pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Controlling Out-of-Domain Gaps in LLMs for Genre Classification and Generated Text Detection
Authors: Dmitri Roussinov, Serge Sharoff, Nadezhda Puchnina
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Classification, Genre classification, In-Context Learning, Text Detection

This study demonstrates that the modern generation of Large Language Models (LLMs, such as GPT-4) suffers from the same out-of-domain (OOD) performance gap observed in prior research on pre-trained Language Models (PLMs, such as BERT). We demonstrate this across two non-topical classification tasks: 1) genre classification and 2) generated text detection. Our results show that when demonstration examples for In-Context Learning (ICL) come from one domain (e.g., travel) and the system is tested on another domain (e.g., history), classification performance declines significantly. To address this, we introduce a method that controls which predictive indicators are used and which are excluded during classification. For the two tasks studied here, this ensures that topical features are omitted, while the model is guided to focus on stylistic rather than content-based attributes. This approach reduces the OOD gap by up to 20 percentage points in a few-shot setup. Straightforward Chain-of-Thought (CoT) methods, used as the baseline, prove insufficient, while our approach consistently enhances domain transfer performance.
Kryptonite-N: Machine Learning Strikes Back
Authors: Albus Li, Nathan Bailey, Will Sumerfield, Kira Kim
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00

Quinn et al propose challenge datasets in their work called ``Kryptonite-N". These datasets aim to counter the universal function approximation argument of machine learning, breaking the notation that machine learning can ``approximate any continuous function" \cite{original_paper}. Our work refutes this claim and shows that universal function approximations can be applied successfully; the Kryptonite datasets are constructed predictably, allowing logistic regression with sufficient polynomial expansion and L1 regularization to solve for any dimension N.
Bridging the Gap: A Decade Review of Time-Series Clustering Methods
Authors: John Paparrizos, Fan Yang, Haojun Li
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Astronomy, Clustering, Survey, Time Series, Time Series Clustering

Time series, as one of the most fundamental representations of sequential data, has been extensively studied across diverse disciplines, including computer science, biology, geology, astronomy, and environmental sciences. The advent of advanced sensing, storage, and networking technologies has resulted in high-dimensional time-series data, however, posing significant challenges for analyzing latent structures over extended temporal scales. Time-series clustering, an established unsupervised learning strategy that groups similar time series together, helps unveil hidden patterns in these complex datasets. In this survey, we trace the evolution of time-series clustering methods from classical approaches to recent advances in neural networks. While previous surveys have focused on specific methodological categories, we bridge the gap between traditional clustering methods and emerging deep learning-based algorithms, presenting a comprehensive, unified taxonomy for this research area. This survey highlights key developments and provides insights to guide future research in time-series clustering.
A Survey on Time-Series Distance Measures
Authors: John Paparrizos, Haojun Li, Fan Yang, Kaize Wu, Jens E. d'Hondt, Odysseas Papapetrou
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Anomaly Detection, Survey, Time Series, Time Series Analysis

Distance measures have been recognized as one of the fundamental building blocks in time-series analysis tasks, e.g., querying, indexing, classification, clustering, anomaly detection, and similarity search. The vast proliferation of time-series data across a wide range of fields has increased the relevance of evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of these distance measures. To provide a comprehensive view of this field, this work considers over 100 state-of-the-art distance measures, classified into 7 categories: lock-step measures, sliding measures, elastic measures, kernel measures, feature-based measures, model-based measures, and embedding measures. Beyond providing comprehensive mathematical frameworks, this work also delves into the distinctions and applications across these categories for both univariate and multivariate cases. By providing comprehensive collections and insights, this study paves the way for the future development of innovative time-series distance measures.
The intrinsic motivation of reinforcement and imitation learning for sequential tasks
Authors: Sao Mai Nguyen
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Imitation Learning, Multi-Task Learning

