pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
How Stable is Stable Diffusion under Recursive InPainting (RIP)?
Authors: Javier Conde, Miguel González, Gonzalo Martínez, Fernando Moral, Elena Merino-Gómez, Pedro Reviriego
Date: 2024-06-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Image Generation, Text to Image Generation, Text-to-Image Generation

Generative Artificial Intelligence image models have achieved outstanding performance in text-to-image generation and other tasks, such as inpainting that completes images with missing fragments. The performance of inpainting can be accurately measured by taking an image, removing some fragments, performing the inpainting to restore them, and comparing the results with the original image. Interestingly, inpainting can also be applied recursively, starting from an image, removing some parts, applying inpainting to reconstruct the image, and then starting the inpainting process again on the reconstructed image, and so forth. This process of recursively applying inpainting can lead to an image that is similar or completely different from the original one, depending on the fragments that are removed and the ability of the model to reconstruct them. Intuitively, stability, understood as the capability to recover an image that is similar to the original one even after many recursive inpainting operations, is a desirable feature and can be used as an additional performance metric for inpainting. The concept of stability is also being studied in the context of recursive training of generative AI models with their own data. Recursive inpainting is an inference-only recursive process whose understanding may complement ongoing efforts to study the behavior of generative AI models under training recursion. In this paper, the impact of recursive inpainting is studied for one of the most widely used image models: Stable Diffusion. The results show that recursive inpainting can lead to image collapse, so ending with a nonmeaningful image, and that the outcome depends on several factors such as the type of image, the size of the inpainting masks, and the number of iterations.
DPEC: Dual-Path Error Compensation Method for Enhanced Low-Light Image Clarity
Authors: Shuang Wang, Qianwen Lu, Boxing Peng, Yihe Nie, Qingchuan Tao
Date: 2024-06-28 00:00:00
Tasks: Denoising, Image Enhancement, Low-Light Image Enhancement

For the task of low-light image enhancement, deep learning-based algorithms have demonstrated superiority and effectiveness compared to traditional methods. However, these methods, primarily based on Retinex theory, tend to overlook the noise and color distortions in input images, leading to significant noise amplification and local color distortions in enhanced results. To address these issues, we propose the Dual-Path Error Compensation (DPEC) method, designed to improve image quality under low-light conditions by preserving local texture details while restoring global image brightness without amplifying noise. DPEC incorporates precise pixel-level error estimation to capture subtle differences and an independent denoising mechanism to prevent noise amplification. We introduce the HIS-Retinex loss to guide DPEC's training, ensuring the brightness distribution of enhanced images closely aligns with real-world conditions. To balance computational speed and resource efficiency while training DPEC for a comprehensive understanding of the global context, we integrated the VMamba architecture into its backbone. Comprehensive quantitative and qualitative experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods in low-light image enhancement. The code is publicly available online at https://github.com/wangshuang233/DPEC.
Explainable Image Captioning using CNN- CNN architecture and Hierarchical Attention
Authors: Rishi Kesav Mohan, Sanjay Sureshkumar, Vignesh Sivasubramaniam
Date: 2024-06-28 00:00:00
Tasks: Caption Generation, Decoder, Image Captioning

Image captioning is a technology that produces text-based descriptions for an image. Deep learning-based solutions built on top of feature recognition may very well serve the purpose. But as with any other machine learning solution, the user understanding in the process of caption generation is poor and the model does not provide any explanation for its predictions and hence the conventional methods are also referred to as Black-Box methods. Thus, an approach where the model's predictions are trusted by the user is needed to appreciate interoperability. Explainable AI is an approach where a conventional method is approached in a way that the model or the algorithm's predictions can be explainable and justifiable. Thus, this article tries to approach image captioning using Explainable AI such that the resulting captions generated by the model can be Explained and visualized. A newer architecture with a CNN decoder and hierarchical attention concept has been used to increase speed and accuracy of caption generation. Also, incorporating explainability to a model makes it more trustable when used in an application. The model is trained and evaluated using MSCOCO dataset and both quantitative and qualitative results are presented in this article.
Performance Comparison of Various Modes of Advanced Encryption Standard
Authors: Abel C. H. Chen
Date: 2024-05-22 00:00:00

With the maturation of quantum computing technology, many cryptographic methods are gradually facing threats from quantum computing. Although the Grover algorithm can accelerate search speeds, current research indicates that the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) method can still enhance security by increasing the length of the secret key. However, the AES method involves multiple modes in implementation, and not all modes are secure. Therefore, this study proposes a normalized Gini impurity (NGI) to verify the security of each mode, using encrypted images as a case study for empirical analysis. Furthermore, this study primarily compares the Electronic Codebook (ECB) mode, Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) mode, Counter (CTR) mode, Counter with CBC-Message Authentication Code (MAC) (CCM) mode, and Galois Counter Mode (GCM).
Light Field Compression Based on Implicit Neural Representation
Authors: Henan Wang, Hanxin Zhu, Zhibo Chen
Date: 2024-05-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Model Compression

