pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Hamiltonian-based neural networks for systems under nonholonomic constraints
Authors: Ignacio Puiggros T., A. Srikantha Phani
Date: 2024-12-04 00:00:00

There has been increasing interest in methodologies that incorporate physics priors into neural network architectures to enhance their modeling capabilities. A family of these methodologies that has gained traction are Hamiltonian neural networks (HNN) and their variations. These architectures explicitly encode Hamiltonian mechanics both in their structure and loss function. Although Hamiltonian systems under nonholonomic constraints are in general not Hamiltonian, it is possible to formulate them in pseudo-Hamiltonian form, equipped with a Lie bracket which is almost Poisson. This opens the possibility of using some principles of HNNs in systems under nonholonomic constraints. The goal of the present work is to develop a modified Hamiltonian neural network architecture capable of modeling Hamiltonian systems under holonomic and nonholonomic constraints. A three-network parallel architecture is proposed to simultaneously learn the Hamiltonian of the system, the constraints, and their associated multipliers. A rolling disk and a ball on a spinning table are considered as canonical examples to assess the performance of the proposed Hamiltonian architecture. The experiments are then repeated with a noisy training set to study modeling performance under more realistic conditions.
Learning Whole-Body Loco-Manipulation for Omni-Directional Task Space Pose Tracking with a Wheeled-Quadrupedal-Manipulator
Authors: Kaiwen Jiang, Zhen Fu, Junde Guo, Wei zhang, Hua Chen
Date: 2024-12-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Pose Tracking, Reinforcement Learning (RL)

In this paper, we study the whole-body loco-manipulation problem using reinforcement learning (RL). Specifically, we focus on the problem of how to coordinate the floating base and the robotic arm of a wheeled-quadrupedal manipulator robot to achieve direct six-dimensional (6D) end-effector (EE) pose tracking in task space. Different from conventional whole-body loco-manipulation problems that track both floating-base and end-effector commands, the direct EE pose tracking problem requires inherent balance among redundant degrees of freedom in the whole-body motion. We leverage RL to solve this challenging problem. To address the associated difficulties, we develop a novel reward fusion module (RFM) that systematically integrates reward terms corresponding to different tasks in a nonlinear manner. In such a way, the inherent multi-stage and hierarchical feature of the loco-manipulation problem can be carefully accommodated. By combining the proposed RFM with the a teacher-student RL training paradigm, we present a complete RL scheme to achieve 6D EE pose tracking for the wheeled-quadruped manipulator robot. Extensive simulation and hardware experiments demonstrate the significance of the RFM. In particular, we enable smooth and precise tracking performance, achieving state-of-the-art tracking position error of less than 5 cm, and rotation error of less than 0.1 rad. Please refer to https://clearlab-sustech.github.io/RFM_loco_mani/ for more experimental videos.
Data Acquisition for Improving Model Fairness using Reinforcement Learning
Authors: Jahid Hasan, Romila Pradhan
Date: 2024-12-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Data Valuation, Fairness, Multi-Armed Bandits, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning

Machine learning systems are increasingly being used in critical decision making such as healthcare, finance, and criminal justice. Concerns around their fairness have resulted in several bias mitigation techniques that emphasize the need for high-quality data to ensure fairer decisions. However, the role of earlier stages of machine learning pipelines in mitigating model bias has not been explored well. In this paper, we focus on the task of acquiring additional labeled data points for training the downstream machine learning model to rapidly improve its fairness. Since not all data points in a data pool are equally beneficial to the task of fairness, we generate an ordering in which data points should be acquired. We present DataSift, a data acquisition framework based on the idea of data valuation that relies on partitioning and multi-armed bandits to determine the most valuable data points to acquire. Over several iterations, DataSift selects a partition and randomly samples a batch of data points from the selected partition, evaluates the benefit of acquiring the batch on model fairness, and updates the utility of partitions depending on the benefit. To further improve the effectiveness and efficiency of evaluating batches, we leverage influence functions that estimate the effect of acquiring a batch without retraining the model. We empirically evaluate DataSift on several real-world and synthetic datasets and show that the fairness of a machine learning model can be significantly improved even while acquiring a few data points.
Provably Extending PageRank-based Local Clustering Algorithm to Weighted Directed Graphs with Self-Loops and to Hypergraphs
Authors: Zihao Li, Dongqi Fu, Hengyu Liu, Jingrui He
Date: 2024-12-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Clustering, Graph Clustering

