pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Adversarial Robustness for Tabular Data through Cost and Utility Awareness
Authors: Klim Kireev, Bogdan Kulynych, Carmela Troncoso
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Abuse Detection, Adversarial Robustness

Many safety-critical applications of machine learning, such as fraud or abuse detection, use data in tabular domains. Adversarial examples can be particularly damaging for these applications. Yet, existing works on adversarial robustness primarily focus on machine-learning models in image and text domains. We argue that, due to the differences between tabular data and images or text, existing threat models are not suitable for tabular domains. These models do not capture that the costs of an attack could be more significant than imperceptibility, or that the adversary could assign different values to the utility obtained from deploying different adversarial examples. We demonstrate that, due to these differences, the attack and defense methods used for images and text cannot be directly applied to tabular settings. We address these issues by proposing new cost and utility-aware threat models that are tailored to the adversarial capabilities and constraints of attackers targeting tabular domains. We introduce a framework that enables us to design attack and defense mechanisms that result in models protected against cost and utility-aware adversaries, for example, adversaries constrained by a certain financial budget. We show that our approach is effective on three datasets corresponding to applications for which adversarial examples can have economic and social implications.
TrojViT: Trojan Insertion in Vision Transformers
Authors: Mengxin Zheng, Qian Lou, Lei Jiang
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00
Proceeding: CVPR 2023 1
Tasks: Backdoor Attack

Vision Transformers (ViTs) have demonstrated the state-of-the-art performance in various vision-related tasks. The success of ViTs motivates adversaries to perform backdoor attacks on ViTs. Although the vulnerability of traditional CNNs to backdoor attacks is well-known, backdoor attacks on ViTs are seldom-studied. Compared to CNNs capturing pixel-wise local features by convolutions, ViTs extract global context information through patches and attentions. Na\"ively transplanting CNN-specific backdoor attacks to ViTs yields only a low clean data accuracy and a low attack success rate. In this paper, we propose a stealth and practical ViT-specific backdoor attack $TrojViT$. Rather than an area-wise trigger used by CNN-specific backdoor attacks, TrojViT generates a patch-wise trigger designed to build a Trojan composed of some vulnerable bits on the parameters of a ViT stored in DRAM memory through patch salience ranking and attention-target loss. TrojViT further uses minimum-tuned parameter update to reduce the bit number of the Trojan. Once the attacker inserts the Trojan into the ViT model by flipping the vulnerable bits, the ViT model still produces normal inference accuracy with benign inputs. But when the attacker embeds a trigger into an input, the ViT model is forced to classify the input to a predefined target class. We show that flipping only few vulnerable bits identified by TrojViT on a ViT model using the well-known RowHammer can transform the model into a backdoored one. We perform extensive experiments of multiple datasets on various ViT models. TrojViT can classify $99.64\%$ of test images to a target class by flipping $345$ bits on a ViT for ImageNet.Our codes are available at https://github.com/mxzheng/TrojViT
Neural Observer with Lyapunov Stability Guarantee for Uncertain Nonlinear Systems
Authors: Song Chen, Shengze Cai, Tehuan Chen, Chao Xu, Jian Chu
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00

In this paper, we propose a novel nonlinear observer based on neural networks, called neural observer, for observation tasks of linear time-invariant (LTI) systems and uncertain nonlinear systems. In particular, the neural observer designed for uncertain systems is inspired by the active disturbance rejection control, which can measure the uncertainty in real-time. The stability analysis (e.g., exponential convergence rate) of LTI and uncertain nonlinear systems (involving neural observers) are presented and guaranteed, where it is shown that the observation problems can be solved only using the linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Also, it is revealed that the observability and controllability of the system matrices are required to demonstrate the existence of solutions of LMIs. Finally, the effectiveness of neural observers is verified on three simulation cases, including the X-29A aircraft model, the nonlinear pendulum, and the four-wheel steering vehicle.
Deep Kernel Learning of Dynamical Models from High-Dimensional Noisy Data
Authors: Nicolò Botteghi, Mengwu Guo, Christoph Brune
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Vocal Bursts Intensity Prediction

This work proposes a Stochastic Variational Deep Kernel Learning method for the data-driven discovery of low-dimensional dynamical models from high-dimensional noisy data. The framework is composed of an encoder that compresses high-dimensional measurements into low-dimensional state variables, and a latent dynamical model for the state variables that predicts the system evolution over time. The training of the proposed model is carried out in an unsupervised manner, i.e., not relying on labeled data. Our learning method is evaluated on the motion of a pendulum -- a well studied baseline for nonlinear model identification and control with continuous states and control inputs -- measured via high-dimensional noisy RGB images. Results show that the method can effectively denoise measurements, learn compact state representations and latent dynamical models, as well as identify and quantify modeling uncertainties.
Tensor Decomposition based Personalized Federated Learning
Authors: Qing Wang, Jing Jin, Xiaofeng Liu, Huixuan Zong, Yunfeng Shao, Yinchuan Li
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Diversity, Federated Learning, Model Optimization, Personalized Federated Learning, Tensor Decomposition

