pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
AI as a Tool for Fair Journalism: Case Studies from Malta
Authors: Dylan Seychell, Gabriel Hili, Jonathan Attard, Konstantinos Makantatis
Date: 2024-07-08 00:00:00
Tasks: Articles

In today`s media landscape, the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in shaping societal perspectives and journalistic integrity is becoming increasingly apparent. This paper presents two case studies centred on Malta`s media market featuring technical novelty. Despite its relatively small scale, Malta offers invaluable insights applicable to both similar and broader media contexts. These two projects focus on media monitoring and present tools designed to analyse potential biases in news articles and television news segments. The first project uses Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing techniques to analyse the coherence between images in news articles and their corresponding captions, headlines, and article bodies. The second project employs computer vision techniques to track individuals` on-screen time or visual exposure in news videos, providing queryable data. These initiatives aim to contribute to society by providing both journalists and the public with the means to identify biases. Furthermore, we make these tools accessible to journalists to improve the trustworthiness of media outlets by offering robust tools for detecting and reducing bias.
RDBE: Reasoning Distillation-Based Evaluation Enhances Automatic Essay Scoring
Authors: Ali Ghiasvand Mohammadkhani
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Decoder, Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model, Small Language Model

Recently, various encoder-only and encoder-decoder pre-trained models like BERT and T5 have been applied to automatic essay scoring (AES) as small language models. However, existing studies have primarily treated this task akin to a classification problem, focusing solely on outputting scores in the target text without offering interpretations for the generated scores. Departing from the approaches, we introduce Reasoning Distillation-Based Evaluation (RDBE), which integrates interpretability to elucidate the rationale behind model scores while enhancing performance through initial reasoning. This interpretive capability is acquired during training by leveraging generated reasoning from a large language model (LLM) to distill a small language model (SLM). Our experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of RDBE across all scoring rubrics considered in the dataset. RDBE outperforms both zero-shot LLM generation and generation from a baseline fine-tuned model, establishing itself as state-of-the-art in the corresponding dataset. This highlights its practical interpretative output and enhanced performance.
Urban Visual Appeal According to ChatGPT: Contrasting AI and Human Insights
Authors: Milad Malekzadeh, Elias Willberg, Jussi Torkko, Tuuli Toivonen
Date: 2024-06-29 00:00:00

The visual appeal of urban environments significantly impacts residents' satisfaction with their living spaces and their overall mood, which in turn, affects their health and well-being. Given the resource-intensive nature of gathering evaluations on urban visual appeal through surveys or inquiries from residents, there is a constant quest for automated solutions to streamline this process and support spatial planning. In this study, we applied an off-the-shelf AI model to automate the analysis of urban visual appeal, using over 1,800 Google Street View images of Helsinki, Finland. By incorporating the GPT-4 model with specified criteria, we assessed these images. Simultaneously, 24 participants were asked to rate the images. Our results demonstrated a strong alignment between GPT-4 and participant ratings, although geographic disparities were noted. Specifically, GPT-4 showed a preference for suburban areas with significant greenery, contrasting with participants who found these areas less appealing. Conversely, in the city centre and densely populated urban regions of Helsinki, GPT-4 assigned lower visual appeal scores than participant ratings. While there was general agreement between AI and human assessments across various locations, GPT-4 struggled to incorporate contextual nuances into its ratings, unlike participants, who considered both context and features of the urban environment. The study suggests that leveraging AI models like GPT-4 allows spatial planners to gather insights into the visual appeal of different areas efficiently, aiding decisions that enhance residents' and travellers' satisfaction and mental health. Although AI models provide valuable insights, human perspectives are essential for a comprehensive understanding of urban visual appeal. This will ensure that planning and design decisions promote healthy living environments effectively.
Encouraging Responsible Use of Generative AI in Education: A Reward-Based Learning Approach
Authors: Aditi Singh, Abul Ehtesham, Saket Kumar, Gaurav Kumar Gupta, Tala Talaei Khoei
Date: 2024-06-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Chatbot

