pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
A New Task and Dataset on Detecting Attacks on Human Rights Defenders
Authors: Shihao Ran, Di Lu, Joel Tetreault, Aoife Cahill, Alejandro Jaimes
Date: 2023-06-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Articles, Humanitarian

The ability to conduct retrospective analyses of attacks on human rights defenders over time and by location is important for humanitarian organizations to better understand historical or ongoing human rights violations and thus better manage the global impact of such events. We hypothesize that NLP can support such efforts by quickly processing large collections of news articles to detect and summarize the characteristics of attacks on human rights defenders. To that end, we propose a new dataset for detecting Attacks on Human Rights Defenders (HRDsAttack) consisting of crowdsourced annotations on 500 online news articles. The annotations include fine-grained information about the type and location of the attacks, as well as information about the victim(s). We demonstrate the usefulness of the dataset by using it to train and evaluate baseline models on several sub-tasks to predict the annotated characteristics.
X-RiSAWOZ: High-Quality End-to-End Multilingual Dialogue Datasets and Few-shot Agents
Authors: Mehrad Moradshahi, Tianhao Shen, Kalika Bali, Monojit Choudhury, Gaël de Chalendar, Anmol Goel, Sungkyun Kim, Prashant Kodali, Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Nasredine Semmar, Sina J. Semnani, Jiwon Seo, Vivek Seshadri, Manish Shrivastava, Michael Sun, Aditya Yadavalli, Chaobin You, Deyi Xiong, Monica S. Lam
Date: 2023-06-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Entity Alignment, Machine Translation, Translation

Task-oriented dialogue research has mainly focused on a few popular languages like English and Chinese, due to the high dataset creation cost for a new language. To reduce the cost, we apply manual editing to automatically translated data. We create a new multilingual benchmark, X-RiSAWOZ, by translating the Chinese RiSAWOZ to 4 languages: English, French, Hindi, Korean; and a code-mixed English-Hindi language. X-RiSAWOZ has more than 18,000 human-verified dialogue utterances for each language, and unlike most multilingual prior work, is an end-to-end dataset for building fully-functioning agents. The many difficulties we encountered in creating X-RiSAWOZ led us to develop a toolset to accelerate the post-editing of a new language dataset after translation. This toolset improves machine translation with a hybrid entity alignment technique that combines neural with dictionary-based methods, along with many automated and semi-automated validation checks. We establish strong baselines for X-RiSAWOZ by training dialogue agents in the zero- and few-shot settings where limited gold data is available in the target language. Our results suggest that our translation and post-editing methodology and toolset can be used to create new high-quality multilingual dialogue agents cost-effectively. Our dataset, code, and toolkit are released open-source.
Biomedical Language Models are Robust to Sub-optimal Tokenization
Authors: Bernal Jiménez Gutiérrez, Huan Sun, Yu Su
Date: 2023-06-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Entity Linking, Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Masked Language Modeling, named-entity-recognition, Named Entity Recognition, Named Entity Recognition (NER), NER

As opposed to general English, many concepts in biomedical terminology have been designed in recent history by biomedical professionals with the goal of being precise and concise. This is often achieved by concatenating meaningful biomedical morphemes to create new semantic units. Nevertheless, most modern biomedical language models (LMs) are pre-trained using standard domain-specific tokenizers derived from large scale biomedical corpus statistics without explicitly leveraging the agglutinating nature of biomedical language. In this work, we first find that standard open-domain and biomedical tokenizers are largely unable to segment biomedical terms into meaningful components. Therefore, we hypothesize that using a tokenizer which segments biomedical terminology more accurately would enable biomedical LMs to improve their performance on downstream biomedical NLP tasks, especially ones which involve biomedical terms directly such as named entity recognition (NER) and entity linking. Surprisingly, we find that pre-training a biomedical LM using a more accurate biomedical tokenizer does not improve the entity representation quality of a language model as measured by several intrinsic and extrinsic measures such as masked language modeling prediction (MLM) accuracy as well as NER and entity linking performance. These quantitative findings, along with a case study which explores entity representation quality more directly, suggest that the biomedical pre-training process is quite robust to instances of sub-optimal tokenization.
Feature Representation Learning for NL2SQL Generation Based on Coupling and Decoupling
Authors: Chenduo Hao, Xu Zhang, Chuanbao Gao, Deyu Zhou
Date: 2023-06-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Feature Correlation, Multi-Task Learning, Representation Learning, slot-filling, Slot Filling

