pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Path Planning for Masked Diffusion Model Sampling
Authors: Fred Zhangzhi Peng, Zachary Bezemek, Sawan Patel, Sherwood Yao, Jarrid Rector-Brooks, Alexander Tong, Pranam Chatterjee
Date: 2025-02-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Code Generation, In-Context Learning, Mathematical Reasoning, model, Text Generation

In this paper, we investigate how the order in which tokens are unmasked during masked diffusion models (MDMs) inference affects generative quality. We derive an expanded evidence lower bound (ELBO) that introduces a planner, responsible for selecting which tokens to unmask at each step. Our analysis suggests that alternative unmasking strategies can improve generative performance. Based on these insights, we propose Path Planning (P2), a sampling framework that leverages pre-trained BERT or the denoiser itself to guide unmasking decisions. P2 generalizes all known MDM sampling strategies and enables significant improvements across diverse domains including language generation (in-context learning, code generation, story infilling, mathematical reasoning, reverse curse correction) and biological sequence generation (protein and RNA sequences).
Improving Adversarial Robustness via Phase and Amplitude-aware Prompting
Authors: Yibo Xu, Dawei Zhou, Decheng Liu, Nannan Wang
Date: 2025-02-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Adversarial Robustness

Deep neural networks are found to be vulnerable to adversarial noises. The prompt-based defense has been increasingly studied due to its high efficiency. However, existing prompt-based defenses mainly exploited mixed prompt patterns, where critical patterns closely related to object semantics lack sufficient focus. The phase and amplitude spectra have been proven to be highly related to specific semantic patterns and crucial for robustness. To this end, in this paper, we propose a Phase and Amplitude-aware Prompting (PAP) defense. Specifically, we construct phase-level and amplitude-level prompts for each class, and adjust weights for prompting according to the model's robust performance under these prompts during training. During testing, we select prompts for each image using its predicted label to obtain the prompted image, which is inputted to the model to get the final prediction. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
LR0.FM: Low-Res Benchmark and Improving Robustness for Zero-Shot Classification in Foundation Models
Authors: Priyank Pathak, Shyam Marjit, Shruti Vyas, Yogesh S Rawat
Date: 2025-02-06 00:00:00
Tasks: zero-shot-classification, Zero-shot Generalization, Zero-Shot Learning

Visual-language foundation Models (FMs) exhibit remarkable zero-shot generalization across diverse tasks, largely attributed to extensive pre-training on largescale datasets. However, their robustness on low-resolution/pixelated (LR) images, a common challenge in real-world scenarios, remains underexplored. We introduce LR0.FM, a comprehensive benchmark evaluating the impact of low resolution on the zero-shot classification performance of 10 FM(s) across 66 backbones and 15 datasets. We propose a novel metric, Weighted Aggregated Robustness, to address the limitations of existing metrics and better evaluate model performance across resolutions and datasets. Our key findings show that: (i) model size positively correlates with robustness to resolution degradation, (ii) pre-training dataset quality is more important than its size, and (iii) fine-tuned and higher resolution models are less robust against LR. Our analysis further reveals that the model makes semantically reasonable predictions at LR, and the lack of fine-grained details in input adversely impacts the model's initial layers more than the deeper layers. We use these insights and introduce a simple strategy, LR-TK0, to enhance the robustness of models without compromising their pre-trained weights. We demonstrate the effectiveness of LR-TK0 for robustness against low-resolution across several datasets and its generalization capability across backbones and other approaches. Code is available at https://github.com/shyammarjit/LR0.FM
PINT: Physics-Informed Neural Time Series Models with Applications to Long-term Inference on WeatherBench 2m-Temperature Data
Authors: Keon Vin Park, Jisu Kim, Jaemin Seo
Date: 2025-02-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Benchmarking, Time Series

This paper introduces PINT (Physics-Informed Neural Time Series Models), a framework that integrates physical constraints into neural time series models to improve their ability to capture complex dynamics. We apply PINT to the ERA5 WeatherBench dataset, focusing on long-term forecasting of 2m-temperature data. PINT incorporates the Simple Harmonic Oscillator Equation as a physics-informed prior, embedding its periodic dynamics into RNN, LSTM, and GRU architectures. This equation's analytical solutions (sine and cosine functions) facilitate rigorous evaluation of the benefits of incorporating physics-informed constraints. By benchmarking against a linear regression baseline derived from its exact solutions, we quantify the impact of embedding physical principles in data-driven models. Unlike traditional time series models that rely on future observations, PINT is designed for practical forecasting. Using only the first 90 days of observed data, it iteratively predicts the next two years, addressing challenges posed by limited real-time updates. Experiments on the WeatherBench dataset demonstrate PINT's ability to generalize, capture periodic trends, and align with physical principles. This study highlights the potential of physics-informed neural models in bridging machine learning and interpretable climate applications. Our models and datasets are publicly available on GitHub: https://github.com/KV-Park.
AL-PINN: Active Learning-Driven Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Efficient Sample Selection in Solving Partial Differential Equations
Authors: Keon Vin Park
Date: 2025-02-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Active Learning, Computational Efficiency, Uncertainty Quantification

Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) have emerged as a promising approach for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) by incorporating physical constraints into deep learning models. However, standard PINNs often require a large number of training samples to achieve high accuracy, leading to increased computational costs. To address this issue, we propose Active Learning-Driven PINNs (AL-PINN), which integrates Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) and Active Learning (AL) strategies to optimize sample selection dynamically. AL-PINN utilizes Monte Carlo Dropout to estimate epistemic uncertainty in the model predictions, enabling the adaptive selection of high-uncertainty regions for additional training. This approach significantly enhances learning efficiency by focusing computational resources on the most informative data points. We evaluate AL-PINN on benchmark PDE problems with known analytical solutions and real-world WeatherBench climate data. Our results demonstrate that AL-PINN achieves comparable or superior accuracy compared to traditional PINNs while reducing the number of required training samples. The proposed framework is particularly beneficial for scientific and engineering applications where data collection is expensive or limited, such as climate modeling, medical simulations, and material science. Our findings highlight the potential of active learning in accelerating PINN-based PDE solvers while maintaining high accuracy and computational efficiency.
UltraIF: Advancing Instruction Following from the Wild
Authors: Kaikai An, Li Sheng, Ganqu Cui, Shuzheng Si, Ning Ding, Yu Cheng, Baobao Chang
Date: 2025-02-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Instruction Following

Instruction-following made modern large language models (LLMs) helpful assistants. However, the key to taming LLMs on complex instructions remains mysterious, for that there are huge gaps between models trained by open-source community and those trained by leading companies. To bridge the gap, we propose a simple and scalable approach UltraIF for building LLMs that can follow complex instructions with open-source data. UltraIF first decomposes real-world user prompts into simpler queries, constraints, and corresponding evaluation questions for the constraints. Then, we train an UltraComposer to compose constraint-associated prompts with evaluation questions. This prompt composer allows us to synthesize complicated instructions as well as filter responses with evaluation questions. In our experiment, for the first time, we successfully align LLaMA-3.1-8B-Base to catch up with its instruct version on 5 instruction-following benchmarks without any benchmark information, using only 8B model as response generator and evaluator. The aligned model also achieved competitive scores on other benchmarks. Moreover, we also show that UltraIF could further improve LLaMA-3.1-8B-Instruct through self-alignment, motivating broader use cases for the method. Our code will be available at https://github.com/kkk-an/UltraIF.
Real-Time Privacy Risk Measurement with Privacy Tokens for Gradient Leakage
Authors: Jiayang Meng, Tao Huang, Hong Chen, Xin Shi, Qingyu Huang, Chen Hou
Date: 2025-02-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Adversarial Attack

The widespread deployment of deep learning models in privacy-sensitive domains has amplified concerns regarding privacy risks, particularly those stemming from gradient leakage during training. Current privacy assessments primarily rely on post-training attack simulations. However, these methods are inherently reactive, unable to encompass all potential attack scenarios, and often based on idealized adversarial assumptions. These limitations underscore the need for proactive approaches to privacy risk assessment during the training process. To address this gap, we propose the concept of privacy tokens, which are derived directly from private gradients during training. Privacy tokens encapsulate gradient features and, when combined with data features, offer valuable insights into the extent of private information leakage from training data, enabling real-time measurement of privacy risks without relying on adversarial attack simulations. Additionally, we employ Mutual Information (MI) as a robust metric to quantify the relationship between training data and gradients, providing precise and continuous assessments of privacy leakage throughout the training process. Extensive experiments validate our framework, demonstrating the effectiveness of privacy tokens and MI in identifying and quantifying privacy risks. This proactive approach marks a significant advancement in privacy monitoring, promoting the safer deployment of deep learning models in sensitive applications.
Efficient Randomized Experiments Using Foundation Models
Authors: Piersilvio De Bartolomeis, Javier Abad, Guanbo Wang, Konstantin Donhauser, Raymond M. Duch, Fanny Yang, Issa J. Dahabreh
Date: 2025-02-06 00:00:00
Tasks: valid

