pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
A Simple Framework to Enhance the Adversarial Robustness of Deep Learning-based Intrusion Detection System
Authors: Xinwei Yuan, Shu Han, Wei Huang, Hongliang Ye, Xianglong Kong, Fan Zhang
Date: 2023-12-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Adversarial Attack, Adversarial Robustness, Deep Learning, Intrusion Detection

Deep learning based intrusion detection systems (DL-based IDS) have emerged as one of the best choices for providing security solutions against various network intrusion attacks. However, due to the emergence and development of adversarial deep learning technologies, it becomes challenging for the adoption of DL models into IDS. In this paper, we propose a novel IDS architecture that can enhance the robustness of IDS against adversarial attacks by combining conventional machine learning (ML) models and Deep Learning models. The proposed DLL-IDS consists of three components: DL-based IDS, adversarial example (AE) detector, and ML-based IDS. We first develop a novel AE detector based on the local intrinsic dimensionality (LID). Then, we exploit the low attack transferability between DL models and ML models to find a robust ML model that can assist us in determining the maliciousness of AEs. If the input traffic is detected as an AE, the ML-based IDS will predict the maliciousness of input traffic, otherwise the DL-based IDS will work for the prediction. The fusion mechanism can leverage the high prediction accuracy of DL models and low attack transferability between DL models and ML models to improve the robustness of the whole system. In our experiments, we observe a significant improvement in the prediction performance of the IDS when subjected to adversarial attack, achieving high accuracy with low resource consumption.
Multicoated and Folded Graph Neural Networks with Strong Lottery Tickets
Authors: Jiale Yan, Hiroaki Ito, Ángel López García-Arias, Yasuyuki Okoshi, Hikari Otsuka, Kazushi Kawamura, Thiem Van Chu, Masato Motomura
Date: 2023-12-06 00:00:00

The Strong Lottery Ticket Hypothesis (SLTH) demonstrates the existence of high-performing subnetworks within a randomly initialized model, discoverable through pruning a convolutional neural network (CNN) without any weight training. A recent study, called Untrained GNNs Tickets (UGT), expanded SLTH from CNNs to shallow graph neural networks (GNNs). However, discrepancies persist when comparing baseline models with learned dense weights. Additionally, there remains an unexplored area in applying SLTH to deeper GNNs, which, despite delivering improved accuracy with additional layers, suffer from excessive memory requirements. To address these challenges, this work utilizes Multicoated Supermasks (M-Sup), a scalar pruning mask method, and implements it in GNNs by proposing a strategy for setting its pruning thresholds adaptively. In the context of deep GNNs, this research uncovers the existence of untrained recurrent networks, which exhibit performance on par with their trained feed-forward counterparts. This paper also introduces the Multi-Stage Folding and Unshared Masks methods to expand the search space in terms of both architecture and parameters. Through the evaluation of various datasets, including the Open Graph Benchmark (OGB), this work establishes a triple-win scenario for SLTH-based GNNs: by achieving high sparsity, competitive performance, and high memory efficiency with up to 98.7\% reduction, it demonstrates suitability for energy-efficient graph processing.
Deep Multimodal Fusion for Surgical Feedback Classification
Authors: Rafal Kocielnik, Elyssa Y. Wong, Timothy N. Chu, Lydia Lin, De-An Huang, Jiayun Wang, Anima Anandkumar, Andrew J. Hung
Date: 2023-12-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Classification

