pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
From Data Creator to Data Reuser: Distance Matters
Authors: Christine L. Borgman, Paul T. Groth
Date: 2024-02-05 00:00:00

Sharing research data is necessary, but not sufficient, for data reuse. Open science policies focus more heavily on data sharing than on reuse, yet both are complex, labor-intensive, expensive, and require infrastructure investments by multiple stakeholders. The value of data reuse lies in relationships between creators and reusers. By addressing knowledge exchange, rather than mere transactions between stakeholders, investments in data management and knowledge infrastructures can be made more wisely. Drawing upon empirical studies of data sharing and reuse, we develop the metaphor of distance between data creator and data reuser, identifying six dimensions of distance that influence the ability to transfer knowledge effectively: domain, methods, collaboration, curation, purposes, and time and temporality. We explore how social and socio-technical aspects of these dimensions may decrease -- or increase -- distances to be traversed between creators and reusers. Our theoretical framing of the distance between data creators and prospective reusers leads to recommendations to four categories of stakeholders on how to make data sharing and reuse more effective: data creators, data reusers, data archivists, and funding agencies. 'It takes a village' to share research data -- and a village to reuse data. Our aim is to provoke new research questions, new research, and new investments in effective and efficient circulation of research data; and to identify criteria for investments at each stage of data and research life cycles.
UFO: A UI-Focused Agent for Windows OS Interaction
Authors: Chaoyun Zhang, Liqun Li, Shilin He, Xu Zhang, Bo Qiao, Si Qin, Minghua Ma, Yu Kang, QIngwei Lin, Saravan Rajmohan, Dongmei Zhang, Qi Zhang
Date: 2024-02-08 00:00:00
Tasks: Navigate

We introduce UFO, an innovative UI-Focused agent to fulfill user requests tailored to applications on Windows OS, harnessing the capabilities of GPT-Vision. UFO employs a dual-agent framework to meticulously observe and analyze the graphical user interface (GUI) and control information of Windows applications. This enables the agent to seamlessly navigate and operate within individual applications and across them to fulfill user requests, even when spanning multiple applications. The framework incorporates a control interaction module, facilitating action grounding without human intervention and enabling fully automated execution. Consequently, UFO transforms arduous and time-consuming processes into simple tasks achievable solely through natural language commands. We conducted testing of UFO across 9 popular Windows applications, encompassing a variety of scenarios reflective of users' daily usage. The results, derived from both quantitative metrics and real-case studies, underscore the superior effectiveness of UFO in fulfilling user requests. To the best of our knowledge, UFO stands as the first UI agent specifically tailored for task completion within the Windows OS environment. The open-source code for UFO is available on https://github.com/microsoft/UFO.
Efficient Adversarial Contrastive Learning via Robustness-Aware Coreset Selection
Authors: Xilie Xu, Jingfeng Zhang, Feng Liu, Masashi Sugiyama, Mohan Kankanhalli
Date: 2023-02-08 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2023 11
Tasks: Contrastive Learning

Adversarial contrastive learning (ACL) does not require expensive data annotations but outputs a robust representation that withstands adversarial attacks and also generalizes to a wide range of downstream tasks. However, ACL needs tremendous running time to generate the adversarial variants of all training data, which limits its scalability to large datasets. To speed up ACL, this paper proposes a robustness-aware coreset selection (RCS) method. RCS does not require label information and searches for an informative subset that minimizes a representational divergence, which is the distance of the representation between natural data and their virtual adversarial variants. The vanilla solution of RCS via traversing all possible subsets is computationally prohibitive. Therefore, we theoretically transform RCS into a surrogate problem of submodular maximization, of which the greedy search is an efficient solution with an optimality guarantee for the original problem. Empirically, our comprehensive results corroborate that RCS can speed up ACL by a large margin without significantly hurting the robustness transferability. Notably, to the best of our knowledge, we are the first to conduct ACL efficiently on the large-scale ImageNet-1K dataset to obtain an effective robust representation via RCS. Our source code is at https://github.com/GodXuxilie/Efficient_ACL_via_RCS.
Topology-Aware Uncertainty for Image Segmentation
Authors: Saumya Gupta, Yikai Zhang, Xiaoling Hu, Prateek Prasanna, Chao Chen
Date: 2023-06-09 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2023 11
Tasks: Image Segmentation, Segmentation, Semantic Segmentation, Topological Data Analysis

