pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Hypermodels for Exploration
Authors: Vikranth Dwaracherla, Xiuyuan Lu, Morteza Ibrahimi, Ian Osband, Zheng Wen, Benjamin Van Roy
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Proceeding: ICLR 2020 1
Tasks: Thompson Sampling

We study the use of hypermodels to represent epistemic uncertainty and guide exploration. This generalizes and extends the use of ensembles to approximate Thompson sampling. The computational cost of training an ensemble grows with its size, and as such, prior work has typically been limited to ensembles with tens of elements. We show that alternative hypermodels can enjoy dramatic efficiency gains, enabling behavior that would otherwise require hundreds or thousands of elements, and even succeed in situations where ensemble methods fail to learn regardless of size. This allows more accurate approximation of Thompson sampling as well as use of more sophisticated exploration schemes. In particular, we consider an approximate form of information-directed sampling and demonstrate performance gains relative to Thompson sampling. As alternatives to ensembles, we consider linear and neural network hypermodels, also known as hypernetworks. We prove that, with neural network base models, a linear hypermodel can represent essentially any distribution over functions, and as such, hypernetworks are no more expressive.
Learning Causal Models Online
Authors: Khurram Javed, Martha White, Yoshua Bengio
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Continual Learning

Predictive models -- learned from observational data not covering the complete data distribution -- can rely on spurious correlations in the data for making predictions. These correlations make the models brittle and hinder generalization. One solution for achieving strong generalization is to incorporate causal structures in the models; such structures constrain learning by ignoring correlations that contradict them. However, learning these structures is a hard problem in itself. Moreover, it's not clear how to incorporate the machinery of causality with online continual learning. In this work, we take an indirect approach to discovering causal models. Instead of searching for the true causal model directly, we propose an online algorithm that continually detects and removes spurious features. Our algorithm works on the idea that the correlation of a spurious feature with a target is not constant over-time. As a result, the weight associated with that feature is constantly changing. We show that by continually removing such features, our method converges to solutions that have strong generalization. Moreover, our method combined with random search can also discover non-spurious features from raw sensory data. Finally, our work highlights that the information present in the temporal structure of the problem -- destroyed by shuffling the data -- is essential for detecting spurious features online.
An Improved Semi-Supervised VAE for Learning Disentangled Representations
Authors: Weili Nie, Zichao Wang, Ankit B. Patel, Richard G. Baraniuk
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Disentanglement, Representation Learning

Learning interpretable and disentangled representations is a crucial yet challenging task in representation learning. In this work, we focus on semi-supervised disentanglement learning and extend work by Locatello et al. (2019) by introducing another source of supervision that we denote as label replacement. Specifically, during training, we replace the inferred representation associated with a data point with its ground-truth representation whenever it is available. Our extension is theoretically inspired by our proposed general framework of semi-supervised disentanglement learning in the context of VAEs which naturally motivates the supervised terms commonly used in existing semi-supervised VAEs (but not for disentanglement learning). Extensive experiments on synthetic and real datasets demonstrate both quantitatively and qualitatively the ability of our extension to significantly and consistently improve disentanglement with very limited supervision.
Consistent Estimation of Identifiable Nonparametric Mixture Models from Grouped Observations
Authors: Alexander Ritchie, Robert A. Vandermeulen, Clayton Scott
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2020 12

Recent research has established sufficient conditions for finite mixture models to be identifiable from grouped observations. These conditions allow the mixture components to be nonparametric and have substantial (or even total) overlap. This work proposes an algorithm that consistently estimates any identifiable mixture model from grouped observations. Our analysis leverages an oracle inequality for weighted kernel density estimators of the distribution on groups, together with a general result showing that consistent estimation of the distribution on groups implies consistent estimation of mixture components. A practical implementation is provided for paired observations, and the approach is shown to outperform existing methods, especially when mixture components overlap significantly.
Projection Robust Wasserstein Distance and Riemannian Optimization
Authors: Tianyi Lin, Chenyou Fan, Nhat Ho, Marco Cuturi, Michael. I. Jordan
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2020 12
Tasks: Riemannian optimization

Projection robust Wasserstein (PRW) distance, or Wasserstein projection pursuit (WPP), is a robust variant of the Wasserstein distance. Recent work suggests that this quantity is more robust than the standard Wasserstein distance, in particular when comparing probability measures in high-dimensions. However, it is ruled out for practical application because the optimization model is essentially non-convex and non-smooth which makes the computation intractable. Our contribution in this paper is to revisit the original motivation behind WPP/PRW, but take the hard route of showing that, despite its non-convexity and lack of nonsmoothness, and even despite some hardness results proved by~\citet{Niles-2019-Estimation} in a minimax sense, the original formulation for PRW/WPP \textit{can} be efficiently computed in practice using Riemannian optimization, yielding in relevant cases better behavior than its convex relaxation. More specifically, we provide three simple algorithms with solid theoretical guarantee on their complexity bound (one in the appendix), and demonstrate their effectiveness and efficiency by conducing extensive experiments on synthetic and real data. This paper provides a first step into a computational theory of the PRW distance and provides the links between optimal transport and Riemannian optimization.
Detangling robustness in high dimensions: composite versus model-averaged estimation
Authors: Jing Zhou, Gerda Claeskens, Jelena Bradic
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Vocal Bursts Intensity Prediction