Quantification of real-time informal feedback delivered by an experienced surgeon to a trainee during surgery is important for skill improvements in surgical training. Such feedback in the live operating room is inherently multimodal, consisting of verbal conversations (e.g., questions and answers) as well as non-verbal elements (e.g., through visual cues like pointing to anatomic elements). In this work, we leverage a clinically-validated five-category classification of surgical feedback: "Anatomic", "Technical", "Procedural", "Praise" and "Visual Aid". We then develop a multi-label machine learning model to classify these five categories of surgical feedback from inputs of text, audio, and video modalities. The ultimate goal of our work is to help automate the annotation of real-time contextual surgical feedback at scale. Our automated classification of surgical feedback achieves AUCs ranging from 71.5 to 77.6 with the fusion improving performance by 3.1%. We also show that high-quality manual transcriptions of feedback audio from experts improve AUCs to between 76.5 and 96.2, which demonstrates a clear path toward future improvements. Empirically, we find that the Staged training strategy, with first pre-training each modality separately and then training them jointly, is more effective than training different modalities altogether. We also present intuitive findings on the importance of modalities for different feedback categories. This work offers an important first look at the feasibility of automated classification of real-world live surgical feedback based on text, audio, and video modalities.
SDSRA: A Skill-Driven Skill-Recombination Algorithm for Efficient Policy Learning
Authors: Eric H. Jiang, Andrew Lizarraga
Date: 2023-12-06 00:00:00
Tasks: reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning

In this paper, we introduce a novel algorithm - the Skill-Driven Skill Recombination Algorithm (SDSRA) - an innovative framework that significantly enhances the efficiency of achieving maximum entropy in reinforcement learning tasks. We find that SDSRA achieves faster convergence compared to the traditional Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) algorithm and produces improved policies. By integrating skill-based strategies within the robust Actor-Critic framework, SDSRA demonstrates remarkable adaptability and performance across a wide array of complex and diverse benchmarks.
FERGI: Automatic Scoring of User Preferences for Text-to-Image Generation from Spontaneous Facial Expression Reaction
Authors: Shuangquan Feng, Junhua Ma, Virginia R. de Sa
Date: 2023-12-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Image Generation, Text to Image Generation, Text-to-Image Generation

Researchers have proposed to use data of human preference feedback to fine-tune text-to-image generative models. However, the scalability of human feedback collection has been limited by its reliance on manual annotation. Therefore, we develop and test a method to automatically score user preferences from their spontaneous facial expression reaction to the generated images. We collect a dataset of Facial Expression Reaction to Generated Images (FERGI) and show that the activations of multiple facial action units (AUs) are highly correlated with user evaluations of the generated images. We develop an FAU-Net (Facial Action Units Neural Network), which receives inputs from an AU estimation model, to automatically score user preferences for text-to-image generation based on their facial expression reactions, which is complementary to the pre-trained scoring models based on the input text prompts and generated images. Integrating our FAU-Net valence score with the pre-trained scoring models improves their consistency with human preferences. This method of automatic annotation with facial expression analysis can be potentially generalized to other generation tasks. The code is available at https://github.com/ShuangquanFeng/FERGI, and the dataset is also available at the same link for research purposes.
Data-Driven Traffic Reconstruction and Kernel Methods for Identifying Stop-and-Go Congestion
Authors: Edgar Ramirez Sanchez, Shreyaa Raghavan, Cathy Wu
Date: 2023-12-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

Identifying stop-and-go events (SAGs) in traffic flow presents an important avenue for advancing data-driven research for climate change mitigation and sustainability, owing to their substantial impact on carbon emissions, travel time, fuel consumption, and roadway safety. In fact, SAGs are estimated to account for 33-50% of highway driving externalities. However, insufficient attention has been paid to precisely quantifying where, when, and how much these SAGs take place -necessary for downstream decision making, such as intervention design and policy analysis. A key challenge is that the data available to researchers and governments are typically sparse and aggregated to a granularity that obscures SAGs. To overcome such data limitations, this study thus explores the use of traffic reconstruction techniques for SAG identification. In particular, we introduce a kernel-based method for identifying spatio-temporal features in traffic and leverage bootstrapping to quantify the uncertainty of the reconstruction process. Experimental results on California highway data demonstrate the promise of the method for capturing SAGs. This work contributes to a foundation for data-driven decision making to advance sustainability of traffic systems.
Using Curiosity for an Even Representation of Tasks in Continual Offline Reinforcement Learning
Authors: Pankayaraj Pathmanathan, Natalia Díaz-Rodríguez, Javier Del Ser
Date: 2023-12-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Boundary Detection, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning

