pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Smart E-commerce Recommendations with Semantic AI
Authors: M. Badouch, M. Boutaounte
Date: 2024-09-02 00:00:00

In e-commerce, web mining for page recommendations is widely used but often fails to meet user needs. To address this, we propose a novel solution combining semantic web mining with BP neural networks. We process user search logs to extract five key features: content priority, time spent, user feedback, recommendation semantics, and input deviation. These features are then fed into a BP neural network to classify and prioritize web pages. The prioritized pages are recommended to users. Using book sales pages for testing, our results demonstrate that this solution can quickly and accurately identify the pages users need. Our approach ensures that recommendations are more relevant and tailored to individual preferences, enhancing the online shopping experience. By leveraging advanced semantic analysis and neural network techniques, we bridge the gap between user expectations and actual recommendations. This innovative method not only improves accuracy but also speeds up the recommendation process, making it a valuable tool for e-commerce platforms aiming to boost user satisfaction and engagement. Additionally, our system ability to handle large datasets and provide real-time recommendations makes it a scalable and efficient solution for modern e-commerce challenges.
A Hybrid Framework for Spatial Interpolation: Merging Data-driven with Domain Knowledge
Authors: Cong Zhang, Shuyi Du, Hongqing Song, Yuhe Wang
Date: 2024-08-28 00:00:00
Tasks: Spatial Interpolation

Estimating spatially distributed information through the interpolation of scattered observation datasets often overlooks the critical role of domain knowledge in understanding spatial dependencies. Additionally, the features of these data sets are typically limited to the spatial coordinates of the scattered observation locations. In this paper, we propose a hybrid framework that integrates data-driven spatial dependency feature extraction with rule-assisted spatial dependency function mapping to augment domain knowledge. We demonstrate the superior performance of our framework in two comparative application scenarios, highlighting its ability to capture more localized spatial features in the reconstructed distribution fields. Furthermore, we underscore its potential to enhance nonlinear estimation capabilities through the application of transformed fuzzy rules and to quantify the inherent uncertainties associated with the observation data sets. Our framework introduces an innovative approach to spatial information estimation by synergistically combining observational data with rule-assisted domain knowledge.
SurgTrack: CAD-Free 3D Tracking of Real-world Surgical Instruments
Authors: Wenwu Guo, Jinlin Wu, Zhen Chen, Qingxiang Zhao, Miao Xu, Zhen Lei, Hongbin Liu
Date: 2024-09-04 00:00:00

Vision-based surgical navigation has received increasing attention due to its non-invasive, cost-effective, and flexible advantages. In particular, a critical element of the vision-based navigation system is tracking surgical instruments. Compared with 2D instrument tracking methods, 3D instrument tracking has broader value in clinical practice, but is also more challenging due to weak texture, occlusion, and lack of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) models for 3D registration. To solve these challenges, we propose the SurgTrack, a two-stage 3D instrument tracking method for CAD-free and robust real-world applications. In the first registration stage, we incorporate an Instrument Signed Distance Field (SDF) modeling the 3D representation of instruments, achieving CAD-freed 3D registration. Due to this, we can obtain the location and orientation of instruments in the 3D space by matching the video stream with the registered SDF model. In the second tracking stage, we devise a posture graph optimization module, leveraging the historical tracking results of the posture memory pool to optimize the tracking results and improve the occlusion robustness. Furthermore, we collect the Instrument3D dataset to comprehensively evaluate the 3D tracking of surgical instruments. The extensive experiments validate the superiority and scalability of our SurgTrack, by outperforming the state-of-the-arts with a remarkable improvement. The code and dataset are available at https://github.com/wenwucode/SurgTrack.
AlignGroup: Learning and Aligning Group Consensus with Member Preferences for Group Recommendation
Authors: Jinfeng Xu, Zheyu Chen, Jinze Li, Shuo Yang, Hewei Wang, Edith C. -H. Ngai
Date: 2024-09-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

