pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Conversation Group Detection With Spatio-Temporal Context
Authors: Stephanie Tan, David M. J. Tax, Hayley Hung
Date: 2022-06-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Graph Clustering

In this work, we propose an approach for detecting conversation groups in social scenarios like cocktail parties and networking events, from overhead camera recordings. We posit the detection of conversation groups as a learning problem that could benefit from leveraging the spatial context of the surroundings, and the inherent temporal context in interpersonal dynamics which is reflected in the temporal dynamics in human behavior signals, an aspect that has not been addressed in recent prior works. This motivates our approach which consists of a dynamic LSTM-based deep learning model that predicts continuous pairwise affinity values indicating how likely two people are in the same conversation group. These affinity values are also continuous in time, since relationships and group membership do not occur instantaneously, even though the ground truths of group membership are binary. Using the predicted affinity values, we apply a graph clustering method based on Dominant Set extraction to identify the conversation groups. We benchmark the proposed method against established methods on multiple social interaction datasets. Our results showed that the proposed method improves group detection performance in data that has more temporal granularity in conversation group labels. Additionally, we provide an analysis in the predicted affinity values in relation to the conversation group detection. Finally, we demonstrate the usability of the predicted affinity values in a forecasting framework to predict group membership for a given forecast horizon.
Adversarial RAW: Image-Scaling Attack Against Imaging Pipeline
Authors: Junjian Li, Honglong Chen
Date: 2022-06-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Adversarial Attack

Deep learning technologies have become the backbone for the development of computer vision. With further explorations, deep neural networks have been found vulnerable to well-designed adversarial attacks. Most of the vision devices are equipped with image signal processing (ISP) pipeline to implement RAW-to-RGB transformations and embedded into data preprocessing module for efficient image processing. Actually, ISP pipeline can introduce adversarial behaviors to post-capture images while data preprocessing may destroy attack patterns. However, none of the existing adversarial attacks takes into account the impacts of both ISP pipeline and data preprocessing. In this paper, we develop an image-scaling attack targeting on ISP pipeline, where the crafted adversarial RAW can be transformed into attack image that presents entirely different appearance once being scaled to a specific-size image. We first consider the gradient-available ISP pipeline, i.e., the gradient information can be directly used in the generation process of adversarial RAW to launch the attack. To make the adversarial attack more applicable, we further consider the gradient-unavailable ISP pipeline, in which a proxy model that well learns the RAW-to-RGB transformations is proposed as the gradient oracles. Extensive experiments show that the proposed adversarial attacks can craft adversarial RAW data against the target ISP pipelines with high attack rates.
Robustness Evaluation and Adversarial Training of an Instance Segmentation Model
Authors: Jacob Bond, Andrew Lingg
Date: 2022-06-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Instance Segmentation, Lane Detection, Semantic Segmentation

To evaluate the robustness of non-classifier models, we propose probabilistic local equivalence, based on the notion of randomized smoothing, as a way to quantitatively evaluate the robustness of an arbitrary function. In addition, to understand the effect of adversarial training on non-classifiers and to investigate the level of robustness that can be obtained without degrading performance on the training distribution, we apply Fast is Better than Free adversarial training together with the TRADES robust loss to the training of an instance segmentation network. In this direction, we were able to achieve a symmetric best dice score of 0.85 on the TuSimple lane detection challenge, outperforming the standardly-trained network's score of 0.82. Additionally, we were able to obtain an F-measure of 0.49 on manipulated inputs, in contrast to the standardly-trained network's score of 0. We show that probabilisitic local equivalence is able to successfully distinguish between standardly-trained and adversarially-trained models, providing another view of the improved robustness of the adversarially-trained models.
Empirical Study of Quality Image Assessment for Synthesis of Fetal Head Ultrasound Imaging with DCGANs
Authors: Thea Bautista, Jacqueline Matthew, Hamideh Kerdegari, Laura Peralta Pereira, Miguel Xochicale
Date: 2022-06-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Image Quality Assessment