In this work, we investigate the means of using curiosity on replay buffers to improve offline multi-task continual reinforcement learning when tasks, which are defined by the non-stationarity in the environment, are non labeled and not evenly exposed to the learner in time. In particular, we investigate the use of curiosity both as a tool for task boundary detection and as a priority metric when it comes to retaining old transition tuples, which we respectively use to propose two different buffers. Firstly, we propose a Hybrid Reservoir Buffer with Task Separation (HRBTS), where curiosity is used to detect task boundaries that are not known due to the task agnostic nature of the problem. Secondly, by using curiosity as a priority metric when it comes to retaining old transition tuples, a Hybrid Curious Buffer (HCB) is proposed. We ultimately show that these buffers, in conjunction with regular reinforcement learning algorithms, can be used to alleviate the catastrophic forgetting issue suffered by the state of the art on replay buffers when the agent's exposure to tasks is not equal along time. We evaluate catastrophic forgetting and the efficiency of our proposed buffers against the latest works such as the Hybrid Reservoir Buffer (HRB) and the Multi-Time Scale Replay Buffer (MTR) in three different continual reinforcement learning settings. Experiments were done on classical control tasks and Metaworld environment. Experiments show that our proposed replay buffers display better immunity to catastrophic forgetting compared to existing works in most of the settings.
A Comparative Study of AI-Generated (GPT-4) and Human-crafted MCQs in Programming Education
Authors: Jacob Doughty, Zipiao Wan, Anishka Bompelli, Jubahed Qayum, Taozhi Wang, Juran Zhang, Yujia Zheng, Aidan Doyle, Pragnya Sridhar, Arav Agarwal, Christopher Bogart, Eric Keylor, Can Kultur, Jaromir Savelka, Majd Sakr
Date: 2023-12-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Multiple-choice

There is a constant need for educators to develop and maintain effective up-to-date assessments. While there is a growing body of research in computing education on utilizing large language models (LLMs) in generation and engagement with coding exercises, the use of LLMs for generating programming MCQs has not been extensively explored. We analyzed the capability of GPT-4 to produce multiple-choice questions (MCQs) aligned with specific learning objectives (LOs) from Python programming classes in higher education. Specifically, we developed an LLM-powered (GPT-4) system for generation of MCQs from high-level course context and module-level LOs. We evaluated 651 LLM-generated and 449 human-crafted MCQs aligned to 246 LOs from 6 Python courses. We found that GPT-4 was capable of producing MCQs with clear language, a single correct choice, and high-quality distractors. We also observed that the generated MCQs appeared to be well-aligned with the LOs. Our findings can be leveraged by educators wishing to take advantage of the state-of-the-art generative models to support MCQ authoring efforts.
FlexModel: A Framework for Interpretability of Distributed Large Language Models
Authors: Matthew Choi, Muhammad Adil Asif, John Willes, David Emerson
Date: 2023-12-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Distributed Computing, GPU

With the growth of large language models, now incorporating billions of parameters, the hardware prerequisites for their training and deployment have seen a corresponding increase. Although existing tools facilitate model parallelization and distributed training, deeper model interactions, crucial for interpretability and responsible AI techniques, still demand thorough knowledge of distributed computing. This often hinders contributions from researchers with machine learning expertise but limited distributed computing background. Addressing this challenge, we present FlexModel, a software package providing a streamlined interface for engaging with models distributed across multi-GPU and multi-node configurations. The library is compatible with existing model distribution libraries and encapsulates PyTorch models. It exposes user-registerable HookFunctions to facilitate straightforward interaction with distributed model internals, bridging the gap between distributed and single-device model paradigms. Primarily, FlexModel enhances accessibility by democratizing model interactions and promotes more inclusive research in the domain of large-scale neural networks. The package is found at https://github.com/VectorInstitute/flex_model.
Evaluating Agents using Social Choice Theory
Authors: Marc Lanctot, Kate Larson, Yoram Bachrach, Luke Marris, Zun Li, Avishkar Bhoopchand, Thomas Anthony, Brian Tanner, Anna Koop
Date: 2023-12-05 00:00:00

