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2501.15321
Figurative-cum-Commonsense Knowledge Infusion for Multimodal Mental Health Meme Classification
cs.CL cs.SI
The expression of mental health symptoms through non-traditional means, such as memes, has gained remarkable attention over the past few years, with users often highlighting their mental health struggles through figurative intricacies within memes. While humans rely on commonsense knowledge to interpret these complex expressions, current Multimodal Language Models (MLMs) struggle to capture these figurative aspects inherent in memes. To address this gap, we introduce a novel dataset, AxiOM, derived from the GAD anxiety questionnaire, which categorizes memes into six fine-grained anxiety symptoms. Next, we propose a commonsense and domain-enriched framework, M3H, to enhance MLMs' ability to interpret figurative language and commonsense knowledge. The overarching goal remains to first understand and then classify the mental health symptoms expressed in memes. We benchmark M3H against 6 competitive baselines (with 20 variations), demonstrating improvements in both quantitative and qualitative metrics, including a detailed human evaluation. We observe a clear improvement of 4.20% and 4.66% on weighted-F1 metric. To assess the generalizability, we perform extensive experiments on a public dataset, RESTORE, for depressive symptom identification, presenting an extensive ablation study that highlights the contribution of each module in both datasets. Our findings reveal limitations in existing models and the advantage of employing commonsense to enhance figurative understanding.
2501.15322
Scaling laws for decoding images from brain activity
eess.IV cs.AI cs.LG q-bio.NC
Generative AI has recently propelled the decoding of images from brain activity. How do these approaches scale with the amount and type of neural recordings? Here, we systematically compare image decoding from four types of non-invasive devices: electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), high-field functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (3T fMRI) and ultra-high field (7T) fMRI. For this, we evaluate decoding models on the largest benchmark to date, encompassing 8 public datasets, 84 volunteers, 498 hours of brain recording and 2.3 million brain responses to natural images. Unlike previous work, we focus on single-trial decoding performance to simulate real-time settings. This systematic comparison reveals three main findings. First, the most precise neuroimaging devices tend to yield the best decoding performances, when the size of the training sets are similar. However, the gain enabled by deep learning - in comparison to linear models - is obtained with the noisiest devices. Second, we do not observe any plateau of decoding performance as the amount of training data increases. Rather, decoding performance scales log-linearly with the amount of brain recording. Third, this scaling law primarily depends on the amount of data per subject. However, little decoding gain is observed by increasing the number of subjects. Overall, these findings delineate the path most suitable to scale the decoding of images from non-invasive brain recordings.
2501.15324
A Game-Theoretic Framework for Distributed Load Balancing: Static and Dynamic Game Models
cs.GT cs.MA
Motivated by applications in job scheduling, queuing networks, and load balancing in cyber-physical systems, we develop and analyze a game-theoretic framework to balance the load among servers in both static and dynamic settings. In these applications, jobs/tasks are often held by selfish entities that do not want to coordinate with each other, yet the goal is to balance the load among servers in a distributed manner. First, we provide a static game formulation in which each player holds a job with a certain processing requirement and wants to schedule it fractionally among a set of heterogeneous servers to minimize its average processing time. We show that this static game is a potential game and admits a pure Nash equilibrium (NE). In particular, the best-response dynamics converge to such an NE after $n$ iterations, where $n$ is the number of players. We then extend our results to a dynamic game setting, where jobs arrive and get processed in the system, and players observe the load (state) on the servers to decide how to schedule their jobs among the servers in order to minimize their averaged cumulative processing time. In this setting, we show that if the players update their strategies using dynamic best-response strategies, the system eventually becomes fully load-balanced and the players' strategies converge to the pure NE of the static game. In particular, we show that the convergence time scales only polynomially with respect to the game parameters. Finally, we provide numerical results to evaluate the performance of our proposed algorithms under both static and dynamic settings.
2501.15326
Recognize Any Surgical Object: Unleashing the Power of Weakly-Supervised Data
cs.CV
We present RASO, a foundation model designed to Recognize Any Surgical Object, offering robust open-set recognition capabilities across a broad range of surgical procedures and object classes, in both surgical images and videos. RASO leverages a novel weakly-supervised learning framework that generates tag-image-text pairs automatically from large-scale unannotated surgical lecture videos, significantly reducing the need for manual annotations. Our scalable data generation pipeline gatherers to 2,200 surgical procedures and produces 3.6 million tag annotations across 2,066 unique surgical tags. Our experiments show that RASO achieves improvements of 2.9 mAP, 4.5 mAP, 10.6 mAP, and 7.2 mAP on four standard surgical benchmarks respectively in zero-shot settings, and surpasses state-of-the-art models in supervised surgical action recognition tasks. We will open-source our code, model, and dataset to facilitate further research.