Robust methods, though ubiquitous in practice, are yet to be fully understood in the context of regularized estimation and high dimensions. Even simple questions become challenging very quickly. For example, classical statistical theory identifies equivalence between model-averaged and composite quantile estimation. However, little to nothing is known about such equivalence between methods that encourage sparsity. This paper provides a toolbox to further study robustness in these settings and focuses on prediction. In particular, we study optimally weighted model-averaged as well as composite $l_1$-regularized estimation. Optimal weights are determined by minimizing the asymptotic mean squared error. This approach incorporates the effects of regularization, without the assumption of perfect selection, as is often used in practice. Such weights are then optimal for prediction quality. Through an extensive simulation study, we show that no single method systematically outperforms others. We find, however, that model-averaged and composite quantile estimators often outperform least-squares methods, even in the case of Gaussian model noise. Real data application witnesses the method's practical use through the reconstruction of compressed audio signals.
Fast Maximum Likelihood Estimation and Supervised Classification for the Beta-Liouville Multinomial
Authors: Steven Michael Lakin, Zaid Abdo
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Classification, Computational Efficiency, General Classification, parameter estimation

The multinomial and related distributions have long been used to model categorical, count-based data in fields ranging from bioinformatics to natural language processing. Commonly utilized variants include the standard multinomial and the Dirichlet multinomial distributions due to their computational efficiency and straightforward parameter estimation process. However, these distributions make strict assumptions about the mean, variance, and covariance between the categorical features being modeled. If these assumptions are not met by the data, it may result in poor parameter estimates and loss in accuracy for downstream applications like classification. Here, we explore efficient parameter estimation and supervised classification methods using an alternative distribution, called the Beta-Liouville multinomial, which relaxes some of the multinomial assumptions. We show that the Beta-Liouville multinomial is comparable in efficiency to the Dirichlet multinomial for Newton-Raphson maximum likelihood estimation, and that its performance on simulated data matches or exceeds that of the multinomial and Dirichlet multinomial distributions. Finally, we demonstrate that the Beta-Liouville multinomial outperforms the multinomial and Dirichlet multinomial on two out of four gold standard datasets, supporting its use in modeling data with low to medium class overlap in a supervised classification context.
A Unified Learning Platform for Dynamic Frequency Scaling in Pipelined Processors
Authors: Arash Fouman Ajirlou, Inna Partin-Vaisband
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00

A machine learning (ML) design framework is proposed for dynamically adjusting clock frequency based on propagation delay of individual instructions. A Random Forest model is trained to classify propagation delays in real-time, utilizing current operation type, current operands, and computation history as ML features. The trained model is implemented in Verilog as an additional pipeline stage within a baseline processor. The modified system is simulated at the gate-level in 45 nm CMOS technology, exhibiting a speed-up of 68% and energy reduction of 37% with coarse-grained ML classification. A speed-up of 95% is demonstrated with finer granularities at additional energy costs.
Safety-guaranteed Reinforcement Learning based on Multi-class Support Vector Machine
Authors: Kwangyeon Kim, Akshita Gupta, Hong-Cheol Choi, Inseok Hwang
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Q-Learning, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning (RL)

Several works have addressed the problem of incorporating constraints in the reinforcement learning (RL) framework, however majority of them can only guarantee the satisfaction of soft constraints. In this work, we address the problem of satisfying hard state constraints in a model-free RL setting with the deterministic system dynamics. The proposed algorithm is developed for the discrete state and action space and utilizes a multi-class support vector machine (SVM) to represent the policy. The state constraints are incorporated in the SVM optimization framework to derive an analytical solution for determining the policy parameters. This final policy converges to a solution which is guaranteed to satisfy the constraints. Additionally, the proposed formulation adheres to the Q-learning framework and thus, also guarantees convergence to the optimal solution. The algorithm is demonstrated with multiple example problems.
Algorithm for Computing Approximate Nash Equilibrium in Continuous Games with Application to Continuous Blotto
Authors: Sam Ganzfried
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00

