an attention-based ingredients-image association model, which is then used to condition a generative neural network tasked with synthesizing meal images. Furthermore, a cycle-consistent constraint is added to further improve image quality and control appearance. Experiments show our model is able to generate meal images corresponding to the ingredients.