2501.15328
Physiologically-Informed Predictability of a Teammate's Future Actions Forecasts Team Performance
q-bio.NC cs.LG
In collaborative environments, a deep understanding of multi-human teaming dynamics is essential for optimizing performance. However, the relationship between individuals' behavioral and physiological markers and their combined influence on overall team performance remains poorly understood. To explore this, we designed a triadic human collaborative sensorimotor task in virtual reality (VR) and introduced a novel predictability metric to examine team dynamics and performance. Our findings reveal a strong connection between team performance and the predictability of a team member's future actions based on other team members' behavioral and physiological data. Contrary to conventional wisdom that high-performing teams are highly synchronized, our results suggest that physiological and behavioral synchronizations among team members have a limited correlation with team performance. These insights provide a new quantitative framework for understanding multi-human teaming, paving the way for deeper insights into team dynamics and performance.
2501.15337
Finite Strain Robust Topology Optimization Considering Multiple Uncertainties
cs.CE math.OC
This paper presents a computational framework for the robust stiffness design of hyperelastic structures at finite deformations subject to various uncertain sources. In particular, the loading, material properties, and geometry uncertainties are incorporated within the topology optimization framework and are modeled by random vectors or random fields. A stochastic perturbation method is adopted to quantify uncertainties, and analytical adjoint sensitivities are derived for efficient gradient-based optimization. Moreover, the mesh distortion of low-density elements under finite deformations is handled by an adaptive linear energy interpolation scheme. The proposed robust topology optimization framework is applied to several examples, and the effects of different uncertain sources on the optimized topologies are systematically investigated. As demonstrated, robust designs are less sensitive to the variation of target uncertain sources than deterministic designs. Finally, it is shown that incorporating symmetry-breaking uncertainties in the topology optimization framework promotes stable designs compared to the deterministic counterpart, where -- when no stability constraint is included -- can lead to unstable designs.
2501.15338
Fairness-aware Contextual Dynamic Pricing with Strategic Buyers
cs.GT cs.LG stat.ML
Contextual pricing strategies are prevalent in online retailing, where the seller adjusts prices based on products' attributes and buyers' characteristics. Although such strategies can enhance seller's profits, they raise concerns about fairness when significant price disparities emerge among specific groups, such as gender or race. These disparities can lead to adverse perceptions of fairness among buyers and may even violate the law and regulation. In contrast, price differences can incentivize disadvantaged buyers to strategically manipulate their group identity to obtain a lower price. In this paper, we investigate contextual dynamic pricing with fairness constraints, taking into account buyers' strategic behaviors when their group status is private and unobservable from the seller. We propose a dynamic pricing policy that simultaneously achieves price fairness and discourages strategic behaviors. Our policy achieves an upper bound of $O(\sqrt{T}+H(T))$ regret over $T$ time horizons, where the term $H(T)$ arises from buyers' assessment of the fairness of the pricing policy based on their learned price difference. When buyers are able to learn the fairness of the price policy, this upper bound reduces to $O(\sqrt{T})$. We also prove an $\Omega(\sqrt{T})$ regret lower bound of any pricing policy under our problem setting. We support our findings with extensive experimental evidence, showcasing our policy's effectiveness. In our real data analysis, we observe the existence of price discrimination against race in the loan application even after accounting for other contextual information. Our proposed pricing policy demonstrates a significant improvement, achieving 35.06% reduction in regret compared to the benchmark policy.
2501.15339
DER Hosting capacity for distribution networks: definitions, attributes, use-cases and challenges
eess.SY cs.SY
The rapid adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs) has outpaced grid modernization, leading to capacity limitations that challenge their further integration. Hosting Capacity Assessment (HCA) is a critical tool for evaluating how much DER capacity a grid can handle without breaching operational limits. HCA serves multiple goals: enabling higher DER penetration, accelerating grid connection times, guiding infrastructure upgrades or flexible resource deployment, ensuring equitable policies, and improving grid flexibility while minimizing curtailment. HCA lacks a universal definition, varying by modelling approaches, uncertainty considerations, and objectives. This paper addresses five key questions to standardize and enhance HCA practices. First, it classifies HCA objectives associated with different stakeholders such as system operators, consumers, market operators and consumers. Second, it examines model attributes, including modelling sophistication, data requirements, and uncertainty handling, thus balancing complexity with computational efficiency. Third, it explores HCA applications, such as planning grid investments or operational decisions, and summarizes use cases associated with HCA. Fourth, it emphasizes the need for periodic updates to reflect dynamic grid conditions, evolving technologies, and new DER installations. Finally, it identifies challenges, such as ensuring data quality, managing computational demands, and aligning short-term and long-term goals. By addressing these aspects, this paper provides a structured approach to perform and apply HCA, offering insights for engineers, planners, and policymakers to manage DER integration effectively.
2501.15343
Development and Application of Self-Supervised Machine Learning for Smoke Plume and Active Fire Identification from the FIREX-AQ Datasets
cs.LG cs.AI cs.CV
Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) was a field campaign aimed at better understanding the impact of wildfires and agricultural fires on air quality and climate. The FIREX-AQ campaign took place in August 2019 and involved two aircraft and multiple coordinated satellite observations. This study applied and evaluated a self-supervised machine learning (ML) method for the active fire and smoke plume identification and tracking in the satellite and sub-orbital remote sensing datasets collected during the campaign. Our unique methodology combines remote sensing observations with different spatial and spectral resolutions. The demonstrated approach successfully differentiates fire pixels and smoke plumes from background imagery, enabling the generation of a per-instrument smoke and fire mask product, as well as smoke and fire masks created from the fusion of selected data from independent instruments. This ML approach has a potential to enhance operational wildfire monitoring systems and improve decision-making in air quality management through fast smoke plume identification12 and tracking and could improve climate impact studies through fusion data from independent instruments.
