pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Interactive Robot Learning from Verbal Correction
Authors: Huihan Liu, Alice Chen, Yuke Zhu, Adith Swaminathan, Andrey Kolobov, Ching-An Cheng
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model

The ability to learn and refine behavior after deployment has become ever more important for robots as we design them to operate in unstructured environments like households. In this work, we design a new learning system based on large language model (LLM), OLAF, that allows everyday users to teach a robot using verbal corrections when the robot makes mistakes, e.g., by saying "Stop what you're doing. You should move closer to the cup." A key feature of OLAF is its ability to update the robot's visuomotor neural policy based on the verbal feedback to avoid repeating mistakes in the future. This is in contrast to existing LLM-based robotic systems, which only follow verbal commands or corrections but not learn from them. We demonstrate the efficacy of our design in experiments where a user teaches a robot to perform long-horizon manipulation tasks both in simulation and on physical hardware, achieving on average 20.0% improvement in policy success rate. Videos and more results are at https://ut-austin-rpl.github.io/olaf/
Model-Based Runtime Monitoring with Interactive Imitation Learning
Authors: Huihan Liu, Shivin Dass, Roberto Martín-Martín, Yuke Zhu
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Imitation Learning, model

Robot learning methods have recently made great strides, but generalization and robustness challenges still hinder their widespread deployment. Failing to detect and address potential failures renders state-of-the-art learning systems not combat-ready for high-stakes tasks. Recent advances in interactive imitation learning have presented a promising framework for human-robot teaming, enabling the robots to operate safely and continually improve their performances over long-term deployments. Nonetheless, existing methods typically require constant human supervision and preemptive feedback, limiting their practicality in realistic domains. This work aims to endow a robot with the ability to monitor and detect errors during task execution. We introduce a model-based runtime monitoring algorithm that learns from deployment data to detect system anomalies and anticipate failures. Unlike prior work that cannot foresee future failures or requires failure experiences for training, our method learns a latent-space dynamics model and a failure classifier, enabling our method to simulate future action outcomes and detect out-of-distribution and high-risk states preemptively. We train our method within an interactive imitation learning framework, where it continually updates the model from the experiences of the human-robot team collected using trustworthy deployments. Consequently, our method reduces the human workload needed over time while ensuring reliable task execution. Our method outperforms the baselines across system-level and unit-test metrics, with 23% and 40% higher success rates in simulation and on physical hardware, respectively. More information at https://ut-austin-rpl.github.io/sirius-runtime-monitor/
Unpacking the Ethical Value Alignment in Big Models
Authors: Xiaoyuan Yi, Jing Yao, Xiting Wang, Xing Xie
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Ethics

Big models have greatly advanced AI's ability to understand, generate, and manipulate information and content, enabling numerous applications. However, as these models become increasingly integrated into everyday life, their inherent ethical values and potential biases pose unforeseen risks to society. This paper provides an overview of the risks and challenges associated with big models, surveys existing AI ethics guidelines, and examines the ethical implications arising from the limitations of these models. Taking a normative ethics perspective, we propose a reassessment of recent normative guidelines, highlighting the importance of collaborative efforts in academia to establish a unified and universal AI ethics framework. Furthermore, we investigate the moral inclinations of current mainstream LLMs using the Moral Foundation theory, analyze existing alignment algorithms, and outline the unique challenges encountered in aligning ethical values within them. To address these challenges, we introduce a novel conceptual paradigm for aligning the ethical values of big models and discuss promising research directions for alignment criteria, evaluation, and method, representing an initial step towards the interdisciplinary construction of the ethically aligned AI This paper is a modified English version of our Chinese paper https://crad.ict.ac.cn/cn/article/doi/10.7544/issn1000-1239.202330553, intended to help non-Chinese native speakers better understand our work.
Neuro-Inspired Fragmentation and Recall to Overcome Catastrophic Forgetting in Curiosity
Authors: Jaedong Hwang, Zhang-Wei Hong, Eric Chen, Akhilan Boopathy, Pulkit Agrawal, Ila Fiete
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Reinforcement Learning, Prediction