We argue that many general evaluation problems can be viewed through the lens of voting theory. Each task is interpreted as a separate voter, which requires only ordinal rankings or pairwise comparisons of agents to produce an overall evaluation. By viewing the aggregator as a social welfare function, we are able to leverage centuries of research in social choice theory to derive principled evaluation frameworks with axiomatic foundations. These evaluations are interpretable and flexible, while avoiding many of the problems currently facing cross-task evaluation. We apply this Voting-as-Evaluation (VasE) framework across multiple settings, including reinforcement learning, large language models, and humans. In practice, we observe that VasE can be more robust than popular evaluation frameworks (Elo and Nash averaging), discovers properties in the evaluation data not evident from scores alone, and can predict outcomes better than Elo in a complex seven-player game. We identify one particular approach, maximal lotteries, that satisfies important consistency properties relevant to evaluation, is computationally efficient (polynomial in the size of the evaluation data), and identifies game-theoretic cycles.
The Landscape of Modern Machine Learning: A Review of Machine, Distributed and Federated Learning
Authors: Omer Subasi, Oceane Bel, Joseph Manzano, Kevin Barker
Date: 2023-12-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Learning, Distributed Computing, Federated Learning

With the advance of the powerful heterogeneous, parallel and distributed computing systems and ever increasing immense amount of data, machine learning has become an indispensable part of cutting-edge technology, scientific research and consumer products. In this study, we present a review of modern machine and deep learning. We provide a high-level overview for the latest advanced machine learning algorithms, applications, and frameworks. Our discussion encompasses parallel distributed learning, deep learning as well as federated learning. As a result, our work serves as an introductory text to the vast field of modern machine learning.
What Causes Polysemanticity? An Alternative Origin Story of Mixed Selectivity from Incidental Causes
Authors: Victor Lecomte, Kushal Thaman, Rylan Schaeffer, Naomi Bashkansky, Trevor Chow, Sanmi Koyejo
Date: 2023-12-05 00:00:00

Polysemantic neurons -- neurons that activate for a set of unrelated features -- have been seen as a significant obstacle towards interpretability of task-optimized deep networks, with implications for AI safety. The classic origin story of polysemanticity is that the data contains more ``features" than neurons, such that learning to perform a task forces the network to co-allocate multiple unrelated features to the same neuron, endangering our ability to understand networks' internal processing. In this work, we present a second and non-mutually exclusive origin story of polysemanticity. We show that polysemanticity can arise incidentally, even when there are ample neurons to represent all features in the data, a phenomenon we term \textit{incidental polysemanticity}. Using a combination of theory and experiments, we show that incidental polysemanticity can arise due to multiple reasons including regularization and neural noise; this incidental polysemanticity occurs because random initialization can, by chance alone, initially assign multiple features to the same neuron, and the training dynamics then strengthen such overlap. Our paper concludes by calling for further research quantifying the performance-polysemanticity tradeoff in task-optimized deep neural networks to better understand to what extent polysemanticity is avoidable.
RESIN-EDITOR: A Schema-guided Hierarchical Event Graph Visualizer and Editor
Authors: Khanh Duy Nguyen, Zixuan Zhang, Reece Suchocki, Sha Li, Martha Palmer, Susan Brown, Jiawei Han, Heng Ji
Date: 2023-12-05 00:00:00

In this paper, we present RESIN-EDITOR, an interactive event graph visualizer and editor designed for analyzing complex events. Our RESIN-EDITOR system allows users to render and freely edit hierarchical event graphs extracted from multimedia and multi-document news clusters with guidance from human-curated event schemas. RESIN-EDITOR's unique features include hierarchical graph visualization, comprehensive source tracing, and interactive user editing, which is more powerful and versatile than existing Information Extraction (IE) visualization tools. In our evaluation of RESIN-EDITOR, we demonstrate ways in which our tool is effective in understanding complex events and enhancing system performance. The source code, a video demonstration, and a live website for RESIN-EDITOR have been made publicly available.
Clinical Notes Reveal Physician Fatigue
Authors: Chao-Chun Hsu, Ziad Obermeyer, Chenhao Tan
Date: 2023-12-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