Federated learning (FL) is a new distributed machine learning framework that can achieve reliably collaborative training without collecting users' private data. However, due to FL's frequent communication and average aggregation strategy, they experience challenges scaling to statistical diversity data and large-scale models. In this paper, we propose a personalized FL framework, named Tensor Decomposition based Personalized Federated learning (TDPFed), in which we design a novel tensorized local model with tensorized linear layers and convolutional layers to reduce the communication cost. TDPFed uses a bi-level loss function to decouple personalized model optimization from the global model learning by controlling the gap between the personalized model and the tensorized local model. Moreover, an effective distributed learning strategy and two different model aggregation strategies are well designed for the proposed TDPFed framework. Theoretical convergence analysis and thorough experiments demonstrate that our proposed TDPFed framework achieves state-of-the-art performance while reducing the communication cost.
Virtual Control Group: Measuring Hidden Performance Metrics
Authors: Moshe Tocker
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Blocking, Causal Inference

Performance metrics measuring in Financial Integrity systems are crucial for maintaining an efficient and cost effective operation. An important performance metric is False Positive Rate. This metric cannot be directly monitored since we don't know for sure if a user is bad once blocked. We present a statistical method based on survey theory and causal inference methods to estimate the false positive rate of the system or a single blocking policy. We also suggest a new approach of outcome matching that in some cases including empirical data outperformed other commonly used methods. The approaches described in this paper can be applied in other Integrity domains such as Cyber Security.
Consistency between ordering and clustering methods for graphs
Authors: Tatsuro Kawamoto, Masaki Ochi, Teruyoshi Kobayashi
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Clustering

A relational dataset is often analyzed by optimally assigning a label to each element through clustering or ordering. While similar characterizations of a dataset would be achieved by both clustering and ordering methods, the former has been studied much more actively than the latter, particularly for the data represented as graphs. This study fills this gap by investigating methodological relationships between several clustering and ordering methods, focusing on spectral techniques. Furthermore, we evaluate the resulting performance of the clustering and ordering methods. To this end, we propose a measure called the label continuity error, which generically quantifies the degree of consistency between a sequence and partition for a set of elements. Based on synthetic and real-world datasets, we evaluate the extents to which an ordering method identifies a module structure and a clustering method identifies a banded structure.
BOBA: Byzantine-Robust Federated Learning with Label Skewness
Authors: Wenxuan Bao, Jun Wu, Jingrui He
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Federated Learning, Selection bias

In federated learning, most existing robust aggregation rules (AGRs) combat Byzantine attacks in the IID setting, where client data is assumed to be independent and identically distributed. In this paper, we address label skewness, a more realistic and challenging non-IID setting, where each client only has access to a few classes of data. In this setting, state-of-the-art AGRs suffer from selection bias, leading to significant performance drop for particular classes; they are also more vulnerable to Byzantine attacks due to the increased variation among gradients of honest clients. To address these limitations, we propose an efficient two-stage method named BOBA. Theoretically, we prove the convergence of BOBA with an error of the optimal order. Our empirical evaluations demonstrate BOBA's superior unbiasedness and robustness across diverse models and datasets when compared to various baselines. Our code is available at https://github.com/baowenxuan/BOBA .
A scalable pipeline for COVID-19: the case study of Germany, Czechia and Poland
Authors: Wildan Abdussalam, Adam Mertel, Kai Fan, Lennart Schüler, Weronika Schlechte-Wełnicz, Justin M. Calabrese
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

Throughout the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, decision makers have relied on forecasting models to determine and implement non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI). In building the forecasting models, continuously updated datasets from various stakeholders including developers, analysts, and testers are required to provide precise predictions. Here we report the design of a scalable pipeline which serves as a data synchronization to support inter-country top-down spatiotemporal observations and forecasting models of COVID-19, named the where2test, for Germany, Czechia and Poland. We have built an operational data store (ODS) using PostgreSQL to continuously consolidate datasets from multiple data sources, perform collaborative work, facilitate high performance data analysis, and trace changes. The ODS has been built not only to store the COVID-19 data from Germany, Czechia, and Poland but also other areas. Employing the dimensional fact model, a schema of metadata is capable of synchronizing the various structures of data from those regions, and is scalable to the entire world. Next, the ODS is populated using batch Extract, Transfer, and Load (ETL) jobs. The SQL queries are subsequently created to reduce the need for pre-processing data for users. The data can then support not only forecasting using a version-controlled Arima-Holt model and other analyses to support decision making, but also risk calculator and optimisation apps. The data synchronization runs at a daily interval, which is displayed at https://www.where2test.de.
Overparameterization from Computational Constraints
Authors: Sanjam Garg, Somesh Jha, Saeed Mahloujifar, Mohammad Mahmoody, Mingyuan Wang
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00

