pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
AutoDAN: Generating Stealthy Jailbreak Prompts on Aligned Large Language Models
Authors: Xiaogeng Liu, Nan Xu, Muhao Chen, Chaowei Xiao
Date: 2023-10-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

The aligned Large Language Models (LLMs) are powerful language understanding and decision-making tools that are created through extensive alignment with human feedback. However, these large models remain susceptible to jailbreak attacks, where adversaries manipulate prompts to elicit malicious outputs that should not be given by aligned LLMs. Investigating jailbreak prompts can lead us to delve into the limitations of LLMs and further guide us to secure them. Unfortunately, existing jailbreak techniques suffer from either (1) scalability issues, where attacks heavily rely on manual crafting of prompts, or (2) stealthiness problems, as attacks depend on token-based algorithms to generate prompts that are often semantically meaningless, making them susceptible to detection through basic perplexity testing. In light of these challenges, we intend to answer this question: Can we develop an approach that can automatically generate stealthy jailbreak prompts? In this paper, we introduce AutoDAN, a novel jailbreak attack against aligned LLMs. AutoDAN can automatically generate stealthy jailbreak prompts by the carefully designed hierarchical genetic algorithm. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that AutoDAN not only automates the process while preserving semantic meaningfulness, but also demonstrates superior attack strength in cross-model transferability, and cross-sample universality compared with the baseline. Moreover, we also compare AutoDAN with perplexity-based defense methods and show that AutoDAN can bypass them effectively.
Investigating Large Language Models' Perception of Emotion Using Appraisal Theory
Authors: Nutchanon Yongsatianchot, Parisa Ghanad Torshizi, Stacy Marsella
Date: 2023-10-03 00:00:00

Large Language Models (LLM) like ChatGPT have significantly advanced in recent years and are now being used by the general public. As more people interact with these systems, improving our understanding of these black box models is crucial, especially regarding their understanding of human psychological aspects. In this work, we investigate their emotion perception through the lens of appraisal and coping theory using the Stress and Coping Process Questionaire (SCPQ). SCPQ is a validated clinical instrument consisting of multiple stories that evolve over time and differ in key appraisal variables such as controllability and changeability. We applied SCPQ to three recent LLMs from OpenAI, davinci-003, ChatGPT, and GPT-4 and compared the results with predictions from the appraisal theory and human data. The results show that LLMs' responses are similar to humans in terms of dynamics of appraisal and coping, but their responses did not differ along key appraisal dimensions as predicted by the theory and data. The magnitude of their responses is also quite different from humans in several variables. We also found that GPTs can be quite sensitive to instruction and how questions are asked. This work adds to the growing literature evaluating the psychological aspects of LLMs and helps enrich our understanding of the current models.
AbCD: A Component-wise Adjustable Framework for Dynamic Optimization Problems
Authors: Alexandre Mascarenhas, Yuri Lavinas, Claus Aranha
Date: 2023-10-09 00:00:00
Tasks: Evolutionary Algorithms

Dynamic Optimization Problems (DOPs) are characterized by changes in the fitness landscape that can occur at any time and are common in real world applications. The main issues to be considered include detecting the change in the fitness landscape and reacting in accord. Over the years, several evolutionary algorithms have been proposed to take into account this characteristic during the optimization process. However, the number of available tools or open source codebases for these approaches is limited, making reproducibility and extensive experimentation difficult. To solve this, we developed a component-oriented framework for DOPs called Adjustable Components for Dynamic Problems (AbCD), inspired by similar works in the Multiobjective static domain. Using this framework, we investigate components that were proposed in several popular DOP algorithms. Our experiments show that the performance of these components depends on the problem and the selected components used in a configuration, which differs from the results reported in the literature. Using irace, we demonstrate how this framework can automatically generate DOP algorithm configurations that take into account the characteristics of the problem to be solved. Our results highlight existing problems in the DOP field that need to be addressed in the future development of algorithms and components.
Distributed Evolution Strategies with Multi-Level Learning for Large-Scale Black-Box Optimization
Authors: Qiqi Duan, Chang Shao, Guochen Zhou, Minghan Zhang, Qi Zhao, Yuhui Shi
Date: 2023-10-09 00:00:00
Tasks: Benchmarking