Group activities are important behaviors in human society, providing personalized recommendations for groups is referred to as the group recommendation task. Existing methods can usually be categorized into two strategies to infer group preferences: 1) determining group preferences by aggregating members' personalized preferences, and 2) inferring group consensus by capturing group members' coherent decisions after common compromises. However, the former would suffer from the lack of group-level considerations, and the latter overlooks the fine-grained preferences of individual users. To this end, we propose a novel group recommendation method AlignGroup, which focuses on both group consensus and individual preferences of group members to infer the group decision-making. Specifically, AlignGroup explores group consensus through a well-designed hypergraph neural network that efficiently learns intra- and inter-group relationships. Moreover, AlignGroup innovatively utilizes a self-supervised alignment task to capture fine-grained group decision-making by aligning the group consensus with members' common preferences. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets validate that our AlignGroup outperforms the state-of-the-art on both the group recommendation task and the user recommendation task, as well as outperforms the efficiency of most baselines.
Solving Video Inverse Problems Using Image Diffusion Models
Authors: Taesung Kwon, Jong Chul Ye
Date: 2024-09-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Deblurring, Image Super-Resolution, Super-Resolution

Recently, diffusion model-based inverse problem solvers (DIS) have emerged as state-of-the-art approaches for addressing inverse problems, including image super-resolution, deblurring, inpainting, etc. However, their application to video inverse problems arising from spatio-temporal degradation remains largely unexplored due to the challenges in training video diffusion models. To address this issue, here we introduce an innovative video inverse solver that leverages only image diffusion models. Specifically, by drawing inspiration from the success of the recent decomposed diffusion sampler (DDS), our method treats the time dimension of a video as the batch dimension of image diffusion models and solves spatio-temporal optimization problems within denoised spatio-temporal batches derived from each image diffusion model. Moreover, we introduce a batch-consistent diffusion sampling strategy that encourages consistency across batches by synchronizing the stochastic noise components in image diffusion models. Our approach synergistically combines batch-consistent sampling with simultaneous optimization of denoised spatio-temporal batches at each reverse diffusion step, resulting in a novel and efficient diffusion sampling strategy for video inverse problems. Experimental results demonstrate that our method effectively addresses various spatio-temporal degradations in video inverse problems, achieving state-of-the-art reconstructions. Project page: https://svi-diffusion.github.io
GenDFIR: Advancing Cyber Incident Timeline Analysis Through Retrieval Augmented Generation and Large Language Models
Authors: Fatma Yasmine Loumachi, Mohamed Chahine Ghanem, Mohamed Amine Ferrag
Date: 2024-09-04 00:00:00
Tasks: RAG, Retrieval, Retrieval-augmented Generation

Cyber timeline analysis, or forensic timeline analysis, is crucial in Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR). It examines artefacts and events particularly timestamps and metadata to detect anomalies, establish correlations, and reconstruct incident timelines. Traditional methods rely on structured artefacts, such as logs and filesystem metadata, using specialised tools for evidence identification and feature extraction. This paper introduces GenDFIR, a framework leveraging large language models (LLMs), specifically Llama 3.1 8B in zero shot mode, integrated with a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) agent. Incident data is preprocessed into a structured knowledge base, enabling the RAG agent to retrieve relevant events based on user prompts. The LLM interprets this context, offering semantic enrichment. Tested on synthetic data in a controlled environment, results demonstrate GenDFIR's reliability and robustness, showcasing LLMs potential to automate timeline analysis and advance threat detection.
More is More: Addition Bias in Large Language Models
Authors: Luca Santagata, Cristiano De Nobili
Date: 2024-09-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Math, Text Summarization

