pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
PolySketchFormer: Fast Transformers via Sketching Polynomial Kernels
Authors: Praneeth Kacham, Vahab Mirrokni, Peilin Zhong
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling

The quadratic time and memory complexity inherent to self-attention mechanisms, with respect to sequence length, presents a critical computational bottleneck in the training and deployment of large-scale Transformer-based language models. Recent theoretical results indicate the intractability of sub-quadratic softmax attention approximation under reasonable complexity assumptions. This paper addresses this challenge by first demonstrating that polynomial attention with high degree can effectively replace softmax without sacrificing model quality. Next, we develop polynomial sketching techniques from numerical linear algebra to achieve linear-time polynomial attention with approximation guarantees. Crucially, our approach achieves this speedup without requiring the sparsification of attention matrices. We also present a block-based algorithm to apply causal masking efficiently. Combining these techniques, we provide \emph{PolySketchFormer}, a practical linear-time Transformer architecture for language modeling that offers provable guarantees. We validate PolySketchFormer empirically by training language models capable of handling long contexts. These experiments utilize both synthetic and real-world datasets (PG19, Wikipedia and C4) on Google Cloud TPUs. For context lengths of 32k and GPT-2 style models, our model achieves a 2.5-4x speedup in training compared to FlashAttention, with no observed degradation in quality across our experiments.
Fool Your (Vision and) Language Model With Embarrassingly Simple Permutations
Authors: Yongshuo Zong, Tingyang Yu, Ruchika Chavhan, Bingchen Zhao, Timothy Hospedales
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Tasks: In-Context Learning, Instruction Following, Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Multiple-choice, Multiple Choice Question Answering (MCQA), Question Answering

Large language and vision-language models are rapidly being deployed in practice thanks to their impressive capabilities in instruction following, in-context learning, and so on. This raises an urgent need to carefully analyse their robustness so that stakeholders can understand if and when such models are trustworthy enough to be relied upon in any given application. In this paper, we highlight a specific vulnerability in popular models, namely permutation sensitivity in multiple-choice question answering (MCQA). Specifically, we show empirically that popular models are vulnerable to adversarial permutation in answer sets for multiple-choice prompting, which is surprising as models should ideally be as invariant to prompt permutation as humans are. These vulnerabilities persist across various model sizes, and exist in very recent language and vision-language models. Code is available at https://github.com/ys-zong/FoolyourVLLMs.
Equivariant Adaptation of Large Pretrained Models
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2023 11

Equivariant networks are specifically designed to ensure consistent behavior with respect to a set of input transformations, leading to higher sample efficiency and more accurate and robust predictions. However, redesigning each component of prevalent deep neural network architectures to achieve chosen equivariance is a difficult problem and can result in a computationally expensive network during both training and inference. A recently proposed alternative towards equivariance that removes the architectural constraints is to use a simple canonicalization network that transforms the input to a canonical form before feeding it to an unconstrained prediction network. We show here that this approach can effectively be used to make a large pretrained network equivariant. However, we observe that the produced canonical orientations can be misaligned with those of the training distribution, hindering performance. Using dataset-dependent priors to inform the canonicalization function, we are able to make large pretrained models equivariant while maintaining their performance. This significantly improves the robustness of these models to deterministic transformations of the data, such as rotations. We believe this equivariant adaptation of large pretrained models can help their domain-specific applications with known symmetry priors.
Operator Learning Meets Numerical Analysis: Improving Neural Networks through Iterative Methods
Authors: Emanuele Zappala, Daniel Levine, Sizhuang He, Syed Rizvi, Sacha Levy, David van Dijk
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Learning, Graph Neural Network, Operator learning