Physicians write notes about patients. In doing so, they reveal much about themselves. Using data from 129,228 emergency room visits, we train a model to identify notes written by fatigued physicians -- those who worked 5 or more of the prior 7 days. In a hold-out set, the model accurately identifies notes written by these high-workload physicians, and also flags notes written in other high-fatigue settings: on overnight shifts, and after high patient volumes. Model predictions also correlate with worse decision-making on at least one important metric: yield of testing for heart attack is 18% lower with each standard deviation increase in model-predicted fatigue. Finally, the model indicates that notes written about Black and Hispanic patients have 12% and 21% higher predicted fatigue than Whites -- larger than overnight vs. daytime differences. These results have an important implication for large language models (LLMs). Our model indicates that fatigued doctors write more predictable notes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, because word prediction is the core of how LLMs work, we find that LLM-written notes have 17% higher predicted fatigue than real physicians' notes. This indicates that LLMs may introduce distortions in generated text that are not yet fully understood.
Generating Interpretable Networks using Hypernetworks
Authors: Isaac Liao, Ziming Liu, Max Tegmark
Date: 2023-12-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Systematic Generalization

An essential goal in mechanistic interpretability to decode a network, i.e., to convert a neural network's raw weights to an interpretable algorithm. Given the difficulty of the decoding problem, progress has been made to understand the easier encoding problem, i.e., to convert an interpretable algorithm into network weights. Previous works focus on encoding existing algorithms into networks, which are interpretable by definition. However, focusing on encoding limits the possibility of discovering new algorithms that humans have never stumbled upon, but that are nevertheless interpretable. In this work, we explore the possibility of using hypernetworks to generate interpretable networks whose underlying algorithms are not yet known. The hypernetwork is carefully designed such that it can control network complexity, leading to a diverse family of interpretable algorithms ranked by their complexity. All of them are interpretable in hindsight, although some of them are less intuitive to humans, hence providing new insights regarding how to "think" like a neural network. For the task of computing L1 norms, hypernetworks find three algorithms: (a) the double-sided algorithm, (b) the convexity algorithm, (c) the pudding algorithm, although only the first algorithm was expected by the authors before experiments. We automatically classify these algorithms and analyze how these algorithmic phases develop during training, as well as how they are affected by complexity control. Furthermore, we show that a trained hypernetwork can correctly construct models for input dimensions not seen in training, demonstrating systematic generalization.
Navigating the Synthetic Realm: Harnessing Diffusion-based Models for Laparoscopic Text-to-Image Generation
Authors: Simeon Allmendinger, Patrick Hemmer, Moritz Queisner, Igor Sauer, Leopold Müller, Johannes Jakubik, Michael Vössing, Niklas Kühl
Date: 2023-12-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, Image Generation, Text to Image Generation, Text-to-Image Generation

Recent advances in synthetic imaging open up opportunities for obtaining additional data in the field of surgical imaging. This data can provide reliable supplements supporting surgical applications and decision-making through computer vision. Particularly the field of image-guided surgery, such as laparoscopic and robotic-assisted surgery, benefits strongly from synthetic image datasets and virtual surgical training methods. Our study presents an intuitive approach for generating synthetic laparoscopic images from short text prompts using diffusion-based generative models. We demonstrate the usage of state-of-the-art text-to-image architectures in the context of laparoscopic imaging with regard to the surgical removal of the gallbladder as an example. Results on fidelity and diversity demonstrate that diffusion-based models can acquire knowledge about the style and semantics in the field of image-guided surgery. A validation study with a human assessment survey underlines the realistic nature of our synthetic data, as medical personnel detects actual images in a pool with generated images causing a false-positive rate of 66%. In addition, the investigation of a state-of-the-art machine learning model to recognize surgical actions indicates enhanced results when trained with additional generated images of up to 5.20%. Overall, the achieved image quality contributes to the usage of computer-generated images in surgical applications and enhances its path to maturity.