Deep reinforcement learning methods exhibit impressive performance on a range of tasks but still struggle on hard exploration tasks in large environments with sparse rewards. To address this, intrinsic rewards can be generated using forward model prediction errors that decrease as the environment becomes known, and incentivize an agent to explore novel states. While prediction-based intrinsic rewards can help agents solve hard exploration tasks, they can suffer from catastrophic forgetting and actually increase at visited states. We first examine the conditions and causes of catastrophic forgetting in grid world environments. We then propose a new method FARCuriosity, inspired by how humans and animals learn. The method depends on fragmentation and recall: an agent fragments an environment based on surprisal, and uses different local curiosity modules (prediction-based intrinsic reward functions) for each fragment so that modules are not trained on the entire environment. At each fragmentation event, the agent stores the current module in long-term memory (LTM) and either initializes a new module or recalls a previously stored module based on its match with the current state. With fragmentation and recall, FARCuriosity achieves less forgetting and better overall performance in games with varied and heterogeneous environments in the Atari benchmark suite of tasks. Thus, this work highlights the problem of catastrophic forgetting in prediction-based curiosity methods and proposes a solution.
SoK: Pitfalls in Evaluating Black-Box Attacks
Authors: Fnu Suya, Anshuman Suri, Tingwei Zhang, Jingtao Hong, Yuan Tian, David Evans
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00

Numerous works study black-box attacks on image classifiers. However, these works make different assumptions on the adversary's knowledge and current literature lacks a cohesive organization centered around the threat model. To systematize knowledge in this area, we propose a taxonomy over the threat space spanning the axes of feedback granularity, the access of interactive queries, and the quality and quantity of the auxiliary data available to the attacker. Our new taxonomy provides three key insights. 1) Despite extensive literature, numerous under-explored threat spaces exist, which cannot be trivially solved by adapting techniques from well-explored settings. We demonstrate this by establishing a new state-of-the-art in the less-studied setting of access to top-k confidence scores by adapting techniques from well-explored settings of accessing the complete confidence vector, but show how it still falls short of the more restrictive setting that only obtains the prediction label, highlighting the need for more research. 2) Identification the threat model of different attacks uncovers stronger baselines that challenge prior state-of-the-art claims. We demonstrate this by enhancing an initially weaker baseline (under interactive query access) via surrogate models, effectively overturning claims in the respective paper. 3) Our taxonomy reveals interactions between attacker knowledge that connect well to related areas, such as model inversion and extraction attacks. We discuss how advances in other areas can enable potentially stronger black-box attacks. Finally, we emphasize the need for a more realistic assessment of attack success by factoring in local attack runtime. This approach reveals the potential for certain attacks to achieve notably higher success rates and the need to evaluate attacks in diverse and harder settings, highlighting the need for better selection criteria.
Can large language models replace humans in the systematic review process? Evaluating GPT-4's efficacy in screening and extracting data from peer-reviewed and grey literature in multiple languages
Authors: Qusai Khraisha, Sophie Put, Johanna Kappenberg, Azza Warraitch, Kristin Hadfield
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00

