pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
LMs: Understanding Code Syntax and Semantics for Code Analysis
Authors: Wei Ma, Shangqing Liu, ZhiHao Lin, Wenhan Wang, Qiang Hu, Ye Liu, Cen Zhang, Liming Nie, Li Li, Yang Liu
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00

Large language models~(LLMs) demonstrate significant potential to revolutionize software engineering (SE) by exhibiting outstanding performance in SE tasks such as code and document generation. However, the high reliability and risk control requirements in software engineering raise concerns about the lack of interpretability of LLMs. To address this concern, we conducted a study to evaluate the capabilities of LLMs and their limitations for code analysis in SE. We break down the abilities needed for artificial intelligence~(AI) models to address SE tasks related to code analysis into three categories: 1) syntax understanding, 2) static behavior understanding, and 3) dynamic behavior understanding. Our investigation focused on the ability of LLMs to comprehend code syntax and semantic structures, which include abstract syntax trees (AST), control flow graphs (CFG), and call graphs (CG). We employed four state-of-the-art foundational models, GPT4, GPT3.5, StarCoder and CodeLlama-13b-instruct. We assessed the performance of LLMs on cross-language tasks involving C, Java, Python, and Solidity. Our findings revealed that while LLMs have a talent for understanding code syntax, they struggle with comprehending code semantics, particularly dynamic semantics. We conclude that LLMs possess capabilities similar to an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) parser, demonstrating initial competencies in static code analysis. Furthermore, our study highlights that LLMs are susceptible to hallucinations when interpreting code semantic structures and fabricating nonexistent facts. These results indicate the need to explore methods to verify the correctness of LLM output to ensure its dependability in SE. More importantly, our study provides an initial answer to why the codes generated by LLM are usually syntax-correct but vulnerable.
Privacy in Multimodal Federated Human Activity Recognition
Authors: Alex Iacob, Pedro P. B. Gusmão, Nicholas D. Lane, Armand K. Koupai, Mohammud J. Bocus, Raúl Santos-Rodríguez, Robert J. Piechocki, Ryan McConville
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Activity Recognition, Federated Learning, Human Activity Recognition

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) training data is often privacy-sensitive or held by non-cooperative entities. Federated Learning (FL) addresses such concerns by training ML models on edge clients. This work studies the impact of privacy in federated HAR at a user, environment, and sensor level. We show that the performance of FL for HAR depends on the assumed privacy level of the FL system and primarily upon the colocation of data from different sensors. By avoiding data sharing and assuming privacy at the human or environment level, as prior works have done, the accuracy decreases by 5-7%. However, extending this to the modality level and strictly separating sensor data between multiple clients may decrease the accuracy by 19-42%. As this form of privacy is necessary for the ethical utilisation of passive sensing methods in HAR, we implement a system where clients mutually train both a general FL model and a group-level one per modality. Our evaluation shows that this method leads to only a 7-13% decrease in accuracy, making it possible to build HAR systems with diverse hardware.
DexPBT: Scaling up Dexterous Manipulation for Hand-Arm Systems with Population Based Training
Authors: Aleksei Petrenko, Arthur Allshire, Gavriel State, Ankur Handa, Viktor Makoviychuk
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Reinforcement Learning, GPU, Object

In this work, we propose algorithms and methods that enable learning dexterous object manipulation using simulated one- or two-armed robots equipped with multi-fingered hand end-effectors. Using a parallel GPU-accelerated physics simulator (Isaac Gym), we implement challenging tasks for these robots, including regrasping, grasp-and-throw, and object reorientation. To solve these problems we introduce a decentralized Population-Based Training (PBT) algorithm that allows us to massively amplify the exploration capabilities of deep reinforcement learning. We find that this method significantly outperforms regular end-to-end learning and is able to discover robust control policies in challenging tasks. Video demonstrations of learned behaviors and the code can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/dexpbt
A Framework for Provably Stable and Consistent Training of Deep Feedforward Networks
Authors: Arunselvan Ramaswamy, Shalabh Bhatnagar, Naman Saxena
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Q-Learning, reinforcement-learning, Unsupervised Reinforcement Learning