The NL2SQL task involves parsing natural language statements into SQL queries. While most state-of-the-art methods treat NL2SQL as a slot-filling task and use feature representation learning techniques, they overlook explicit correlation features between the SELECT and WHERE clauses and implicit correlation features between sub-tasks within a single clause. To address this issue, we propose the Clause Feature Correlation Decoupling and Coupling (CFCDC) model, which uses a feature representation decoupling method to separate the SELECT and WHERE clauses at the parameter level. Next, we introduce a multi-task learning architecture to decouple implicit correlation feature representation between different SQL tasks in a specific clause. Moreover, we present an improved feature representation coupling module to integrate the decoupled tasks in the SELECT and WHERE clauses and predict the final SQL query. Our proposed CFCDC model demonstrates excellent performance on the WikiSQL dataset, with significant improvements in logic precision and execution accuracy. The source code for the model will be publicly available on GitHub
A Cost-aware Study of Depression Language on Social Media using Topic and Affect Contextualization
Authors: Andrea Laguna, Oscar Araque
Date: 2023-06-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Classification, Depression Detection, Ensemble Learning

Depression is a growing issue in society's mental health that affects all areas of life and can even lead to suicide. Fortunately, prevention programs can be effective in its treatment. In this context, this work proposes an automatic system for detecting depression on social media based on machine learning and natural language processing methods. This paper presents the following contributions: (i) an ensemble learning system that combines several types of text representations for depression detection, including recent advances in the field; (ii) a contextualization schema through topic and affective information; (iii) an analysis of models' energy consumption, establishing a trade-off between classification performance and overall computational costs. To assess the proposed models' effectiveness, a thorough evaluation is performed in two datasets that model depressive text. Experiments indicate that the proposed contextualization strategies can improve the classification and that approaches that use Transformers can improve the overall F-score by 2% while augmenting the energy cost a hundred times. Finally, this work paves the way for future energy-wise systems by considering both the performance classification and the energy consumption.
GPT-FinRE: In-context Learning for Financial Relation Extraction using Large Language Models
Authors: Pawan Kumar Rajpoot, Ankur Parikh
Date: 2023-06-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Articles, Financial Relation Extraction, In-Context Learning, Relation, Relation Extraction, Retrieval

Relation extraction (RE) is a crucial task in natural language processing (NLP) that aims to identify and classify relationships between entities mentioned in text. In the financial domain, relation extraction plays a vital role in extracting valuable information from financial documents, such as news articles, earnings reports, and company filings. This paper describes our solution to relation extraction on one such dataset REFinD. The dataset was released along with shared task as a part of the Fourth Workshop on Knowledge Discovery from Unstructured Data in Financial Services, co-located with SIGIR 2023. In this paper, we employed OpenAI models under the framework of in-context learning (ICL). We utilized two retrieval strategies to find top K relevant in-context learning demonstrations / examples from training data for a given test example. The first retrieval mechanism, we employed, is a learning-free dense retriever and the other system is a learning-based retriever. We were able to achieve 3rd rank overall. Our best F1-score is 0.718.
Knowledge Base Completion for Long-Tail Entities
Authors: Lihu Chen, Simon Razniewski, Gerhard Weikum
Date: 2023-06-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Knowledge Base Completion, Retrieval