In the post-Moore era, main performance gains of black-box optimizers are increasingly depending on parallelism, especially for large-scale optimization (LSO). Here we propose to parallelize the well-established covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES) and in particular its one latest LSO variant called limited-memory CMA-ES (LM-CMA). To achieve efficiency while approximating its powerful invariance property, we present a multilevel learning-based meta-framework for distributed LM-CMA. Owing to its hierarchically organized structure, Meta-ES is well-suited to implement our distributed meta-framework, wherein the outer-ES controls strategy parameters while all parallel inner-ESs run the serial LM-CMA with different settings. For the distribution mean update of the outer-ES, both the elitist and multi-recombination strategy are used in parallel to avoid stagnation and regression, respectively. To exploit spatiotemporal information, the global step-size adaptation combines Meta-ES with the parallel cumulative step-size adaptation. After each isolation time, our meta-framework employs both the structure and parameter learning strategy to combine aligned evolution paths for CMA reconstruction. Experiments on a set of large-scale benchmarking functions with memory-intensive evaluations, arguably reflecting many data-driven optimization problems, validate the benefits (e.g., effectiveness w.r.t. solution quality, and adaptability w.r.t. second-order learning) and costs of our meta-framework.
FM Tone Transfer with Envelope Learning
Authors: Franco Caspe, Andrew McPherson, Mark Sandler
Date: 2023-10-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Diversity

Tone Transfer is a novel deep-learning technique for interfacing a sound source with a synthesizer, transforming the timbre of audio excerpts while keeping their musical form content. Due to its good audio quality results and continuous controllability, it has been recently applied in several audio processing tools. Nevertheless, it still presents several shortcomings related to poor sound diversity, and limited transient and dynamic rendering, which we believe hinder its possibilities of articulation and phrasing in a real-time performance context. In this work, we present a discussion on current Tone Transfer architectures for the task of controlling synthetic audio with musical instruments and discuss their challenges in allowing expressive performances. Next, we introduce Envelope Learning, a novel method for designing Tone Transfer architectures that map musical events using a training objective at the synthesis parameter level. Our technique can render note beginnings and endings accurately and for a variety of sounds; these are essential steps for improving musical articulation, phrasing, and sound diversity with Tone Transfer. Finally, we implement a VST plugin for real-time live use and discuss possibilities for improvement.
What's the Magic Word? A Control Theory of LLM Prompting
Authors: Aman Bhargava, Cameron Witkowski, Shi-Zhuo Looi, Matt Thomson
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Causal Language Modeling, Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Prompt Engineering

Prompt engineering is crucial for deploying LLMs but is poorly understood mathematically. We formalize LLM systems as a class of discrete stochastic dynamical systems to explore prompt engineering through the lens of control theory. We offer a mathematical analysis of the limitations on the controllability of self-attention as a function of the singular values of the parameter matrices. We present complementary empirical results on the controllability of a panel of LLMs, including Falcon-7b, Llama-7b, and Falcon-40b. Given initial state $\mathbf x_0$ from Wikitext and prompts of length $k \leq 10$ tokens, we find that the "correct" next token is reachable at least 97% of the time, and that the top 75 most likely next tokens are reachable at least 85% of the time. Intriguingly, short prompt sequences can dramatically alter the likelihood of specific outputs, even making the least likely tokens become the most likely ones. This control-theoretic analysis of LLMs demonstrates the significant and poorly understood role of input sequences in steering output probabilities, offering a foundational perspective for enhancing language model system capabilities.
Stability Analysis of Non-Linear Classifiers using Gene Regulatory Neural Network for Biological AI
Authors: Adrian Ratwatte, Samitha Somathilaka, Sasitharan Balasubramaniam, Assaf A. Gilad
Date: 2023-09-14 00:00:00
Tasks: Translation