We present a novel algorithm for training deep neural networks in supervised (classification and regression) and unsupervised (reinforcement learning) scenarios. This algorithm combines the standard stochastic gradient descent and the gradient clipping method. The output layer is updated using clipped gradients, the rest of the neural network is updated using standard gradients. Updating the output layer using clipped gradient stabilizes it. We show that the remaining layers are automatically stabilized provided the neural network is only composed of squashing (compact range) activations. We also present a novel squashing activation function - it is obtained by modifying a Gaussian Error Linear Unit (GELU) to have compact range - we call it Truncated GELU (tGELU). Unlike other squashing activations, such as sigmoid, the range of tGELU can be explicitly specified. As a consequence, the problem of vanishing gradients that arise due to a small range, e.g., in the case of a sigmoid activation, is eliminated. We prove that a NN composed of squashing activations (tGELU, sigmoid, etc.), when updated using the algorithm presented herein, is numerically stable and has consistent performance (low variance). The theory is supported by extensive experiments. Within reinforcement learning, as a consequence of our study, we show that target networks in Deep Q-Learning can be omitted, greatly speeding up learning and alleviating memory requirements. Cross-entropy based classification algorithms that suffer from high variance issues are more consistent when trained using our framework. One symptom of numerical instability in training is the high variance of the neural network update values. We show, in theory and through experiments, that our algorithm updates have low variance, and the training loss reduces in a smooth manner.
Annealing Self-Distillation Rectification Improves Adversarial Training
Authors: Yu-Yu Wu, Hung-Jui Wang, Shang-Tse Chen
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Adversarial Robustness

In standard adversarial training, models are optimized to fit one-hot labels within allowable adversarial perturbation budgets. However, the ignorance of underlying distribution shifts brought by perturbations causes the problem of robust overfitting. To address this issue and enhance adversarial robustness, we analyze the characteristics of robust models and identify that robust models tend to produce smoother and well-calibrated outputs. Based on the observation, we propose a simple yet effective method, Annealing Self-Distillation Rectification (ADR), which generates soft labels as a better guidance mechanism that accurately reflects the distribution shift under attack during adversarial training. By utilizing ADR, we can obtain rectified distributions that significantly improve model robustness without the need for pre-trained models or extensive extra computation. Moreover, our method facilitates seamless plug-and-play integration with other adversarial training techniques by replacing the hard labels in their objectives. We demonstrate the efficacy of ADR through extensive experiments and strong performances across datasets.
GFDC: A Granule Fusion Density-Based Clustering with Evidential Reasoning
Authors: Mingjie Cai, Zhishan Wu, Qingguo Li, Feng Xu, Jie zhou
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Clustering

Currently, density-based clustering algorithms are widely applied because they can detect clusters with arbitrary shapes. However, they perform poorly in measuring global density, determining reasonable cluster centers or structures, assigning samples accurately and handling data with large density differences among clusters. To overcome their drawbacks, this paper proposes a granule fusion density-based clustering with evidential reasoning (GFDC). Both local and global densities of samples are measured by a sparse degree metric first. Then information granules are generated in high-density and low-density regions, assisting in processing clusters with significant density differences. Further, three novel granule fusion strategies are utilized to combine granules into stable cluster structures, helping to detect clusters with arbitrary shapes. Finally, by an assignment method developed from Dempster-Shafer theory, unstable samples are assigned. After using GFDC, a reasonable clustering result and some identified outliers can be obtained. The experimental results on extensive datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of GFDC.
Human-annotated label noise and their impact on ConvNets for remote sensing image scene classification
Authors: Longkang Peng, Tao Wei, Xuehong Chen, Xiaobei Chen, Rui Sun, Luoma Wan, Jin Chen, Xiaolin Zhu
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Scene Classification

Convolutional neural networks (ConvNets) have been successfully applied to satellite image scene classification. Human-labeled training datasets are essential for ConvNets to perform accurate classification. Errors in human-annotated training datasets are unavoidable due to the complexity of satellite images. However, the distribution of real-world human-annotated label noises on remote sensing images and their impact on ConvNets have not been investigated. To fill this research gap, this study, for the first time, collected real-world labels from 32 participants and explored how their annotated label noise affect three representative ConvNets (VGG16, GoogleNet, and ResNet-50) for remote sensing image scene classification. We found that: (1) human-annotated label noise exhibits significant class and instance dependence; (2) an additional 1% of human-annotated label noise in training data leads to 0.5% reduction in the overall accuracy of ConvNets classification; (3) the error pattern of ConvNet predictions was strongly correlated with that of participant's labels. To uncover the mechanism underlying the impact of human labeling errors on ConvNets, we further compared it with three types of simulated label noise: uniform noise, class-dependent noise and instance-dependent noise. Our results show that the impact of human-annotated label noise on ConvNets significantly differs from all three types of simulated label noise, while both class dependence and instance dependence contribute to the impact of human-annotated label noise on ConvNets. These observations necessitate a reevaluation of the handling of noisy labels, and we anticipate that our real-world label noise dataset would facilitate the future development and assessment of label-noise learning algorithms.
UP5: Unbiased Foundation Model for Fairness-aware Recommendation
Authors: Wenyue Hua, Yingqiang Ge, Shuyuan Xu, Jianchao Ji, Yongfeng Zhang
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, Fairness, model, Recommendation Systems