Overparameterized models with millions of parameters have been hugely successful. In this work, we ask: can the need for large models be, at least in part, due to the \emph{computational} limitations of the learner? Additionally, we ask, is this situation exacerbated for \emph{robust} learning? We show that this indeed could be the case. We show learning tasks for which computationally bounded learners need \emph{significantly more} model parameters than what information-theoretic learners need. Furthermore, we show that even more model parameters could be necessary for robust learning. In particular, for computationally bounded learners, we extend the recent result of Bubeck and Sellke [NeurIPS'2021] which shows that robust models might need more parameters, to the computational regime and show that bounded learners could provably need an even larger number of parameters. Then, we address the following related question: can we hope to remedy the situation for robust computationally bounded learning by restricting \emph{adversaries} to also be computationally bounded for sake of obtaining models with fewer parameters? Here again, we show that this could be possible. Specifically, building on the work of Garg, Jha, Mahloujifar, and Mahmoody [ALT'2020], we demonstrate a learning task that can be learned efficiently and robustly against a computationally bounded attacker, while to be robust against an information-theoretic attacker requires the learner to utilize significantly more parameters.
Quantifying French Document Complexity
Authors: Vincent Primpied, David Beauchemin, Richard Khoury
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00

Measuring a document's complexity level is an open challenge, particularly when one is working on a diverse corpus of documents rather than comparing several documents on a similar topic or working on a language other than English. In this paper, we define a methodology to measure the complexity of French documents, using a new general and diversified corpus of texts, the "French Canadian complexity level corpus", and a wide range of metrics. We compare different learning algorithms to this task and contrast their performances and their observations on which characteristics of the texts are more significant to their complexity. Our results show that our methodology gives a general-purpose measurement of text complexity in French.
Network-Level Adversaries in Federated Learning
Authors: Giorgio Severi, Matthew Jagielski, Gökberk Yar, Yuxuan Wang, Alina Oprea, Cristina Nita-Rotaru
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Federated Learning

Federated learning is a popular strategy for training models on distributed, sensitive data, while preserving data privacy. Prior work identified a range of security threats on federated learning protocols that poison the data or the model. However, federated learning is a networked system where the communication between clients and server plays a critical role for the learning task performance. We highlight how communication introduces another vulnerability surface in federated learning and study the impact of network-level adversaries on training federated learning models. We show that attackers dropping the network traffic from carefully selected clients can significantly decrease model accuracy on a target population. Moreover, we show that a coordinated poisoning campaign from a few clients can amplify the dropping attacks. Finally, we develop a server-side defense which mitigates the impact of our attacks by identifying and up-sampling clients likely to positively contribute towards target accuracy. We comprehensively evaluate our attacks and defenses on three datasets, assuming encrypted communication channels and attackers with partial visibility of the network.
Pipeline-Invariant Representation Learning for Neuroimaging
Authors: Xinhui Li, Alex Fedorov, Mrinal Mathur, Anees Abrol, Gregory Kiar, Sergey Plis, Vince Calhoun
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Representation Learning

Deep learning has been widely applied in neuroimaging, including predicting brain-phenotype relationships from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) volumes. MRI data usually requires extensive preprocessing prior to modeling, but variation introduced by different MRI preprocessing pipelines may lead to different scientific findings, even when using the identical data. Motivated by the data-centric perspective, we first evaluate how preprocessing pipeline selection can impact the downstream performance of a supervised learning model. We next propose two pipeline-invariant representation learning methodologies, MPSL and PXL, to improve robustness in classification performance and to capture similar neural network representations. Using 2000 human subjects from the UK Biobank dataset, we demonstrate that proposed models present unique and shared advantages, in particular that MPSL can be used to improve out-of-sample generalization to new pipelines, while PXL can be used to improve within-sample prediction performance. Both MPSL and PXL can learn more similar between-pipeline representations. These results suggest that our proposed models can be applied to mitigate pipeline-related biases, and to improve prediction robustness in brain-phenotype modeling.
A Comprehensive Review of Digital Twin -- Part 2: Roles of Uncertainty Quantification and Optimization, a Battery Digital Twin, and Perspectives
Authors: Adam Thelen, Xiaoge Zhang, Olga Fink, Yan Lu, Sayan Ghosh, Byeng D. Youn, Michael D. Todd, Sankaran Mahadevan, Chao Hu, Zhen Hu
Date: 2022-08-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Uncertainty Quantification