Systematic reviews are vital for guiding practice, research, and policy, yet they are often slow and labour-intensive. Large language models (LLMs) could offer a way to speed up and automate systematic reviews, but their performance in such tasks has not been comprehensively evaluated against humans, and no study has tested GPT-4, the biggest LLM so far. This pre-registered study evaluates GPT-4's capability in title/abstract screening, full-text review, and data extraction across various literature types and languages using a 'human-out-of-the-loop' approach. Although GPT-4 had accuracy on par with human performance in most tasks, results were skewed by chance agreement and dataset imbalance. After adjusting for these, there was a moderate level of performance for data extraction, and - barring studies that used highly reliable prompts - screening performance levelled at none to moderate for different stages and languages. When screening full-text literature using highly reliable prompts, GPT-4's performance was 'almost perfect.' Penalising GPT-4 for missing key studies using highly reliable prompts improved its performance even more. Our findings indicate that, currently, substantial caution should be used if LLMs are being used to conduct systematic reviews, but suggest that, for certain systematic review tasks delivered under reliable prompts, LLMs can rival human performance.
The Expressive Power of Low-Rank Adaptation
Authors: Yuchen Zeng, Kangwook Lee
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: parameter-efficient fine-tuning

Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA), a parameter-efficient fine-tuning method that leverages low-rank adaptation of weight matrices, has emerged as a prevalent technique for fine-tuning pre-trained models such as large language models and diffusion models. Despite its huge success in practice, the theoretical underpinnings of LoRA have largely remained unexplored. This paper takes the first step to bridge this gap by theoretically analyzing the expressive power of LoRA. We prove that, for fully connected neural networks, LoRA can adapt any model $f$ to accurately represent any smaller target model $\overline{f}$ if LoRA-rank $\geq(\text{width of }f) \times \frac{\text{depth of }\overline{f}}{\text{depth of }f}$. We also quantify the approximation error when LoRA-rank is lower than the threshold. For Transformer networks, we show any model can be adapted to a target model of the same size with rank-$(\frac{\text{embedding size}}{2})$ LoRA adapters.
CompeteAI: Understanding the Competition Dynamics in Large Language Model-based Agents
Authors: Qinlin Zhao, Jindong Wang, Yixuan Zhang, Yiqiao Jin, Kaijie Zhu, Hao Chen, Xing Xie
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model

Large language models (LLMs) have been widely used as agents to complete different tasks, such as personal assistance or event planning. While most of the work has focused on cooperation and collaboration between agents, little work explores competition, another important mechanism that promotes the development of society and economy. In this paper, we seek to examine the competition dynamics in LLM-based agents. We first propose a general framework for studying the competition between agents. Then, we implement a practical competitive environment using GPT-4 to simulate a virtual town with two types of agents, restaurant agents and customer agents. Specifically, the restaurant agents compete with each other to attract more customers, where competition encourages them to transform, such as cultivating new operating strategies. Simulation experiments reveal several interesting findings at the micro and macro levels, which align well with existing market and sociological theories. We hope that the framework and environment can be a promising testbed to study competition that fosters understanding of society. Code is available at: https://github.com/microsoft/competeai.
Orchestration of Emulator Assisted Mobile Edge Tuning for AI Foundation Models: A Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach
Authors: Wenhan Yu, Terence Jie Chua, Jun Zhao
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Computational Efficiency, Deep Reinforcement Learning, Edge-computing

The efficient deployment and fine-tuning of foundation models are pivotal in contemporary artificial intelligence. In this study, we present a groundbreaking paradigm integrating Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) with foundation models, specifically designed to enhance local task performance on user equipment (UE). Central to our approach is the innovative Emulator-Adapter architecture, segmenting the foundation model into two cohesive modules. This design not only conserves computational resources but also ensures adaptability and fine-tuning efficiency for downstream tasks. Additionally, we introduce an advanced resource allocation mechanism that is fine-tuned to the needs of the Emulator-Adapter structure in decentralized settings. To address the challenges presented by this system, we employ a hybrid multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) strategy, adept at handling mixed discrete-continuous action spaces, ensuring dynamic and optimal resource allocations. Our comprehensive simulations and validations underscore the practical viability of our approach, demonstrating its robustness, efficiency, and scalability. Collectively, this work offers a fresh perspective on deploying foundation models and balancing computational efficiency with task proficiency.
Improving Zero-shot Reader by Reducing Distractions from Irrelevant Documents in Open-Domain Question Answering
Authors: Sukmin Cho, Jeongyeon Seo, Soyeong Jeong, Jong C. Park
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Answer Selection, Negation, Open-Domain Question Answering, Question Answering

