pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Variational Offline Multi-agent Skill Discovery
Authors: Jiayu Chen, Bhargav Ganguly, Tian Lan, Vaneet Aggarwal
Date: 2024-05-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning, Multi-Task Learning, Sequential Decision Making, Starcraft

Skills are effective temporal abstractions established for sequential decision making, which enable efficient hierarchical learning for long-horizon tasks and facilitate multi-task learning through their transferability. Despite extensive research, research gaps remain in multi-agent scenarios, particularly for automatically extracting subgroup coordination patterns in a multi-agent task. In this case, we propose two novel auto-encoder schemes: VO-MASD-3D and VO-MASD-Hier, to simultaneously capture subgroup- and temporal-level abstractions and form multi-agent skills, which firstly solves the aforementioned challenge. An essential algorithm component of these schemes is a dynamic grouping function that can automatically detect latent subgroups based on agent interactions in a task. Our method can be applied to offline multi-task data, and the discovered subgroup skills can be transferred across relevant tasks without retraining. Empirical evaluations on StarCraft tasks indicate that our approach significantly outperforms existing hierarchical multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) methods. Moreover, skills discovered using our method can effectively reduce the learning difficulty in MARL scenarios with delayed and sparse reward signals.
Trivialized Momentum Facilitates Diffusion Generative Modeling on Lie Groups
Authors: Yuchen Zhu, Tianrong Chen, Lingkai Kong, Evangelos A. Theodorou, Molei Tao
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Position

The generative modeling of data on manifold is an important task, for which diffusion models in flat spaces typically need nontrivial adaptations. This article demonstrates how a technique called `trivialization' can transfer the effectiveness of diffusion models in Euclidean spaces to Lie groups. In particular, an auxiliary momentum variable was algorithmically introduced to help transport the position variable between data distribution and a fixed, easy-to-sample distribution. Normally, this would incur further difficulty for manifold data because momentum lives in a space that changes with the position. However, our trivialization technique creates to a new momentum variable that stays in a simple $\textbf{fixed vector space}$. This design, together with a manifold preserving integrator, simplifies implementation and avoids inaccuracies created by approximations such as projections to tangent space and manifold, which were typically used in prior work, hence facilitating generation with high-fidelity and efficiency. The resulting method achieves state-of-the-art performance on protein and RNA torsion angle generation and sophisticated torus datasets. We also, arguably for the first time, tackle the generation of data on high-dimensional Special Orthogonal and Unitary groups, the latter essential for quantum problems.
LLMs for User Interest Exploration in Large-scale Recommendation Systems
Authors: Jianling Wang, Haokai Lu, Yifan Liu, He Ma, Yueqi Wang, Yang Gu, Shuzhou Zhang, Ningren Han, Shuchao Bi, Lexi Baugher, Ed Chi, Minmin Chen
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Recommendation Systems

Traditional recommendation systems are subject to a strong feedback loop by learning from and reinforcing past user-item interactions, which in turn limits the discovery of novel user interests. To address this, we introduce a hybrid hierarchical framework combining Large Language Models (LLMs) and classic recommendation models for user interest exploration. The framework controls the interfacing between the LLMs and the classic recommendation models through "interest clusters", the granularity of which can be explicitly determined by algorithm designers. It recommends the next novel interests by first representing "interest clusters" using language, and employs a fine-tuned LLM to generate novel interest descriptions that are strictly within these predefined clusters. At the low level, it grounds these generated interests to an item-level policy by restricting classic recommendation models, in this case a transformer-based sequence recommender to return items that fall within the novel clusters generated at the high level. We showcase the efficacy of this approach on an industrial-scale commercial platform serving billions of users. Live experiments show a significant increase in both exploration of novel interests and overall user enjoyment of the platform.
Navigating AI Fallibility: Examining People's Reactions and Perceptions of AI after Encountering Personality Misrepresentations
Authors: Qiaosi Wang, Chidimma L. Anyi, Vedant Das Swain, Ashok K. Goel
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00

Many hyper-personalized AI systems profile people's characteristics (e.g., personality traits) to provide personalized recommendations. These systems are increasingly used to facilitate interactions among people, such as providing teammate recommendations. Despite improved accuracy, such systems are not immune to errors when making inferences about people's most personal traits. These errors manifested as AI misrepresentations. However, the repercussions of such AI misrepresentations are unclear, especially on people's reactions and perceptions of the AI. We present two studies to examine how people react and perceive the AI after encountering personality misrepresentations in AI-facilitated team matching in a higher education context. Through semi-structured interviews (n=20) and a survey experiment (n=198), we pinpoint how people's existing and newly acquired AI knowledge could shape their perceptions and reactions of the AI after encountering AI misrepresentations. Specifically, we identified three rationales that people adopted through knowledge acquired from AI (mis)representations: AI works like a machine, human, and/or magic. These rationales are highly connected to people's reactions of over-trusting, rationalizing, and forgiving of AI misrepresentations. Finally, we found that people's existing AI knowledge, i.e., AI literacy, could moderate people's changes in their trust in AI after encountering AI misrepresentations, but not changes in people's social perceptions of AI. We discuss the role of people's AI knowledge when facing AI fallibility and implications for designing responsible mitigation and repair strategies.
A Second-Order Perspective on Model Compositionality and Incremental Learning
Authors: Angelo Porrello, Lorenzo Bonicelli, Pietro Buzzega, Monica Millunzi, Simone Calderara, Rita Cucchiara
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Incremental Learning