In this work, we present an empirical study of DCGANs, including hyperparameter heuristics and image quality assessment, as a way to address the scarcity of datasets to investigate fetal head ultrasound. We present experiments to show the impact of different image resolutions, epochs, dataset size input, and learning rates for quality image assessment on four metrics: mutual information (MI), Fr\'echet inception distance (FID), peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and local binary pattern vector (LBPv). The results show that FID and LBPv have stronger relationship with clinical image quality scores. The resources to reproduce this work are available at \url{https://github.com/budai4medtech/miua2022}.
RLSS: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Algorithm for Sequential Scene Generation
Authors: Azimkhon Ostonov, Peter Wonka, Dominik L. Michels
Date: 2022-06-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Reinforcement Learning, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning, Reinforcement Learning (RL), Scene Generation

We present RLSS: a reinforcement learning algorithm for sequential scene generation. This is based on employing the proximal policy optimization (PPO) algorithm for generative problems. In particular, we consider how to effectively reduce the action space by including a greedy search algorithm in the learning process. Our experiments demonstrate that our method converges for a relatively large number of actions and learns to generate scenes with predefined design objectives. This approach is placing objects iteratively in the virtual scene. In each step, the network chooses which objects to place and selects positions which result in maximal reward. A high reward is assigned if the last action resulted in desired properties whereas the violation of constraints is penalized. We demonstrate the capability of our method to generate plausible and diverse scenes efficiently by solving indoor planning problems and generating Angry Birds levels.
Neuro CROSS exchange: Learning to CROSS exchange to solve realistic vehicle routing problems
Authors: Minjun Kim, Junyoung Park, Jinkyoo Park
Date: 2022-06-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Graph Neural Network

CROSS exchange (CE), a meta-heuristic that solves various vehicle routing problems (VRPs), improves the solutions of VRPs by swapping the sub-tours of the vehicles. Inspired by CE, we propose Neuro CE (NCE), a fundamental operator of learned meta-heuristic, to solve various VRPs while overcoming the limitations of CE (i.e., the expensive $\mathcal{O}(n^4)$ search cost). NCE employs a graph neural network to predict the cost-decrements (i.e., results of CE searches) and utilizes the predicted cost-decrements as guidance for search to decrease the search cost to $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$. As the learning objective of NCE is to predict the cost-decrement, the training can be simply done in a supervised fashion, whose training samples can be prepared effortlessly. Despite the simplicity of NCE, numerical results show that the NCE trained with flexible multi-depot VRP (FMDVRP) outperforms the meta-heuristic baselines. More importantly, it significantly outperforms the neural baselines when solving distinctive special cases of FMDVRP (e.g., MDVRP, mTSP, CVRP) without additional training.
The Neural Covariance SDE: Shaped Infinite Depth-and-Width Networks at Initialization
Authors: Mufan Bill Li, Mihai Nica, Daniel M. Roy
Date: 2022-06-06 00:00:00

The logit outputs of a feedforward neural network at initialization are conditionally Gaussian, given a random covariance matrix defined by the penultimate layer. In this work, we study the distribution of this random matrix. Recent work has shown that shaping the activation function as network depth grows large is necessary for this covariance matrix to be non-degenerate. However, the current infinite-width-style understanding of this shaping method is unsatisfactory for large depth: infinite-width analyses ignore the microscopic fluctuations from layer to layer, but these fluctuations accumulate over many layers. To overcome this shortcoming, we study the random covariance matrix in the shaped infinite-depth-and-width limit. We identify the precise scaling of the activation function necessary to arrive at a non-trivial limit, and show that the random covariance matrix is governed by a stochastic differential equation (SDE) that we call the Neural Covariance SDE. Using simulations, we show that the SDE closely matches the distribution of the random covariance matrix of finite networks. Additionally, we recover an if-and-only-if condition for exploding and vanishing norms of large shaped networks based on the activation function.
Communication-constrained hypothesis testing: Optimality, robustness, and reverse data processing inequalities
Authors: Ankit Pensia, Varun Jog, Po-Ling Loh
Date: 2022-06-06 00:00:00