This work in the field of developmental cognitive robotics aims to devise a new domain bridging between reinforcement learning and imitation learning, with a model of the intrinsic motivation for learning agents to learn with guidance from tutors multiple tasks, including sequential tasks. The main contribution has been to propose a common formulation of intrinsic motivation based on empirical progress for a learning agent to choose automatically its learning curriculum by actively choosing its learning strategy for simple or sequential tasks: which task to learn, between autonomous exploration or imitation learning, between low-level actions or task decomposition, between several tutors. The originality is to design a learner that benefits not only passively from data provided by tutors, but to actively choose when to request tutoring and what and whom to ask. The learner is thus more robust to the quality of the tutoring and learns faster with fewer demonstrations. We developed the framework of socially guided intrinsic motivation with machine learning algorithms to learn multiple tasks by taking advantage of the generalisability properties of human demonstrations in a passive manner or in an active manner through requests of demonstrations from the best tutor for simple and composing subtasks. The latter relies on a representation of subtask composition proposed for a construction process, which should be refined by representations used for observational processes of analysing human movements and activities of daily living. With the outlook of a language-like communication with the tutor, we investigated the emergence of a symbolic representation of the continuous sensorimotor space and of tasks using intrinsic motivation. We proposed within the reinforcement learning framework, a reward function for interacting with tutors for automatic curriculum learning in multi-task learning.
Segmentation of Muscularis Propria in Colon Histopathology Images Using Vision Transformers for Hirschsprung's Disease
Authors: Youssef Megahed, Anthony Fuller, Saleh Abou-Alwan, Dina El Demellawy, Adrian D. C. Chan
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00

Hirschsprung's disease (HD) is a congenital birth defect diagnosed by identifying the lack of ganglion cells within the colon's muscularis propria, specifically within the myenteric plexus regions. There may be advantages for quantitative assessments of histopathology images of the colon, such as counting the ganglion and assessing their spatial distribution; however, this would be time-intensive for pathologists, costly, and subject to inter- and intra-rater variability. Previous research has demonstrated the potential for deep learning approaches to automate histopathology image analysis, including segmentation of the muscularis propria using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Recently, Vision Transformers (ViTs) have emerged as a powerful deep learning approach due to their self-attention. This study explores the application of ViTs for muscularis propria segmentation in calretinin-stained histopathology images and compares their performance to CNNs and shallow learning methods. The ViT model achieved a DICE score of 89.9% and Plexus Inclusion Rate (PIR) of 100%, surpassing the CNN (DICE score of 89.2%; PIR of 96.0%) and k-means clustering method (DICE score of 80.7%; PIR 77.4%). Results assert that ViTs are a promising tool for advancing HD-related image analysis.
Enhancing autonomous vehicle safety in rain: a data-centric approach for clear vision
Authors: Mark A. Seferian, Jidong J. Yang
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Autonomous Vehicles, Decoder

Autonomous vehicles face significant challenges in navigating adverse weather, particularly rain, due to the visual impairment of camera-based systems. In this study, we leveraged contemporary deep learning techniques to mitigate these challenges, aiming to develop a vision model that processes live vehicle camera feeds to eliminate rain-induced visual hindrances, yielding visuals closely resembling clear, rain-free scenes. Using the Car Learning to Act (CARLA) simulation environment, we generated a comprehensive dataset of clear and rainy images for model training and testing. In our model, we employed a classic encoder-decoder architecture with skip connections and concatenation operations. It was trained using novel batching schemes designed to effectively distinguish high-frequency rain patterns from low-frequency scene features across successive image frames. To evaluate the model performance, we integrated it with a steering module that processes front-view images as input. The results demonstrated notable improvements in steering accuracy, underscoring the model's potential to enhance navigation safety and reliability in rainy weather conditions.
Attacks on the neural network and defense methods
Authors: A. Korenev, G. Belokrylov, B. Lodonova, A. Novokhrestov
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Data Poisoning

This article will discuss the use of attacks on a neural network trained on audio data, as well as possible methods of protection against these attacks. FGSM, PGD and CW attacks, as well as data poisoning, will be considered. Within the framework of protection, Art-IBM and advertorch libraries will be considered. The obtained accuracy metrics within the framework of attack applications are presented
Game Theory and Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning : From Nash Equilibria to Evolutionary Dynamics
Authors: Neil De La Fuente, Miquel Noguer i Alonso, Guim Casadellà
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning

This paper explores advanced topics in complex multi-agent systems building upon our previous work. We examine four fundamental challenges in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL): non-stationarity, partial observability, scalability with large agent populations, and decentralized learning. The paper provides mathematical formulations and analysis of recent algorithmic advancements designed to address these challenges, with a particular focus on their integration with game-theoretic concepts. We investigate how Nash equilibria, evolutionary game theory, correlated equilibrium, and adversarial dynamics can be effectively incorporated into MARL algorithms to improve learning outcomes. Through this comprehensive analysis, we demonstrate how the synthesis of game theory and MARL can enhance the robustness and effectiveness of multi-agent systems in complex, dynamic environments.
Goal-Conditioned Data Augmentation for Offline Reinforcement Learning
Authors: Xingshuai Huang, Di Wu Member, Benoit Boulet
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: D4RL, Data Augmentation, Offline RL, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning, Reinforcement Learning (RL), Traffic Signal Control