The fine-tuning of deep pre-trained models has revealed compositional properties, with multiple specialized modules that can be arbitrarily composed into a single, multi-task model. However, identifying the conditions that promote compositionality remains an open issue, with recent efforts concentrating mainly on linearized networks. We conduct a theoretical study that attempts to demystify compositionality in standard non-linear networks through the second-order Taylor approximation of the loss function. The proposed formulation highlights the importance of staying within the pre-training basin to achieve composable modules. Moreover, it provides the basis for two dual incremental training algorithms: the one from the perspective of multiple models trained individually, while the other aims to optimize the composed model as a whole. We probe their application in incremental classification tasks and highlight some valuable skills. In fact, the pool of incrementally learned modules not only supports the creation of an effective multi-task model but also enables unlearning and specialization in certain tasks.
Learning to Reason via Program Generation, Emulation, and Search
Authors: Nathaniel Weir, Muhammad Khalifa, Linlu Qiu, Orion Weller, Peter Clark
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Code Generation, In-Context Learning, Program Synthesis

Program synthesis with language models (LMs) has unlocked a large set of reasoning abilities; code-tuned LMs have proven adept at generating programs that solve a wide variety of algorithmic symbolic manipulation tasks (e.g. word concatenation). However, not all reasoning tasks are easily expressible as code, e.g. tasks involving commonsense reasoning, moral decision-making, and sarcasm understanding. Our goal is to extend an LM's program synthesis skills to such tasks and evaluate the results via pseudo-programs, namely Python programs where some leaf function calls are left undefined. To that end, we propose, Code Generation and Emulated EXecution (CoGEX). CoGEX works by (1) training LMs to generate pseudo-programs, (2) teaching them to emulate their generated program's execution, including those leaf functions, allowing the LM's knowledge to fill in the execution gaps; and (3) using them to search over many programs to find an optimal one. To adapt the CoGEX model to a new task, we introduce a method for performing program search to find a single program whose pseudo-execution yields optimal performance when applied to all the instances of a given dataset. We show that our approach yields large improvements compared to standard in-context learning approaches on a battery of tasks, both algorithmic and soft reasoning. This result thus demonstrates that code synthesis can be applied to a much broader class of problems than previously considered. Our released dataset, fine-tuned models, and implementation can be found at \url{https://github.com/nweir127/CoGEX}.
Devil's Advocate: Anticipatory Reflection for LLM Agents
Authors: Haoyu Wang, Tao Li, Zhiwei Deng, Dan Roth, Yang Li
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Navigate

In this work, we introduce a novel approach that equips LLM agents with introspection, enhancing consistency and adaptability in solving complex tasks. Our approach prompts LLM agents to decompose a given task into manageable subtasks (i.e., to make a plan), and to continuously introspect upon the suitability and results of their actions. %; and when necessary, to explore ``the road not taken.'' We implement a three-fold introspective intervention: 1) anticipatory reflection on potential failures and alternative remedy before action execution, 2) post-action alignment with subtask objectives and backtracking with remedy to ensure utmost effort in plan execution, and 3) comprehensive review upon plan completion for future strategy refinement. By deploying and experimenting with this methodology -- a zero-shot approach -- within WebArena for practical tasks in web environments, our agent demonstrates superior performance with a success rate of 23.5% over existing zero-shot methods by 3.5%. The experimental results suggest that our introspection-driven approach not only enhances the agent's ability to navigate unanticipated challenges through a robust mechanism of plan execution, but also improves efficiency by reducing the number of trials and plan revisions by 45% needed to achieve a task.
SLoPe: Double-Pruned Sparse Plus Lazy Low-Rank Adapter Pretraining of LLMs
Authors: Mohammad Mozaffari, Amir Yazdanbakhsh, Zhao Zhang, Maryam Mehri Dehnavi
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00