2501.15348
ReInc: Scaling Training of Dynamic Graph Neural Networks
cs.LG cs.DC
Dynamic Graph Neural Networks (DGNNs) have gained widespread attention due to their applicability in diverse domains such as traffic network prediction, epidemiological forecasting, and social network analysis. In this paper, we present ReInc, a system designed to enable efficient and scalable training of DGNNs on large-scale graphs. ReInc introduces key innovations that capitalize on the unique combination of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) inherent in DGNNs. By reusing intermediate results and incrementally computing aggregations across consecutive graph snapshots, ReInc significantly enhances computational efficiency. To support these optimizations, ReInc incorporates a novel two-level caching mechanism with a specialized caching policy aligned to the DGNN execution workflow. Additionally, ReInc addresses the challenges of managing structural and temporal dependencies in dynamic graphs through a new distributed training strategy. This approach eliminates communication overheads associated with accessing remote features and redistributing intermediate results. Experimental results demonstrate that ReInc achieves up to an order of magnitude speedup compared to state-of-the-art frameworks, tested across various dynamic GNN architectures and real-world graph datasets.
2501.15351
Fairness in LLM-Generated Surveys
cs.CY cs.LG
Large Language Models (LLMs) excel in text generation and understanding, especially in simulating socio-political and economic patterns, serving as an alternative to traditional surveys. However, their global applicability remains questionable due to unexplored biases across socio-demographic and geographic contexts. This study examines how LLMs perform across diverse populations by analyzing public surveys from Chile and the United States, focusing on predictive accuracy and fairness metrics. The results show performance disparities, with LLM consistently outperforming on U.S. datasets. This bias originates from the U.S.-centric training data, remaining evident after accounting for socio-demographic differences. In the U.S., political identity and race significantly influence prediction accuracy, while in Chile, gender, education, and religious affiliation play more pronounced roles. Our study presents a novel framework for measuring socio-demographic biases in LLMs, offering a path toward ensuring fairer and more equitable model performance across diverse socio-cultural contexts.
2501.15355
Large Language Models as Theory of Mind Aware Generative Agents with Counterfactual Reflection
cs.CL cs.AI
Recent studies have increasingly demonstrated that large language models (LLMs) possess significant theory of mind (ToM) capabilities, showing the potential for simulating the tracking of mental states in generative agents. In this study, we propose a novel paradigm called ToM-agent, designed to empower LLMs-based generative agents to simulate ToM in open-domain conversational interactions. ToM-agent disentangles the confidence from mental states, facilitating the emulation of an agent's perception of its counterpart's mental states, such as beliefs, desires, and intentions (BDIs). Using past conversation history and verbal reflections, ToM-Agent can dynamically adjust counterparts' inferred BDIs, along with related confidence levels. We further put forth a counterfactual intervention method that reflects on the gap between the predicted responses of counterparts and their real utterances, thereby enhancing the efficiency of reflection. Leveraging empathetic and persuasion dialogue datasets, we assess the advantages of implementing the ToM-agent with downstream tasks, as well as its performance in both the first-order and the \textit{second-order} ToM. Our findings indicate that the ToM-agent can grasp the underlying reasons for their counterpart's behaviors beyond mere semantic-emotional supporting or decision-making based on common sense, providing new insights for studying large-scale LLMs-based simulation of human social behaviors.
2501.15356
Federated Class-Incremental Learning: A Hybrid Approach Using Latent Exemplars and Data-Free Techniques to Address Local and Global Forgetting
cs.LG
Federated Class-Incremental Learning (FCIL) refers to a scenario where a dynamically changing number of clients collaboratively learn an ever-increasing number of incoming tasks. FCIL is known to suffer from local forgetting due to class imbalance at each client and global forgetting due to class imbalance across clients. We develop a mathematical framework for FCIL that formulates local and global forgetting. Then, we propose an approach called Hybrid Rehearsal (HR), which utilizes latent exemplars and data-free techniques to address local and global forgetting, respectively. HR employs a customized autoencoder designed for both data classification and the generation of synthetic data. To determine the embeddings of new tasks for all clients in the latent space of the encoder, the server uses the Lennard-Jones Potential formulations. Meanwhile, at the clients, the decoder decodes the stored low-dimensional latent space exemplars back to the high-dimensional input space, used to address local forgetting. To overcome global forgetting, the decoder generates synthetic data. Furthermore, our mathematical framework proves that our proposed approach HR can, in principle, tackle the two local and global forgetting challenges. In practice, extensive experiments demonstrate that while preserving privacy, our proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art baselines on multiple FCIL benchmarks with low compute and memory footprints.