Despite their impressive scale, knowledge bases (KBs), such as Wikidata, still contain significant gaps. Language models (LMs) have been proposed as a source for filling these gaps. However, prior works have focused on prominent entities with rich coverage by LMs, neglecting the crucial case of long-tail entities. In this paper, we present a novel method for LM-based-KB completion that is specifically geared for facts about long-tail entities. The method leverages two different LMs in two stages: for candidate retrieval and for candidate verification and disambiguation. To evaluate our method and various baselines, we introduce a novel dataset, called MALT, rooted in Wikidata. Our method outperforms all baselines in F1, with major gains especially in recall.
Japanese Lexical Complexity for Non-Native Readers: A New Dataset
Authors: Yusuke Ide, Masato Mita, Adam Nohejl, Hiroki Ouchi, Taro Watanabe
Date: 2023-06-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Lexical Complexity Prediction

Lexical complexity prediction (LCP) is the task of predicting the complexity of words in a text on a continuous scale. It plays a vital role in simplifying or annotating complex words to assist readers. To study lexical complexity in Japanese, we construct the first Japanese LCP dataset. Our dataset provides separate complexity scores for Chinese/Korean annotators and others to address the readers' L1-specific needs. In the baseline experiment, we demonstrate the effectiveness of a BERT-based system for Japanese LCP.
SummQA at MEDIQA-Chat 2023:In-Context Learning with GPT-4 for Medical Summarization
Authors: Yash Mathur, Sanketh Rangreji, Raghav Kapoor, Medha Palavalli, Amanda Bertsch, Matthew R. Gormley
Date: 2023-06-30 00:00:00
Tasks: All, In-Context Learning

Medical dialogue summarization is challenging due to the unstructured nature of medical conversations, the use of medical terminology in gold summaries, and the need to identify key information across multiple symptom sets. We present a novel system for the Dialogue2Note Medical Summarization tasks in the MEDIQA 2023 Shared Task. Our approach for section-wise summarization (Task A) is a two-stage process of selecting semantically similar dialogues and using the top-k similar dialogues as in-context examples for GPT-4. For full-note summarization (Task B), we use a similar solution with k=1. We achieved 3rd place in Task A (2nd among all teams), 4th place in Task B Division Wise Summarization (2nd among all teams), 15th place in Task A Section Header Classification (9th among all teams), and 8th place among all teams in Task B. Our results highlight the effectiveness of few-shot prompting for this task, though we also identify several weaknesses of prompting-based approaches. We compare GPT-4 performance with several finetuned baselines. We find that GPT-4 summaries are more abstractive and shorter. We make our code publicly available.
Citations as Queries: Source Attribution Using Language Models as Rerankers
Authors: Ryan Muther, David Smith
Date: 2023-06-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Reranking, Retrieval

This paper explores new methods for locating the sources used to write a text, by fine-tuning a variety of language models to rerank candidate sources. After retrieving candidates sources using a baseline BM25 retrieval model, a variety of reranking methods are tested to see how effective they are at the task of source attribution. We conduct experiments on two datasets, English Wikipedia and medieval Arabic historical writing, and employ a variety of retrieval and generation based reranking models. In particular, we seek to understand how the degree of supervision required affects the performance of various reranking models. We find that semisupervised methods can be nearly as effective as fully supervised methods while avoiding potentially costly span-level annotation of the target and source documents.
Towards Open-Domain Topic Classification
Authors: Hantian Ding, Jinrui Yang, Yuqian Deng, Hongming Zhang, Dan Roth
Date: 2023-06-29 00:00:00
Proceeding: NAACL (ACL) 2022 7
Tasks: Classification, Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Topic Classification

We introduce an open-domain topic classification system that accepts user-defined taxonomy in real time. Users will be able to classify a text snippet with respect to any candidate labels they want, and get instant response from our web interface. To obtain such flexibility, we build the backend model in a zero-shot way. By training on a new dataset constructed from Wikipedia, our label-aware text classifier can effectively utilize implicit knowledge in the pretrained language model to handle labels it has never seen before. We evaluate our model across four datasets from various domains with different label sets. Experiments show that the model significantly improves over existing zero-shot baselines in open-domain scenarios, and performs competitively with weakly-supervised models trained on in-domain data.
Learning Multilingual Expressive Speech Representation for Prosody Prediction without Parallel Data
Authors: Jarod Duret, Titouan Parcollet, Yannick Estève
Date: 2023-06-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Machine Translation, Prosody Prediction, Resynthesis, Translation

