pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Steering Large Language Models with Feature Guided Activation Additions
Authors: Samuel Soo, Wesley Teng, Chandrasekaran Balaganesh
Date: 2025-01-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Decoder, Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model

Effective and reliable control over large language model (LLM) behavior is a significant challenge. While activation steering methods, which add steering vectors to a model's hidden states, are a promising approach, existing techniques often lack precision and interpretability in how they influence model outputs. We introduce Feature Guided Activation Additions (FGAA), a novel activation steering method that leverages insights from Contrastive Activation Addition (CAA) and Sparse Autoencoder-Targeted Steering (SAE-TS). By operating in the latent space of a Sparse Autoencoder (SAE) and employing optimization techniques to select desired SAE features, FGAA constructs precise steering vectors that provide better steering effects while maintaining coherence of steered model outputs. In this regard, evaluations on Gemma-2-2B and Gemma-2-9B models across various steering tasks demonstrate that FGAA outperforms existing steering methods of CAA, SAE decoder steering, and SAE-TS. Our results also highlight important trade-offs between steering scale and general model capabilities that are consistent across all tested steering methods.
Dialogue Benchmark Generation from Knowledge Graphs with Cost-Effective Retrieval-Augmented LLMs
Authors: Reham Omar, Omij Mangukiya, Essam Mansour
Date: 2025-01-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Dialogue Generation, Knowledge Graphs, Question Answering, Retrieval, Retrieval-augmented Generation

Dialogue benchmarks are crucial in training and evaluating chatbots engaging in domain-specific conversations. Knowledge graphs (KGs) represent semantically rich and well-organized data spanning various domains, such as DBLP, DBpedia, and YAGO. Traditionally, dialogue benchmarks have been manually created from documents, neglecting the potential of KGs in automating this process. Some question-answering benchmarks are automatically generated using extensive preprocessing from KGs, but they do not support dialogue generation. This paper introduces Chatty-Gen, a novel multi-stage retrieval-augmented generation platform for automatically generating high-quality dialogue benchmarks tailored to a specific domain using a KG. Chatty-Gen decomposes the generation process into manageable stages and uses assertion rules for automatic validation between stages. Our approach enables control over intermediate results to prevent time-consuming restarts due to hallucinations. It also reduces reliance on costly and more powerful commercial LLMs. Chatty-Gen eliminates upfront processing of the entire KG using efficient query-based retrieval to find representative subgraphs based on the dialogue context. Our experiments with several real and large KGs demonstrate that Chatty-Gen significantly outperforms state-of-the-art systems and ensures consistent model and system performance across multiple LLMs of diverse capabilities, such as GPT-4o, Gemini 1.5, Llama 3, and Mistral.
IE-Bench: Advancing the Measurement of Text-Driven Image Editing for Human Perception Alignment
Authors: Shangkun Sun, Bowen Qu, Xiaoyu Liang, Songlin Fan, Wei Gao
Date: 2025-01-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Image Generation

Recent advances in text-driven image editing have been significant, yet the task of accurately evaluating these edited images continues to pose a considerable challenge. Different from the assessment of text-driven image generation, text-driven image editing is characterized by simultaneously conditioning on both text and a source image. The edited images often retain an intrinsic connection to the original image, which dynamically change with the semantics of the text. However, previous methods tend to solely focus on text-image alignment or have not aligned with human perception. In this work, we introduce the Text-driven Image Editing Benchmark suite (IE-Bench) to enhance the assessment of text-driven edited images. IE-Bench includes a database contains diverse source images, various editing prompts and the corresponding results different editing methods, and total 3,010 Mean Opinion Scores (MOS) provided by 25 human subjects. Furthermore, we introduce IE-QA, a multi-modality source-aware quality assessment method for text-driven image editing. To the best of our knowledge, IE-Bench offers the first IQA dataset and model tailored for text-driven image editing. Extensive experiments demonstrate IE-QA's superior subjective-alignments on the text-driven image editing task compared with previous metrics. We will make all related data and code available to the public.
ForestProtector: An IoT Architecture Integrating Machine Vision and Deep Reinforcement Learning for Efficient Wildfire Monitoring
Authors: Kenneth Bonilla-Ormachea, Horacio Cuizaga, Edwin Salcedo, Sebastian Castro, Sergio Fernandez-Testa, Misael Mamani
Date: 2025-01-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Reinforcement Learning, Fire Detection