2501.15357
Structural Symmetry, Multiplicity, and Differentiability of Eigenfrequencies
cs.CE math.OC
This work investigates the multiplicity and differentiability of eigenfrequencies in structures with various symmetries. In particular, the study explores how the geometric and design variable symmetries affect the distribution of eigenvalues, distinguishing between simple and multiple eigenvalues in 3-D trusses. Moreover, this article also examines the differentiability of multiple eigenvalues under various symmetry conditions, which is crucial for gradient-based optimization. The results presented in this study show that while full symmetry ensures the differentiability of all eigenvalues, increased symmetry in optimized design, such as accidental symmetry, may lead to non-differentiable eigenvalues. Additionally, the study presents solutions using symmetric functions, demonstrating their effectiveness in ensuring differentiability in scenarios where multiple eigenvalues are non-differentiable. The study also highlights a critical insight into the differentiability criterion of symmetric functions, i.e., the completeness of eigen-clusters, which is necessary to ensure the differentiability of such functions.
2501.15361
Decentralized Low-Rank Fine-Tuning of Large Language Models
cs.LG
While parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) techniques like Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) offer computationally efficient adaptations of Large Language Models (LLMs), their practical deployment often assumes centralized data and training environments. However, real-world scenarios frequently involve distributed, privacy-sensitive datasets that require decentralized solutions. Federated learning (FL) addresses data privacy by coordinating model updates across clients, but it is typically based on centralized aggregation through a parameter server, which can introduce bottlenecks and communication constraints. Decentralized learning, in contrast, eliminates this dependency by enabling direct collaboration between clients, improving scalability and efficiency in distributed environments. Despite its advantages, decentralized LLM fine-tuning remains underexplored. In this work, we propose Dec-LoRA, an algorithm for decentralized fine-tuning of LLMs based on LoRA. Through extensive experiments on BERT and LLaMA-2 models, we show that Dec-LoRA maintains performance comparable to centralized LoRA across various conditions, including data heterogeneity and quantization constraints. This highlights its potential for scalable LLM fine-tuning in decentralized environments.
2501.15363
AI-Driven Secure Data Sharing: A Trustworthy and Privacy-Preserving Approach
cs.CR cs.CV
In the era of data-driven decision-making, ensuring the privacy and security of shared data is paramount across various domains. Applying existing deep neural networks (DNNs) to encrypted data is critical and often compromises performance, security, and computational overhead. To address these limitations, this research introduces a secure framework consisting of a learnable encryption method based on the block-pixel operation to encrypt the data and subsequently integrate it with the Vision Transformer (ViT). The proposed framework ensures data privacy and security by creating unique scrambling patterns per key, providing robust performance against adversarial attacks without compromising computational efficiency and data integrity. The framework was tested on sensitive medical datasets to validate its efficacy, proving its ability to handle highly confidential information securely. The suggested framework was validated with a 94\% success rate after extensive testing on real-world datasets, such as MRI brain tumors and histological scans of lung and colon cancers. Additionally, the framework was tested under diverse adversarial attempts against secure data sharing with optimum performance and demonstrated its effectiveness in various threat scenarios. These comprehensive analyses underscore its robustness, making it a trustworthy solution for secure data sharing in critical applications.
2501.15365
A Transfer Learning Framework for Anomaly Detection in Multivariate IoT Traffic Data
cs.LG cs.CR cs.NI
In recent years, rapid technological advancements and expanded Internet access have led to a significant rise in anomalies within network traffic and time-series data. Prompt detection of these irregularities is crucial for ensuring service quality, preventing financial losses, and maintaining robust security standards. While machine learning algorithms have shown promise in achieving high accuracy for anomaly detection, their performance is often constrained by the specific conditions of their training data. A persistent challenge in this domain is the scarcity of labeled data for anomaly detection in time-series datasets. This limitation hampers the training efficacy of both traditional machine learning and advanced deep learning models. To address this, unsupervised transfer learning emerges as a viable solution, leveraging unlabeled data from a source domain to identify anomalies in an unlabeled target domain. However, many existing approaches still depend on a small amount of labeled data from the target domain. To overcome these constraints, we propose a transfer learning-based model for anomaly detection in multivariate time-series datasets. Unlike conventional methods, our approach does not require labeled data in either the source or target domains. Empirical evaluations on novel intrusion detection datasets demonstrate that our model outperforms existing techniques in accurately identifying anomalies within an entirely unlabeled target domain.
2501.15368
Baichuan-Omni-1.5 Technical Report
cs.CL cs.SD eess.AS
We introduce Baichuan-Omni-1.5, an omni-modal model that not only has omni-modal understanding capabilities but also provides end-to-end audio generation capabilities. To achieve fluent and high-quality interaction across modalities without compromising the capabilities of any modality, we prioritized optimizing three key aspects. First, we establish a comprehensive data cleaning and synthesis pipeline for multimodal data, obtaining about 500B high-quality data (text, audio, and vision). Second, an audio-tokenizer (Baichuan-Audio-Tokenizer) has been designed to capture both semantic and acoustic information from audio, enabling seamless integration and enhanced compatibility with MLLM. Lastly, we designed a multi-stage training strategy that progressively integrates multimodal alignment and multitask fine-tuning, ensuring effective synergy across all modalities. Baichuan-Omni-1.5 leads contemporary models (including GPT4o-mini and MiniCPM-o 2.6) in terms of comprehensive omni-modal capabilities. Notably, it achieves results comparable to leading models such as Qwen2-VL-72B across various multimodal medical benchmarks.