Local clustering aims to find a compact cluster near the given starting instances. This work focuses on graph local clustering, which has broad applications beyond graphs because of the internal connectivities within various modalities. While most existing studies on local graph clustering adopt the discrete graph setting (i.e., unweighted graphs without self-loops), real-world graphs can be more complex. In this paper, we extend the non-approximating Andersen-Chung-Lang ("ACL") algorithm beyond discrete graphs and generalize its quadratic optimality to a wider range of graphs, including weighted, directed, and self-looped graphs and hypergraphs. Specifically, leveraging PageRank, we propose two algorithms: GeneralACL for graphs and HyperACL for hypergraphs. We theoretically prove that, under two mild conditions, both algorithms can identify a quadratically optimal local cluster in terms of conductance with at least 1/2 probability. On the property of hypergraphs, we address a fundamental gap in the literature by defining conductance for hypergraphs from the perspective of hypergraph random walks. Additionally, we provide experiments to validate our theoretical findings.
Preference-based Pure Exploration
Authors: Apurv Shukla, Debabrota Basu
Date: 2024-12-04 00:00:00

We study the preference-based pure exploration problem for bandits with vector-valued rewards. The rewards are ordered using a (given) preference cone $\mathcal{C}$ and our goal is to identify the set of Pareto optimal arms. First, to quantify the impact of preferences, we derive a novel lower bound on sample complexity for identifying the most preferred policy with a confidence level $1-\delta$. Our lower bound elicits the role played by the geometry of the preference cone and punctuates the difference in hardness compared to existing best-arm identification variants of the problem. We further explicate this geometry when the rewards follow Gaussian distributions. We then provide a convex relaxation of the lower bound and leverage it to design the Preference-based Track and Stop (PreTS) algorithm that identifies the most preferred policy. Finally, we show that the sample complexity of PreTS is asymptotically tight by deriving a new concentration inequality for vector-valued rewards.
Unified Inductive Logic: From Formal Learning to Statistical Inference to Supervised Learning
Authors: Hanti Lin
Date: 2024-12-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Learning Theory

While the traditional conception of inductive logic is Carnapian, I develop a Peircean alternative and use it to unify formal learning theory, statistics, and a significant part of machine learning: supervised learning. Some crucial standards for evaluating non-deductive inferences have been assumed separately in those areas, but can actually be justified by a unifying principle.
How Many Ratings per Item are Necessary for Reliable Significance Testing?
Authors: Christopher Homan, Flip Korn, Chris Welty
Date: 2024-12-04 00:00:00

Most approaches to machine learning evaluation assume that machine and human responses are repeatable enough to be measured against data with unitary, authoritative, "gold standard" responses, via simple metrics such as accuracy, precision, and recall that assume scores are independent given the test item. However, AI models have multiple sources of stochasticity and the human raters who create gold standards tend to disagree with each other, often in meaningful ways, hence a single output response per input item may not provide enough information. We introduce methods for determining whether an (existing or planned) evaluation dataset has enough responses per item to reliably compare the performance of one model to another. We apply our methods to several of very few extant gold standard test sets with multiple disaggregated responses per item and show that there are usually not enough responses per item to reliably compare the performance of one model against another. Our methods also allow us to estimate the number of responses per item for hypothetical datasets with similar response distributions to the existing datasets we study. When two models are very far apart in their predictive performance, fewer raters are needed to confidently compare them, as expected. However, as the models draw closer, we find that a larger number of raters than are currently typical in annotation collection are needed to ensure that the power analysis correctly reflects the difference in performance.
Incorporating System-level Safety Requirements in Perception Models via Reinforcement Learning
Authors: Weisi Fan, Jesse Lane, Qisai Liu, Soumik Sarkar, Tichakorn Wongpiromsarn
Date: 2024-12-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

Perception components in autonomous systems are often developed and optimized independently of downstream decision-making and control components, relying on established performance metrics like accuracy, precision, and recall. Traditional loss functions, such as cross-entropy loss and negative log-likelihood, focus on reducing misclassification errors but fail to consider their impact on system-level safety, overlooking the varying severities of system-level failures caused by these errors. To address this limitation, we propose a novel training paradigm that augments the perception component with an understanding of system-level safety objectives. Central to our approach is the translation of system-level safety requirements, formally specified using the rulebook formalism, into safety scores. These scores are then incorporated into the reward function of a reinforcement learning framework for fine-tuning perception models with system-level safety objectives. Simulation results demonstrate that models trained with this approach outperform baseline perception models in terms of system-level safety.
BGTplanner: Maximizing Training Accuracy for Differentially Private Federated Recommenders via Strategic Privacy Budget Allocation
Authors: Xianzhi Zhang, Yipeng Zhou, Miao Hu, Di wu, Pengshan Liao, Mohsen Guizani, Michael Sheng
Date: 2024-12-04 00:00:00