Recent advances in Foundation Models such as Large Language Models (LLMs) have propelled them to the forefront of Recommender Systems (RS). Despite their utility, there is a growing concern that LLMs might inadvertently perpetuate societal stereotypes, resulting in unfair recommendations. Since fairness is critical for RS as many users take it for decision-making and demand fulfillment, this paper focuses on user-side fairness for LLM-based recommendation where the users may require a recommender system to be fair on specific sensitive features such as gender or age. In this paper, we dive into the extent of unfairness exhibited by LLM-based recommender models based on both T5 and LLaMA backbones, and discuss appropriate methods for promoting equitable treatment of users in LLM-based recommendation models. We introduce a novel Counterfactually-Fair-Prompt (CFP) method towards Unbiased Foundation mOdels (UFO) for fairness-aware LLM-based recommendation. Experiments are conducted on two real-world datasets, MovieLens-1M and Insurance, and compared with both matching-based and sequential-based fairness-aware recommendation models. Results show that CFP achieves better recommendation performance with a high level of fairness. Data and code are open-sourced at https://github.com/agiresearch/UP5.
Game-Theoretical Analysis of Reviewer Rewards in Peer-Review Journal Systems: Analysis and Experimental Evaluation using Deep Reinforcement Learning
Authors: Minhyeok Lee
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Reinforcement Learning, Navigate, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning

In this paper, we navigate the intricate domain of reviewer rewards in open-access academic publishing, leveraging the precision of mathematics and the strategic acumen of game theory. We conceptualize the prevailing voucher-based reviewer reward system as a two-player game, subsequently identifying potential shortcomings that may incline reviewers towards binary decisions. To address this issue, we propose and mathematically formalize an alternative reward system with the objective of mitigating this bias and promoting more comprehensive reviews. We engage in a detailed investigation of the properties and outcomes of both systems, employing rigorous game-theoretical analysis and deep reinforcement learning simulations. Our results underscore a noteworthy divergence between the two systems, with our proposed system demonstrating a more balanced decision distribution and enhanced stability. This research not only augments the mathematical understanding of reviewer reward systems, but it also provides valuable insights for the formulation of policies within journal review system. Our contribution to the mathematical community lies in providing a game-theoretical perspective to a real-world problem and in the application of deep reinforcement learning to simulate and understand this complex system.
MediTab: Scaling Medical Tabular Data Predictors via Data Consolidation, Enrichment, and Refinement
Authors: Zifeng Wang, Chufan Gao, Cao Xiao, Jimeng Sun
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Prediction

Tabular data prediction has been employed in medical applications such as patient health risk prediction. However, existing methods usually revolve around the algorithm design while overlooking the significance of data engineering. Medical tabular datasets frequently exhibit significant heterogeneity across different sources, with limited sample sizes per source. As such, previous predictors are often trained on manually curated small datasets that struggle to generalize across different tabular datasets during inference. This paper proposes to scale medical tabular data predictors (MediTab) to various tabular inputs with varying features. The method uses a data engine that leverages large language models (LLMs) to consolidate tabular samples to overcome the barrier across tables with distinct schema. It also aligns out-domain data with the target task using a "learn, annotate, and refinement" pipeline. The expanded training data then enables the pre-trained MediTab to infer for arbitrary tabular input in the domain without fine-tuning, resulting in significant improvements over supervised baselines: it reaches an average ranking of 1.57 and 1.00 on 7 patient outcome prediction datasets and 3 trial outcome prediction datasets, respectively. In addition, MediTab exhibits impressive zero-shot performances: it outperforms supervised XGBoost models by 8.9% and 17.2% on average in two prediction tasks, respectively.
GELU Activation Function in Deep Learning: A Comprehensive Mathematical Analysis and Performance
Authors: Minhyeok Lee
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Computational Efficiency, Deep Learning

Selecting the most suitable activation function is a critical factor in the effectiveness of deep learning models, as it influences their learning capacity, stability, and computational efficiency. In recent years, the Gaussian Error Linear Unit (GELU) activation function has emerged as a dominant method, surpassing traditional functions such as the Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) in various applications. This study presents a rigorous mathematical investigation of the GELU activation function, exploring its differentiability, boundedness, stationarity, and smoothness properties in detail. Additionally, we conduct an extensive experimental comparison of the GELU function against a broad range of alternative activation functions, utilizing a residual convolutional network trained on the CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and STL-10 datasets as the empirical testbed. Our results demonstrate the superior performance of GELU compared to other activation functions, establishing its suitability for a wide range of deep learning applications. This comprehensive study contributes to a more profound understanding of the underlying mathematical properties of GELU and provides valuable insights for practitioners aiming to select activation functions that optimally align with their specific objectives and constraints in deep learning.
Technical outlier detection via convolutional variational autoencoder for the ADMANI breast mammogram dataset
Authors: Hui Li, Carlos A. Pena Solorzano, Susan Wei, Davis J. McCarthy
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Breast Cancer Detection, Outlier Detection

