pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Toward Adaptive Large Language Models Structured Pruning via Hybrid-grained Weight Importance Assessment
Authors: Jun Liu, Zhenglun Kong, Pu Zhao, Changdi Yang, Hao Tang, Xuan Shen, Geng Yuan, Wei Niu, Wenbin Zhang, Xue Lin, Dong Huang, Yanzhi Wang
Date: 2024-03-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Decoder, Language Modelling, Large Language Model

Structured pruning for large language models (LLMs) has garnered significant academic interest due to its ability to efficiently compress and accelerate LLMs by eliminating redundant weight groups at a coarse-grained granularity. Current structured pruning methods for LLMs typically depend on a singular granularity for assessing weight importance, resulting in notable performance degradation in downstream tasks. Intriguingly, our empirical investigations reveal that utilizing unstructured pruning, which achieves better performance retention by pruning weights at a finer granularity, \emph{i.e.}, individual weights, yields significantly varied sparse LLM structures when juxtaposed to structured pruning. This suggests that evaluating both holistic and individual assessment for weight importance is essential for LLM pruning. Building on this insight, we introduce the Hybrid-grained Weight Importance Assessment (HyWIA), a novel method that merges fine-grained and coarse-grained evaluations of weight importance for the pruning of LLMs. Leveraging an attention mechanism, HyWIA adaptively determines the optimal blend of granularity in weight importance assessments in an end-to-end pruning manner. Extensive experiments on LLaMA-V1/V2, Vicuna, Baichuan, and Bloom across various benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness of HyWIA in pruning LLMs. For example, HyWIA surpasses the cutting-edge LLM-Pruner by an average margin of 2.82% in accuracy across seven downstream tasks when pruning LLaMA-7B by 50%.
Can Large Language Models Solve Robot Routing?
Authors: Zhehui Huang, Guangyao Shi, Gaurav S. Sukhatme
Date: 2024-03-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Code Generation, Text-to-Code Generation, Traveling Salesman Problem

Routing problems are common in mobile robotics, encompassing tasks such as inspection, surveillance, and coverage. Depending on the objective and constraints, these problems often reduce to variants of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), with solutions traditionally derived by translating high-level objectives into an optimization formulation and using modern solvers to arrive at a solution. Here, we explore the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) to replace the entire pipeline from tasks described in natural language to the generation of robot routes. We systematically investigate the performance of LLMs in robot routing by constructing a dataset with 80 unique robot routing problems across 8 variants in both single and multi-robot settings. We evaluate LLMs through three frameworks: single attempt, self-debugging, and self-debugging with self-verification and various contexts, including mathematical formulations, pseudo-code, and related research papers. Our findings reveal that both self-debugging and self-verification enhance success rates without significantly lowering the optimality gap. We observe context-sensitive behavior - providing mathematical formulations as context decreases the optimality gap but significantly decreases success rates and providing pseudo-code and related research papers as context does not consistently improve success rates or decrease the optimality gap. We identify key challenges and propose future directions to enhance LLM performance in solving robot routing problems. Our source code is available on the project website: https://sites.google.com/view/words-to-routes/.
Time Series Representation Learning with Supervised Contrastive Temporal Transformer
Authors: Yuansan Liu, Sudanthi Wijewickrema, Christofer Bester, Stephen O'Leary, James Bailey
Date: 2024-03-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Change Point Detection, Representation Learning, Time Series, Time Series Classification

Finding effective representations for time series data is a useful but challenging task. Several works utilize self-supervised or unsupervised learning methods to address this. However, there still remains the open question of how to leverage available label information for better representations. To answer this question, we exploit pre-existing techniques in time series and representation learning domains and develop a simple, yet novel fusion model, called: \textbf{S}upervised \textbf{CO}ntrastive \textbf{T}emporal \textbf{T}ransformer (SCOTT). We first investigate suitable augmentation methods for various types of time series data to assist with learning change-invariant representations. Secondly, we combine Transformer and Temporal Convolutional Networks in a simple way to efficiently learn both global and local features. Finally, we simplify Supervised Contrastive Loss for representation learning of labelled time series data. We preliminarily evaluate SCOTT on a downstream task, Time Series Classification, using 45 datasets from the UCR archive. The results show that with the representations learnt by SCOTT, even a weak classifier can perform similar to or better than existing state-of-the-art models (best performance on 23/45 datasets and highest rank against 9 baseline models). Afterwards, we investigate SCOTT's ability to address a real-world task, online Change Point Detection (CPD), on two datasets: a human activity dataset and a surgical patient dataset. We show that the model performs with high reliability and efficiency on the online CPD problem ($\sim$98\% and $\sim$97\% area under precision-recall curve respectively). Furthermore, we demonstrate the model's potential in tackling early detection and show it performs best compared to other candidates.
Exploring Chinese Humor Generation: A Study on Two-Part Allegorical Sayings
Authors: Rongwu Xu
Date: 2024-03-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Contrastive Learning, Language Modeling, Language Modelling