We propose a method for speech-to-speech emotionpreserving translation that operates at the level of discrete speech units. Our approach relies on the use of multilingual emotion embedding that can capture affective information in a language-independent manner. We show that this embedding can be used to predict the pitch and duration of speech units in a target language, allowing us to resynthesize the source speech signal with the same emotional content. We evaluate our approach to English and French speech signals and show that it outperforms a baseline method that does not use emotional information, including when the emotion embedding is extracted from a different language. Even if this preliminary study does not address directly the machine translation issue, our results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach for cross-lingual emotion preservation in the context of speech resynthesis.
First Steps Towards a Runtime Analysis of Neuroevolution
Authors: Paul Fischer, Emil Lundt Larsen, Carsten Witt
Date: 2023-07-03 00:00:00

We consider a simple setting in neuroevolution where an evolutionary algorithm optimizes the weights and activation functions of a simple artificial neural network. We then define simple example functions to be learned by the network and conduct rigorous runtime analyses for networks with a single neuron and for a more advanced structure with several neurons and two layers. Our results show that the proposed algorithm is generally efficient on two example problems designed for one neuron and efficient with at least constant probability on the example problem for a two-layer network. In particular, the so-called harmonic mutation operator choosing steps of size $j$ with probability proportional to $1/j$ turns out as a good choice for the underlying search space. However, for the case of one neuron, we also identify situations with hard-to-overcome local optima. Experimental investigations of our neuroevolutionary algorithm and a state-of-the-art CMA-ES support the theoretical findings.
Quantum State Assignment Flows
Authors: Jonathan Schwarz, Jonas Cassel, Bastian Boll, Martin Gärttner, Peter Albers, Christoph Schnörr
Date: 2023-06-30 00:00:00

This paper introduces assignment flows for density matrices as state spaces for representing and analyzing data associated with vertices of an underlying weighted graph. Determining an assignment flow by geometric integration of the defining dynamical system causes an interaction of the non-commuting states across the graph, and the assignment of a pure (rank-one) state to each vertex after convergence. Adopting the Riemannian Bogoliubov-Kubo-Mori metric from information geometry leads to closed-form local expressions which can be computed efficiently and implemented in a fine-grained parallel manner. Restriction to the submanifold of commuting density matrices recovers the assignment flows for categorial probability distributions, which merely assign labels from a finite set to each data point. As shown for these flows in our prior work, the novel class of quantum state assignment flows can also be characterized as Riemannian gradient flows with respect to a non-local non-convex potential, after proper reparametrization and under mild conditions on the underlying weight function. This weight function generates the parameters of the layers of a neural network, corresponding to and generated by each step of the geometric integration scheme. Numerical results indicates and illustrate the potential of the novel approach for data representation and analysis, including the representation of correlations of data across the graph by entanglement and tensorization.
Comparing Algorithm Selection Approaches on Black-Box Optimization Problems
Authors: Ana Kostovska, Anja Jankovic, Diederick Vermetten, Sašo Džeroski, Tome Eftimov, Carola Doerr
Date: 2023-06-30 00:00:00

Performance complementarity of solvers available to tackle black-box optimization problems gives rise to the important task of algorithm selection (AS). Automated AS approaches can help replace tedious and labor-intensive manual selection, and have already shown promising performance in various optimization domains. Automated AS relies on machine learning (ML) techniques to recommend the best algorithm given the information about the problem instance. Unfortunately, there are no clear guidelines for choosing the most appropriate one from a variety of ML techniques. Tree-based models such as Random Forest or XGBoost have consistently demonstrated outstanding performance for automated AS. Transformers and other tabular deep learning models have also been increasingly applied in this context. We investigate in this work the impact of the choice of the ML technique on AS performance. We compare four ML models on the task of predicting the best solver for the BBOB problems for 7 different runtime budgets in 2 dimensions. While our results confirm that a per-instance AS has indeed impressive potential, we also show that the particular choice of the ML technique is of much minor importance.
Doubly Robust Estimation of Direct and Indirect Quantile Treatment Effects with Machine Learning
Authors: Yu-Chin Hsu, Martin Huber, Yu-Min Yen
Date: 2023-07-03 00:00:00