Large language models (LLMs) enable zero-shot approaches in open-domain question answering (ODQA), yet with limited advancements as the reader is compared to the retriever. This study aims at the feasibility of a zero-shot reader that addresses the challenges of computational cost and the need for labeled data. We find that LLMs are distracted due to irrelevant documents in the retrieved set and the overconfidence of the generated answers when they are exploited as zero-shot readers. To tackle these problems, we mitigate the impact of such documents via Distraction-aware Answer Selection (DAS) with a negation-based instruction and score adjustment for proper answer selection. Experimental results show that our approach successfully handles distraction across diverse scenarios, enhancing the performance of zero-shot readers. Furthermore, unlike supervised readers struggling with unseen data, zero-shot readers demonstrate outstanding transferability without any training.
Towards Learning Monocular 3D Object Localization From 2D Labels using the Physical Laws of Motion
Authors: Daniel Kienzle, Julian Lorenz, Katja Ludwig, Rainer Lienhart
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Monocular 3D Object Localization, Object, Object Localization

We present a novel method for precise 3D object localization in single images from a single calibrated camera using only 2D labels. No expensive 3D labels are needed. Thus, instead of using 3D labels, our model is trained with easy-to-annotate 2D labels along with the physical knowledge of the object's motion. Given this information, the model can infer the latent third dimension, even though it has never seen this information during training. Our method is evaluated on both synthetic and real-world datasets, and we are able to achieve a mean distance error of just 6 cm in our experiments on real data. The results indicate the method's potential as a step towards learning 3D object location estimation, where collecting 3D data for training is not feasible.
Generating by Understanding: Neural Visual Generation with Logical Symbol Groundings
Authors: Yifei Peng, Zijie Zha, Yu Jin, Zhexu Luo, Wang-Zhou Dai, Zhong Ren, Yao-Xiang Ding, Kun Zhou
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Disentanglement, Logical Reasoning

Making neural visual generative models controllable by logical reasoning systems is promising for improving faithfulness, transparency, and generalizability. We propose the Abductive visual Generation (AbdGen) approach to build such logic-integrated models. A vector-quantized symbol grounding mechanism and the corresponding disentanglement training method are introduced to enhance the controllability of logical symbols over generation. Furthermore, we propose two logical abduction methods to make our approach require few labeled training data and support the induction of latent logical generative rules from data. We experimentally show that our approach can be utilized to integrate various neural generative models with logical reasoning systems, by both learning from scratch or utilizing pre-trained models directly. The code is released at https://github.com/future-item/AbdGen.
LSA64: An Argentinian Sign Language Dataset
Authors: Franco Ronchetti, Facundo Manuel Quiroga, César Estrebou, Laura Lanzarini, Alejandro Rosete
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Sign Language Recognition

Automatic sign language recognition is a research area that encompasses human-computer interaction, computer vision and machine learning. Robust automatic recognition of sign language could assist in the translation process and the integration of hearing-impaired people, as well as the teaching of sign language to the hearing population. Sign languages differ significantly in different countries and even regions, and their syntax and semantics are different as well from those of written languages. While the techniques for automatic sign language recognition are mostly the same for different languages, training a recognition system for a new language requires having an entire dataset for that language. This paper presents a dataset of 64 signs from the Argentinian Sign Language (LSA). The dataset, called LSA64, contains 3200 videos of 64 different LSA signs recorded by 10 subjects, and is a first step towards building a comprehensive research-level dataset of Argentinian signs, specifically tailored to sign language recognition or other machine learning tasks. The subjects that performed the signs wore colored gloves to ease the hand tracking and segmentation steps, allowing experiments on the dataset to focus specifically on the recognition of signs. We also present a pre-processed version of the dataset, from which we computed statistics of movement, position and handshape of the signs.
Handshape recognition for Argentinian Sign Language using ProbSom
Authors: Franco Ronchetti, Facundo Manuel Quiroga, César Estrebou, Laura Lanzarini
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Proceeding: Journal of Computer Science and Technology (JCST) 2016 4
Tasks: Sign Language Recognition