Segmentation of curvilinear structures such as vasculature and road networks is challenging due to relatively weak signals and complex geometry/topology. To facilitate and accelerate large scale annotation, one has to adopt semi-automatic approaches such as proofreading by experts. In this work, we focus on uncertainty estimation for such tasks, so that highly uncertain, and thus error-prone structures can be identified for human annotators to verify. Unlike most existing works, which provide pixel-wise uncertainty maps, we stipulate it is crucial to estimate uncertainty in the units of topological structures, e.g., small pieces of connections and branches. To achieve this, we leverage tools from topological data analysis, specifically discrete Morse theory (DMT), to first capture the structures, and then reason about their uncertainties. To model the uncertainty, we (1) propose a joint prediction model that estimates the uncertainty of a structure while taking the neighboring structures into consideration (inter-structural uncertainty); (2) propose a novel Probabilistic DMT to model the inherent uncertainty within each structure (intra-structural uncertainty) by sampling its representations via a perturb-and-walk scheme. On various 2D and 3D datasets, our method produces better structure-wise uncertainty maps compared to existing works. Code available at https://github.com/Saumya-Gupta-26/struct-uncertainty
Language Model Tokenizers Introduce Unfairness Between Languages
Authors: Aleksandar Petrov, Emanuele La Malfa, Philip H. S. Torr, Adel Bibi
Date: 2023-05-17 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2023 11
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling, model

Recent language models have shown impressive multilingual performance, even when not explicitly trained for it. Despite this, there are concerns about the quality of their outputs across different languages. In this paper, we show how disparity in the treatment of different languages arises at the tokenization stage, well before a model is even invoked. The same text translated into different languages can have drastically different tokenization lengths, with differences up to 15 times in some cases. These disparities persist even for tokenizers that are intentionally trained for multilingual support. Character-level and byte-level models also exhibit over 4 times the difference in the encoding length for some language pairs. This induces unfair treatment for some language communities in regard to the cost of accessing commercial language services, the processing time and latency, as well as the amount of content that can be provided as context to the models. Therefore, we make the case that we should train future language models using multilingually fair subword tokenizers.
SpecFormer: Guarding Vision Transformer Robustness via Maximum Singular Value Penalization
Authors: Xixu Hu, Runkai Zheng, Jindong Wang, Cheuk Hang Leung, Qi Wu, Xing Xie
Date: 2024-01-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Computational Efficiency

Vision Transformers (ViTs) are increasingly used in computer vision due to their high performance, but their vulnerability to adversarial attacks is a concern. Existing methods lack a solid theoretical basis, focusing mainly on empirical training adjustments. This study introduces SpecFormer, tailored to fortify ViTs against adversarial attacks, with theoretical underpinnings. We establish local Lipschitz bounds for the self-attention layer and propose the Maximum Singular Value Penalization (MSVP) to precisely manage these bounds By incorporating MSVP into ViTs' attention layers, we enhance the model's robustness without compromising training efficiency. SpecFormer, the resulting model, outperforms other state-of-the-art models in defending against adversarial attacks, as proven by experiments on CIFAR and ImageNet datasets. Code is released at https://github.com/microsoft/robustlearn.
Analysing Training-Data Leakage from Gradients through Linear Systems and Gradient Matching
Authors: Cangxiong Chen, Neill D. F. Campbell
Date: 2022-10-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Attribute, image-classification, Image Classification