2501.15369
iFormer: Integrating ConvNet and Transformer for Mobile Application
cs.CV cs.AI cs.LG
We present a new family of mobile hybrid vision networks, called iFormer, with a focus on optimizing latency and accuracy on mobile applications. iFormer effectively integrates the fast local representation capacity of convolution with the efficient global modeling ability of self-attention. The local interactions are derived from transforming a standard convolutional network, \textit{i.e.}, ConvNeXt, to design a more lightweight mobile network. Our newly introduced mobile modulation attention removes memory-intensive operations in MHA and employs an efficient modulation mechanism to boost dynamic global representational capacity. We conduct comprehensive experiments demonstrating that iFormer outperforms existing lightweight networks across various tasks. Notably, iFormer achieves an impressive Top-1 accuracy of 80.4\% on ImageNet-1k with a latency of only 1.10 ms on an iPhone 13, surpassing the recently proposed MobileNetV4 under similar latency constraints. Additionally, our method shows significant improvements in downstream tasks, including COCO object detection, instance segmentation, and ADE20k semantic segmentation, while still maintaining low latency on mobile devices for high-resolution inputs in these scenarios.
2501.15370
Scaling Large Vision-Language Models for Enhanced Multimodal Comprehension In Biomedical Image Analysis
cs.CV cs.AI
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated immense capabilities in understanding textual data and are increasingly being adopted to help researchers accelerate scientific discovery through knowledge extraction (information retrieval), knowledge distillation (summarizing key findings and methodologies into concise forms), and knowledge synthesis (aggregating information from multiple scientific sources to address complex queries, generate hypothesis and formulate experimental plans). However, scientific data often exists in both visual and textual modalities. Vision language models (VLMs) address this by incorporating a pretrained vision backbone for processing images and a cross-modal projector that adapts image tokens into the LLM dimensional space, thereby providing richer multimodal comprehension. Nevertheless, off-the-shelf VLMs show limited capabilities in handling domain-specific data and are prone to hallucinations. We developed intelligent assistants finetuned from LLaVA models to enhance multimodal understanding in low-dose radiation therapy (LDRT)-a benign approach used in the treatment of cancer-related illnesses. Using multilingual data from 42,673 articles, we devise complex reasoning and detailed description tasks for visual question answering (VQA) benchmarks. Our assistants, trained on 50,882 image-text pairs, demonstrate superior performance over base models as evaluated using LLM-as-a-judge approach, particularly in reducing hallucination and improving domain-specific comprehension.
2501.15371
Acquiring Submillimeter-Accurate Multi-Task Vision Datasets for Computer-Assisted Orthopedic Surgery
cs.CV
Advances in computer vision, particularly in optical image-based 3D reconstruction and feature matching, enable applications like marker-less surgical navigation and digitization of surgery. However, their development is hindered by a lack of suitable datasets with 3D ground truth. This work explores an approach to generating realistic and accurate ex vivo datasets tailored for 3D reconstruction and feature matching in open orthopedic surgery. A set of posed images and an accurately registered ground truth surface mesh of the scene are required to develop vision-based 3D reconstruction and matching methods suitable for surgery. We propose a framework consisting of three core steps and compare different methods for each step: 3D scanning, calibration of viewpoints for a set of high-resolution RGB images, and an optical-based method for scene registration. We evaluate each step of this framework on an ex vivo scoliosis surgery using a pig spine, conducted under real operating room conditions. A mean 3D Euclidean error of 0.35 mm is achieved with respect to the 3D ground truth. The proposed method results in submillimeter accurate 3D ground truths and surgical images with a spatial resolution of 0.1 mm. This opens the door to acquiring future surgical datasets for high-precision applications.
2501.15373
Learning-Enhanced Safeguard Control for High-Relative-Degree Systems: Robust Optimization under Disturbances and Faults
eess.SY cs.AI cs.LG cs.SY math.OC nlin.AO
Merely pursuing performance may adversely affect the safety, while a conservative policy for safe exploration will degrade the performance. How to balance the safety and performance in learning-based control problems is an interesting yet challenging issue. This paper aims to enhance system performance with safety guarantee in solving the reinforcement learning (RL)-based optimal control problems of nonlinear systems subject to high-relative-degree state constraints and unknown time-varying disturbance/actuator faults. First, to combine control barrier functions (CBFs) with RL, a new type of CBFs, termed high-order reciprocal control barrier function (HO-RCBF) is proposed to deal with high-relative-degree constraints during the learning process. Then, the concept of gradient similarity is proposed to quantify the relationship between the gradient of safety and the gradient of performance. Finally, gradient manipulation and adaptive mechanisms are introduced in the safe RL framework to enhance the performance with a safety guarantee. Two simulation examples illustrate that the proposed safe RL framework can address high-relative-degree constraint, enhance safety robustness and improve system performance.