Offline reinforcement learning (RL) enables policy learning from pre-collected offline datasets, relaxing the need to interact directly with the environment. However, limited by the quality of offline datasets, it generally fails to learn well-qualified policies in suboptimal datasets. To address datasets with insufficient optimal demonstrations, we introduce Goal-cOnditioned Data Augmentation (GODA), a novel goal-conditioned diffusion-based method for augmenting samples with higher quality. Leveraging recent advancements in generative modeling, GODA incorporates a novel return-oriented goal condition with various selection mechanisms. Specifically, we introduce a controllable scaling technique to provide enhanced return-based guidance during data sampling. GODA learns a comprehensive distribution representation of the original offline datasets while generating new data with selectively higher-return goals, thereby maximizing the utility of limited optimal demonstrations. Furthermore, we propose a novel adaptive gated conditioning method for processing noised inputs and conditions, enhancing the capture of goal-oriented guidance. We conduct experiments on the D4RL benchmark and real-world challenges, specifically traffic signal control (TSC) tasks, to demonstrate GODA's effectiveness in enhancing data quality and superior performance compared to state-of-the-art data augmentation methods across various offline RL algorithms.
Dive into Time-Series Anomaly Detection: A Decade Review
Authors: Paul Boniol, Qinghua Liu, Mingyi Huang, Themis Palpanas, John Paparrizos
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Anomaly Detection, Time Series, Time Series Anomaly Detection

Recent advances in data collection technology, accompanied by the ever-rising volume and velocity of streaming data, underscore the vital need for time series analytics. In this regard, time-series anomaly detection has been an important activity, entailing various applications in fields such as cyber security, financial markets, law enforcement, and health care. While traditional literature on anomaly detection is centered on statistical measures, the increasing number of machine learning algorithms in recent years call for a structured, general characterization of the research methods for time-series anomaly detection. This survey groups and summarizes anomaly detection existing solutions under a process-centric taxonomy in the time series context. In addition to giving an original categorization of anomaly detection methods, we also perform a meta-analysis of the literature and outline general trends in time-series anomaly detection research.
Stratify: Unifying Multi-Step Forecasting Strategies
Authors: Riku Green, Grant Stevens, Zahraa Abdallah, Telmo M. Silva Filho
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Benchmarking

A key aspect of temporal domains is the ability to make predictions multiple time steps into the future, a process known as multi-step forecasting (MSF). At the core of this process is selecting a forecasting strategy, however, with no existing frameworks to map out the space of strategies, practitioners are left with ad-hoc methods for strategy selection. In this work, we propose Stratify, a parameterised framework that addresses multi-step forecasting, unifying existing strategies and introducing novel, improved strategies. We evaluate Stratify on 18 benchmark datasets, five function classes, and short to long forecast horizons (10, 20, 40, 80). In over 84% of 1080 experiments, novel strategies in Stratify improved performance compared to all existing ones. Importantly, we find that no single strategy consistently outperforms others in all task settings, highlighting the need for practitioners explore the Stratify space to carefully search and select forecasting strategies based on task-specific requirements. Our results are the most comprehensive benchmarking of known and novel forecasting strategies. We make code available to reproduce our results.
Planning, Living and Judging: A Multi-agent LLM-based Framework for Cyclical Urban Planning
Authors: Hang Ni, Yuzhi Wang, Hao liu
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00

Urban regeneration presents significant challenges within the context of urbanization, requiring adaptive approaches to tackle evolving needs. Leveraging advancements in large language models (LLMs), we propose Cyclical Urban Planning (CUP), a new paradigm that continuously generates, evaluates, and refines urban plans in a closed-loop. Specifically, our multi-agent LLM-based framework consists of three key components: (1) Planning, where LLM agents generate and refine urban plans based on contextual data; (2) Living, where agents simulate the behaviors and interactions of residents, modeling life in the urban environment; and (3) Judging, which involves evaluating plan effectiveness and providing iterative feedback for improvement. The cyclical process enables a dynamic and responsive planning approach. Experiments on the real-world dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework as a continuous and adaptive planning process.
A Multiparty Homomorphic Encryption Approach to Confidential Federated Kaplan Meier Survival Analysis
Authors: Narasimha Raghavan Veeraragavan, Svetlana Boudko, Jan Franz Nygård
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Privacy Preserving, Reconstruction Attack, Survival Analysis