Humor, a culturally nuanced aspect of human language, poses challenges for computational understanding and generation, especially in Chinese humor, which remains relatively unexplored in the NLP community. This paper investigates the capability of state-of-the-art language models to comprehend and generate Chinese humor, specifically focusing on training them to create allegorical sayings. We employ two prominent training methods: fine-tuning a medium-sized language model and prompting a large one. Our novel fine-tuning approach incorporates fused Pinyin embeddings to consider homophones and employs contrastive learning with synthetic hard negatives to distinguish humor elements. Human-annotated results show that these models can generate humorous allegorical sayings, with prompting proving to be a practical and effective method. However, there is still room for improvement in generating allegorical sayings that match human creativity.
Segment Any Object Model (SAOM): Real-to-Simulation Fine-Tuning Strategy for Multi-Class Multi-Instance Segmentation
Authors: Mariia Khan, Yue Qiu, Yuren Cong, Jumana Abu-Khalaf, David Suter, Bodo Rosenhahn
Date: 2024-03-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Instance Segmentation, Object, Scene Understanding, Segmentation, Semantic Segmentation

Multi-class multi-instance segmentation is the task of identifying masks for multiple object classes and multiple instances of the same class within an image. The foundational Segment Anything Model (SAM) is designed for promptable multi-class multi-instance segmentation but tends to output part or sub-part masks in the "everything" mode for various real-world applications. Whole object segmentation masks play a crucial role for indoor scene understanding, especially in robotics applications. We propose a new domain invariant Real-to-Simulation (Real-Sim) fine-tuning strategy for SAM. We use object images and ground truth data collected from Ai2Thor simulator during fine-tuning (real-to-sim). To allow our Segment Any Object Model (SAOM) to work in the "everything" mode, we propose the novel nearest neighbour assignment method, updating point embeddings for each ground-truth mask. SAOM is evaluated on our own dataset collected from Ai2Thor simulator. SAOM significantly improves on SAM, with a 28% increase in mIoU and a 25% increase in mAcc for 54 frequently-seen indoor object classes. Moreover, our Real-to-Simulation fine-tuning strategy demonstrates promising generalization performance in real environments without being trained on the real-world data (sim-to-real). The dataset and the code will be released after publication.
From Melting Pots to Misrepresentations: Exploring Harms in Generative AI
Authors: Sanjana Gautam, Pranav Narayanan Venkit, Sourojit Ghosh
Date: 2024-03-16 00:00:00

With the widespread adoption of advanced generative models such as Gemini and GPT, there has been a notable increase in the incorporation of such models into sociotechnical systems, categorized under AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS). Despite their versatility across diverse sectors, concerns persist regarding discriminatory tendencies within these models, particularly favoring selected `majority' demographics across various sociodemographic dimensions. Despite widespread calls for diversification of media representations, marginalized racial and ethnic groups continue to face persistent distortion, stereotyping, and neglect within the AIaaS context. In this work, we provide a critical summary of the state of research in the context of social harms to lead the conversation to focus on their implications. We also present open-ended research questions, guided by our discussion, to help define future research pathways.
ECRC: Emotion-Causality Recognition in Korean Conversation for GCN
Authors: J. K. Lee, T. M. Chung
Date: 2024-03-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Graph Neural Network, Multi-Task Learning, Sentence

In this multi-task learning study on simultaneous analysis of emotions and their underlying causes in conversational contexts, deep neural network methods were employed to effectively process and train large labeled datasets. However, these approaches are typically limited to conducting context analyses across the entire corpus because they rely on one of the two methods: word- or sentence-level embedding. The former struggles with polysemy and homonyms, whereas the latter causes information loss when processing long sentences. In this study, we overcome the limitations of previous embeddings by utilizing both word- and sentence-level embeddings. Furthermore, we propose the emotion-causality recognition in conversation (ECRC) model, which is based on a novel graph structure, thereby leveraging the strengths of both embedding methods. This model uniquely integrates the bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) and graph neural network (GCN) models for Korean conversation analysis. Compared with models that rely solely on one embedding method, the proposed model effectively structures abstract concepts, such as language features and relationships, thereby minimizing information loss. To assess model performance, we compared the multi-task learning results of three deep neural network models with varying graph structures. Additionally, we evaluated the proposed model using Korean and English datasets. The experimental results show that the proposed model performs better in emotion and causality multi-task learning (74.62% and 75.30%, respectively) when node and edge characteristics are incorporated into the graph structure. Similar results were recorded for the Korean ECC and Wellness datasets (74.62% and 73.44%, respectively) with 71.35% on the IEMOCAP English dataset.
Scheduling Drone and Mobile Charger via Hybrid-Action Deep Reinforcement Learning
Authors: Jizhe Dou, Haotian Zhang, Guodong Sun
Date: 2024-03-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Reinforcement Learning, Representation Learning, Scheduling