Deep neural networks, despite their success in numerous applications, often function without established theoretical foundations. In this paper, we bridge this gap by drawing parallels between deep learning and classical numerical analysis. By framing neural networks as operators with fixed points representing desired solutions, we develop a theoretical framework grounded in iterative methods for operator equations. Under defined conditions, we present convergence proofs based on fixed point theory. We demonstrate that popular architectures, such as diffusion models and AlphaFold, inherently employ iterative operator learning. Empirical assessments highlight that performing iterations through network operators improves performance. We also introduce an iterative graph neural network, PIGN, that further demonstrates benefits of iterations. Our work aims to enhance the understanding of deep learning by merging insights from numerical analysis, potentially guiding the design of future networks with clearer theoretical underpinnings and improved performance.
Intractability of Learning the Discrete Logarithm with Gradient-Based Methods
Authors: Rustem Takhanov, Maxat Tezekbayev, Artur Pak, Arman Bolatov, Zhibek Kadyrsizova, Zhenisbek Assylbekov
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00

The discrete logarithm problem is a fundamental challenge in number theory with significant implications for cryptographic protocols. In this paper, we investigate the limitations of gradient-based methods for learning the parity bit of the discrete logarithm in finite cyclic groups of prime order. Our main result, supported by theoretical analysis and empirical verification, reveals the concentration of the gradient of the loss function around a fixed point, independent of the logarithm's base used. This concentration property leads to a restricted ability to learn the parity bit efficiently using gradient-based methods, irrespective of the complexity of the network architecture being trained. Our proof relies on Boas-Bellman inequality in inner product spaces and it involves establishing approximate orthogonality of discrete logarithm's parity bit functions through the spectral norm of certain matrices. Empirical experiments using a neural network-based approach further verify the limitations of gradient-based learning, demonstrating the decreasing success rate in predicting the parity bit as the group order increases.
Adversarial Contextual Bandits Go Kernelized
Authors: Gergely Neu, Julia Olkhovskaya, Sattar Vakili
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, Multi-Armed Bandits

We study a generalization of the problem of online learning in adversarial linear contextual bandits by incorporating loss functions that belong to a reproducing kernel Hilbert space, which allows for a more flexible modeling of complex decision-making scenarios. We propose a computationally efficient algorithm that makes use of a new optimistically biased estimator for the loss functions and achieves near-optimal regret guarantees under a variety of eigenvalue decay assumptions made on the underlying kernel. Specifically, under the assumption of polynomial eigendecay with exponent $c>1$, the regret is $\widetilde{O}(KT^{\frac{1}{2}(1+\frac{1}{c})})$, where $T$ denotes the number of rounds and $K$ the number of actions. Furthermore, when the eigendecay follows an exponential pattern, we achieve an even tighter regret bound of $\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$. These rates match the lower bounds in all special cases where lower bounds are known at all, and match the best known upper bounds available for the more well-studied stochastic counterpart of our problem.
Pool-Based Active Learning with Proper Topological Regions
Authors: Lies Hadjadj, Emilie Devijver, Remi Molinier, Massih-Reza Amini
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Active Learning, Multi-class Classification, Topological Data Analysis

Machine learning methods usually rely on large sample size to have good performance, while it is difficult to provide labeled set in many applications. Pool-based active learning methods are there to detect, among a set of unlabeled data, the ones that are the most relevant for the training. We propose in this paper a meta-approach for pool-based active learning strategies in the context of multi-class classification tasks based on Proper Topological Regions. PTR, based on topological data analysis (TDA), are relevant regions used to sample cold-start points or within the active learning scheme. The proposed method is illustrated empirically on various benchmark datasets, being competitive to the classical methods from the literature.
An Investigation of Representation and Allocation Harms in Contrastive Learning
Authors: Subha Maity, Mayank Agarwal, Mikhail Yurochkin, Yuekai Sun
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Contrastive Learning, Self-Supervised Learning, Stochastic Block Model