The Gene Regulatory Network (GRN) of biological cells governs a number of key functionalities that enables them to adapt and survive through different environmental conditions. Close observation of the GRN shows that the structure and operational principles resembles an Artificial Neural Network (ANN), which can pave the way for the development of Biological Artificial Intelligence. In particular, a gene's transcription and translation process resembles a sigmoidal-like property based on transcription factor inputs. In this paper, we develop a mathematical model of gene-perceptron using a dual-layered transcription-translation chemical reaction model, enabling us to transform a GRN into a Gene Regulatory Neural Network (GRNN). We perform stability analysis for each gene-perceptron within the fully-connected GRNN sub network to determine temporal as well as stable concentration outputs that will result in reliable computing performance. We focus on a non-linear classifier application for the GRNN, where we analyzed generic multi-layer GRNNs as well as E.Coli GRNN that is derived from trans-omic experimental data. Our analysis found that varying the parameters of the chemical reactions can allow us shift the boundaries of the classification region, laying the platform for programmable GRNNs that suit diverse application requirements.
A New Transformation Approach for Uplift Modeling with Binary Outcome
Authors: Kun Li, Liangshu Zhu
Date: 2023-10-09 00:00:00
Tasks: Marketing

Uplift modeling has been used effectively in fields such as marketing and customer retention, to target those customers who are more likely to respond due to the campaign or treatment. Essentially, it is a machine learning technique that predicts the gain from performing some action with respect to not taking it. A popular class of uplift models is the transformation approach that redefines the target variable with the original treatment indicator. These transformation approaches only need to train and predict the difference in outcomes directly. The main drawback of these approaches is that in general it does not use the information in the treatment indicator beyond the construction of the transformed outcome and usually is not efficient. In this paper, we design a novel transformed outcome for the case of the binary target variable and unlock the full value of the samples with zero outcome. From a practical perspective, our new approach is flexible and easy to use. Experimental results on synthetic and real-world datasets obviously show that our new approach outperforms the traditional one. At present, our new approach has already been applied to precision marketing in a China nation-wide financial holdings group.
Projecting infinite time series graphs to finite marginal graphs using number theory
Authors: Andreas Gerhardus, jonas Wahl, Sofia Faltenbacher, Urmi Ninad, Jakob Runge
Date: 2023-10-09 00:00:00
Tasks: Causal Discovery, Causal Inference, Time Series

In recent years, a growing number of method and application works have adapted and applied the causal-graphical-model framework to time series data. Many of these works employ time-resolved causal graphs that extend infinitely into the past and future and whose edges are repetitive in time, thereby reflecting the assumption of stationary causal relationships. However, most results and algorithms from the causal-graphical-model framework are not designed for infinite graphs. In this work, we develop a method for projecting infinite time series graphs with repetitive edges to marginal graphical models on a finite time window. These finite marginal graphs provide the answers to $m$-separation queries with respect to the infinite graph, a task that was previously unresolved. Moreover, we argue that these marginal graphs are useful for causal discovery and causal effect estimation in time series, effectively enabling to apply results developed for finite graphs to the infinite graphs. The projection procedure relies on finding common ancestors in the to-be-projected graph and is, by itself, not new. However, the projection procedure has not yet been algorithmically implemented for time series graphs since in these infinite graphs there can be infinite sets of paths that might give rise to common ancestors. We solve the search over these possibly infinite sets of paths by an intriguing combination of path-finding techniques for finite directed graphs and solution theory for linear Diophantine equations. By providing an algorithm that carries out the projection, our paper makes an important step towards a theoretically-grounded and method-agnostic generalization of a range of causal inference methods and results to time series.
On the Convergence of Federated Averaging under Partial Participation for Over-parameterized Neural Networks
Authors: Xin Liu, Wei Li, Dazhi Zhan, Yu Pan, Xin Ma, Yu Ding, Zhisong Pan
Date: 2023-10-09 00:00:00
Tasks: Federated Learning