Successful algorithms have been developed for computing Nash equilibrium in a variety of finite game classes. However, solving continuous games -- in which the pure strategy space is (potentially uncountably) infinite -- is far more challenging. Nonetheless, many real-world domains have continuous action spaces, e.g., where actions refer to an amount of time, money, or other resource that is naturally modeled as being real-valued as opposed to integral. We present a new algorithm for {approximating} Nash equilibrium strategies in continuous games. In addition to two-player zero-sum games, our algorithm also applies to multiplayer games and games with imperfect information. We experiment with our algorithm on a continuous imperfect-information Blotto game, in which two players distribute resources over multiple battlefields. Blotto games have frequently been used to model national security scenarios and have also been applied to electoral competition and auction theory. Experiments show that our algorithm is able to quickly compute close approximations of Nash equilibrium strategies for this game.
Self-Imitation Learning via Generalized Lower Bound Q-learning
Authors: Yunhao Tang
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2020 12
Tasks: continuous-control, Continuous Control, Imitation Learning, Q-Learning

Self-imitation learning motivated by lower-bound Q-learning is a novel and effective approach for off-policy learning. In this work, we propose a n-step lower bound which generalizes the original return-based lower-bound Q-learning, and introduce a new family of self-imitation learning algorithms. To provide a formal motivation for the potential performance gains provided by self-imitation learning, we show that n-step lower bound Q-learning achieves a trade-off between fixed point bias and contraction rate, drawing close connections to the popular uncorrected n-step Q-learning. We finally show that n-step lower bound Q-learning is a more robust alternative to return-based self-imitation learning and uncorrected n-step, over a wide range of continuous control benchmark tasks.
Attentive Feature Reuse for Multi Task Meta learning
Authors: Kiran Lekkala, Laurent Itti
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Depth Estimation, General Classification, image-classification, Image Classification, Meta-Learning, Surface Normal Estimation

We develop new algorithms for simultaneous learning of multiple tasks (e.g., image classification, depth estimation), and for adapting to unseen task/domain distributions within those high-level tasks (e.g., different environments). First, we learn common representations underlying all tasks. We then propose an attention mechanism to dynamically specialize the network, at runtime, for each task. Our approach is based on weighting each feature map of the backbone network, based on its relevance to a particular task. To achieve this, we enable the attention module to learn task representations during training, which are used to obtain attention weights. Our method improves performance on new, previously unseen environments, and is 1.5x faster than standard existing meta learning methods using similar architectures. We highlight performance improvements for Multi-Task Meta Learning of 4 tasks (image classification, depth, vanishing point, and surface normal estimation), each over 10 to 25 test domains/environments, a result that could not be achieved with standard meta learning techniques like MAML.
Continuous Control for Searching and Planning with a Learned Model
Authors: Xuxi Yang, Werner Duvaud, Peng Wei
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Tasks: continuous-control, Continuous Control, Decision Making, Deep Reinforcement Learning, MuJoCo, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning (RL)

Decision-making agents with planning capabilities have achieved huge success in the challenging domain like Chess, Shogi, and Go. In an effort to generalize the planning ability to the more general tasks where the environment dynamics are not available to the agent, researchers proposed the MuZero algorithm that can learn the dynamical model through the interactions with the environment. In this paper, we provide a way and the necessary theoretical results to extend the MuZero algorithm to more generalized environments with continuous action space. Through numerical results on two relatively low-dimensional MuJoCo environments, we show the proposed algorithm outperforms the soft actor-critic (SAC) algorithm, a state-of-the-art model-free deep reinforcement learning algorithm.
Manifold GPLVMs for discovering non-Euclidean latent structure in neural data
Authors: Kristopher T. Jensen, Ta-Chu Kao, Marco Tripodi, Guillaume Hennequin
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2020 12
Tasks: Variational Inference

A common problem in neuroscience is to elucidate the collective neural representations of behaviorally important variables such as head direction, spatial location, upcoming movements, or mental spatial transformations. Often, these latent variables are internal constructs not directly accessible to the experimenter. Here, we propose a new probabilistic latent variable model to simultaneously identify the latent state and the way each neuron contributes to its representation in an unsupervised way. In contrast to previous models which assume Euclidean latent spaces, we embrace the fact that latent states often belong to symmetric manifolds such as spheres, tori, or rotation groups of various dimensions. We therefore propose the manifold Gaussian process latent variable model (mGPLVM), where neural responses arise from (i) a shared latent variable living on a specific manifold, and (ii) a set of non-parametric tuning curves determining how each neuron contributes to the representation. Cross-validated comparisons of models with different topologies can be used to distinguish between candidate manifolds, and variational inference enables quantification of uncertainty. We demonstrate the validity of the approach on several synthetic datasets, as well as on calcium recordings from the ellipsoid body of Drosophila melanogaster and extracellular recordings from the mouse anterodorsal thalamic nucleus. These circuits are both known to encode head direction, and mGPLVM correctly recovers the ring topology expected from neural populations representing a single angular variable.
Measuring Forecasting Skill from Text
Authors: Shi Zong, Alan Ritter, Eduard Hovy
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Proceeding: ACL 2020 6