Automatic sign language recognition is an important topic within the areas of human-computer interaction and machine learning. On the one hand, it poses a complex challenge that requires the intervention of various knowledge areas, such as video processing, image processing, intelligent systems and linguistics. On the other hand, robust recognition of sign language could assist in the translation process and the integration of hearing-impaired people. This paper offers two main contributions: first, the creation of a database of handshapes for the Argentinian Sign Language (LSA), which is a topic that has barely been discussed so far. Secondly, a technique for image processing, descriptor extraction and subsequent handshape classification using a supervised adaptation of self-organizing maps that is called ProbSom. This technique is compared to others in the state of the art, such as Support Vector Machines (SVM), Random Forests, and Neural Networks. The database that was built contains 800 images with 16 LSA handshapes, and is a first step towards building a comprehensive database of Argentinian signs. The ProbSom-based neural classifier, using the proposed descriptor, achieved an accuracy rate above 90%.
Distribution of Action Movements (DAM): A Descriptor for Human Action Recognition
Authors: Facundo Manuel Quiroga, Franco Ronchetti, Laura Lanzarini, Cesar Eestrebou
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Proceeding: Frontiers of Computer Science 2015 9
Tasks: Action Recognition, Temporal Action Localization

Human action recognition from skeletal data is an important and active area of research in which the state of the art has not yet achieved near-perfect accuracy on many well-known datasets. In this paper, we introduce the Distribution of Action Movements Descriptor, a novel action descriptor based on the distribution of the directions of the motions of the joints between frames, over the set of all possible motions in the dataset. The descriptor is computed as a normalized histogram over a set of representative directions of the joints, which are in turn obtained via clustering. While the descriptor is global in the sense that it represents the overall distribution of movement directions of an action, it is able to partially retain its temporal structure by applying a windowing scheme. The descriptor, together with a standard classifier, outperforms several state-of-the-art techniques on many well-known datasets.
Goals are Enough: Inducing AdHoc cooperation among unseen Multi-Agent systems in IMFs
Authors: Kaushik Dey, Satheesh K. Perepu, Abir Das
Date: 2023-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Management, Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning

Intent-based management will play a critical role in achieving customers' expectations in the next-generation mobile networks. Traditional methods cannot perform efficient resource management since they tend to handle each expectation independently. Existing approaches, e.g., based on multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) allocate resources in an efficient fashion when there are conflicting expectations on the network slice. However, in reality, systems are often far more complex to be addressed by a standalone MARL formulation. Often there exists a hierarchical structure of intent fulfilment where multiple pre-trained, self-interested agents may need to be further orchestrated by a supervisor or controller agent. Such agents may arrive in the system adhoc, which then needs to be orchestrated along with other available agents. Retraining the whole system every time is often infeasible given the associated time and cost. Given the challenges, such adhoc coordination of pre-trained systems could be achieved through an intelligent supervisor agent which incentivizes pre-trained RL/MARL agents through sets of dynamic contracts (goals or bonuses) and encourages them to act as a cohesive unit towards fulfilling a global expectation. Some approaches use a rule-based supervisor agent and deploy the hierarchical constituent agents sequentially, based on human-coded rules. In the current work, we propose a framework whereby pre-trained agents can be orchestrated in parallel leveraging an AI-based supervisor agent. For this, we propose to use Adhoc-Teaming approaches which assign optimal goals to the MARL agents and incentivize them to exhibit certain desired behaviours. Results on the network emulator show that the proposed approach results in faster and improved fulfilment of expectations when compared to rule-based approaches and even generalizes to changes in environments.