In this paper, we investigate the presence of additive bias in Large Language Models (LLMs), drawing a parallel to the cognitive bias observed in humans where individuals tend to favor additive over subtractive changes. Using a series of controlled experiments, we tested various LLMs, including GPT-3.5 Turbo, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Mistral, Math$\Sigma$tral, and Llama 3.1, on tasks designed to measure their propensity for additive versus subtractive modifications. Our findings demonstrate a significant preference for additive changes across all tested models. For example, in a palindrome creation task, Llama 3.1 favored adding letters 97.85% of the time over removing them. Similarly, in a Lego tower balancing task, GPT-3.5 Turbo chose to add a brick 76.38% of the time rather than remove one. In a text summarization task, Mistral 7B produced longer summaries in 59.40% to 75.10% of cases when asked to improve its own or others' writing. These results indicate that, similar to humans, LLMs exhibit a marked additive bias, which might have implications when LLMs are used on a large scale. Addittive bias might increase resource use and environmental impact, leading to higher economic costs due to overconsumption and waste. This bias should be considered in the development and application of LLMs to ensure balanced and efficient problem-solving approaches.
Vision-Language Navigation with Continual Learning
Authors: Zhiyuan Li, Yanfeng Lv, Ziqin Tu, Di Shang, Hong Qiao
Date: 2024-09-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Continual Learning, Navigate, Vision-Language Navigation

Vision-language navigation (VLN) is a critical domain within embedded intelligence, requiring agents to navigate 3D environments based on natural language instructions. Traditional VLN research has focused on improving environmental understanding and decision accuracy. However, these approaches often exhibit a significant performance gap when agents are deployed in novel environments, mainly due to the limited diversity of training data. Expanding datasets to cover a broader range of environments is impractical and costly. We propose the Vision-Language Navigation with Continual Learning (VLNCL) paradigm to address this challenge. In this paradigm, agents incrementally learn new environments while retaining previously acquired knowledge. VLNCL enables agents to maintain an environmental memory and extract relevant knowledge, allowing rapid adaptation to new environments while preserving existing information. We introduce a novel dual-loop scenario replay method (Dual-SR) inspired by brain memory replay mechanisms integrated with VLN agents. This method facilitates consolidating past experiences and enhances generalization across new tasks. By utilizing a multi-scenario memory buffer, the agent efficiently organizes and replays task memories, thereby bolstering its ability to adapt quickly to new environments and mitigating catastrophic forgetting. Our work pioneers continual learning in VLN agents, introducing a novel experimental setup and evaluation metrics. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through extensive evaluations and establish a benchmark for the VLNCL paradigm. Comparative experiments with existing continual learning and VLN methods show significant improvements, achieving state-of-the-art performance in continual learning ability and highlighting the potential of our approach in enabling rapid adaptation while preserving prior knowledge.
Low-Resolution Object Recognition with Cross-Resolution Relational Contrastive Distillation
Authors: Kangkai Zhang, Shiming Ge, Ruixin Shi, Dan Zeng
Date: 2024-09-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Face Recognition, Knowledge Distillation, Object Recognition, Transfer Learning

Recognizing objects in low-resolution images is a challenging task due to the lack of informative details. Recent studies have shown that knowledge distillation approaches can effectively transfer knowledge from a high-resolution teacher model to a low-resolution student model by aligning cross-resolution representations. However, these approaches still face limitations in adapting to the situation where the recognized objects exhibit significant representation discrepancies between training and testing images. In this study, we propose a cross-resolution relational contrastive distillation approach to facilitate low-resolution object recognition. Our approach enables the student model to mimic the behavior of a well-trained teacher model which delivers high accuracy in identifying high-resolution objects. To extract sufficient knowledge, the student learning is supervised with contrastive relational distillation loss, which preserves the similarities in various relational structures in contrastive representation space. In this manner, the capability of recovering missing details of familiar low-resolution objects can be effectively enhanced, leading to a better knowledge transfer. Extensive experiments on low-resolution object classification and low-resolution face recognition clearly demonstrate the effectiveness and adaptability of our approach.
A Sequential Decision-Making Model for Perimeter Identification
Authors: Ayal Taitler
Date: 2024-09-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, model, Sequential Decision Making