Recent works have demonstrated that it is possible to reconstruct training images and their labels from gradients of an image-classification model when its architecture is known. Unfortunately, there is still an incomplete theoretical understanding of the efficacy and failure of these gradient-leakage attacks. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to analyse training-data leakage from gradients that draws insights from both analytic and optimisation-based gradient-leakage attacks. We formulate the reconstruction problem as solving a linear system from each layer iteratively, accompanied by corrections using gradient matching. Under this framework, we claim that the solubility of the reconstruction problem is primarily determined by that of the linear system at each layer. As a result, we are able to partially attribute the leakage of the training data in a deep network to its architecture. We also propose a metric to measure the level of security of a deep learning model against gradient-based attacks on the training data.
Artificial intelligence and the transformation of higher education institutions
Authors: Evangelos Katsamakas, Oleg V. Pavlov, Ryan Saklad
Date: 2024-02-13 00:00:00

Artificial intelligence (AI) advances and the rapid adoption of generative AI tools like ChatGPT present new opportunities and challenges for higher education. While substantial literature discusses AI in higher education, there is a lack of a systemic approach that captures a holistic view of the AI transformation of higher education institutions (HEIs). To fill this gap, this article, taking a complex systems approach, develops a causal loop diagram (CLD) to map the causal feedback mechanisms of AI transformation in a typical HEI. Our model accounts for the forces that drive the AI transformation and the consequences of the AI transformation on value creation in a typical HEI. The article identifies and analyzes several reinforcing and balancing feedback loops, showing how, motivated by AI technology advances, the HEI invests in AI to improve student learning, research, and administration. The HEI must take measures to deal with academic integrity problems and adapt to changes in available jobs due to AI, emphasizing AI-complementary skills for its students. However, HEIs face a competitive threat and several policy traps that may lead to decline. HEI leaders need to become systems thinkers to manage the complexity of the AI transformation and benefit from the AI feedback loops while avoiding the associated pitfalls. We also discuss long-term scenarios, the notion of HEIs influencing the direction of AI, and directions for future research on AI transformation.
Dynamic graph neural network for fake news detection
Authors: Chenguang Song, Yiyang Teng, Yangfu Zhu, Siqi Wei, Bin Wu
Date: 2022-07-18 00:00:00
Proceeding: Neurocomputing 2022 7
Tasks: Fake News Detection, Graph Neural Network

The widespread of fake news on social media and other platforms can bring significant damage to the
harmony and stability of our society. To defend against fake news, researchers have suggested various
ways of dealing with fake news. In recent years, fake news detection has become the research focus in
both academic and industrial communities. The majority of existing propagation-based fake news detection algorithms are based on static networks and they assume the whole information propagation network structure is readily available before performing fake news detection algorithms. However, realworld information diffusion networks are dynamic as new nodes joining the network and new edges
being created. To address these shortcomings, we proposed a dynamic propagation graph-based fake
news detection method to capture the missing dynamic propagation information in static networks
and classify fake news. Specifically, the proposed method models each news propagation graph as a series
of graph snapshots recorded at discrete time steps. We evaluate our approach on three real-world benchmark datasets, and the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model.
Depth-aware Volume Attention for Texture-less Stereo Matching
Authors: Tong Zhao, Mingyu Ding, Wei Zhan, Masayoshi Tomizuka, Yintao Wei
Date: 2024-02-14 00:00:00
Tasks: Depth Estimation, Stereo Matching