2501.15374
Evaluating the Effectiveness of XAI Techniques for Encoder-Based Language Models
cs.CL cs.AI
The black-box nature of large language models (LLMs) necessitates the development of eXplainable AI (XAI) techniques for transparency and trustworthiness. However, evaluating these techniques remains a challenge. This study presents a general evaluation framework using four key metrics: Human-reasoning Agreement (HA), Robustness, Consistency, and Contrastivity. We assess the effectiveness of six explainability techniques from five different XAI categories model simplification (LIME), perturbation-based methods (SHAP), gradient-based approaches (InputXGradient, Grad-CAM), Layer-wise Relevance Propagation (LRP), and attention mechanisms-based explainability methods (Attention Mechanism Visualization, AMV) across five encoder-based language models: TinyBERT, BERTbase, BERTlarge, XLM-R large, and DeBERTa-xlarge, using the IMDB Movie Reviews and Tweet Sentiment Extraction (TSE) datasets. Our findings show that the model simplification-based XAI method (LIME) consistently outperforms across multiple metrics and models, significantly excelling in HA with a score of 0.9685 on DeBERTa-xlarge, robustness, and consistency as the complexity of large language models increases. AMV demonstrates the best Robustness, with scores as low as 0.0020. It also excels in Consistency, achieving near-perfect scores of 0.9999 across all models. Regarding Contrastivity, LRP performs the best, particularly on more complex models, with scores up to 0.9371.
2501.15377
Fine Tuning without Catastrophic Forgetting via Selective Low Rank Adaptation
cs.CV
Adapting deep learning models to new domains often requires computationally intensive retraining and risks catastrophic forgetting. While fine-tuning enables domain-specific adaptation, it can reduce robustness to distribution shifts, impacting out-of-distribution (OOD) performance. Pre-trained zero-shot models like CLIP offer strong generalization but may suffer degraded robustness after fine-tuning. Building on Task Adaptive Parameter Sharing (TAPS), we propose a simple yet effective extension as a parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) method, using an indicator function to selectively activate Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) blocks. Our approach minimizes knowledge loss, retains its generalization strengths under domain shifts, and significantly reduces computational costs compared to traditional fine-tuning. We demonstrate that effective fine-tuning can be achieved with as few as 5\% of active blocks, substantially improving efficiency. Evaluations on pre-trained models such as CLIP and DINO-ViT demonstrate our method's broad applicability and effectiveness in maintaining performance and knowledge retention.
2501.15378
How to Mitigate Information Loss in Knowledge Graphs for GraphRAG: Leveraging Triple Context Restoration and Query-Driven Feedback
cs.AI cs.IR
Knowledge Graph (KG)-augmented Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently propelled significant advances in complex reasoning tasks, thanks to their broad domain knowledge and contextual awareness. Unfortunately, current methods often assume KGs to be complete, which is impractical given the inherent limitations of KG construction and the potential loss of contextual cues when converting unstructured text into entity-relation triples. In response, this paper proposes the Triple Context Restoration and Query-driven Feedback (TCR-QF) framework, which reconstructs the textual context underlying each triple to mitigate information loss, while dynamically refining the KG structure by iteratively incorporating query-relevant missing knowledge. Experiments on five benchmark question-answering datasets substantiate the effectiveness of TCR-QF in KG and LLM integration, where itachieves a 29.1% improvement in Exact Match and a 15.5% improvement in F1 over its state-of-the-art GraphRAG competitors.
2501.15379
Zero-Shot Interactive Text-to-Image Retrieval via Diffusion-Augmented Representations
cs.IR cs.AI cs.CV
Interactive Text-to-Image Retrieval (I-TIR) has emerged as a transformative user-interactive tool for applications in domains such as e-commerce and education. Yet, current methodologies predominantly depend on finetuned Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), which face two critical limitations: (1) Finetuning imposes prohibitive computational overhead and long-term maintenance costs. (2) Finetuning narrows the pretrained knowledge distribution of MLLMs, reducing their adaptability to novel scenarios. These issues are exacerbated by the inherently dynamic nature of real-world I-TIR systems, where queries and image databases evolve in complexity and diversity, often deviating from static training distributions. To overcome these constraints, we propose Diffusion Augmented Retrieval (DAR), a paradigm-shifting framework that bypasses MLLM finetuning entirely. DAR synergizes Large Language Model (LLM)-guided query refinement with Diffusion Model (DM)-based visual synthesis to create contextually enriched intermediate representations. This dual-modality approach deciphers nuanced user intent more holistically, enabling precise alignment between textual queries and visually relevant images. Rigorous evaluations across four benchmarks reveal DAR's dual strengths: (1) Matches state-of-the-art finetuned I-TIR models on straightforward queries without task-specific training. (2) Scalable Generalization: Surpasses finetuned baselines by 7.61% in Hits@10 (top-10 accuracy) under multi-turn conversational complexity, demonstrating robustness to intricate, distributionally shifted interactions. By eliminating finetuning dependencies and leveraging generative-augmented representations, DAR establishes a new trajectory for efficient, adaptive, and scalable cross-modal retrieval systems.