We study hypothesis testing under communication constraints, where each sample is quantized before being revealed to a statistician. Without communication constraints, it is well known that the sample complexity of simple binary hypothesis testing is characterized by the Hellinger distance between the distributions. We show that the sample complexity of simple binary hypothesis testing under communication constraints is at most a logarithmic factor larger than in the unconstrained setting and this bound is tight. We develop a polynomial-time algorithm that achieves the aforementioned sample complexity. Our framework extends to robust hypothesis testing, where the distributions are corrupted in the total variation distance. Our proofs rely on a new reverse data processing inequality and a reverse Markov inequality, which may be of independent interest. For simple $M$-ary hypothesis testing, the sample complexity in the absence of communication constraints has a logarithmic dependence on $M$. We show that communication constraints can cause an exponential blow-up leading to $\Omega(M)$ sample complexity even for adaptive algorithms.
Robust and Fast Data-Driven Power System State Estimator Using Graph Neural Networks
Authors: Ognjen Kundacina, Mirsad Cosovic, Dejan Vukobratovic
Date: 2022-06-06 00:00:00
Tasks: State Estimation

The power system state estimation (SE) algorithm estimates the complex bus voltages based on the available set of measurements. Because phasor measurement units (PMUs) are becoming more widely employed in transmission power systems, a fast SE solver capable of exploiting PMUs' high sample rates is required. To accomplish this, we present a method for training a model based on graph neural networks (GNNs) to learn estimates from PMU voltage and current measurements, which, once it is trained, has a linear computational complexity with respect to the number of nodes in the power system. We propose an original GNN implementation over the power system's factor graph to simplify the incorporation of various types and numbers of measurements both on power system buses and branches. Furthermore, we augment the factor graph to improve the robustness of GNN predictions. Training and test examples were generated by randomly sampling sets of power system measurements and annotated with the exact solutions of linear SE with PMUs. The numerical results demonstrate that the GNN model provides an accurate approximation of the SE solutions. Additionally, errors caused by PMU malfunctions or the communication failures that make the SE problem unobservable have a local effect and do not deteriorate the results in the rest of the power system.
Stochastic Variance-Reduced Newton: Accelerating Finite-Sum Minimization with Large Batches
Authors: Michał Dereziński
Date: 2022-06-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Second-order methods

Stochastic variance reduction has proven effective at accelerating first-order algorithms for solving convex finite-sum optimization tasks such as empirical risk minimization. Incorporating second-order information has proven helpful in further improving the performance of these first-order methods. Yet, comparatively little is known about the benefits of using variance reduction to accelerate popular stochastic second-order methods such as Subsampled Newton. To address this, we propose Stochastic Variance-Reduced Newton (SVRN), a finite-sum minimization algorithm that provably accelerates existing stochastic Newton methods from $O(\alpha\log(1/\epsilon))$ to $O\big(\frac{\log(1/\epsilon)}{\log(n)}\big)$ passes over the data, i.e., by a factor of $O(\alpha\log(n))$, where $n$ is the number of sum components and $\alpha$ is the approximation factor in the Hessian estimate. Surprisingly, this acceleration gets more significant the larger the data size $n$, which is a unique property of SVRN. Our algorithm retains the key advantages of Newton-type methods, such as easily parallelizable large-batch operations and a simple unit step size. We use SVRN to accelerate Subsampled Newton and Iterative Hessian Sketch algorithms, and show that it compares favorably to popular first-order methods with variance~reduction.
Provably Efficient Risk-Sensitive Reinforcement Learning: Iterated CVaR and Worst Path
Authors: Yihan Du, Siwei Wang, Longbo Huang
Date: 2022-06-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Autonomous Driving, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning (RL)