Stereo matching plays a crucial role in 3D perception and scenario understanding. Despite the proliferation of promising methods, addressing texture-less and texture-repetitive conditions remains challenging due to the insufficient availability of rich geometric and semantic information. In this paper, we propose a lightweight volume refinement scheme to tackle the texture deterioration in practical outdoor scenarios. Specifically, we introduce a depth volume supervised by the ground-truth depth map, capturing the relative hierarchy of image texture. Subsequently, the disparity discrepancy volume undergoes hierarchical filtering through the incorporation of depth-aware hierarchy attention and target-aware disparity attention modules. Local fine structure and context are emphasized to mitigate ambiguity and redundancy during volume aggregation. Furthermore, we propose a more rigorous evaluation metric that considers depth-wise relative error, providing comprehensive evaluations for universal stereo matching and depth estimation models. We extensively validate the superiority of our proposed methods on public datasets. Results demonstrate that our model achieves state-of-the-art performance, particularly excelling in scenarios with texture-less images. The code is available at https://github.com/ztsrxh/DVANet.
Magic-Me: Identity-Specific Video Customized Diffusion
Authors: Ze Ma, Daquan Zhou, Chun-Hsiao Yeh, Xue-She Wang, Xiuyu Li, Huanrui Yang, Zhen Dong, Kurt Keutzer, Jiashi Feng
Date: 2024-02-14 00:00:00
Tasks: Image Generation, Text to Image Generation, Text-to-Image Generation, Video Generation

Creating content with specified identities (ID) has attracted significant interest in the field of generative models. In the field of text-to-image generation (T2I), subject-driven creation has achieved great progress with the identity controlled via reference images. However, its extension to video generation is not well explored. In this work, we propose a simple yet effective subject identity controllable video generation framework, termed Video Custom Diffusion (VCD). With a specified identity defined by a few images, VCD reinforces the identity characteristics and injects frame-wise correlation at the initialization stage for stable video outputs. To achieve this, we propose three novel components that are essential for high-quality identity preservation and stable video generation: 1) a noise initialization method with 3D Gaussian Noise Prior for better inter-frame stability; 2) an ID module based on extended Textual Inversion trained with the cropped identity to disentangle the ID information from the background 3) Face VCD and Tiled VCD modules to reinforce faces and upscale the video to higher resolution while preserving the identity's features. We conducted extensive experiments to verify that VCD is able to generate stable videos with better ID over the baselines. Besides, with the transferability of the encoded identity in the ID module, VCD is also working well with personalized text-to-image models available publicly. The codes are available at https://github.com/Zhen-Dong/Magic-Me.
Sentinels of the Stream: Unleashing Large Language Models for Dynamic Packet Classification in Software Defined Networks -- Position Paper
Authors: Shariq Murtuza
Date: 2024-02-10 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model, Position

With the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT, the field of large language models (LLM) saw an increase of academic interest in GPT based chat assistants. In the next few months multiple accesible large language models were released that included Meta's LLama models and Mistral AI's Mistral and Mixtral MoE models. These models are available openly for a wide array of purposes with a wide spectrum of licenses. These LLMs have found their use in a different number of fields like code development, SQL generation etc. In this work we propose our plan to explore the applicability of large language model in the domain of network security. We plan to create Sentinel, a LLM, to analyse network packet contents and pass a judgment on it's threat level. This work is a preliminary report that will lay our plan for our future endeavors.
Large Language User Interfaces: Voice Interactive User Interfaces powered by LLMs
Authors: Syed Mekael Wasti, Ken Q. Pu, Ali Neshati
Date: 2024-02-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Logical Reasoning

The evolution of Large Language Models (LLMs) has showcased remarkable capacities for logical reasoning and natural language comprehension. These capabilities can be leveraged in solutions that semantically and textually model complex problems. In this paper, we present our efforts toward constructing a framework that can serve as an intermediary between a user and their user interface (UI), enabling dynamic and real-time interactions. We employ a system that stands upon textual semantic mappings of UI components, in the form of annotations. These mappings are stored, parsed, and scaled in a custom data structure, supplementary to an agent-based prompting backend engine. Employing textual semantic mappings allows each component to not only explain its role to the engine but also provide expectations. By comprehending the needs of both the user and the components, our LLM engine can classify the most appropriate application, extract relevant parameters, and subsequently execute precise predictions of the user's expected actions. Such an integration evolves static user interfaces into highly dynamic and adaptable solutions, introducing a new frontier of intelligent and responsive user experiences.
A Human-Machine Collaboration Framework for the Development of Schemas
Authors: Nicos Isaak
Date: 2024-02-06 00:00:00