2501.15383
Qwen2.5-1M Technical Report
cs.CL
We introduce Qwen2.5-1M, a series of models that extend the context length to 1 million tokens. Compared to the previous 128K version, the Qwen2.5-1M series have significantly enhanced long-context capabilities through long-context pre-training and post-training. Key techniques such as long data synthesis, progressive pre-training, and multi-stage supervised fine-tuning are employed to effectively enhance long-context performance while reducing training costs. To promote the use of long-context models among a broader user base, we present and open-source our inference framework. This framework includes a length extrapolation method that can expand the model context lengths by at least four times, or even more, without additional training. To reduce inference costs, we implement a sparse attention method along with chunked prefill optimization for deployment scenarios and a sparsity refinement method to improve precision. Additionally, we detail our optimizations in the inference engine, including kernel optimization, pipeline parallelism, and scheduling optimization, which significantly enhance overall inference performance. By leveraging our inference framework, the Qwen2.5-1M models achieve a remarkable 3x to 7x prefill speedup in scenarios with 1 million tokens of context. This framework provides an efficient and powerful solution for developing applications that require long-context processing using open-source models. The Qwen2.5-1M series currently includes the open-source models Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M and Qwen2.5-14B-Instruct-1M, as well as the API-accessed model Qwen2.5-Turbo. Evaluations show that Qwen2.5-1M models have been greatly improved in long-context tasks without compromising performance in short-context scenarios. Specifically, the Qwen2.5-14B-Instruct-1M model significantly outperforms GPT-4o-mini in long-context tasks and supports contexts eight times longer.
2501.15384
MetaOcc: Surround-View 4D Radar and Camera Fusion Framework for 3D Occupancy Prediction with Dual Training Strategies
cs.CV cs.AI
3D occupancy prediction is crucial for autonomous driving perception. Fusion of 4D radar and camera provides a potential solution of robust occupancy prediction on serve weather with least cost. How to achieve effective multi-modal feature fusion and reduce annotation costs remains significant challenges. In this work, we propose MetaOcc, a novel multi-modal occupancy prediction framework that fuses surround-view cameras and 4D radar for comprehensive environmental perception. We first design a height self-attention module for effective 3D feature extraction from sparse radar points. Then, a local-global fusion mechanism is proposed to adaptively capture modality contributions while handling spatio-temporal misalignments. Temporal alignment and fusion module is employed to further aggregate historical feature. Furthermore, we develop a semi-supervised training procedure leveraging open-set segmentor and geometric constraints for pseudo-label generation, enabling robust perception with limited annotations. Extensive experiments on OmniHD-Scenes dataset demonstrate that MetaOcc achieves state-of-the-art performance, surpassing previous methods by significant margins. Notably, as the first semi-supervised 4D radar and camera fusion-based occupancy prediction approach, MetaOcc maintains 92.5% of the fully-supervised performance while using only 50% of ground truth annotations, establishing a new benchmark for multi-modal 3D occupancy prediction. Code and data are available at https://github.com/LucasYang567/MetaOcc.
2501.15385
DDUNet: Dual Dynamic U-Net for Highly-Efficient Cloud Segmentation
cs.CV eess.IV
Cloud segmentation amounts to separating cloud pixels from non-cloud pixels in an image. Current deep learning methods for cloud segmentation suffer from three issues. (a) Constrain on their receptive field due to the fixed size of the convolution kernel. (b) Lack of robustness towards different scenarios. (c) Requirement of a large number of parameters and limitations for real-time implementation. To address these issues, we propose a Dual Dynamic U-Net (DDUNet) for supervised cloud segmentation. The DDUNet adheres to a U-Net architecture and integrates two crucial modules: the dynamic multi-scale convolution (DMSC), improving merging features under different reception fields, and the dynamic weights and bias generator (DWBG) in classification layers to enhance generalization ability. More importantly, owing to the use of depth-wise convolution, the DDUNet is a lightweight network that can achieve 95.3% accuracy on the SWINySEG dataset with only 0.33M parameters, and achieve superior performance over three different configurations of the SWINySEg dataset in both accuracy and efficiency.
2501.15388
Guaranteed Multidimensional Time Series Prediction via Deterministic Tensor Completion Theory
cs.LG
In recent years, the prediction of multidimensional time series data has become increasingly important due to its wide-ranging applications. Tensor-based prediction methods have gained attention for their ability to preserve the inherent structure of such data. However, existing approaches, such as tensor autoregression and tensor decomposition, often have consistently failed to provide clear assertions regarding the number of samples that can be exactly predicted. While matrix-based methods using nuclear norms address this limitation, their reliance on matrices limits accuracy and increases computational costs when handling multidimensional data. To overcome these challenges, we reformulate multidimensional time series prediction as a deterministic tensor completion problem and propose a novel theoretical framework. Specifically, we develop a deterministic tensor completion theory and introduce the Temporal Convolutional Tensor Nuclear Norm (TCTNN) model. By convolving the multidimensional time series along the temporal dimension and applying the tensor nuclear norm, our approach identifies the maximum forecast horizon for exact predictions. Additionally, TCTNN achieves superior performance in prediction accuracy and computational efficiency compared to existing methods across diverse real-world datasets, including climate temperature, network flow, and traffic ride data. Our implementation is publicly available at https://github.com/HaoShu2000/TCTNN.