The ADMANI datasets (annotated digital mammograms and associated non-image datasets) from the Transforming Breast Cancer Screening with AI programme (BRAIx) run by BreastScreen Victoria in Australia are multi-centre, large scale, clinically curated, real-world databases. The datasets are expected to aid in the development of clinically relevant Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms for breast cancer detection, early diagnosis, and other applications. To ensure high data quality, technical outliers must be removed before any downstream algorithm development. As a first step, we randomly select 30,000 individual mammograms and use Convolutional Variational Autoencoder (CVAE), a deep generative neural network, to detect outliers. CVAE is expected to detect all sorts of outliers, although its detection performance differs among different types of outliers. Traditional image processing techniques such as erosion and pectoral muscle analysis can compensate for the poor performance of CVAE in certain outlier types. We identify seven types of technical outliers: implant, pacemaker, cardiac loop recorder, improper radiography, atypical lesion/calcification, incorrect exposure parameter and improper placement. The outlier recall rate for the test set is 61% if CVAE, erosion and pectoral muscle analysis each select the top 1% images ranked in ascending or descending order according to image outlier score under each detection method, and 83% if each selects the top 5% images. This study offers an overview of technical outliers in the ADMANI dataset and suggests future directions to improve outlier detection effectiveness.
DADIN: Domain Adversarial Deep Interest Network for Cross Domain Recommender Systems
Authors: Menglin Kong, Muzhou Hou, Shaojie Zhao, Feng Liu, Ri Su, Yinghao Chen
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Click-Through Rate Prediction, Domain Adaptation, Prediction, Recommendation Systems, Transfer Learning

Click-Through Rate (CTR) prediction is one of the main tasks of the recommendation system, which is conducted by a user for different items to give the recommendation results. Cross-domain CTR prediction models have been proposed to overcome problems of data sparsity, long tail distribution of user-item interactions, and cold start of items or users. In order to make knowledge transfer from source domain to target domain more smoothly, an innovative deep learning cross-domain CTR prediction model, Domain Adversarial Deep Interest Network (DADIN) is proposed to convert the cross-domain recommendation task into a domain adaptation problem. The joint distribution alignment of two domains is innovatively realized by introducing domain agnostic layers and specially designed loss, and optimized together with CTR prediction loss in a way of adversarial training. It is found that the Area Under Curve (AUC) of DADIN is 0.08% higher than the most competitive baseline on Huawei dataset and is 0.71% higher than its competitors on Amazon dataset, achieving the state-of-the-art results on the basis of the evaluation of this model performance on two real datasets. The ablation study shows that by introducing adversarial method, this model has respectively led to the AUC improvements of 2.34% on Huawei dataset and 16.67% on Amazon dataset.
AI-assisted Code Authoring at Scale: Fine-tuning, deploying, and mixed methods evaluation
Authors: Vijayaraghavan Murali, Chandra Maddila, Imad Ahmad, Michael Bolin, Daniel Cheng, Negar Ghorbani, Renuka Fernandez, Nachiappan Nagappan, Peter C. Rigby
Date: 2023-05-20 00:00:00
Tasks: 16k

Generative LLMs have been shown to effectively power AI-based code authoring tools that can suggest entire statements or blocks of code during code authoring. In this paper we present CodeCompose, an AI-assisted code authoring tool developed and deployed at Meta internally. CodeCompose is based on the InCoder LLM that merges generative capabilities with bi-directionality. We have scaled up CodeCompose to serve tens of thousands of developers at Meta, across 9 programming languages and several coding surfaces. We present our experience in making design decisions about the model and system architecture for CodeCompose that addresses these challenges. To release a LLM model at this scale, we needed to first ensure that it is sufficiently accurate. In a random sample of 20K source code files, depending on the language, we are able to reproduce hidden lines between 40% and 58% of the time, an improvement of 1.4x and 4.1x over a model trained only on public data. We gradually rolled CodeCompose out to developers. At the time of this writing, 16K developers have used it with 8% of their code coming directly from CodeCompose. To triangulate our numerical findings, we conduct a thematic analysis on the feedback from 70 developers. We find that 91.5% of the feedback is positive, with the most common themes being discovering APIs, dealing with boilerplate code, and accelerating coding. Meta continues to integrate this feedback into CodeCompose.