Perimeter identification involves ascertaining the boundaries of a designated area or zone, requiring traffic flow monitoring, control, or optimization. Various methodologies and technologies exist for accurately defining these perimeters; however, they often necessitate specialized equipment, precise mapping, or comprehensive data for effective problem delineation. In this study, we propose a sequential decision-making framework for perimeter search, designed to operate efficiently in real-time and require only publicly accessible information. We conceptualize the perimeter search as a game between a playing agent and an artificial environment, where the agent's objective is to identify the optimal perimeter by sequentially improving the current perimeter. We detail the model for the game and discuss its adaptability in determining the definition of an optimal perimeter. Ultimately, we showcase the model's efficacy through a real-world scenario, highlighting the identification of corresponding optimal perimeters.
Understanding eGFR Trajectories and Kidney Function Decline via Large Multimodal Models
Authors: Chih-Yuan Li, Jun-Ting Wu, Chan Hsu, Ming-Yen Lin, Yihuang Kang
Date: 2024-09-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Kidney Function

The estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (eGFR) is an essential indicator of kidney function in clinical practice. Although traditional equations and Machine Learning (ML) models using clinical and laboratory data can estimate eGFR, accurately predicting future eGFR levels remains a significant challenge for nephrologists and ML researchers. Recent advances demonstrate that Large Language Models (LLMs) and Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) can serve as robust foundation models for diverse applications. This study investigates the potential of LMMs to predict future eGFR levels with a dataset consisting of laboratory and clinical values from 50 patients. By integrating various prompting techniques and ensembles of LMMs, our findings suggest that these models, when combined with precise prompts and visual representations of eGFR trajectories, offer predictive performance comparable to existing ML models. This research extends the application of foundation models and suggests avenues for future studies to harness these models in addressing complex medical forecasting challenges.
Cog-GA: A Large Language Models-based Generative Agent for Vision-Language Navigation in Continuous Environments
Authors: Zhiyuan Li, YanFeng Lu, Yao Mu, Hong Qiao
Date: 2024-09-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Continual Learning, Navigate, Spatial Reasoning, Vision-Language Navigation

Vision Language Navigation in Continuous Environments (VLN-CE) represents a frontier in embodied AI, demanding agents to navigate freely in unbounded 3D spaces solely guided by natural language instructions. This task introduces distinct challenges in multimodal comprehension, spatial reasoning, and decision-making. To address these challenges, we introduce Cog-GA, a generative agent founded on large language models (LLMs) tailored for VLN-CE tasks. Cog-GA employs a dual-pronged strategy to emulate human-like cognitive processes. Firstly, it constructs a cognitive map, integrating temporal, spatial, and semantic elements, thereby facilitating the development of spatial memory within LLMs. Secondly, Cog-GA employs a predictive mechanism for waypoints, strategically optimizing the exploration trajectory to maximize navigational efficiency. Each waypoint is accompanied by a dual-channel scene description, categorizing environmental cues into 'what' and 'where' streams as the brain. This segregation enhances the agent's attentional focus, enabling it to discern pertinent spatial information for navigation. A reflective mechanism complements these strategies by capturing feedback from prior navigation experiences, facilitating continual learning and adaptive replanning. Extensive evaluations conducted on VLN-CE benchmarks validate Cog-GA's state-of-the-art performance and ability to simulate human-like navigation behaviors. This research significantly contributes to the development of strategic and interpretable VLN-CE agents.
Vision-Language and Large Language Model Performance in Gastroenterology: GPT, Claude, Llama, Phi, Mistral, Gemma, and Quantized Models
Authors: Seyed Amir Ahmad Safavi-Naini, Shuhaib Ali, Omer Shahab, Zahra Shahhoseini, Thomas Savage, Sara Rafiee, Jamil S Samaan, Reem Al Shabeeb, Farah Ladak, Jamie O Yang, Juan Echavarria, Sumbal Babar, Aasma Shaukat, Samuel Margolis, Nicholas P Tatonetti, Girish Nadkarni, Bara El Kurdi, Ali Soroush
Date: 2024-08-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model, Multiple-choice, Prompt Engineering, Quantization