The effect of underrepresentation on the performance of minority groups is known to be a serious problem in supervised learning settings; however, it has been underexplored so far in the context of self-supervised learning (SSL). In this paper, we demonstrate that contrastive learning (CL), a popular variant of SSL, tends to collapse representations of minority groups with certain majority groups. We refer to this phenomenon as representation harm and demonstrate it on image and text datasets using the corresponding popular CL methods. Furthermore, our causal mediation analysis of allocation harm on a downstream classification task reveals that representation harm is partly responsible for it, thus emphasizing the importance of studying and mitigating representation harm. Finally, we provide a theoretical explanation for representation harm using a stochastic block model that leads to a representational neural collapse in a contrastive learning setting.
Contraction Properties of the Global Workspace Primitive
Authors: Michaela Ennis, Leo Kozachkov, Jean-Jacques Slotine
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Overall - Test

To push forward the important emerging research field surrounding multi-area recurrent neural networks (RNNs), we expand theoretically and empirically on the provably stable RNNs of RNNs introduced by Kozachkov et al. in "RNNs of RNNs: Recursive Construction of Stable Assemblies of Recurrent Neural Networks". We prove relaxed stability conditions for salient special cases of this architecture, most notably for a global workspace modular structure. We then demonstrate empirical success for Global Workspace Sparse Combo Nets with a small number of trainable parameters, not only through strong overall test performance but also greater resilience to removal of individual subnetworks. These empirical results for the global workspace inter-area topology are contingent on stability preservation, highlighting the relevance of our theoretical work for enabling modular RNN success. Further, by exploring sparsity in the connectivity structure between different subnetwork modules more broadly, we improve the state of the art performance for stable RNNs on benchmark sequence processing tasks, thus underscoring the general utility of specialized graph structures for multi-area RNNs.
Causality-informed Rapid Post-hurricane Building Damage Detection in Large Scale from InSAR Imagery
Authors: Chenguang Wang, Yepeng Liu, Xiaojian Zhang, Xuechun Li, Vladimir Paramygin, Arthriya Subgranon, Peter Sheng, Xilei Zhao, Susu Xu
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Building Damage Assessment

Timely and accurate assessment of hurricane-induced building damage is crucial for effective post-hurricane response and recovery efforts. Recently, remote sensing technologies provide large-scale optical or Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) imagery data immediately after a disastrous event, which can be readily used to conduct rapid building damage assessment. Compared to optical satellite imageries, the Synthetic Aperture Radar can penetrate cloud cover and provide more complete spatial coverage of damaged zones in various weather conditions. However, these InSAR imageries often contain highly noisy and mixed signals induced by co-occurring or co-located building damage, flood, flood/wind-induced vegetation changes, as well as anthropogenic activities, making it challenging to extract accurate building damage information. In this paper, we introduced an approach for rapid post-hurricane building damage detection from InSAR imagery. This approach encoded complex causal dependencies among wind, flood, building damage, and InSAR imagery using a holistic causal Bayesian network. Based on the causal Bayesian network, we further jointly inferred the large-scale unobserved building damage by fusing the information from InSAR imagery with prior physical models of flood and wind, without the need for ground truth labels. Furthermore, we validated our estimation results in a real-world devastating hurricane -- the 2022 Hurricane Ian. We gathered and annotated building damage ground truth data in Lee County, Florida, and compared the introduced method's estimation results with the ground truth and benchmarked it against state-of-the-art models to assess the effectiveness of our proposed method. Results show that our method achieves rapid and accurate detection of building damage, with significantly reduced processing time compared to traditional manual inspection methods.
On the near-optimality of betting confidence sets for bounded means
Authors: Shubhanshu Shekhar, Aaditya Ramdas
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00