Recently there has been a growing interest in industry and academia, regarding the use of wireless chargers to prolong the operational longevity of unmanned aerial vehicles (commonly knowns as drones). In this paper we consider a charger-assisted drone application: a drone is deployed to observe a set points of interest, while a charger can move to recharge the drone's battery. We focus on the route and charging schedule of the drone and the mobile charger, to obtain high observation utility with the shortest possible time, while ensuring the drone remains operational during task execution. Essentially, this proposed drone-charger scheduling problem is a multi-stage decision-making process, in which the drone and the mobile charger act as two agents who cooperate to finish a task. The discrete-continuous hybrid action space of the two agents poses a significant challenge in our problem. To address this issue, we present a hybrid-action deep reinforcement learning framework, called HaDMC, which uses a standard policy learning algorithm to generate latent continuous actions. Motivated by representation learning, we specifically design and train an action decoder. It involves two pipelines to convert the latent continuous actions into original discrete and continuous actions, by which the drone and the charger can directly interact with environment. We embed a mutual learning scheme in model training, emphasizing the collaborative rather than individual actions. We conduct extensive numerical experiments to evaluate HaDMC and compare it with state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning approaches. The experimental results show the effectiveness and efficiency of our solution.
LightCode: Light Analytical and Neural Codes for Channels with Feedback
Authors: Sravan Kumar Ankireddy, Krishna Narayanan, Hyeji Kim
Date: 2024-03-16 00:00:00

The design of reliable and efficient codes for channels with feedback remains a longstanding challenge in communication theory. While significant improvements have been achieved by leveraging deep learning techniques, neural codes often suffer from high computational costs, a lack of interpretability, and limited practicality in resource-constrained settings. We focus on designing low-complexity coding schemes that are interpretable and more suitable for communication systems. We advance both analytical and neural codes. First, we demonstrate that PowerBlast, an analytical coding scheme inspired by Schalkwijk-Kailath (SK) and Gallager-Nakibo\u{g}lu (GN) schemes, achieves notable reliability improvements over both SK and GN schemes, outperforming neural codes in high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regions. Next, to enhance reliability in low-SNR regions, we propose LightCode, a lightweight neural code that achieves state-of-the-art reliability while using a fraction of memory and compute compared to existing deeplearning-based codes. Finally, we systematically analyze the learned codes, establishing connections between LightCode and PowerBlast, identifying components crucial for performance, and providing interpretation aided by linear regression analysis.
Depression Detection on Social Media with Large Language Models
Authors: Xiaochong Lan, Yiming Cheng, Li Sheng, Chen Gao, Yong Li
Date: 2024-03-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Benchmarking, Depression Detection, Diagnostic

Depression harms. However, due to a lack of mental health awareness and fear of stigma, many patients do not actively seek diagnosis and treatment, leading to detrimental outcomes. Depression detection aims to determine whether an individual suffers from depression by analyzing their history of posts on social media, which can significantly aid in early detection and intervention. It mainly faces two key challenges: 1) it requires professional medical knowledge, and 2) it necessitates both high accuracy and explainability. To address it, we propose a novel depression detection system called DORIS, combining medical knowledge and the recent advances in large language models (LLMs). Specifically, to tackle the first challenge, we proposed an LLM-based solution to first annotate whether high-risk texts meet medical diagnostic criteria. Further, we retrieve texts with high emotional intensity and summarize critical information from the historical mood records of users, so-called mood courses. To tackle the second challenge, we combine LLM and traditional classifiers to integrate medical knowledge-guided features, for which the model can also explain its prediction results, achieving both high accuracy and explainability. Extensive experimental results on benchmarking datasets show that, compared to the current best baseline, our approach improves by 0.036 in AUPRC, which can be considered significant, demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach and its high value as an NLP application.
Game and Reference: Policy Combination Synthesis for Epidemic Prevention and Control
Authors: Zhiyi Tan, Bingkun Bao
Date: 2024-03-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Contrastive Learning, Decision Making