We propose SLoPe, a Double-Pruned Sparse Plus Lazy Low-rank Adapter Pretraining method for LLMs that improves the accuracy of sparse LLMs while accelerating their pretraining and inference and reducing their memory footprint. Sparse pretraining of LLMs reduces the accuracy of the model, to overcome this, prior work uses dense models during fine-tuning. SLoPe improves the accuracy of sparsely pretrained models by adding low-rank adapters in the final 1% iterations of pretraining without adding significant overheads to the model pretraining and inference. In addition, SLoPe uses a double-pruned backward pass formulation that prunes the transposed weight matrix using N:M sparsity structures to enable an accelerated sparse backward pass. SLoPe accelerates the training and inference of models with billions of parameters up to $1.25\times$ and $1.54\times$ respectively (OPT-33B and OPT-66B) while reducing their memory usage by up to $0.63\times$ and $0.61\times$ for training and inference respectively.
Time-SSM: Simplifying and Unifying State Space Models for Time Series Forecasting
Authors: Jiaxi Hu, Disen Lan, Ziyu Zhou, Qingsong Wen, Yuxuan Liang
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Mamba, State Space Models, Time Series, Time Series Forecasting

State Space Models (SSMs) have emerged as a potent tool in sequence modeling tasks in recent years. These models approximate continuous systems using a set of basis functions and discretize them to handle input data, making them well-suited for modeling time series data collected at specific frequencies from continuous systems. Despite its potential, the application of SSMs in time series forecasting remains underexplored, with most existing models treating SSMs as a black box for capturing temporal or channel dependencies. To address this gap, this paper proposes a novel theoretical framework termed Dynamic Spectral Operator, offering more intuitive and general guidance on applying SSMs to time series data. Building upon our theory, we introduce Time-SSM, a novel SSM-based foundation model with only one-seventh of the parameters compared to Mamba. Various experiments validate both our theoretical framework and the superior performance of Time-SSM.
An Empirical Exploration of Trust Dynamics in LLM Supply Chains
Authors: Agathe Balayn, Mireia Yurrita, Fanny Rancourt, Fabio Casati, Ujwal Gadiraju
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Navigate

With the widespread proliferation of AI systems, trust in AI is an important and timely topic to navigate. Researchers so far have largely employed a myopic view of this relationship. In particular, a limited number of relevant trustors (e.g., end-users) and trustees (i.e., AI systems) have been considered, and empirical explorations have remained in laboratory settings, potentially overlooking factors that impact human-AI relationships in the real world. In this paper, we argue for broadening the scope of studies addressing `trust in AI' by accounting for the complex and dynamic supply chains that AI systems result from. AI supply chains entail various technical artifacts that diverse individuals, organizations, and stakeholders interact with, in a variety of ways. We present insights from an in-situ, empirical study of LLM supply chains. Our work reveals additional types of trustors and trustees and new factors impacting their trust relationships. These relationships were found to be central to the development and adoption of LLMs, but they can also be the terrain for uncalibrated trust and reliance on untrustworthy LLMs. Based on these findings, we discuss the implications for research on `trust in AI'. We highlight new research opportunities and challenges concerning the appropriate study of inter-actor relationships across the supply chain and the development of calibrated trust and meaningful reliance behaviors. We also question the meaning of building trust in the LLM supply chain.
Federated Unsupervised Domain Generalization using Global and Local Alignment of Gradients
Authors: Farhad Pourpanah, Mahdiyar Molahasani, Milad Soltany, Michael Greenspan, Ali Etemad
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Domain Generalization, Federated Learning

We address the problem of federated domain generalization in an unsupervised setting for the first time. We first theoretically establish a connection between domain shift and alignment of gradients in unsupervised federated learning and show that aligning the gradients at both client and server levels can facilitate the generalization of the model to new (target) domains. Building on this insight, we propose a novel method named FedGaLA, which performs gradient alignment at the client level to encourage clients to learn domain-invariant features, as well as global gradient alignment at the server to obtain a more generalized aggregated model. To empirically evaluate our method, we perform various experiments on four commonly used multi-domain datasets, PACS, OfficeHome, DomainNet, and TerraInc. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method which outperforms comparable baselines. Ablation and sensitivity studies demonstrate the impact of different components and parameters in our approach. The source code is available at: https://github.com/MahdiyarMM/FedGaLA.
Confidence Under the Hood: An Investigation into the Confidence-Probability Alignment in Large Language Models
Authors: Abhishek Kumar, Robert Morabito, Sanzhar Umbet, Jad Kabbara, Ali Emami
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00