Early detection of forest fires is crucial to minimizing the environmental and socioeconomic damage they cause. Indeed, a fire's duration directly correlates with the difficulty and cost of extinguishing it. For instance, a fire burning for 1 minute might require 1 liter of water to extinguish, while a 2-minute fire could demand 100 liters, and a 10-minute fire might necessitate 1,000 liters. On the other hand, existing fire detection systems based on novel technologies (e.g., remote sensing, PTZ cameras, UAVs) are often expensive and require human intervention, making continuous monitoring of large areas impractical. To address this challenge, this work proposes a low-cost forest fire detection system that utilizes a central gateway device with computer vision capabilities to monitor a 360{\deg} field of view for smoke at long distances. A deep reinforcement learning agent enhances surveillance by dynamically controlling the camera's orientation, leveraging real-time sensor data (smoke levels, ambient temperature, and humidity) from distributed IoT devices. This approach enables automated wildfire monitoring across expansive areas while reducing false positives.
Study on a Fast Solver for Combined Field Integral Equations of 3D Conducting Bodies Based on Graph Neural Networks
Authors: Tao Shan, Xin Zhang, Di wu
Date: 2025-01-17 00:00:00

In this paper, we present a graph neural networks (GNNs)-based fast solver (GraphSolver) for solving combined field integral equations (CFIEs) of 3D conducting bodies. Rao-Wilton-Glisson (RWG) basis functions are employed to discretely and accurately represent the geometry of 3D conducting bodies. A concise and informative graph representation is then constructed by treating each RWG function as a node in the graph, enabling the flow of current between nodes. With the transformed graphs, GraphSolver is developed to directly predict real and imaginary parts of the x, y and z components of the surface current densities at each node (RWG function). Numerical results demonstrate the efficacy of GraphSolver in solving CFIEs for 3D conducting bodies with varying levels of geometric complexity, including basic 3D targets, missile-shaped targets, and airplane-shaped targets.
GenSC-6G: A Prototype Testbed for Integrated Generative AI, Quantum, and Semantic Communication
Authors: Brian E. Arfeto, Shehbaz Tariq, Uman Khalid, Trung Q. Duong, Hyundong Shin
Date: 2025-01-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Semantic Communication

We introduce a prototyping testbed, GenSC-6G, developed to generate a comprehensive dataset that supports the integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and semantic communication for emerging sixth-generation (6G) applications. The GenSC-6G dataset is designed with noise-augmented synthetic data optimized for semantic decoding, classification, and localization tasks, significantly enhancing flexibility for diverse AI-driven communication applications. This adaptable prototype supports seamless modifications across baseline models, communication modules, and goal-oriented decoders. Case studies demonstrate its application in lightweight classification, semantic upsampling, and edge-based language inference under noise conditions. The GenSC-6G dataset serves as a scalable and robust resource for developing goal-oriented communication systems tailored to the growing demands of 6G networks.
Towards A Litmus Test for Common Sense
Authors: Hugo Latapie
Date: 2025-01-17 00:00:00
Tasks: ARC, Common Sense Reasoning, Novel Concepts