To mitigate the rising concern about privacy leakage, the federated recommender (FR) paradigm emerges, in which decentralized clients co-train the recommendation model without exposing their raw user-item rating data. The differentially private federated recommender (DPFR) further enhances FR by injecting differentially private (DP) noises into clients. Yet, current DPFRs, suffering from noise distortion, cannot achieve satisfactory accuracy. Various efforts have been dedicated to improving DPFRs by adaptively allocating the privacy budget over the learning process. However, due to the intricate relation between privacy budget allocation and model accuracy, existing works are still far from maximizing DPFR accuracy. To address this challenge, we develop BGTplanner (Budget Planner) to strategically allocate the privacy budget for each round of DPFR training, improving overall training performance. Specifically, we leverage the Gaussian process regression and historical information to predict the change in recommendation accuracy with a certain allocated privacy budget. Additionally, Contextual Multi-Armed Bandit (CMAB) is harnessed to make privacy budget allocation decisions by reconciling the current improvement and long-term privacy constraints. Our extensive experimental results on real datasets demonstrate that \emph{BGTplanner} achieves an average improvement of 6.76\% in training performance compared to state-of-the-art baselines.
Harnessing Loss Decomposition for Long-Horizon Wave Predictions via Deep Neural Networks
Authors: Indu Kant Deo, Rajeev Jaiman
Date: 2024-12-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Prediction

Accurate prediction over long time horizons is crucial for modeling complex physical processes such as wave propagation. Although deep neural networks show promise for real-time forecasting, they often struggle with accumulating phase and amplitude errors as predictions extend over a long period. To address this issue, we propose a novel loss decomposition strategy that breaks down the loss into separate phase and amplitude components. This technique improves the long-term prediction accuracy of neural networks in wave propagation tasks by explicitly accounting for numerical errors, improving stability, and reducing error accumulation over extended forecasts.
MACAW: A Causal Generative Model for Medical Imaging
Authors: Vibujithan Vigneshwaran, Erik Ohara, Matthias Wilms, Nils Forkert
Date: 2024-12-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Bayesian Inference, counterfactual, model

Although deep learning techniques show promising results for many neuroimaging tasks in research settings, they have not yet found widespread use in clinical scenarios. One of the reasons for this problem is that many machine learning models only identify correlations between the input images and the outputs of interest, which can lead to many practical problems, such as encoding of uninformative biases and reduced explainability. Thus, recent research is exploring if integrating a priori causal knowledge into deep learning models is a potential avenue to identify these problems. This work introduces a new causal generative architecture named Masked Causal Flow (MACAW) for neuroimaging applications. Within this context, three main contributions are described. First, a novel approach that integrates complex causal structures into normalizing flows is proposed. Second, counterfactual prediction is performed to identify the changes in effect variables associated with a cause variable. Finally, an explicit Bayesian inference for classification is derived and implemented, providing an inherent uncertainty estimation. The feasibility of the proposed method was first evaluated using synthetic data and then using MRI brain data from more than 23000 participants of the UK biobank study. The evaluation results show that the proposed method can (1) accurately encode causal reasoning and generate counterfactuals highlighting the structural changes in the brain known to be associated with aging, (2) accurately predict a subject's age from a single 2D MRI slice, and (3) generate new samples assuming other values for subject-specific indicators such as age, sex, and body mass index. The code for a toy dataset is available at the following link: https://github.com/vibujithan/macaw-2D.git.
TDD-Bench Verified: Can LLMs Generate Tests for Issues Before They Get Resolved?
Authors: Toufique Ahmed, Martin Hirzel, Rangeet Pan, Avraham Shinnar, Saurabh Sinha
Date: 2024-12-03 00:00:00
Tasks: test driven development

Test-driven development (TDD) is the practice of writing tests first and coding later, and the proponents of TDD expound its numerous benefits. For instance, given an issue on a source code repository, tests can clarify the desired behavior among stake-holders before anyone writes code for the agreed-upon fix. Although there has been a lot of work on automated test generation for the practice "write code first, test later", there has been little such automation for TDD. Ideally, tests for TDD should be fail-to-pass (i.e., fail before the issue is resolved and pass after) and have good adequacy with respect to covering the code changed during issue resolution. This paper introduces TDD-Bench Verified, a high-quality benchmark suite of 449 issues mined from real-world GitHub code repositories. The benchmark's evaluation harness runs only relevant tests in isolation for simple yet accurate coverage measurements, and the benchmark's dataset is filtered both by human judges and by execution in the harness. This paper also presents Auto-TDD, an LLM-based solution that takes as input an issue description and a codebase (prior to issue resolution) and returns as output a test that can be used to validate the changes made for resolving the issue. Our evaluation shows that Auto-TDD yields a better fail-to-pass rate than the strongest prior work while also yielding high coverage adequacy. Overall, we hope that this work helps make developers more productive at resolving issues while simultaneously leading to more robust fixes.
An Information-Theoretic Analysis of Thompson Sampling for Logistic Bandits
Authors: Amaury Gouverneur, Borja Rodríguez-Gálvez, Tobias J. Oechtering, Mikael Skoglund
Date: 2024-12-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Thompson Sampling