As the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) becomes more widespread, understanding their self-evaluation of confidence in generated responses becomes increasingly important as it is integral to the reliability of the output of these models. We introduce the concept of Confidence-Probability Alignment, that connects an LLM's internal confidence, quantified by token probabilities, to the confidence conveyed in the model's response when explicitly asked about its certainty. Using various datasets and prompting techniques that encourage model introspection, we probe the alignment between models' internal and expressed confidence. These techniques encompass using structured evaluation scales to rate confidence, including answer options when prompting, and eliciting the model's confidence level for outputs it does not recognize as its own. Notably, among the models analyzed, OpenAI's GPT-4 showed the strongest confidence-probability alignment, with an average Spearman's $\hat{\rho}$ of 0.42, across a wide range of tasks. Our work contributes to the ongoing efforts to facilitate risk assessment in the application of LLMs and to further our understanding of model trustworthiness.
AI-Assisted Detector Design for the EIC (AID(2)E)
Authors: M. Diefenthaler, C. Fanelli, L. O. Gerlach, W. Guan, T. Horn, A. Jentsch, M. Lin, K. Nagai, H. Nayak, C. Pecar, K. Suresh, A. Vossen, T. Wang, T. Wenaus
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Multiobjective Optimization, Navigate, Robust Design

Artificial Intelligence is poised to transform the design of complex, large-scale detectors like the ePIC at the future Electron Ion Collider. Featuring a central detector with additional detecting systems in the far forward and far backward regions, the ePIC experiment incorporates numerous design parameters and objectives, including performance, physics reach, and cost, constrained by mechanical and geometric limits. This project aims to develop a scalable, distributed AI-assisted detector design for the EIC (AID(2)E), employing state-of-the-art multiobjective optimization to tackle complex designs. Supported by the ePIC software stack and using Geant4 simulations, our approach benefits from transparent parameterization and advanced AI features. The workflow leverages the PanDA and iDDS systems, used in major experiments such as ATLAS at CERN LHC, the Rubin Observatory, and sPHENIX at RHIC, to manage the compute intensive demands of ePIC detector simulations. Tailored enhancements to the PanDA system focus on usability, scalability, automation, and monitoring. Ultimately, this project aims to establish a robust design capability, apply a distributed AI-assisted workflow to the ePIC detector, and extend its applications to the design of the second detector (Detector-2) in the EIC, as well as to calibration and alignment tasks. Additionally, we are developing advanced data science tools to efficiently navigate the complex, multidimensional trade-offs identified through this optimization process.
Picturing Ambiguity: A Visual Twist on the Winograd Schema Challenge
Authors: Brendan Park, Madeline Janecek, Naser Ezzati-Jivan, Yifeng Li, Ali Emami
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Common Sense Reasoning

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable success in tasks like the Winograd Schema Challenge (WSC), showcasing advanced textual common-sense reasoning. However, applying this reasoning to multimodal domains, where understanding text and images together is essential, remains a substantial challenge. To address this, we introduce WinoVis, a novel dataset specifically designed to probe text-to-image models on pronoun disambiguation within multimodal contexts. Utilizing GPT-4 for prompt generation and Diffusion Attentive Attribution Maps (DAAM) for heatmap analysis, we propose a novel evaluation framework that isolates the models' ability in pronoun disambiguation from other visual processing challenges. Evaluation of successive model versions reveals that, despite incremental advancements, Stable Diffusion 2.0 achieves a precision of 56.7% on WinoVis, only marginally surpassing random guessing. Further error analysis identifies important areas for future research aimed at advancing text-to-image models in their ability to interpret and interact with the complex visual world.
Assessing Image Inpainting via Re-Inpainting Self-Consistency Evaluation
Authors: Tianyi Chen, Jianfu Zhang, Yan Hong, Yiyi Zhang, Liqing Zhang
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Image Inpainting

Image inpainting, the task of reconstructing missing segments in corrupted images using available data, faces challenges in ensuring consistency and fidelity, especially under information-scarce conditions. Traditional evaluation methods, heavily dependent on the existence of unmasked reference images, inherently favor certain inpainting outcomes, introducing biases. Addressing this issue, we introduce an innovative evaluation paradigm that utilizes a self-supervised metric based on multiple re-inpainting passes. This approach, diverging from conventional reliance on direct comparisons in pixel or feature space with original images, emphasizes the principle of self-consistency to enable the exploration of various viable inpainting solutions, effectively reducing biases. Our extensive experiments across numerous benchmarks validate the alignment of our evaluation method with human judgment.
Front-propagation Algorithm: Explainable AI Technique for Extracting Linear Function Approximations from Neural Networks
Authors: Javier Viaña
Date: 2024-05-25 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

This paper introduces the front-propagation algorithm, a novel eXplainable AI (XAI) technique designed to elucidate the decision-making logic of deep neural networks. Unlike other popular explainability algorithms such as Integrated Gradients or Shapley Values, the proposed algorithm is able to extract an accurate and consistent linear function explanation of the network in a single forward pass of the trained model. This nuance sets apart the time complexity of the front-propagation as it could be running real-time and in parallel with deployed models. We packaged this algorithm in a software called $\texttt{front-prop}$ and we demonstrate its efficacy in providing accurate linear functions with three different neural network architectures trained on publicly available benchmark datasets.