We suggest double/debiased machine learning estimators of direct and indirect quantile treatment effects under a selection-on-observables assumption. This permits disentangling the causal effect of a binary treatment at a specific outcome rank into an indirect component that operates through an intermediate variable called mediator and an (unmediated) direct impact. The proposed method is based on the efficient score functions of the cumulative distribution functions of potential outcomes, which are robust to certain misspecifications of the nuisance parameters, i.e., the outcome, treatment, and mediator models. We estimate these nuisance parameters by machine learning and use cross-fitting to reduce overfitting bias in the estimation of direct and indirect quantile treatment effects. We establish uniform consistency and asymptotic normality of our effect estimators. We also propose a multiplier bootstrap for statistical inference and show the validity of the multiplier bootstrap. Finally, we investigate the finite sample performance of our method in a simulation study and apply it to empirical data from the National Job Corp Study to assess the direct and indirect earnings effects of training.
Bootstrapping the Cross-Validation Estimate
Authors: Bryan Cai, Fabio Pellegrini, Menglan Pang, Carl de Moor, Changyu Shen, Vivek Charu, Lu Tian
Date: 2023-07-01 00:00:00
Tasks: valid

Cross-validation is a widely used technique for evaluating the performance of prediction models. It helps avoid the optimism bias in error estimates, which can be significant for models built using complex statistical learning algorithms. However, since the cross-validation estimate is a random value dependent on observed data, it is essential to accurately quantify the uncertainty associated with the estimate. This is especially important when comparing the performance of two models using cross-validation, as one must determine whether differences in error estimates are a result of chance fluctuations. Although various methods have been developed for making inferences on cross-validation estimates, they often have many limitations, such as stringent model assumptions This paper proposes a fast bootstrap method that quickly estimates the standard error of the cross-validation estimate and produces valid confidence intervals for a population parameter measuring average model performance. Our method overcomes the computational challenge inherent in bootstrapping the cross-validation estimate by estimating the variance component within a random effects model. It is just as flexible as the cross-validation procedure itself. To showcase the effectiveness of our approach, we employ comprehensive simulations and real data analysis across three diverse applications.
Large-scale Bayesian Structure Learning for Gaussian Graphical Models using Marginal Pseudo-likelihood
Authors: Reza Mohammadi, Marit Schoonhoven, Lucas Vogels, S. Ilker Birbil
Date: 2023-06-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Computational Efficiency

Bayesian methods for learning Gaussian graphical models offer a comprehensive framework that addresses model uncertainty and incorporates prior knowledge. Despite their theoretical strengths, the applicability of Bayesian methods is often constrained by computational demands, especially in modern contexts involving thousands of variables. To overcome this issue, we introduce two novel Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) search algorithms with a significantly lower computational cost than leading Bayesian approaches. Our proposed MCMC-based search algorithms use the marginal pseudo-likelihood approach to bypass the complexities of computing intractable normalizing constants and iterative precision matrix sampling. These algorithms can deliver reliable results in mere minutes on standard computers, even for large-scale problems with one thousand variables. Furthermore, our proposed method efficiently addresses model uncertainty by exploring the full posterior graph space. We establish the consistency of graph recovery, and our extensive simulation study indicates that the proposed algorithms, particularly for large-scale sparse graphs, outperform leading Bayesian approaches in terms of computational efficiency and accuracy. We also illustrate the practical utility of our methods on medium and large-scale applications from human and mice gene expression studies. The implementation supporting the new approach is available through the R package BDgraph.