This research introduces an innovative mathematical learning approach that integrates generative AI to cultivate a structured learning rather than quick solution. Our method combines chatbot capabilities and generative AI to offer interactive problem-solving exercises, enhancing learning through a stepby-step approach for varied problems, advocating for the responsible use of AI in education. Our approach emphasizes that immediate answers from ChatGPT can impede real learning. We introduce a reward-based system that requires students to solve mathematical problems effectively to receive the final answer. This encourages a progressive learning path from basic to complex problems, rewarding mastery with final solutions. The goal is to transition students from seeking quick fixes to engaging actively in a comprehensive learning experience.
Integrating Attentional Factors and Spacing in Logistic Knowledge Tracing Models to Explore the Impact of Training Sequences on Category Learning
Authors: Meng Cao, Philip I. Pavlik Jr., Wei Chu, Liang Zhang
Date: 2024-06-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Blocking, Knowledge Tracing

In category learning, a growing body of literature has increasingly focused on exploring the impacts of interleaving in contrast to blocking. The sequential attention hypothesis posits that interleaving draws attention to the differences between categories while blocking directs attention toward similarities within categories. Although a recent study underscores the joint influence of memory and attentional factors on sequencing effects, there remains a scarcity of effective computational models integrating both attentional and memory considerations to comprehensively understand the effect of training sequences on students' performance. This study introduces a novel integration of attentional factors and spacing into the logistic knowledge tracing (LKT) models to monitor students' performance across different training sequences (interleaving and blocking). Attentional factors were incorporated by recording the counts of comparisons between adjacent trials, considering whether they belong to the same or different category. Several features were employed to account for temporal spacing. We used cross-validations to test the model fit and predictions on the learning session and posttest. Our findings reveal that incorporating both attentional factors and spacing features in the Additive Factors Model (AFM) significantly enhances its capacity to capture the effects of interleaving and blocking and demonstrates superior predictive accuracy for students' learning outcomes. By bridging the gap between attentional factors and memory processes, our computational approach offers a more comprehensive framework for understanding and predicting category learning outcomes in educational settings.
Personalization of Dataset Retrieval Results using a Metadata-based Data Valuation Method
Authors: Malick Ebiele, Malika Bendechache, Eamonn Clinton, Rob Brennan
Date: 2024-07-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Data Valuation, Retrieval

In this paper, we propose a novel data valuation method for a Dataset Retrieval (DR) use case in Ireland's National mapping agency. To the best of our knowledge, data valuation has not yet been applied to Dataset Retrieval. By leveraging metadata and a user's preferences, we estimate the personal value of each dataset to facilitate dataset retrieval and filtering. We then validated the data value-based ranking against the stakeholders' ranking of the datasets. The proposed data valuation method and use case demonstrated that data valuation is promising for dataset retrieval. For instance, the outperforming dataset retrieval based on our approach obtained 0.8207 in terms of NDCG@5 (the truncated Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain at 5). This study is unique in its exploration of a data valuation-based approach to dataset retrieval and stands out because, unlike most existing methods, our approach is validated using the stakeholders ranking of the datasets.
Retrieval with Learned Similarities
Authors: Bailu Ding, Jiaqi Zhai
Date: 2024-07-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Question Answering, Recommendation Systems, Retrieval