As an emerging technology in the era of Industry 4.0, digital twin is gaining unprecedented attention because of its promise to further optimize process design, quality control, health monitoring, decision and policy making, and more, by comprehensively modeling the physical world as a group of interconnected digital models. In a two-part series of papers, we examine the fundamental role of different modeling techniques, twinning enabling technologies, and uncertainty quantification and optimization methods commonly used in digital twins. This second paper presents a literature review of key enabling technologies of digital twins, with an emphasis on uncertainty quantification, optimization methods, open source datasets and tools, major findings, challenges, and future directions. Discussions focus on current methods of uncertainty quantification and optimization and how they are applied in different dimensions of a digital twin. Additionally, this paper presents a case study where a battery digital twin is constructed and tested to illustrate some of the modeling and twinning methods reviewed in this two-part review. Code and preprocessed data for generating all the results and figures presented in the case study are available on GitHub.
Reducing Computational Complexity of Neural Networks in Optical Channel Equalization: From Concepts to Implementation
Authors: Pedro J. Freire, Antonio Napoli, Diego Arguello Ron, Bernhard Spinnler, Michael Anderson, Wolfgang Schairer, Thomas Bex, Nelson Costa, Sergei K. Turitsyn, Jaroslaw E. Prilepsky
Date: 2022-08-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Bayesian Optimization, Clustering, Model Compression, Quantization

In this paper, a new methodology is proposed that allows for the low-complexity development of neural network (NN) based equalizers for the mitigation of impairments in high-speed coherent optical transmission systems. In this work, we provide a comprehensive description and comparison of various deep model compression approaches that have been applied to feed-forward and recurrent NN designs. Additionally, we evaluate the influence these strategies have on the performance of each NN equalizer. Quantization, weight clustering, pruning, and other cutting-edge strategies for model compression are taken into consideration. In this work, we propose and evaluate a Bayesian optimization-assisted compression, in which the hyperparameters of the compression are chosen to simultaneously reduce complexity and improve performance. In conclusion, the trade-off between the complexity of each compression approach and its performance is evaluated by utilizing both simulated and experimental data in order to complete the analysis. By utilizing optimal compression approaches, we show that it is possible to design an NN-based equalizer that is simpler to implement and has better performance than the conventional digital back-propagation (DBP) equalizer with only one step per span. This is accomplished by reducing the number of multipliers used in the NN equalizer after applying the weighted clustering and pruning algorithms. Furthermore, we demonstrate that an equalizer based on NN can also achieve superior performance while still maintaining the same degree of complexity as the full electronic chromatic dispersion compensation block. We conclude our analysis by highlighting open questions and existing challenges, as well as possible future research directions.
Improving the Efficiency of Gradient Descent Algorithms Applied to Optimization Problems with Dynamical Constraints
Authors: Ion Matei, Maksym Zhenirovskyy, Johan de Kleer, John Maxwell
Date: 2022-08-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Computational Efficiency, GPU, Sensitivity

We introduce two block coordinate descent algorithms for solving optimization problems with ordinary differential equations (ODEs) as dynamical constraints. The algorithms do not need to implement direct or adjoint sensitivity analysis methods to evaluate loss function gradients. They results from reformulation of the original problem as an equivalent optimization problem with equality constraints. The algorithms naturally follow from steps aimed at recovering the gradient-decent algorithm based on ODE solvers that explicitly account for sensitivity of the ODE solution. In our first proposed algorithm we avoid explicitly solving the ODE by integrating the ODE solver as a sequence of implicit constraints. In our second algorithm, we use an ODE solver to reset the ODE solution, but no direct are adjoint sensitivity analysis methods are used. Both algorithm accepts mini-batch implementations and show significant efficiency benefits from GPU-based parallelization. We demonstrate the performance of the algorithms when applied to learning the parameters of the Cucker-Smale model. The algorithms are compared with gradient descent algorithms based on ODE solvers endowed with sensitivity analysis capabilities, for various number of state size, using Pytorch and Jax implementations. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms are at least 4x faster than the Pytorch implementations, and at least 16x faster than Jax implementations. For large versions of the Cucker-Smale model, the Jax implementation is thousands of times faster than the sensitivity analysis-based implementation. In addition, our algorithms generate more accurate results both on training and test data. Such gains in computational efficiency is paramount for algorithms that implement real time parameter estimations, such as diagnosis algorithms.