The Winograd Schema Challenge (WSC), a seemingly well-thought-out test for machine intelligence, has been proposed to shed light on developing systems that exhibit human behavior. Since its introduction, it aimed to pivot the focus of the AI community from the technology to the science of AI. While common and trivial for humans, studies show that it is still challenging for machines, especially when they have to deal with novel schemas, that is, well-designed sentences that require the resolving of definite pronouns. As researchers have become increasingly interested in the challenge itself, this presumably necessitates the availability of an extensive collection of Winograd schemas, which goes beyond what human experts can reasonably develop themselves, especially after proposed ways of utilizing them as novel forms of CAPTCHAs. To address this necessity, we propose a novel framework that explicitly focuses on how humans and machines can collaborate as teammates to design novel schemas from scratch. This is being accomplished by combining two recent studies from the literature: i) Winventor, a machine-driven approach for the development of large amounts of Winograd schemas, albeit not of high quality, and ii) WinoFlexi, an online crowdsourcing system that allows crowd workers to develop a limited number of schemas often of similar quality to that of experts. Our proposal crafts a new road map toward developing a novel collaborative platform that amplifies human and machine intelligence by combining their complementary strengths.
AQA-Bench: An Interactive Benchmark for Evaluating LLMs' Sequential Reasoning Ability
Authors: Siwei Yang, Bingchen Zhao, Cihang Xie
Date: 2024-02-14 00:00:00

This paper introduces AQA-Bench, a novel benchmark to assess the sequential reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs) in algorithmic contexts, such as depth-first search (DFS). The key feature of our evaluation benchmark lies in its interactive evaluation protocol -- for example, in DFS, the availability of each node's connected edge is contingent upon the model's traversal to that node, thereby necessitating the LLM's ability to effectively remember visited nodes and strategize subsequent moves. We comprehensively build AQA-Bench with three different algorithms, namely binary search, depth-first search, and breadth-first search, and to evaluate the sequential reasoning ability of 12 different LLMs. Our investigations reveal several interesting findings: (1) Closed-source models like GPT-4 and Gemini generally show strong sequential reasoning ability, significantly outperforming open-source LLMs. (2) Naively providing interactive examples may inadvertently hurt few-shot performance. (3) A very limited number of predecessor steps following the optimal policy can substantially boost small models' performance. (4) The scaling correlation between performance and model size is not always significant, sometimes even showcasing an inverse trend. We hope our study can catalyze future work on advancing the understanding and enhancement of LLMs' capabilities in sequential reasoning. The code is available at https://github.com/UCSC-VLAA/AQA-Bench.
Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback with Active Queries
Authors: Kaixuan Ji, Jiafan He, Quanquan Gu
Date: 2024-02-14 00:00:00
Tasks: Active Learning, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning

Aligning large language models (LLM) with human preference plays a key role in building modern generative models and can be achieved by reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). Despite their superior performance, current RLHF approaches often require a large amount of human-labelled preference data, which is expensive to collect. In this paper, inspired by the success of active learning, we address this problem by proposing query-efficient RLHF methods. We first formalize the alignment problem as a contextual dueling bandit problem and design an active-query-based proximal policy optimization (APPO) algorithm with an $\tilde{O}(d^2/\Delta)$ instance-dependent regret bound and an $\tilde{O}(d^2/\Delta^2)$ query complexity, where $d$ is the dimension of feature space and $\Delta$ is the sub-optimality gap over all the contexts. We then propose ADPO, a practical version of our algorithm based on direct preference optimization (DPO) and apply it to fine-tuning LLMs. Our experiments show that ADPO, while only making about half of queries for human preference, matches the performance of the state-of-the-art DPO method.