Light field, as a new data representation format in multimedia, has the ability to capture both intensity and direction of light rays. However, the additional angular information also brings a large volume of data. Classical coding methods are not effective to describe the relationship between different views, leading to redundancy left. To address this problem, we propose a novel light field compression scheme based on implicit neural representation to reduce redundancies between views. We store the information of a light field image implicitly in an neural network and adopt model compression methods to further compress the implicit representation. Extensive experiments have demonstrated the effectiveness of our proposed method, which achieves comparable rate-distortion performance as well as superior perceptual quality over traditional methods.
ENOVA: Autoscaling towards Cost-effective and Stable Serverless LLM Serving
Authors: Tao Huang, Pengfei Chen, Kyoka Gong, Jocky Hawk, Zachary Bright, Wenxin Xie, Kecheng Huang, Zhi Ji
Date: 2024-05-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Diversity, GPU, Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model, Scheduling

Since the increasing popularity of large language model (LLM) backend systems, it is common and necessary to deploy stable serverless serving of LLM on multi-GPU clusters with autoscaling. However, there exist challenges because the diversity and co-location of applications in multi-GPU clusters will lead to low service quality and GPU utilization. To address them, we build ENOVA, a deployment, monitoring and autoscaling service towards serverless LLM serving. ENOVA deconstructs the execution process of LLM service comprehensively, based on which ENOVA designs a configuration recommendation module for automatic deployment on any GPU clusters and a performance detection module for autoscaling. On top of them, ENOVA implements a deployment execution engine for multi-GPU cluster scheduling. The experiment results show that ENOVA significantly outperforms other state-of-the-art methods and is suitable for wide deployment in large online systems.
Social AI and The Equation of Wittgenstein's Language User With Calvino's Literature Machine
Authors: W. J. T. Mollema
Date: 2024-05-23 00:00:00

Is it sensical to ascribe psychological predicates to AI systems like chatbots based on large language models (LLMs)? People have intuitively started ascribing emotions or consciousness to social AI ('affective artificial agents'), with consequences that range from love to suicide. The philosophical question of whether such ascriptions are warranted is thus very relevant. This paper advances the argument that LLMs instantiate language users in Ludwig Wittgenstein's sense but that ascribing psychological predicates to these systems remains a functionalist temptation. Social AIs are not full-blown language users, but rather more like Italo Calvino's literature machines. The ideas of LLMs as Wittgensteinian language users and Calvino's literature-producing writing machine are combined. This sheds light on the misguided functionalist temptation inherent in moving from equating the two to the ascription of psychological predicates to social AI. Finally, the framework of mortal computation is used to show that social AIs lack the basic autopoiesis needed for narrative fa\c{c}ons de parler and their role in the sensemaking of human (inter)action. Such psychological predicate ascriptions could make sense: the transition 'from quantity to quality' can take place, but its route lies somewhere between life and death, not between affective artifacts and emotion approximation by literature machines.
Design and evaluation of AI copilots -- case studies of retail copilot templates
Authors: Michal Furmakiewicz, Chang Liu, Angus Taylor, Ilya Venger
Date: 2024-06-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Anatomy, Retrieval

Building a successful AI copilot requires a systematic approach. This paper is divided into two sections, covering the design and evaluation of a copilot respectively. A case study of developing copilot templates for the retail domain by Microsoft is used to illustrate the role and importance of each aspect. The first section explores the key technical components of a copilot's architecture, including the LLM, plugins for knowledge retrieval and actions, orchestration, system prompts, and responsible AI guardrails. The second section discusses testing and evaluation as a principled way to promote desired outcomes and manage unintended consequences when using AI in a business context. We discuss how to measure and improve its quality and safety, through the lens of an end-to-end human-AI decision loop framework. By providing insights into the anatomy of a copilot and the critical aspects of testing and evaluation, this paper provides concrete evidence of how good design and evaluation practices are essential for building effective, human-centered AI assistants.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning applications for cultured meat
Authors: Michael E. Todhunter, Sheikh Jubair, Ruchika Verma, Rikard Saqe, Kevin Shen, Breanna Duffy
Date: 2024-04-30 00:00:00