Randomized experiments are the preferred approach for evaluating the effects of interventions, but they are costly and often yield estimates with substantial uncertainty. On the other hand, in silico experiments leveraging foundation models offer a cost-effective alternative that can potentially attain higher statistical precision. However, the benefits of in silico experiments come with a significant risk: statistical inferences are not valid if the models fail to accurately predict experimental responses to interventions. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that integrates the predictions from multiple foundation models with experimental data while preserving valid statistical inference. Our estimator is consistent and asymptotically normal, with asymptotic variance no larger than the standard estimator based on experimental data alone. Importantly, these statistical properties hold even when model predictions are arbitrarily biased. Empirical results across several randomized experiments show that our estimator offers substantial precision gains, equivalent to a reduction of up to 20% in the sample size needed to match the same precision as the standard estimator based on experimental data alone.
Maximizing the Position Embedding for Vision Transformers with Global Average Pooling
Authors: Wonjun Lee, Bumsub Ham, Suhyun Kim
Date: 2025-02-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Position

In vision transformers, position embedding (PE) plays a crucial role in capturing the order of tokens. However, in vision transformer structures, there is a limitation in the expressiveness of PE due to the structure where position embedding is simply added to the token embedding. A layer-wise method that delivers PE to each layer and applies independent Layer Normalizations for token embedding and PE has been adopted to overcome this limitation. In this paper, we identify the conflicting result that occurs in a layer-wise structure when using the global average pooling (GAP) method instead of the class token. To overcome this problem, we propose MPVG, which maximizes the effectiveness of PE in a layer-wise structure with GAP. Specifically, we identify that PE counterbalances token embedding values at each layer in a layer-wise structure. Furthermore, we recognize that the counterbalancing role of PE is insufficient in the layer-wise structure, and we address this by maximizing the effectiveness of PE through MPVG. Through experiments, we demonstrate that PE performs a counterbalancing role and that maintaining this counterbalancing directionality significantly impacts vision transformers. As a result, the experimental results show that MPVG outperforms existing methods across vision transformers on various tasks.
Quantum Circuit Design using a Progressive Widening Enhanced Monte Carlo Tree Search
Authors: Vincenzo Lipardi, Domenica Dibenedetto, Georgios Stamoulis, Mark H. M. Winands
Date: 2025-02-06 00:00:00

The performance of Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) strongly depends on the choice of the parameterized quantum circuit to optimize. One of the biggest challenges in VQAs is designing quantum circuits tailored to the particular problem. This article proposes a gradient-free Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) technique to automate the process of quantum circuit design. Our proposed technique introduces a novel formulation of the action space based on a sampling scheme and a progressive widening technique to explore the space dynamically. When testing our MCTS approach on the domain of random quantum circuits, MCTS approximates unstructured circuits under different values of stabilizer R\'enyi entropy. It turns out that MCTS manages to approximate the benchmark quantum states independently from their degree of nonstabilizerness. Next, our technique exhibits robustness across various application domains, including quantum chemistry and systems of linear equations. Compared to previous MCTS research, our technique reduces the number of quantum circuit evaluations by a factor of 10 up to 100 while achieving equal or better results. In addition, the resulting quantum circuits exhibit up to three times fewer CNOT gates, which is important for implementation on noisy quantum hardware.
Simplifying Formal Proof-Generating Models with ChatGPT and Basic Searching Techniques
Authors: Sangjun Han, Taeil Hur, Youngmi Hur, Kathy Sangkyung Lee, Myungyoon Lee, Hyojae Lim
Date: 2025-02-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model

The challenge of formal proof generation has a rich history, but with modern techniques, we may finally be at the stage of making actual progress in real-life mathematical problems. This paper explores the integration of ChatGPT and basic searching techniques to simplify generating formal proofs, with a particular focus on the miniF2F dataset. We demonstrate how combining a large language model like ChatGPT with a formal language such as Lean, which has the added advantage of being verifiable, enhances the efficiency and accessibility of formal proof generation. Despite its simplicity, our best-performing Lean-based model surpasses all known benchmarks with a 31.15% pass rate. We extend our experiments to include other datasets and employ alternative language models, showcasing our models' comparable performance in diverse settings and allowing for a more nuanced analysis of our results. Our findings offer insights into AI-assisted formal proof generation, suggesting a promising direction for future research in formal mathematical proof.
Deep Meta Coordination Graphs for Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning
Authors: Nikunj Gupta, James Zachary Hare, Rajgopal Kannan, Viktor Prasanna
Date: 2025-02-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning

This paper presents deep meta coordination graphs (DMCG) for learning cooperative policies in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). Coordination graph formulations encode local interactions and accordingly factorize the joint value function of all agents to improve efficiency in MARL. However, existing approaches rely solely on pairwise relations between agents, which potentially oversimplifies complex multi-agent interactions. DMCG goes beyond these simple direct interactions by also capturing useful higher-order and indirect relationships among agents. It generates novel graph structures accommodating multiple types of interactions and arbitrary lengths of multi-hop connections in coordination graphs to model such interactions. It then employs a graph convolutional network module to learn powerful representations in an end-to-end manner. We demonstrate its effectiveness in multiple coordination problems in MARL where other state-of-the-art methods can suffer from sample inefficiency or fail entirely. All codes can be found here: https://github.com/Nikunj-Gupta/dmcg-marl.
Open-set recognition with long-tail sonar images
Authors: Wenpei Jiao, Jianlei Zhang, Chunyan Zhang
Date: 2024-09-01 00:00:00
Proceeding: Expert Systems with Applications 2024 9
Tasks: Open Set Learning, Out-of-Distribution Detection

Current sonar image recognition methods excel in closed-set and balanced scenarios, but real underwater data often follow an open-set and long-tailed distribution, leading to misclassifications, especially among tail classes. Although open-set long-tail recognition (OLTR) tasks have received attention in natural images in recent years, there has been a lack of systematic research in sonar images. To address this gap, we present the first comprehensive study and analysis of open-set long-tail recognition in sonar images (Sonar-OLTR). In this paper, we establish a Sonar-OLTR benchmark by introducing the Nankai Sonar Image Dataset (NKSID), a new collection of 2617 real-world forward-looking sonar images. We investigate the challenges posed by long-tail distributions in existing open-set recognition (OSR) evaluation metrics for sonar images and propose two improved evaluation metrics. Using this benchmark, we conduct a thorough examination of state-of-the-art OSR, long-tail recognition, OLTR, and out-of-distribution detection algorithms. Additionally, we propose a straightforward yet effective integrated Sonar-OLTR approach as a new baseline. This method introduces a Push the right Logit Up and the wrong logit Down (PLUD) loss to increase feature space margins between known and unknown classes, as well as head and tail classes within known classes. Extensive experimental evaluation based on the benchmark demonstrates the performance and speed advantages of PLUD, providing insights for future Sonar-OLTR research. The code and dataset are publicly available at https://github.com/Jorwnpay/Sonar-OLTR.
Great Models Think Alike and this Undermines AI Oversight
Authors: Shashwat Goel, Joschka Struber, Ilze Amanda Auzina, Karuna K Chandra, Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Douwe Kiela, Ameya Prabhu, Matthias Bethge, Jonas Geiping
Date: 2025-02-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling

As Language Model (LM) capabilities advance, evaluating and supervising them at scale is getting harder for humans. There is hope that other language models can automate both these tasks, which we refer to as "AI Oversight". We study how model similarity affects both aspects of AI oversight by proposing a probabilistic metric for LM similarity based on overlap in model mistakes. Using this metric, we first show that LLM-as-a-judge scores favor models similar to the judge, generalizing recent self-preference results. Then, we study training on LM annotations, and find complementary knowledge between the weak supervisor and strong student model plays a crucial role in gains from "weak-to-strong generalization". As model capabilities increase, it becomes harder to find their mistakes, and we might defer more to AI oversight. However, we observe a concerning trend -- model mistakes are becoming more similar with increasing capabilities, pointing to risks from correlated failures. Our work underscores the importance of reporting and correcting for model similarity, especially in the emerging paradigm of AI oversight.
Experiments with Large Language Models on Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Closed-Source Simulation Software
Authors: Andreas Baumann, Peter Eberhard
Date: 2025-02-06 00:00:00
Tasks: RAG, Retrieval-augmented Generation, Text Generation

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly helpful in text generation, even writing code in programming languages based on user prompts written in natural language. They are even applied to generate simulation models for multibody systems from natural language. Research results suggest that LLMs surpass the mere replication of existing code examples, where some LLMs have been trained on an open-source multibody simulation code. However, for closed-source simulation software, such results are not to be expected as their ideas and concepts might differ from other publicly available ones. LLMs can hallucinate for knowledge-intensive tasks, such as model creation, which can lead to wrong responses. This is especially the case for the LLM unknown closed-source simulation software. The same applies to other internal knowledge kept private to protect intellectual property or data privacy. The Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) approach might yield a solution for these knowledge-intensive tasks. This paper explores the application of RAG to closed-source simulation software and presents first experiments. After a brief introduction to LLMs, the RAG approach, and the simulation method applied by the close-source simulation software, several examples are provided to test LLMs' knowledge of the simulation software and the creation of simulation models using two RAG systems. The examples show promising results indicating the benefits of applying RAG systems to closed-source simulation software, helping to access their knowledge. Nevertheless, they also reveal gaps in the applied information and open questions for further research.