Constructing nonasymptotic confidence intervals (CIs) for the mean of a univariate distribution from independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) observations is a fundamental task in statistics. For bounded observations, a classical nonparametric approach proceeds by inverting standard concentration bounds, such as Hoeffding's or Bernstein's inequalities. Recently, an alternative betting-based approach for defining CIs and their time-uniform variants called confidence sequences (CSs), has been shown to be empirically superior to the classical methods. In this paper, we provide theoretical justification for this improved empirical performance of betting CIs and CSs. Our main contributions are as follows: (i) We first compare CIs using the values of their first-order asymptotic widths (scaled by $\sqrt{n}$), and show that the betting CI of Waudby-Smith and Ramdas (2023) has a smaller limiting width than existing empirical Bernstein (EB)-CIs. (ii) Next, we establish two lower bounds that characterize the minimum width achievable by any method for constructing CIs/CSs in terms of certain inverse information projections. (iii) Finally, we show that the betting CI and CS match the fundamental limits, modulo an additive logarithmic term and a multiplicative constant. Overall these results imply that the betting CI~(and CS) admit stronger theoretical guarantees than the existing state-of-the-art EB-CI~(and CS); both in the asymptotic and finite-sample regimes.
Fusing Models with Complementary Expertise
Authors: Hongyi Wang, Felipe Maia Polo, Yuekai Sun, Souvik Kundu, Eric Xing, Mikhail Yurochkin
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Multiple-choice, text-classification, Text Classification, Text Summarization

Training AI models that generalize across tasks and domains has long been among the open problems driving AI research. The emergence of Foundation Models made it easier to obtain expert models for a given task, but the heterogeneity of data that may be encountered at test time often means that any single expert is insufficient. We consider the Fusion of Experts (FoE) problem of fusing outputs of expert models with complementary knowledge of the data distribution and formulate it as an instance of supervised learning. Our method is applicable to both discriminative and generative tasks and leads to significant performance improvements in image and text classification, text summarization, multiple-choice QA, and automatic evaluation of generated text. We also extend our method to the "frugal" setting where it is desired to reduce the number of expert model evaluations at test time. Our implementation is publicly available at https://github.com/hwang595/FoE-ICLR2024.
Adversarial Client Detection via Non-parametric Subspace Monitoring in the Internet of Federated Things
Authors: Xianjian Xie, Xiaochen Xian, Dan Li, Andi Wang
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Adversarial Attack, Federated Learning

The Internet of Federated Things (IoFT) represents a network of interconnected systems with federated learning as the backbone, facilitating collaborative knowledge acquisition while ensuring data privacy for individual systems. The wide adoption of IoFT, however, is hindered by security concerns, particularly the susceptibility of federated learning networks to adversarial attacks. In this paper, we propose an effective non-parametric approach FedRR, which leverages the low-rank features of the transmitted parameter updates generated by federated learning to address the adversarial attack problem. Besides, our proposed method is capable of accurately detecting adversarial clients and controlling the false alarm rate under the scenario with no attack occurring. Experiments based on digit recognition using the MNIST datasets validated the advantages of our approach.
Nowcasting day-ahead marginal emissions using multi-headed CNNs and deep generative models
Authors: Dhruv Suri, Anela Arifi, Ines Azevedo
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00

Nowcasting day-ahead marginal emissions factors is increasingly important for power systems with high flexibility and penetration of distributed energy resources. With a significant share of firm generation from natural gas and coal power plants, forecasting day-ahead emissions in the current energy system has been widely studied. In contrast, as we shift to an energy system characterized by flexible power markets, dispatchable sources, and competing low-cost generation such as large-scale battery or hydrogen storage, system operators will be able to choose from a mix of different generation as well as emission pathways. To fully develop the emissions implications of a given dispatch schedule, we need a near real-time workflow with two layers. The first layer is a market model that continuously solves a security-constrained economic dispatch model. The second layer determines the marginal emissions based on the output of the market model, which is the subject of this paper. We propose using multi-headed convolutional neural networks to generate day-ahead forecasts of marginal and average emissions for a given independent system operator.
The Benefit of Noise-Injection for Dynamic Gray-Box Model Creation
Authors: Mohamed Kandil, J. J. McArthur
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00