Cultured meat has the potential to provide a complementary meat industry with reduced environmental, ethical, and health impacts. However, major technological challenges remain which require time- and resource-intensive research and development efforts. Machine learning has the potential to accelerate cultured meat technology by streamlining experiments, predicting optimal results, and reducing experimentation time and resources. However, the use of machine learning in cultured meat is in its infancy. This review covers the work available to date on the use of machine learning in cultured meat and explores future possibilities. We address four major areas of cultured meat research and development: establishing cell lines, cell culture media design, microscopy and image analysis, and bioprocessing and food processing optimization. This review aims to provide the foundation necessary for both cultured meat and machine learning scientists to identify research opportunities at the intersection between cultured meat and machine learning.
Towards Green AI: Current status and future research
Authors: Christian Clemm, Lutz Stobbe, Kishan Wimalawarne, Jan Druschke
Date: 2024-05-01 00:00:00

The immense technological progress in artificial intelligence research and applications is increasingly drawing attention to the environmental sustainability of such systems, a field that has been termed Green AI. With this contribution we aim to broaden the discourse on Green AI by investigating the current status of approaches to both environmental assessment and ecodesign of AI systems. We propose a life-cycle-based system thinking approach that accounts for the four key elements of these software-hardware-systems: model, data, server, and cloud. We conduct an exemplary estimation of the carbon footprint of relevant compute hardware and highlight the need to further investigate methods for Green AI and ways to facilitate wide-spread adoption of its principles. We envision that AI could be leveraged to mitigate its own environmental challenges, which we denote as AI4greenAI.
Reimagining AI in Social Work: Practitioner Perspectives on Incorporating Technology in their Practice
Authors: Katie Wassal, Carolyn Ashurst, Jiri Hron, Miri Zilka
Date: 2024-04-30 00:00:00

There has been a surge in the number and type of AI tools being tested and deployed within both national and local government in the UK, including within the social care sector. Given the many ongoing and planned future developments, the time is ripe to review and reflect on the state of AI in social care. We do so by conducting semi-structured interviews with UK-based social work professionals about their experiences and opinions of past and current AI systems. Our aim is to understand what systems would practitioners like to see developed and how. We find that all our interviewees had overwhelmingly negative past experiences of technology in social care, unanimous aversion to algorithmic decision systems in particular, but also strong interest in AI applications that could allow them to spend less time on administrative tasks. In response to our findings, we offer a series of concrete recommendations, which include commitment to participatory design, as well as the necessity of regaining practitioner trust.
CourseAssist: Pedagogically Appropriate AI Tutor for Computer Science Education
Authors: Ty Feng, Sa Liu, Dipak Ghosal
Date: 2024-05-01 00:00:00
Tasks: intent-classification, Intent Classification, Question Answering, Retrieval-augmented Generation

The growing enrollments in computer science courses and increase in class sizes necessitate scalable, automated tutoring solutions to adequately support student learning. While Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4 have demonstrated potential in assisting students through question-answering, educators express concerns over student overreliance, miscomprehension of generated code, and the risk of inaccurate answers. Rather than banning these tools outright, we advocate for a constructive approach that harnesses the capabilities of AI while mitigating potential risks. This poster introduces CourseAssist, a novel LLM-based tutoring system tailored for computer science education. Unlike generic LLM systems, CourseAssist uses retrieval-augmented generation, user intent classification, and question decomposition to align AI responses with specific course materials and learning objectives, thereby ensuring pedagogical appropriateness of LLMs in educational settings. We evaluated CourseAssist against a baseline of GPT-4 using a dataset of 50 question-answer pairs from a programming languages course, focusing on the criteria of usefulness, accuracy, and pedagogical appropriateness. Evaluation results show that CourseAssist significantly outperforms the baseline, demonstrating its potential to serve as an effective learning assistant. We have also deployed CourseAssist in 6 computer science courses at a large public R1 research university reaching over 500 students. Interviews with 20 student users show that CourseAssist improves computer science instruction by increasing the accessibility of course-specific tutoring help and shortening the feedback loop on their programming assignments. Future work will include extensive pilot testing at more universities and exploring better collaborative relationships between students, educators, and AI that improve computer science learning experiences.
The Elephant in the Room -- Why AI Safety Demands Diverse Teams
Authors: David Rostcheck, Lara Scheibling
Date: 2024-05-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Navigate

We consider that existing approaches to AI "safety" and "alignment" may not be using the most effective tools, teams, or approaches. We suggest that an alternative and better approach to the problem may be to treat alignment as a social science problem, since the social sciences enjoy a rich toolkit of models for understanding and aligning motivation and behavior, much of which could be repurposed to problems involving AI models, and enumerate reasons why this is so. We introduce an alternate alignment approach informed by social science tools and characterized by three steps: 1. defining a positive desired social outcome for human/AI collaboration as the goal or "North Star," 2. properly framing knowns and unknowns, and 3. forming diverse teams to investigate, observe, and navigate emerging challenges in alignment.
Effective Design Verification -- Constrained Random with Python and Cocotb
Authors: Deepak Narayan Gadde, Suruchi Kumari, Aman Kumar
Date: 2024-05-06 00:00:00