In this paper, we study a novel episodic risk-sensitive Reinforcement Learning (RL) problem, named Iterated CVaR RL, which aims to maximize the tail of the reward-to-go at each step, and focuses on tightly controlling the risk of getting into catastrophic situations at each stage. This formulation is applicable to real-world tasks that demand strong risk avoidance throughout the decision process, such as autonomous driving, clinical treatment planning and robotics. We investigate two performance metrics under Iterated CVaR RL, i.e., Regret Minimization and Best Policy Identification. For both metrics, we design efficient algorithms ICVaR-RM and ICVaR-BPI, respectively, and provide nearly matching upper and lower bounds with respect to the number of episodes $K$. We also investigate an interesting limiting case of Iterated CVaR RL, called Worst Path RL, where the objective becomes to maximize the minimum possible cumulative reward. For Worst Path RL, we propose an efficient algorithm with constant upper and lower bounds. Finally, our techniques for bounding the change of CVaR due to the value function shift and decomposing the regret via a distorted visitation distribution are novel, and can find applications in other risk-sensitive RL problems.
Emergent specialization from participation dynamics and multi-learner retraining
Authors: Sarah Dean, Mihaela Curmei, Lillian J. Ratliff, Jamie Morgenstern, Maryam Fazel
Date: 2022-06-06 00:00:00

Numerous online services are data-driven: the behavior of users affects the system's parameters, and the system's parameters affect the users' experience of the service, which in turn affects the way users may interact with the system. For example, people may choose to use a service only for tasks that already works well, or they may choose to switch to a different service. These adaptations influence the ability of a system to learn about a population of users and tasks in order to improve its performance broadly. In this work, we analyze a class of such dynamics -- where users allocate their participation amongst services to reduce the individual risk they experience, and services update their model parameters to reduce the service's risk on their current user population. We refer to these dynamics as \emph{risk-reducing}, which cover a broad class of common model updates including gradient descent and multiplicative weights. For this general class of dynamics, we show that asymptotically stable equilibria are always segmented, with sub-populations allocated to a single learner. Under mild assumptions, the utilitarian social optimum is a stable equilibrium. In contrast to previous work, which shows that repeated risk minimization can result in (Hashimoto et al., 2018; Miller et al., 2021), we find that repeated myopic updates with multiple learners lead to better outcomes. We illustrate the phenomena via a simulated example initialized from real data.
Robust Pareto Set Identification with Contaminated Bandit Feedback
Authors: İlter Onat Korkmaz, Efe Eren Ceyani, Kerem Bozgan, Cem Tekin
Date: 2022-06-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Management, Multi-Armed Bandits

We consider the Pareto set identification (PSI) problem in multi-objective multi-armed bandits (MO-MAB) with contaminated reward observations. At each arm pull, with some fixed probability, the true reward samples are replaced with the samples from an arbitrary contamination distribution chosen by an adversary. We consider ({\alpha}, {\delta})-PAC PSI and propose a sample median-based multi-objective adaptive elimination algorithm that returns an ({\alpha}, {\delta})- PAC Pareto set upon termination with a sample complexity bound that depends on the contamination probability. As the contamination probability decreases, we recover the wellknown sample complexity results in MO-MAB. We compare the proposed algorithm with a mean-based method from MO-MAB literature, as well as an extended version that uses median estimators, on several PSI problems under adversarial corruptions, including review bombing and diabetes management. Our numerical results support our theoretical findings and demonstrate that robust algorithm design is crucial for accurate PSI under contaminated reward observations.
TransBO: Hyperparameter Optimization via Two-Phase Transfer Learning
Authors: Yang Li, Yu Shen, Huaijun Jiang, Wentao Zhang, Zhi Yang, Ce Zhang, Bin Cui
Date: 2022-06-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Hyperparameter Optimization, Neural Architecture Search, Transfer Learning, Vocal Bursts Valence Prediction