In recent years, epidemic policy-making models are increasingly being used to provide reference for governors on prevention and control policies against catastrophic epidemics such as SARS, H1N1 and COVID-19. Existing studies are currently constrained by two issues: First, previous methods develop policies based on effect evaluation, since few of factors in real-world decision-making can be modeled, the output policies will then easily become extreme. Second, the subjectivity and cognitive limitation of human make the historical policies not always optimal for the training of decision models. To these ends, we present a novel Policy Combination Synthesis (PCS) model for epidemic policy-making. Specially, to prevent extreme decisions, we introduce adversarial learning between the model-made policies and the real policies to force the output policies to be more human-liked. On the other hand, to minimize the impact of sub-optimal historical policies, we employ contrastive learning to let the model draw on experience from the best historical policies under similar scenarios. Both adversarial and contrastive learning are adaptive based on the comprehensive effects of real policies to ensure the model always learns useful information. Extensive experiments on real-world data prove the effectiveness of the proposed model.
Variance-Dependent Regret Bounds for Non-stationary Linear Bandits
Authors: Zhiyong Wang, Jize Xie, Yi Chen, John C. S. Lui, Dongruo Zhou
Date: 2024-03-15 00:00:00

We investigate the non-stationary stochastic linear bandit problem where the reward distribution evolves each round. Existing algorithms characterize the non-stationarity by the total variation budget $B_K$, which is the summation of the change of the consecutive feature vectors of the linear bandits over $K$ rounds. However, such a quantity only measures the non-stationarity with respect to the expectation of the reward distribution, which makes existing algorithms sub-optimal under the general non-stationary distribution setting. In this work, we propose algorithms that utilize the variance of the reward distribution as well as the $B_K$, and show that they can achieve tighter regret upper bounds. Specifically, we introduce two novel algorithms: Restarted Weighted$\text{OFUL}^+$ and Restarted $\text{SAVE}^+$. These algorithms address cases where the variance information of the rewards is known and unknown, respectively. Notably, when the total variance $V_K$ is much smaller than $K$, our algorithms outperform previous state-of-the-art results on non-stationary stochastic linear bandits under different settings. Experimental evaluations further validate the superior performance of our proposed algorithms over existing works.
Strict Partitioning for Sporadic Rigid Gang Tasks
Authors: Binqi Sun, Tomasz Kloda, Marco Caccamo
Date: 2024-03-15 00:00:00
Tasks: Scheduling

The rigid gang task model is based on the idea of executing multiple threads simultaneously on a fixed number of processors to increase efficiency and performance. Although there is extensive literature on global rigid gang scheduling, partitioned approaches have several practical advantages (e.g., task isolation and reduced scheduling overheads). In this paper, we propose a new partitioned scheduling strategy for rigid gang tasks, named strict partitioning. The method creates disjoint partitions of tasks and processors to avoid inter-partition interference. Moreover, it tries to assign tasks with similar volumes (i.e., parallelisms) to the same partition so that the intra-partition interference can be reduced. Within each partition, the tasks can be scheduled using any type of scheduler, which allows the use of a less pessimistic schedulability test. Extensive synthetic experiments and a case study based on Edge TPU benchmarks show that strict partitioning achieves better schedulability performance than state-of-the-art global gang schedulability analyses for both preemptive and non-preemptive rigid gang task sets.
Development and Application of a Monte Carlo Tree Search Algorithm for Simulating Da Vinci Code Game Strategies
Authors: Ye Zhang, Mengran Zhu, Kailin Gui, Jiayue Yu, Yong Hao, Haozhan Sun
Date: 2024-03-15 00:00:00
Tasks: CPU, Decision Making, GPU

In this study, we explore the efficiency of the Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS), a prominent decision-making algorithm renowned for its effectiveness in complex decision environments, contingent upon the volume of simulations conducted. Notwithstanding its broad applicability, the algorithm's performance can be adversely impacted in certain scenarios, particularly within the domain of game strategy development. This research posits that the inherent branch divergence within the Da Vinci Code board game significantly impedes parallelism when executed on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). To investigate this hypothesis, we implemented and meticulously evaluated two variants of the MCTS algorithm, specifically designed to assess the impact of branch divergence on computational performance. Our comparative analysis reveals a linear improvement in performance with the CPU-based implementation, in stark contrast to the GPU implementation, which exhibits a non-linear enhancement pattern and discernible performance troughs. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the MCTS algorithm's behavior in divergent branch scenarios, highlighting critical considerations for optimizing game strategy algorithms on parallel computing architectures.