Retrieval plays a fundamental role in recommendation systems, search, and natural language processing (NLP) by efficiently finding relevant items from a large corpus given a query. Dot products have been widely used as the similarity function in such tasks, enabled by Maximum Inner Product Search (MIPS) algorithms for efficient retrieval. However, state-of-the-art retrieval algorithms have migrated to learned similarities. These advanced approaches encompass multiple query embeddings, complex neural networks, direct item ID decoding via beam search, and hybrid solutions. Unfortunately, we lack efficient solutions for retrieval in these state-of-the-art setups. Our work addresses this gap by investigating efficient retrieval techniques with expressive learned similarity functions. We establish Mixture-of-Logits (MoL) as a universal approximator of similarity functions, demonstrate that MoL's expressiveness can be realized empirically to achieve superior performance on diverse retrieval scenarios, and propose techniques to retrieve the approximate top-k results using MoL with tight error bounds. Through extensive experimentation, we show that MoL, enhanced by our proposed mutual information-based load balancing loss, sets new state-of-the-art results across heterogeneous scenarios, including sequential retrieval models in recommendation systems and finetuning language models for question answering; and our approximate top-$k$ algorithms outperform baselines by up to 66x in latency while achieving >.99 recall rate compared to exact algorithms.
Relational Database Augmented Large Language Model
Authors: Zongyue Qin, Chen Luo, Zhengyang Wang, Haoming Jiang, Yizhou Sun
Date: 2024-07-21 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model, model

Large language models (LLMs) excel in many natural language processing (NLP) tasks. However, since LLMs can only incorporate new knowledge through training or supervised fine-tuning processes, they are unsuitable for applications that demand precise, up-to-date, and private information not available in the training corpora. This precise, up-to-date, and private information is typically stored in relational databases. Thus, a promising solution is to augment LLMs with the inclusion of relational databases as external memory. This can ensure the timeliness, correctness, and consistency of data, and assist LLMs in performing complex arithmetic operations beyond their inherent capabilities. However, bridging the gap between LLMs and relational databases is challenging. It requires the awareness of databases and data values stored in databases to select correct databases and issue correct SQL queries. Besides, it is necessary for the external memory to be independent of the LLM to meet the needs of real-world applications. We introduce a novel LLM-agnostic memory architecture comprising a database selection memory, a data value memory, and relational databases. And we design an elegant pipeline to retrieve information from it. Besides, we carefully design the prompts to instruct the LLM to maximize the framework's potential. To evaluate our method, we compose a new dataset with various types of questions. Experimental results show that our framework enables LLMs to effectively answer database-related questions, which is beyond their direct ability.
Data Augmentation in Graph Neural Networks: The Role of Generated Synthetic Graphs
Authors: Sumeyye Bas, Kiymet Kaya, resul tugay, sule gunduz oguducu
Date: 2024-07-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Data Augmentation, Graph Classification

Graphs are crucial for representing interrelated data and aiding predictive modeling by capturing complex relationships. Achieving high-quality graph representation is important for identifying linked patterns, leading to improvements in Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to better capture data structures. However, challenges such as data scarcity, high collection costs, and ethical concerns limit progress. As a result, generative models and data augmentation have become more and more popular. This study explores using generated graphs for data augmentation, comparing the performance of combining generated graphs with real graphs, and examining the effect of different quantities of generated graphs on graph classification tasks. The experiments show that balancing scalability and quality requires different generators based on graph size. Our results introduce a new approach to graph data augmentation, ensuring consistent labels and enhancing classification performance.
SQLfuse: Enhancing Text-to-SQL Performance through Comprehensive LLM Synergy
Authors: Tingkai Zhang, Chaoyu Chen, Cong Liao, Jun Wang, Xudong Zhao, Hang Yu, Jianchao Wang, Jianguo Li, Wenhui Shi
Date: 2024-07-19 00:00:00
Tasks: Natural Language Queries, Natural Language Understanding, Text to SQL, Text-To-SQL