This paper is the second in a planned series aimed at envisioning a path to safe and beneficial artificial intelligence. Building on the conceptual insights of "Common Sense Is All You Need," we propose a more formal litmus test for common sense, adopting an axiomatic approach that combines minimal prior knowledge (MPK) constraints with diagonal or Godel-style arguments to create tasks beyond the agent's known concept set. We discuss how this approach applies to the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC), acknowledging training/test data constraints, physical or virtual embodiment, and large language models (LLMs). We also integrate observations regarding emergent deceptive hallucinations, in which more capable AI systems may intentionally fabricate plausible yet misleading outputs to disguise knowledge gaps. The overarching theme is that scaling AI without ensuring common sense risks intensifying such deceptive tendencies, thereby undermining safety and trust. Aligning with the broader goal of developing beneficial AI without causing harm, our axiomatic litmus test not only diagnoses whether an AI can handle truly novel concepts but also provides a stepping stone toward an ethical, reliable foundation for future safe, beneficial, and aligned artificial intelligence.
SLIM: Sim-to-Real Legged Instructive Manipulation via Long-Horizon Visuomotor Learning
Authors: Haichao Zhang, Haonan Yu, Le Zhao, Andrew Choi, Qinxun Bai, Break Yang, Wei Xu
Date: 2025-01-17 00:00:00

We present a low-cost legged mobile manipulation system that solves long-horizon real-world tasks, trained by reinforcement learning purely in simulation. This system is made possible by 1) a hierarchical design of a high-level policy for visual-mobile manipulation following task instructions, and a low-level quadruped locomotion policy, 2) a teacher and student training pipeline for the high level, which trains a teacher to tackle long-horizon tasks using privileged task decomposition and target object information, and further trains a student for visual-mobile manipulation via RL guided by the teacher's behavior, and 3) a suite of techniques for minimizing the sim-to-real gap. In contrast to many previous works that use high-end equipments, our system demonstrates effective performance with more accessible hardware -- specifically, a Unitree Go1 quadruped, a WidowX-250S arm, and a single wrist-mounted RGB camera -- despite the increased challenges of sim-to-real transfer. Trained fully in simulation, a single policy autonomously solves long-horizon tasks involving search, move to, grasp, transport, and drop into, achieving nearly 80% real-world success. This performance is comparable to that of expert human teleoperation on the same tasks while the robot is more efficient, operating at about 1.5x the speed of the teleoperation. Finally, we perform extensive ablations on key techniques for efficient RL training and effective sim-to-real transfer, and demonstrate effective deployment across diverse indoor and outdoor scenes under various lighting conditions.
Evolving Deeper LLM Thinking
Authors: Kuang-Huei Lee, Ian Fischer, Yueh-Hua Wu, Dave Marwood, Shumeet Baluja, Dale Schuurmans, Xinyun Chen
Date: 2025-01-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling

We explore an evolutionary search strategy for scaling inference time compute in Large Language Models. The proposed approach, Mind Evolution, uses a language model to generate, recombine and refine candidate responses. The proposed approach avoids the need to formalize the underlying inference problem whenever a solution evaluator is available. Controlling for inference cost, we find that Mind Evolution significantly outperforms other inference strategies such as Best-of-N and Sequential Revision in natural language planning tasks. In the TravelPlanner and Natural Plan benchmarks, Mind Evolution solves more than 98% of the problem instances using Gemini 1.5 Pro without the use of a formal solver.
Exploring the Implementation of AI in Early Onset Interviews to Help Mitigate Bias
Authors: Nishka Lal, Omar Benkraouda
Date: 2025-01-17 00:00:00

This paper investigates the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in early-stage recruitment interviews in order to reduce inherent bias, specifically sentiment bias. Traditional interviewers are often subject to several biases, including interviewer bias, social desirability effects, and even confirmation bias. In turn, this leads to non-inclusive hiring practices, and a less diverse workforce. This study further analyzes various AI interventions that are present in the marketplace today such as multimodal platforms and interactive candidate assessment tools in order to gauge the current market usage of AI in early-stage recruitment. However, this paper aims to use a unique AI system that was developed to transcribe and analyze interview dynamics, which emphasize skill and knowledge over emotional sentiments. Results indicate that AI effectively minimizes sentiment-driven biases by 41.2%, suggesting its revolutionizing power in companies' recruitment processes for improved equity and efficiency.
ASTRA: A Scene-aware TRAnsformer-based model for trajectory prediction
Authors: Izzeddin Teeti, Aniket Thomas, Munish Monga, Sachin Kumar, Uddeshya Singh, Andrew Bradley, Biplab Banerjee, Fabio Cuzzolin
Date: 2025-01-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Trajectory Forecasting, Trajectory Prediction