The proliferation of healthcare data has expanded opportunities for collaborative research, yet stringent privacy regulations hinder pooling sensitive patient records. We propose a \emph{multiparty homomorphic encryption-based} framework for \emph{privacy-preserving federated Kaplan--Meier survival analysis}, offering native floating-point support, a theoretical model, and explicit reconstruction-attack mitigation. Compared to prior work, our framework ensures encrypted federated survival estimates closely match centralized outcomes, supported by formal utility-loss bounds that demonstrate convergence as aggregation and decryption noise diminish. Extensive experiments on the NCCTG Lung Cancer and synthetic Breast Cancer datasets confirm low \emph{mean absolute error (MAE)} and \emph{root mean squared error (RMSE)}, indicating negligible deviations between encrypted and non-encrypted survival curves. Log-rank and numerical accuracy tests reveal \emph{no significant difference} between federated encrypted and non-encrypted analyses, preserving statistical validity. A reconstruction-attack evaluation shows smaller federations (2--3 providers) with overlapping data between the institutions are vulnerable, a challenge mitigated by multiparty encryption. Larger federations (5--50 sites) degrade reconstruction accuracy further, with encryption improving confidentiality. Despite an 8--19$\times$ computational overhead, threshold-based homomorphic encryption is \emph{feasible for moderate-scale deployments}, balancing security and runtime. By providing robust privacy guarantees alongside high-fidelity survival estimates, our framework advances the state-of-the art in secure multi-institutional survival analysis.
A Comprehensive Framework for Reliable Legal AI: Combining Specialized Expert Systems and Adaptive Refinement
Authors: Sidra Nasir, Qamar Abbas, Samita Bai, Rizwan Ahmed Khan
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, Knowledge Graphs, RAG, Retrieval-augmented Generation

This article discusses the evolving role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the legal profession, focusing on its potential to streamline tasks such as document review, research, and contract drafting. However, challenges persist, particularly the occurrence of "hallucinations" in AI models, where they generate inaccurate or misleading information, undermining their reliability in legal contexts. To address this, the article proposes a novel framework combining a mixture of expert systems with a knowledge-based architecture to improve the precision and contextual relevance of AI-driven legal services. This framework utilizes specialized modules, each focusing on specific legal areas, and incorporates structured operational guidelines to enhance decision-making. Additionally, it leverages advanced AI techniques like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Knowledge Graphs (KG), and Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) to improve the system's accuracy. The proposed approach demonstrates significant improvements over existing AI models, showcasing enhanced performance in legal tasks and offering a scalable solution to provide more accessible and affordable legal services. The article also outlines the methodology, system architecture, and promising directions for future research in AI applications for the legal sector.
Integrating Natural Language Processing Techniques of Text Mining Into Financial System: Applications and Limitations
Authors: Denisa Millo, Blerina Vika, Nevila Baci
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Financial Analysis

The financial sector, a pivotal force in economic development, increasingly uses the intelligent technologies such as natural language processing to enhance data processing and insight extraction. This research paper through a review process of the time span of 2018-2023 explores the use of text mining as natural language processing techniques in various components of the financial system including asset pricing, corporate finance, derivatives, risk management, and public finance and highlights the need to address the specific problems in the discussion section. We notice that most of the research materials combined probabilistic with vector-space models, and text-data with numerical ones. The most used technique regarding information processing is the information classification technique and the most used algorithms include the long-short term memory and bidirectional encoder models. The research noticed that new specific algorithms are developed and the focus of the financial system is mainly on asset pricing component. The research also proposes a path from engineering perspective for researchers who need to analyze financial text. The challenges regarding text mining perspective such as data quality, context-adaption and model interpretability need to be solved so to integrate advanced natural language processing models and techniques in enhancing financial analysis and prediction. Keywords: Financial System (FS), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Software and Text Engineering, Probabilistic, Vector-Space, Models, Techniques, TextData, Financial Analysis.
Multi-Scenario Reasoning: Unlocking Cognitive Autonomy in Humanoid Robots for Multimodal Understanding
Authors: Libo Wang
Date: 2024-12-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Experimental Design, Self-Learning

To improve the cognitive autonomy of humanoid robots, this research proposes a multi-scenario reasoning architecture to solve the technical shortcomings of multi-modal understanding in this field. It draws on simulation based experimental design that adopts multi-modal synthesis (visual, auditory, tactile) and builds a simulator "Maha" to perform the experiment. The findings demonstrate the feasibility of this architecture in multimodal data. It provides reference experience for the exploration of cross-modal interaction strategies for humanoid robots in dynamic environments. In addition, multi-scenario reasoning simulates the high-level reasoning mechanism of the human brain to humanoid robots at the cognitive level. This new concept promotes cross-scenario practical task transfer and semantic-driven action planning. It heralds the future development of self-learning and autonomous behavior of humanoid robots in changing scenarios.