Federated learning (FL) is a widely employed distributed paradigm for collaboratively training machine learning models from multiple clients without sharing local data. In practice, FL encounters challenges in dealing with partial client participation due to the limited bandwidth, intermittent connection and strict synchronized delay. Simultaneously, there exist few theoretical convergence guarantees in this practical setting, especially when associated with the non-convex optimization of neural networks. To bridge this gap, we focus on the training problem of federated averaging (FedAvg) method for two canonical models: a deep linear network and a two-layer ReLU network. Under the over-parameterized assumption, we provably show that FedAvg converges to a global minimum at a linear rate $\mathcal{O}\left((1-\frac{min_{i \in [t]}|S_i|}{N^2})^t\right)$ after $t$ iterations, where $N$ is the number of clients and $|S_i|$ is the number of the participated clients in the $i$-th iteration. Experimental evaluations confirm our theoretical results.
Integration-free Training for Spatio-temporal Multimodal Covariate Deep Kernel Point Processes
Date: 2023-10-09 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2023 11
Tasks: Denoising, Point Processes

In this study, we propose a novel deep spatio-temporal point process model, Deep Kernel Mixture Point Processes (DKMPP), that incorporates multimodal covariate information. DKMPP is an enhanced version of Deep Mixture Point Processes (DMPP), which uses a more flexible deep kernel to model complex relationships between events and covariate data, improving the model's expressiveness. To address the intractable training procedure of DKMPP due to the non-integrable deep kernel, we utilize an integration-free method based on score matching, and further improve efficiency by adopting a scalable denoising score matching method. Our experiments demonstrate that DKMPP and its corresponding score-based estimators outperform baseline models, showcasing the advantages of incorporating covariate information, utilizing a deep kernel, and employing score-based estimators.
Enhancing Interpretability and Generalizability in Extended Isolation Forests
Authors: Alessio Arcudi, Davide Frizzo, Chiara Masiero, Gian Antonio Susto
Date: 2023-10-09 00:00:00
Tasks: Anomaly Detection, Feature Importance, feature selection, valid

Anomaly Detection (AD) focuses on identifying unusual behaviors in complex datasets. Machine Learning (ML) algorithms and Decision Support Systems (DSSs) provide effective solutions for AD, but detecting anomalies alone may not be enough, especially in engineering, where diagnostics and maintenance are crucial. Users need clear explanations to support root cause analysis and build trust in the model. The unsupervised nature of AD, however, makes interpretability a challenge. This paper introduces Extended Isolation Forest Feature Importance (ExIFFI), a method that explains predictions made by Extended Isolation Forest (EIF) models, which split data using hyperplanes. ExIFFI provides explanations at both global and local levels by leveraging feature importance. We also present an improved version, Enhanced Extended Isolation Forest (EIF+), designed to enhance the model's ability to detect unseen anomalies through a revised splitting strategy. Using five synthetic and eleven real-world datasets, we conduct a comparative analysis, evaluating unsupervised AD methods with the Average Precision metric. EIF+ consistently outperforms EIF across all datasets when trained without anomalies, demonstrating better generalization. To assess ExIFFI's interpretability, we introduce the Area Under the Curve of Feature Selection (AUC\_FS), a novel metric using feature selection as a proxy task. ExIFFI outperforms other unsupervised interpretability methods on 8 of 11 real-world datasets and successfully identifies anomalous features in synthetic datasets. When trained only on inliers, ExIFFI also outperforms competing models on real-world data and accurately detects anomalous features in synthetic datasets. We provide open-source code to encourage further research and reproducibility.
Equation Discovery with Bayesian Spike-and-Slab Priors and Efficient Kernels
Authors: Da Long, Wei W. Xing, Aditi S. Krishnapriyan, Robert M. Kirby, Shandian Zhe, Michael W. Mahoney
Date: 2023-10-09 00:00:00
Tasks: Equation Discovery, regression, tensor algebra, Uncertainty Quantification