Background and Aims: This study evaluates the medical reasoning performance of large language models (LLMs) and vision language models (VLMs) in gastroenterology. Methods: We used 300 gastroenterology board exam-style multiple-choice questions, 138 of which contain images to systematically assess the impact of model configurations and parameters and prompt engineering strategies utilizing GPT-3.5. Next, we assessed the performance of proprietary and open-source LLMs (versions), including GPT (3.5, 4, 4o, 4omini), Claude (3, 3.5), Gemini (1.0), Mistral, Llama (2, 3, 3.1), Mixtral, and Phi (3), across different interfaces (web and API), computing environments (cloud and local), and model precisions (with and without quantization). Finally, we assessed accuracy using a semiautomated pipeline. Results: Among the proprietary models, GPT-4o (73.7%) and Claude3.5-Sonnet (74.0%) achieved the highest accuracy, outperforming the top open-source models: Llama3.1-405b (64%), Llama3.1-70b (58.3%), and Mixtral-8x7b (54.3%). Among the quantized open-source models, the 6-bit quantized Phi3-14b (48.7%) performed best. The scores of the quantized models were comparable to those of the full-precision models Llama2-7b, Llama2--13b, and Gemma2-9b. Notably, VLM performance on image-containing questions did not improve when the images were provided and worsened when LLM-generated captions were provided. In contrast, a 10% increase in accuracy was observed when images were accompanied by human-crafted image descriptions. Conclusion: In conclusion, while LLMs exhibit robust zero-shot performance in medical reasoning, the integration of visual data remains a challenge for VLMs. Effective deployment involves carefully determining optimal model configurations, encouraging users to consider either the high performance of proprietary models or the flexible adaptability of open-source models.
Continual Diffuser (CoD): Mastering Continual Offline Reinforcement Learning with Experience Rehearsal
Authors: Jifeng Hu, Li Shen, Sili Huang, Zhejian Yang, Hechang Chen, Lichao Sun, Yi Chang, DaCheng Tao
Date: 2024-09-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Reinforcement Learning (RL)

Artificial neural networks, especially recent diffusion-based models, have shown remarkable superiority in gaming, control, and QA systems, where the training tasks' datasets are usually static. However, in real-world applications, such as robotic control of reinforcement learning (RL), the tasks are changing, and new tasks arise in a sequential order. This situation poses the new challenge of plasticity-stability trade-off for training an agent who can adapt to task changes and retain acquired knowledge. In view of this, we propose a rehearsal-based continual diffusion model, called Continual Diffuser (CoD), to endow the diffuser with the capabilities of quick adaptation (plasticity) and lasting retention (stability). Specifically, we first construct an offline benchmark that contains 90 tasks from multiple domains. Then, we train the CoD on each task with sequential modeling and conditional generation for making decisions. Next, we preserve a small portion of previous datasets as the rehearsal buffer and replay it to retain the acquired knowledge. Extensive experiments on a series of tasks show CoD can achieve a promising plasticity-stability trade-off and outperform existing diffusion-based methods and other representative baselines on most tasks.
CoAst: Validation-Free Contribution Assessment for Federated Learning based on Cross-Round Valuation
Authors: Hao Wu, Likun Zhang, Shucheng Li, Fengyuan Xu, Sheng Zhong
Date: 2024-09-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Contribution Assessment, Federated Learning, Quantization

In the federated learning (FL) process, since the data held by each participant is different, it is necessary to figure out which participant has a higher contribution to the model performance. Effective contribution assessment can help motivate data owners to participate in the FL training. Research works in this field can be divided into two directions based on whether a validation dataset is required. Validation-based methods need to use representative validation data to measure the model accuracy, which is difficult to obtain in practical FL scenarios. Existing validation-free methods assess the contribution based on the parameters and gradients of local models and the global model in a single training round, which is easily compromised by the stochasticity of model training. In this work, we propose CoAst, a practical method to assess the FL participants' contribution without access to any validation data. The core idea of CoAst involves two aspects: one is to only count the most important part of model parameters through a weights quantization, and the other is a cross-round valuation based on the similarity between the current local parameters and the global parameter updates in several subsequent communication rounds. Extensive experiments show that CoAst has comparable assessment reliability to existing validation-based methods and outperforms existing validation-free methods.