We present ASTRA (A} Scene-aware TRAnsformer-based model for trajectory prediction), a light-weight pedestrian trajectory forecasting model that integrates the scene context, spatial dynamics, social inter-agent interactions and temporal progressions for precise forecasting. We utilised a U-Net-based feature extractor, via its latent vector representation, to capture scene representations and a graph-aware transformer encoder for capturing social interactions. These components are integrated to learn an agent-scene aware embedding, enabling the model to learn spatial dynamics and forecast the future trajectory of pedestrians. The model is designed to produce both deterministic and stochastic outcomes, with the stochastic predictions being generated by incorporating a Conditional Variational Auto-Encoder (CVAE). ASTRA also proposes a simple yet effective weighted penalty loss function, which helps to yield predictions that outperform a wide array of state-of-the-art deterministic and generative models. ASTRA demonstrates an average improvement of 27%/10% in deterministic/stochastic settings on the ETH-UCY dataset, and 26% improvement on the PIE dataset, respectively, along with seven times fewer parameters than the existing state-of-the-art model (see Figure 1). Additionally, the model's versatility allows it to generalize across different perspectives, such as Bird's Eye View (BEV) and Ego-Vehicle View (EVV).
From Explainability to Interpretability: Interpretable Policies in Reinforcement Learning Via Model Explanation
Authors: Peilang Li, Umer Siddique, Yongcan Cao
Date: 2025-01-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, Deep Reinforcement Learning, Reinforcement Learning (RL)

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has shown remarkable success in complex domains, however, the inherent black box nature of deep neural network policies raises significant challenges in understanding and trusting the decision-making processes. While existing explainable RL methods provide local insights, they fail to deliver a global understanding of the model, particularly in high-stakes applications. To overcome this limitation, we propose a novel model-agnostic approach that bridges the gap between explainability and interpretability by leveraging Shapley values to transform complex deep RL policies into transparent representations. The proposed approach offers two key contributions: a novel approach employing Shapley values to policy interpretation beyond local explanations and a general framework applicable to off-policy and on-policy algorithms. We evaluate our approach with three existing deep RL algorithms and validate its performance in two classic control environments. The results demonstrate that our approach not only preserves the original models' performance but also generates more stable interpretable policies.
CrossModalityDiffusion: Multi-Modal Novel View Synthesis with Unified Intermediate Representation
Authors: Alex Berian, Daniel Brignac, JhihYang Wu, Natnael Daba, Abhijit Mahalanobis
Date: 2025-01-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Novel View Synthesis, Scene Understanding

Geospatial imaging leverages data from diverse sensing modalities-such as EO, SAR, and LiDAR, ranging from ground-level drones to satellite views. These heterogeneous inputs offer significant opportunities for scene understanding but present challenges in interpreting geometry accurately, particularly in the absence of precise ground truth data. To address this, we propose CrossModalityDiffusion, a modular framework designed to generate images across different modalities and viewpoints without prior knowledge of scene geometry. CrossModalityDiffusion employs modality-specific encoders that take multiple input images and produce geometry-aware feature volumes that encode scene structure relative to their input camera positions. The space where the feature volumes are placed acts as a common ground for unifying input modalities. These feature volumes are overlapped and rendered into feature images from novel perspectives using volumetric rendering techniques. The rendered feature images are used as conditioning inputs for a modality-specific diffusion model, enabling the synthesis of novel images for the desired output modality. In this paper, we show that jointly training different modules ensures consistent geometric understanding across all modalities within the framework. We validate CrossModalityDiffusion's capabilities on the synthetic ShapeNet cars dataset, demonstrating its effectiveness in generating accurate and consistent novel views across multiple imaging modalities and perspectives.
Bridging Language Barriers in Healthcare: A Study on Arabic LLMs
Authors: Nada Saadi, Tathagata Raha, Clément Christophe, Marco AF Pimentel, Ronnie Rajan, Praveen K Kanithi
Date: 2025-01-16 00:00:00