Text-to-SQL conversion is a critical innovation, simplifying the transition from complex SQL to intuitive natural language queries, especially significant given SQL's prevalence in the job market across various roles. The rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 has greatly advanced this field, offering improved natural language understanding and the ability to generate nuanced SQL statements. However, the potential of open-source LLMs in Text-to-SQL applications remains underexplored, with many frameworks failing to leverage their full capabilities, particularly in handling complex database queries and incorporating feedback for iterative refinement. Addressing these limitations, this paper introduces SQLfuse, a robust system integrating open-source LLMs with a suite of tools to enhance Text-to-SQL translation's accuracy and usability. SQLfuse features four modules: schema mining, schema linking, SQL generation, and a SQL critic module, to not only generate but also continuously enhance SQL query quality. Demonstrated by its leading performance on the Spider Leaderboard and deployment by Ant Group, SQLfuse showcases the practical merits of open-source LLMs in diverse business contexts.
FuncEvalGMN: Evaluating Functional Correctness of SQL via Graph Matching Network
Authors: Yi Zhan, Yang Sun, Han Weng, Longjie Cui, Guifeng Wang, Jiajun Xie, Yu Tian, Xiaoming Yin, Boyi Liu, Dongchi Huang
Date: 2024-07-09 00:00:00
Tasks: Code Generation, Graph Matching

In this paper, we propose a novel graph-based methodology to evaluate the functional correctness of SQL generation. Conventional metrics for assessing SQL code generation, such as matching-based and execution-based methods (e.g., exact set match and execution accuracy), are subject to two primary limitations. Firstly, the former fails to effectively assess functional correctness, as different SQL queries may possess identical functionalities. Secondly, the latter is susceptible to producing false positive samples in evaluations. Our proposed evaluation method, \texttt{FuncEvalGMN}, does not depend on the sufficient preparation of the test data, and it enables precise testing of the functional correctness of the code. Firstly, we parse SQL using a relational operator tree (ROT) called \textit{Relnode}, which contains rich semantic information from the perspective of logical execution.Then, we introduce a GNN-based approach for predicting the functional correctness of generated SQL. This approach incorporates global positional embeddings to address the limitations with the loss of topological information in conventional graph matching frameworks. As an auxiliary contribution, we propose a rule-based matching algorithm, Relnode Partial Matching (\texttt{RelPM}) as a baseline. Finally, we contribute a dataset, \texttt{Pair-Aug-Spider} with a training set and two testing sets, each comprising pairs of SQL codes to simulate various SQL code evaluation scenarios. The training set and one testing dataset focus on code generation using large language models (LLMs), while the other emphasizes SQL equivalence rewriting.
Parallel Split Learning with Global Sampling
Authors: Mohammad Kohankhaki, Ahmad Ayad, Mahdi Barhoush, Anke Schmeink
Date: 2024-07-22 00:00:00

Distributed deep learning in resource-constrained environments faces scalability and generalization challenges due to large effective batch sizes and non-identically distributed client data. We introduce a server-driven sampling strategy that maintains a fixed global batch size by dynamically adjusting client-side batch sizes. This decouples the effective batch size from the number of participating devices and ensures that global batches better reflect the overall data distribution. Using standard concentration bounds, we establish tighter deviation guarantees compared to existing approaches. Empirical results on a benchmark dataset confirm that the proposed method improves model accuracy, training efficiency, and convergence stability, offering a scalable solution for learning at the network edge.
vTensor: Flexible Virtual Tensor Management for Efficient LLM Serving
Authors: Jiale Xu, Rui Zhang, Cong Guo, Weiming Hu, Zihan Liu, Feiyang Wu, Yu Feng, Shixuan Sun, Changxu Shao, Yuhong Guo, Junping Zhao, Ke Zhang, Minyi Guo, Jingwen Leng
Date: 2024-07-22 00:00:00
Tasks: CPU, GPU, Management