Being the most widely used language across the world due to its simplicity and with 35 keywords (v3.7), Python attracts both hardware and software engineers. Python-based verification environment leverages open-source libraries such as cocotb and cocotb-coverage that enables interfacing the tesbenches with any available simulator and facilitating constrained randomization, coverage respectively. These libraries significantly ease the development of testbenches and have the potential to reduce the setup cost. The goal of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of a Python-Cocotb verification setup with design IPs and compare its features and performance metrics with the current de-facto hardware verification language i.e., SystemVerilog.
Generative Discrimination: What Happens When Generative AI Exhibits Bias, and What Can Be Done About It
Authors: Philipp Hacker, Brent Mittelstadt, Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius, Sandra Wachter
Date: 2024-06-26 00:00:00

As generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI) technologies proliferate across sectors, they offer significant benefits but also risk exacerbating discrimination. This chapter explores how genAI intersects with non-discrimination laws, identifying shortcomings and suggesting improvements. It highlights two main types of discriminatory outputs: (i) demeaning and abusive content and (ii) subtler biases due to inadequate representation of protected groups, which may not be overtly discriminatory in individual cases but have cumulative discriminatory effects. For example, genAI systems may predominantly depict white men when asked for images of people in important jobs. This chapter examines these issues, categorizing problematic outputs into three legal categories: discriminatory content; harassment; and legally hard cases like unbalanced content, harmful stereotypes or misclassification. It argues for holding genAI providers and deployers liable for discriminatory outputs and highlights the inadequacy of traditional legal frameworks to address genAI-specific issues. The chapter suggests updating EU laws, including the AI Act, to mitigate biases in training and input data, mandating testing and auditing, and evolving legislation to enforce standards for bias mitigation and inclusivity as technology advances.
A Robust Governance for the AI Act: AI Office, AI Board, Scientific Panel, and National Authorities
Authors: Claudio Novelli, Philipp Hacker, Jessica Morley, Jarle Trondal, Luciano Floridi
Date: 2024-05-11 00:00:00

Regulation is nothing without enforcement. This particularly holds for the dynamic field of emerging technologies. Hence, this article has two ambitions. First, it explains how the EU's new Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) will be implemented and enforced by various institutional bodies, thus clarifying the governance framework of the AIA. Second, it proposes a normative model of governance, providing recommendations to ensure uniform and coordinated execution of the AIA and the fulfilment of the legislation. Taken together, the article explores how the AIA may be implemented by national and EU institutional bodies, encompassing longstanding bodies, such as the European Commission, and those newly established under the AIA, such as the AI Office. It investigates their roles across supranational and national levels, emphasizing how EU regulations influence institutional structures and operations. These regulations may not only directly dictate the structural design of institutions but also indirectly request administrative capacities needed to enforce the AIA.
FAITH: Frequency-domain Attention In Two Horizons for Time Series Forecasting
Authors: RuiQi Li, Maowei Jiang, Kai Wang, Kaiduo Feng, Quangao Liu, Yue Sun, Xiufang Zhou
Date: 2024-05-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Time Series, Time Series Forecasting

Time Series Forecasting plays a crucial role in various fields such as industrial equipment maintenance, meteorology, energy consumption, traffic flow and financial investment. However, despite their considerable advantages over traditional statistical approaches, current deep learning-based predictive models often exhibit a significant deviation between their forecasting outcomes and the ground truth. This discrepancy is largely due to an insufficient emphasis on extracting the sequence's latent information, particularly its global information within the frequency domain and the relationship between different variables. To address this issue, we propose a novel model Frequency-domain Attention In Two Horizons, which decomposes time series into trend and seasonal components using a multi-scale sequence adaptive decomposition and fusion architecture, and processes them separately. FAITH utilizes Frequency Channel feature Extraction Module and Frequency Temporal feature Extraction Module to capture inter-channel relationships and temporal global information in the sequence, significantly improving its ability to handle long-term dependencies and complex patterns. Furthermore, FAITH achieves theoretically linear complexity by modifying the time-frequency domain transformation method, effectively reducing computational costs. Extensive experiments on 6 benchmarks for long-term forecasting and 3 benchmarks for short-term forecasting demonstrate that FAITH outperforms existing models in many fields, such as electricity, weather and traffic, proving its effectiveness and superiority both in long-term and short-term time series forecasting tasks. Our codes and data are available at https://github.com/LRQ577/FAITH.