Gray-box models offer significant benefit over black-box approaches for equipment emulator development for equipment since their integration of physics provides more confidence in the model outside of the training domain. However, challenges such as model nonlinearity, unmodeled dynamics, and local minima introduce uncertainties into grey-box creation that contemporary approaches have failed to overcome, leading to their under-performance compared with black-box models. This paper seeks to address these uncertainties by injecting noise into the training dataset. This noise injection enriches the dataset and provides a measure of robustness against such uncertainties. A dynamic model for a water-to-water heat exchanger has been used as a demonstration case for this approach and tested using a pair of real devices with live data streaming. Compared to the unprocessed signal data, the application of noise injection resulted in a significant reduction in modeling error (root mean square error), decreasing from 0.68 to 0.27{\deg}C. This improvement amounts to a 60% enhancement when assessed on the training set, and improvements of 50% and 45% when validated against the test and validation sets, respectively.
Tensor Ring Optimized Quantum-Enhanced Tensor Neural Networks
Authors: Debanjan Konar, Dheeraj Peddireddy, Vaneet Aggarwal, Bijaya K. Panigrahi
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Binary Classification, Quantum Machine Learning, Tensor Networks

Quantum machine learning researchers often rely on incorporating Tensor Networks (TN) into Deep Neural Networks (DNN) and variational optimization. However, the standard optimization techniques used for training the contracted trainable weights of each model layer suffer from the correlations and entanglement structure between the model parameters on classical implementations. To address this issue, a multi-layer design of a Tensor Ring optimized variational Quantum learning classifier (Quan-TR) comprising cascading entangling gates replacing the fully connected (dense) layers of a TN is proposed, and it is referred to as Tensor Ring optimized Quantum-enhanced tensor neural Networks (TR-QNet). TR-QNet parameters are optimized through the stochastic gradient descent algorithm on qubit measurements. The proposed TR-QNet is assessed on three distinct datasets, namely Iris, MNIST, and CIFAR-10, to demonstrate the enhanced precision achieved for binary classification. On quantum simulations, the proposed TR-QNet achieves promising accuracy of $94.5\%$, $86.16\%$, and $83.54\%$ on the Iris, MNIST, and CIFAR-10 datasets, respectively. Benchmark studies have been conducted on state-of-the-art quantum and classical implementations of TN models to show the efficacy of the proposed TR-QNet. Moreover, the scalability of TR-QNet highlights its potential for exhibiting in deep learning applications on a large scale. The PyTorch implementation of TR-QNet is available on Github:https://github.com/konar1987/TR-QNet/
CODA: Temporal Domain Generalization via Concept Drift Simulator
Authors: Chia-Yuan Chang, Yu-Neng Chuang, Zhimeng Jiang, Kwei-Herng Lai, Anxiao Jiang, Na Zou
Date: 2023-10-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Domain Generalization, Feature Correlation

In real-world applications, machine learning models often become obsolete due to shifts in the joint distribution arising from underlying temporal trends, a phenomenon known as the "concept drift". Existing works propose model-specific strategies to achieve temporal generalization in the near-future domain. However, the diverse characteristics of real-world datasets necessitate customized prediction model architectures. To this end, there is an urgent demand for a model-agnostic temporal domain generalization approach that maintains generality across diverse data modalities and architectures. In this work, we aim to address the concept drift problem from a data-centric perspective to bypass considering the interaction between data and model. Developing such a framework presents non-trivial challenges: (i) existing generative models struggle to generate out-of-distribution future data, and (ii) precisely capturing the temporal trends of joint distribution along chronological source domains is computationally infeasible. To tackle the challenges, we propose the COncept Drift simulAtor (CODA) framework incorporating a predicted feature correlation matrix to simulate future data for model training. Specifically, CODA leverages feature correlations to represent data characteristics at specific time points, thereby circumventing the daunting computational costs. Experimental results demonstrate that using CODA-generated data as training input effectively achieves temporal domain generalization across different model architectures.