Large Language Models (LLMs) are widely used across various domains, processing millions of daily requests. This surge in demand poses significant challenges in optimizing throughput and latency while keeping costs manageable. The Key-Value (KV) cache, a standard method for retaining previous computations, makes LLM inference highly bounded by memory. While batching strategies can enhance performance, they frequently lead to significant memory fragmentation. Even though cutting-edge systems like vLLM mitigate KV cache fragmentation using paged Attention mechanisms, they still suffer from inefficient memory and computational operations due to the tightly coupled page management and computation kernels. This study introduces the vTensor, an innovative tensor structure for LLM inference based on GPU virtual memory management (VMM). vTensor addresses existing limitations by decoupling computation from memory defragmentation and offering dynamic extensibility. Our framework employs a CPU-GPU heterogeneous approach, ensuring efficient, fragmentation-free memory management while accommodating various computation kernels across different LLM architectures. Experimental results indicate that vTensor achieves an average speedup of 1.86x across different models, with up to 2.42x in multi-turn chat scenarios. Additionally, vTensor provides average speedups of 2.12x and 3.15x in kernel evaluation, reaching up to 3.92x and 3.27x compared to SGLang Triton prefix-prefilling kernels and vLLM paged Attention kernel, respectively. Furthermore, it frees approximately 71.25% (57GB) of memory on the NVIDIA A100 GPU compared to vLLM, enabling more memory-intensive workloads.
A New Theoretical Perspective on Data Heterogeneity in Federated Optimization
Authors: Jiayi Wang, Shiqiang Wang, Rong-Rong Chen, Mingyue Ji
Date: 2024-07-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Federated Learning

In federated learning (FL), data heterogeneity is the main reason that existing theoretical analyses are pessimistic about the convergence rate. In particular, for many FL algorithms, the convergence rate grows dramatically when the number of local updates becomes large, especially when the product of the gradient divergence and local Lipschitz constant is large. However, empirical studies can show that more local updates can improve the convergence rate even when these two parameters are large, which is inconsistent with the theoretical findings. This paper aims to bridge this gap between theoretical understanding and practical performance by providing a theoretical analysis from a new perspective on data heterogeneity. In particular, we propose a new and weaker assumption compared to the local Lipschitz gradient assumption, named the heterogeneity-driven pseudo-Lipschitz assumption. We show that this and the gradient divergence assumptions can jointly characterize the effect of data heterogeneity. By deriving a convergence upper bound for FedAvg and its extensions, we show that, compared to the existing works, local Lipschitz constant is replaced by the much smaller heterogeneity-driven pseudo-Lipschitz constant and the corresponding convergence upper bound can be significantly reduced for the same number of local updates, although its order stays the same. In addition, when the local objective function is quadratic, more insights on the impact of data heterogeneity can be obtained using the heterogeneity-driven pseudo-Lipschitz constant. For example, we can identify a region where FedAvg can outperform mini-batch SGD even when the gradient divergence can be arbitrarily large. Our findings are validated using experiments.
The Diversity Bonus: Learning from Dissimilar Distributed Clients in Personalized Federated Learning
Authors: Xinghao Wu, Xuefeng Liu, Jianwei Niu, Guogang Zhu, Shaojie Tang, Xiaotian Li, Jiannong Cao
Date: 2024-07-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Diversity, Federated Learning, Personalized Federated Learning

Personalized Federated Learning (PFL) is a commonly used framework that allows clients to collaboratively train their personalized models. PFL is particularly useful for handling situations where data from different clients are not independent and identically distributed (non-IID). Previous research in PFL implicitly assumes that clients can gain more benefits from those with similar data distributions. Correspondingly, methods such as personalized weight aggregation are developed to assign higher weights to similar clients during training. We pose a question: can a client benefit from other clients with dissimilar data distributions and if so, how? This question is particularly relevant in scenarios with a high degree of non-IID, where clients have widely different data distributions, and learning from only similar clients will lose knowledge from many other clients. We note that when dealing with clients with similar data distributions, methods such as personalized weight aggregation tend to enforce their models to be close in the parameter space. It is reasonable to conjecture that a client can benefit from dissimilar clients if we allow their models to depart from each other. Based on this idea, we propose DiversiFed which allows each client to learn from clients with diversified data distribution in personalized federated learning. DiversiFed pushes personalized models of clients with dissimilar data distributions apart in the parameter space while pulling together those with similar distributions. In addition, to achieve the above effect without using prior knowledge of data distribution, we design a loss function that leverages the model similarity to determine the degree of attraction and repulsion between any two models. Experiments on several datasets show that DiversiFed can benefit from dissimilar clients and thus outperform the state-of-the-art methods.