With the extensive applications of machine learning models, automatic hyperparameter optimization (HPO) has become increasingly important. Motivated by the tuning behaviors of human experts, it is intuitive to leverage auxiliary knowledge from past HPO tasks to accelerate the current HPO task. In this paper, we propose TransBO, a novel two-phase transfer learning framework for HPO, which can deal with the complementary nature among source tasks and dynamics during knowledge aggregation issues simultaneously. This framework extracts and aggregates source and target knowledge jointly and adaptively, where the weights can be learned in a principled manner. The extensive experiments, including static and dynamic transfer learning settings and neural architecture search, demonstrate the superiority of TransBO over the state-of-the-arts.
Pseudo-Hamiltonian Neural Networks with State-Dependent External Forces
Authors: Sølve Eidnes, Alexander J. Stasik, Camilla Sterud, Eivind Bøhn, Signe Riemer-Sørensen
Date: 2022-06-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Hybrid Machine Learning

Hybrid machine learning based on Hamiltonian formulations has recently been successfully demonstrated for simple mechanical systems, both energy conserving and not energy conserving. We introduce a pseudo-Hamiltonian formulation that is a generalization of the Hamiltonian formulation via the port-Hamiltonian formulation, and show that pseudo-Hamiltonian neural network models can be used to learn external forces acting on a system. We argue that this property is particularly useful when the external forces are state dependent, in which case it is the pseudo-Hamiltonian structure that facilitates the separation of internal and external forces. Numerical results are provided for a forced and damped mass-spring system and a tank system of higher complexity, and a symmetric fourth-order integration scheme is introduced for improved training on sparse and noisy data.
A Regret-Variance Trade-Off in Online Learning
Authors: Dirk van der Hoeven, Nikita Zhivotovskiy, Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi
Date: 2022-06-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Model Selection

We consider prediction with expert advice for strongly convex and bounded losses, and investigate trade-offs between regret and "variance" (i.e., squared difference of learner's predictions and best expert predictions). With $K$ experts, the Exponentially Weighted Average (EWA) algorithm is known to achieve $O(\log K)$ regret. We prove that a variant of EWA either achieves a negative regret (i.e., the algorithm outperforms the best expert), or guarantees a $O(\log K)$ bound on both variance and regret. Building on this result, we show several examples of how variance of predictions can be exploited in learning. In the online to batch analysis, we show that a large empirical variance allows to stop the online to batch conversion early and outperform the risk of the best predictor in the class. We also recover the optimal rate of model selection aggregation when we do not consider early stopping. In online prediction with corrupted losses, we show that the effect of corruption on the regret can be compensated by a large variance. In online selective sampling, we design an algorithm that samples less when the variance is large, while guaranteeing the optimal regret bound in expectation. In online learning with abstention, we use a similar term as the variance to derive the first high-probability $O(\log K)$ regret bound in this setting. Finally, we extend our results to the setting of online linear regression.
Crust Macrofracturing as the Evidence of the Last Deglaciation
Authors: Igor Aleshin, Kirill Kholodkov, Elena Kozlovskaya, Ivan Malygin
Date: 2022-06-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Attribute, BIG-bench Machine Learning

Machine learning methods were applied to reconsider the results of several passive seismic experiments in Finland. We created datasets from different stages of the receiver function technique and processed them with one of basic machine learning algorithms. All the results were obtained uniformly with the $k$-nearest neighbors algorithm. The first result is the Moho depth map of the region. Another result is the delineation of the near-surface low $S$-wave velocity layer. There are three such areas in the Northern, Southern, and central parts of the region. The low $S$-wave velocity in the Northern and Southern areas can be linked to the geological structure. However, we attribute the central low $S$-wave velocity area to a large number of water-saturated cracks in the upper 1-5 km. Analysis of the structure of this area leads us to the conclusion that macrofracturing was caused by the last deglaciation.