We study the performance of the Thompson Sampling algorithm for logistic bandit problems, where the agent receives binary rewards with probabilities determined by a logistic function $\exp(\beta \langle a, \theta \rangle)/(1+\exp(\beta \langle a, \theta \rangle))$. We focus on the setting where the action $a$ and parameter $\theta$ lie within the $d$-dimensional unit ball with the action space encompassing the parameter space. Adopting the information-theoretic framework introduced by (Russo $\&$ Van Roy, 2015), we analyze the information ratio, which is defined as the ratio of the expected squared difference between the optimal and actual rewards to the mutual information between the optimal action and the reward. Improving upon previous results, we establish that the information ratio is bounded by $\tfrac{9}{2}d$. Notably, we obtain a regret bound in $O(d\sqrt{T \log(\beta T/d)})$ that depends only logarithmically on the parameter $\beta$.
Measuring Bias of Web-filtered Text Datasets and Bias Propagation Through Training
Authors: Youssef Mansour, Reinhard Heckel
Date: 2024-12-03 00:00:00

We investigate biases in pretraining datasets for large language models (LLMs) through dataset classification experiments. Building on prior work demonstrating the existence of biases in popular computer vision datasets, we analyze popular open-source pretraining datasets for LLMs derived from CommonCrawl including C4, RefinedWeb, DolmaCC, RedPajama-V2, FineWeb, and DCLM-Baseline. Despite those datasets being obtained with similar filtering and deduplication steps, neural networks can classify surprisingly well which dataset a single text sequence belongs to, significantly better than a human can. This indicates that popular pretraining datasets have their own unique biases or fingerprints. Those biases remain even when the text is rewritten with LLMs. Moreover, these biases propagate through training: Random sequences generated by models trained on those datasets can be classified well by a classifier trained on the original datasets.
Optimized IoT Intrusion Detection using Machine Learning Technique
Authors: Muhammad Zawad Mahmud, Samiha Islam, Shahran Rahman Alve, Al Jubayer Pial
Date: 2024-12-03 00:00:00
Tasks: feature selection, Intrusion Detection

An application of software known as an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) employs machine algorithms to identify network intrusions. Selective logging, safeguarding privacy, reputation-based defense against numerous attacks, and dynamic response to threats are a few of the problems that intrusion identification is used to solve. The biological system known as IoT has seen a rapid increase in high dimensionality and information traffic. Self-protective mechanisms like intrusion detection systems (IDSs) are essential for defending against a variety of attacks. On the other hand, the functional and physical diversity of IoT IDS systems causes significant issues. These attributes make it troublesome and unrealistic to completely use all IoT elements and properties for IDS self-security. For peculiarity-based IDS, this study proposes and implements a novel component selection and extraction strategy (our strategy). A five-ML algorithm model-based IDS for machine learning-based networks with proper hyperparamater tuning is presented in this paper by examining how the most popular feature selection methods and classifiers are combined, such as K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) Classifier, Decision Tree (DT) Classifier, Random Forest (RF) Classifier, Gradient Boosting Classifier, and Ada Boost Classifier. The Random Forest (RF) classifier had the highest accuracy of 99.39%. The K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) classifier exhibited the lowest performance among the evaluated models, achieving an accuracy of 94.84%. This study's models have a significantly higher performance rate than those used in previous studies, indicating that they are more reliable.
Batch Normalization Decomposed
Authors: Ido Nachum, Marco Bondaschi, Michael Gastpar, Anatoly Khina
Date: 2024-12-03 00:00:00

\emph{Batch normalization} is a successful building block of neural network architectures. Yet, it is not well understood. A neural network layer with batch normalization comprises three components that affect the representation induced by the network: \emph{recentering} the mean of the representation to zero, \emph{rescaling} the variance of the representation to one, and finally applying a \emph{non-linearity}. Our work follows the work of Hadi Daneshmand, Amir Joudaki, Francis Bach [NeurIPS~'21], which studied deep \emph{linear} neural networks with only the rescaling stage between layers at initialization. In our work, we present an analysis of the other two key components of networks with batch normalization, namely, the recentering and the non-linearity. When these two components are present, we observe a curious behavior at initialization. Through the layers, the representation of the batch converges to a single cluster except for an odd data point that breaks far away from the cluster in an orthogonal direction. We shed light on this behavior from two perspectives: (1) we analyze the geometrical evolution of a simplified indicative model; (2) we prove a stability result for the aforementioned~configuration.