This paper investigates the challenges of developing large language models (LLMs) proficient in both multilingual understanding and medical knowledge. We demonstrate that simply translating medical data does not guarantee strong performance on clinical tasks in the target language. Our experiments reveal that the optimal language mix in training data varies significantly across different medical tasks. We find that larger models with carefully calibrated language ratios achieve superior performance on native-language clinical tasks. Furthermore, our results suggest that relying solely on fine-tuning may not be the most effective approach for incorporating new language knowledge into LLMs. Instead, data and computationally intensive pretraining methods may still be necessary to achieve optimal performance in multilingual medical settings. These findings provide valuable guidance for building effective and inclusive medical AI systems for diverse linguistic communities.
Generalized Single-Image-Based Morphing Attack Detection Using Deep Representations from Vision Transformer
Authors: Haoyu Zhang, Raghavendra Ramachandra, Kiran Raja, Christoph Busch
Date: 2025-01-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Face Recognition

Face morphing attacks have posed severe threats to Face Recognition Systems (FRS), which are operated in border control and passport issuance use cases. Correspondingly, morphing attack detection algorithms (MAD) are needed to defend against such attacks. MAD approaches must be robust enough to handle unknown attacks in an open-set scenario where attacks can originate from various morphing generation algorithms, post-processing and the diversity of printers/scanners. The problem of generalization is further pronounced when the detection has to be made on a single suspected image. In this paper, we propose a generalized single-image-based MAD (S-MAD) algorithm by learning the encoding from Vision Transformer (ViT) architecture. Compared to CNN-based architectures, ViT model has the advantage on integrating local and global information and hence can be suitable to detect the morphing traces widely distributed among the face region. Extensive experiments are carried out on face morphing datasets generated using publicly available FRGC face datasets. Several state-of-the-art (SOTA) MAD algorithms, including representative ones that have been publicly evaluated, have been selected and benchmarked with our ViT-based approach. Obtained results demonstrate the improved detection performance of the proposed S-MAD method on inter-dataset testing (when different data is used for training and testing) and comparable performance on intra-dataset testing (when the same data is used for training and testing) experimental protocol.
Enhancing Generalization in Chain of Thought Reasoning for Smaller Models
Authors: Maxwell J. Yin, Dingyi Jiang, Yongbing Chen, Boyu Wang, Charles Ling
Date: 2025-01-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Knowledge Distillation, Memorization, Prompt Engineering

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning in smaller language models is a challenging natural language process problem yet highly desirable in many real-life applications. Existing CoT knowledge distillation methods often suffer from overly conservative memorization in smaller LLMs, leading to low generalization confidence. As fully preserving the CoT ability of teacher model is impossible, we hypothesize that adversarial CoT fine-tuning is crucial for developing smaller LLM with robust CoT generalization. To this end, we propose \textit{PRompt-Assisted Domain-Adversarial fine-tuning} (PRADA), a principled fine-tuning framework that integrates diverse CoT domains. Specifically, PRADA pioneers two CoT improvements in smaller LLM: (1) Recovering the domain-invariant feature insight which typically lost during distillation with domain adversarial fine-tuning; (2) Enhancing the domain adaptability of CoT prompt engineering by employing domain-adversarial approaches. We theoretically demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach and empirically show that it significantly outperforms the state of the arts in a wide range of tasks. Moreover, our empirical findings reveal that the smaller LLM, when leveraging PRADA, aligns closely with domain knowledge, thereby improving the explainability of our approach.