People vary in their ability to make accurate predictions about the future. Prior studies have shown that some individuals can predict the outcome of future events with consistently better accuracy. This leads to a natural question: what makes some forecasters better than others? In this paper we explore connections between the language people use to describe their predictions and their forecasting skill. Datasets from two different forecasting domains are explored: (1) geopolitical forecasts from Good Judgment Open, an online prediction forum and (2) a corpus of company earnings forecasts made by financial analysts. We present a number of linguistic metrics which are computed over text associated with people's predictions about the future including: uncertainty, readability, and emotion. By studying linguistic factors associated with predictions, we are able to shed some light on the approach taken by skilled forecasters. Furthermore, we demonstrate that it is possible to accurately predict forecasting skill using a model that is based solely on language. This could potentially be useful for identifying accurate predictions or potentially skilled forecasters earlier.
Defending against GAN-based Deepfake Attacks via Transformation-aware Adversarial Faces
Authors: Chaofei Yang, Lei Ding, Yiran Chen, Hai Li
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Face Swapping

Deepfake represents a category of face-swapping attacks that leverage machine learning models such as autoencoders or generative adversarial networks. Although the concept of the face-swapping is not new, its recent technical advances make fake content (e.g., images, videos) more realistic and imperceptible to Humans. Various detection techniques for Deepfake attacks have been explored. These methods, however, are passive measures against Deepfakes as they are mitigation strategies after the high-quality fake content is generated. More importantly, we would like to think ahead of the attackers with robust defenses. This work aims to take an offensive measure to impede the generation of high-quality fake images or videos. Specifically, we propose to use novel transformation-aware adversarially perturbed faces as a defense against GAN-based Deepfake attacks. Different from the naive adversarial faces, our proposed approach leverages differentiable random image transformations during the generation. We also propose to use an ensemble-based approach to enhance the defense robustness against GAN-based Deepfake variants under the black-box setting. We show that training a Deepfake model with adversarial faces can lead to a significant degradation in the quality of synthesized faces. This degradation is twofold. On the one hand, the quality of the synthesized faces is reduced with more visual artifacts such that the synthesized faces are more obviously fake or less convincing to human observers. On the other hand, the synthesized faces can easily be detected based on various metrics.
BI-MAML: Balanced Incremental Approach for Meta Learning
Authors: Yang Zheng, Jinlin Xiang, Kun Su, Eli Shlizerman
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Tasks: General Classification, image-classification, Image Classification, Meta-Learning

We present a novel Balanced Incremental Model Agnostic Meta Learning system (BI-MAML) for learning multiple tasks. Our method implements a meta-update rule to incrementally adapt its model to new tasks without forgetting old tasks. Such a capability is not possible in current state-of-the-art MAML approaches. These methods effectively adapt to new tasks, however, suffer from 'catastrophic forgetting' phenomena, in which new tasks that are streamed into the model degrade the performance of the model on previously learned tasks. Our system performs the meta-updates with only a few-shots and can successfully accomplish them. Our key idea for achieving this is the design of balanced learning strategy for the baseline model. The strategy sets the baseline model to perform equally well on various tasks and incorporates time efficiency. The balanced learning strategy enables BI-MAML to both outperform other state-of-the-art models in terms of classification accuracy for existing tasks and also accomplish efficient adaption to similar new tasks with less required shots. We evaluate BI-MAML by conducting comparisons on two common benchmark datasets with multiple number of image classification tasks. BI-MAML performance demonstrates advantages in both accuracy and efficiency.
How to Avoid Being Eaten by a Grue: Structured Exploration Strategies for Textual Worlds
Authors: Prithviraj Ammanabrolu, Ethan Tien, Matthew Hausknecht, Mark O. Riedl
Date: 2020-06-12 00:00:00
Tasks: text-based games

Text-based games are long puzzles or quests, characterized by a sequence of sparse and potentially deceptive rewards. They provide an ideal platform to develop agents that perceive and act upon the world using a combinatorially sized natural language state-action space. Standard Reinforcement Learning agents are poorly equipped to effectively explore such spaces and often struggle to overcome bottlenecks---states that agents are unable to pass through simply because they do not see the right action sequence enough times to be sufficiently reinforced. We introduce Q*BERT, an agent that learns to build a knowledge graph of the world by answering questions, which leads to greater sample efficiency. To overcome bottlenecks, we further introduce MC!Q*BERT an agent that uses an knowledge-graph-based intrinsic motivation to detect bottlenecks and a novel exploration strategy to efficiently learn a chain of policy modules to overcome them. We present an ablation study and results demonstrating how our method outperforms the current state-of-the-art on nine text games, including the popular game, Zork, where, for the first time, a learning agent gets past the bottleneck where the player is eaten by a Grue.