Discovering governing equations from data is important to many scientific and engineering applications. Despite promising successes, existing methods are still challenged by data sparsity and noise issues, both of which are ubiquitous in practice. Moreover, state-of-the-art methods lack uncertainty quantification and/or are costly in training. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel equation discovery method based on Kernel learning and BAyesian Spike-and-Slab priors (KBASS). We use kernel regression to estimate the target function, which is flexible, expressive, and more robust to data sparsity and noises. We combine it with a Bayesian spike-and-slab prior -- an ideal Bayesian sparse distribution -- for effective operator selection and uncertainty quantification. We develop an expectation-propagation expectation-maximization (EP-EM) algorithm for efficient posterior inference and function estimation. To overcome the computational challenge of kernel regression, we place the function values on a mesh and induce a Kronecker product construction, and we use tensor algebra to enable efficient computation and optimization. We show the advantages of KBASS on a list of benchmark ODE and PDE discovery tasks.
Adversarial Attacks on Combinatorial Multi-Armed Bandits
Authors: Rishab Balasubramanian, Jiawei Li, Prasad Tadepalli, Huazheng Wang, Qingyun Wu, Haoyu Zhao
Date: 2023-10-08 00:00:00
Tasks: Multi-Armed Bandits

We study reward poisoning attacks on Combinatorial Multi-armed Bandits (CMAB). We first provide a sufficient and necessary condition for the attackability of CMAB, a notion to capture the vulnerability and robustness of CMAB. The attackability condition depends on the intrinsic properties of the corresponding CMAB instance such as the reward distributions of super arms and outcome distributions of base arms. Additionally, we devise an attack algorithm for attackable CMAB instances. Contrary to prior understanding of multi-armed bandits, our work reveals a surprising fact that the attackability of a specific CMAB instance also depends on whether the bandit instance is known or unknown to the adversary. This finding indicates that adversarial attacks on CMAB are difficult in practice and a general attack strategy for any CMAB instance does not exist since the environment is mostly unknown to the adversary. We validate our theoretical findings via extensive experiments on real-world CMAB applications including probabilistic maximum covering problem, online minimum spanning tree, cascading bandits for online ranking, and online shortest path.
Clustering Three-Way Data with Outliers
Authors: Katharine M. Clark, Paul D. McNicholas
Date: 2023-10-08 00:00:00
Tasks: Clustering, Time Series

Matrix-variate distributions are a recent addition to the model-based clustering field, thereby making it possible to analyze data in matrix form with complex structure such as images and time series. Due to its recent appearance, there is limited literature on matrix-variate data, with even less on dealing with outliers in these models. An approach for clustering matrix-variate normal data with outliers is discussed. The approach, which uses the distribution of subset log-likelihoods, extends the OCLUST algorithm to matrix-variate normal data and uses an iterative approach to detect and trim outliers.
Simple GNNs with Low Rank Non-parametric Aggregators
Authors: Luciano Vinas, Arash A. Amini
Date: 2023-10-08 00:00:00
Tasks: Benchmarking, Node Classification

We revisit recent spectral GNN approaches to semi-supervised node classification (SSNC). We posit that state-of-the-art (SOTA) GNN architectures may be over-engineered for common SSNC benchmark datasets (citation networks, page-page networks, etc.). By replacing feature aggregation with a non-parametric learner we are able to streamline the GNN design process and avoid many of the engineering complexities associated with SOTA hyperparameter selection (GNN depth, non-linearity choice, feature dropout probability, etc.). Our empirical experiments suggest conventional methods such as non-parametric regression are well suited for semi-supervised learning on sparse, directed networks and a variety of other graph types commonly found in SSNC benchmarks. Additionally, we bring attention to recent changes in evaluation conventions for SSNC benchmarking and how this may have partially contributed to rising performances over time.