2501.15389
CP2M: Clustered-Patch-Mixed Mosaic Augmentation for Aerial Image Segmentation
cs.CV
Remote sensing image segmentation is pivotal for earth observation, underpinning applications such as environmental monitoring and urban planning. Due to the limited annotation data available in remote sensing images, numerous studies have focused on data augmentation as a means to alleviate overfitting in deep learning networks. However, some existing data augmentation strategies rely on simple transformations that may not sufficiently enhance data diversity or model generalization capabilities. This paper proposes a novel augmentation strategy, Clustered-Patch-Mixed Mosaic (CP2M), designed to address these limitations. CP2M integrates a Mosaic augmentation phase with a clustered patch mix phase. The former stage constructs a new sample from four random samples, while the latter phase uses the connected component labeling algorithm to ensure the augmented data maintains spatial coherence and avoids introducing irrelevant semantics when pasting random patches. Our experiments on the ISPRS Potsdam dataset demonstrate that CP2M substantially mitigates overfitting, setting new benchmarks for segmentation accuracy and model robustness in remote sensing tasks.
2501.15392
Faster Configuration Performance Bug Testing with Neural Dual-level Prioritization
cs.SE cs.AI
As software systems become more complex and configurable, more performance problems tend to arise from the configuration designs. This has caused some configuration options to unexpectedly degrade performance which deviates from their original expectations designed by the developers. Such discrepancies, namely configuration performance bugs (CPBugs), are devastating and can be deeply hidden in the source code. Yet, efficiently testing CPBugs is difficult, not only due to the test oracle is hard to set, but also because the configuration measurement is expensive and there are simply too many possible configurations to test. As such, existing testing tools suffer from lengthy runtime or have been ineffective in detecting CPBugs when the budget is limited, compounded by inaccurate test oracle. In this paper, we seek to achieve significantly faster CPBug testing by neurally prioritizing the testing at both the configuration option and value range levels with automated oracle estimation. Our proposed tool, dubbed NDP, is a general framework that works with different heuristic generators. The idea is to leverage two neural language models: one to estimate the CPBug types that serve as the oracle while, more vitally, the other to infer the probabilities of an option being CPBug-related, based on which the options and the value ranges to be searched can be prioritized. Experiments on several widely-used systems of different versions reveal that NDP can, in general, better predict CPBug type in 87% cases and find more CPBugs with up to 88.88x testing efficiency speedup over the state-of-the-art tools.
2501.15393
Diffusion-based Hierarchical Negative Sampling for Multimodal Knowledge Graph Completion
cs.AI cs.CL
Multimodal Knowledge Graph Completion (MMKGC) aims to address the critical issue of missing knowledge in multimodal knowledge graphs (MMKGs) for their better applications. However, both the previous MMGKC and negative sampling (NS) approaches ignore the employment of multimodal information to generate diverse and high-quality negative triples from various semantic levels and hardness levels, thereby limiting the effectiveness of training MMKGC models. Thus, we propose a novel Diffusion-based Hierarchical Negative Sampling (DHNS) scheme tailored for MMKGC tasks, which tackles the challenge of generating high-quality negative triples by leveraging a Diffusion-based Hierarchical Embedding Generation (DiffHEG) that progressively conditions on entities and relations as well as multimodal semantics. Furthermore, we develop a Negative Triple-Adaptive Training (NTAT) strategy that dynamically adjusts training margins associated with the hardness level of the synthesized negative triples, facilitating a more robust and effective learning procedure to distinguish between positive and negative triples. Extensive experiments on three MMKGC benchmark datasets demonstrate that our framework outperforms several state-of-the-art MMKGC models and negative sampling techniques, illustrating the effectiveness of our DHNS for training MMKGC models. The source codes and datasets of this paper are available at https://github.com/ngl567/DHNS.
2501.15394
Doracamom: Joint 3D Detection and Occupancy Prediction with Multi-view 4D Radars and Cameras for Omnidirectional Perception
cs.CV
3D object detection and occupancy prediction are critical tasks in autonomous driving, attracting significant attention. Despite the potential of recent vision-based methods, they encounter challenges under adverse conditions. Thus, integrating cameras with next-generation 4D imaging radar to achieve unified multi-task perception is highly significant, though research in this domain remains limited. In this paper, we propose Doracamom, the first framework that fuses multi-view cameras and 4D radar for joint 3D object detection and semantic occupancy prediction, enabling comprehensive environmental perception. Specifically, we introduce a novel Coarse Voxel Queries Generator that integrates geometric priors from 4D radar with semantic features from images to initialize voxel queries, establishing a robust foundation for subsequent Transformer-based refinement. To leverage temporal information, we design a Dual-Branch Temporal Encoder that processes multi-modal temporal features in parallel across BEV and voxel spaces, enabling comprehensive spatio-temporal representation learning. Furthermore, we propose a Cross-Modal BEV-Voxel Fusion module that adaptively fuses complementary features through attention mechanisms while employing auxiliary tasks to enhance feature quality. Extensive experiments on the OmniHD-Scenes, View-of-Delft (VoD), and TJ4DRadSet datasets demonstrate that Doracamom achieves state-of-the-art performance in both tasks, establishing new benchmarks for multi-modal 3D perception. Code and models will be publicly available.
2501.15396
Foundations of a Knee Joint Digital Twin from qMRI Biomarkers for Osteoarthritis and Knee Replacement
q-bio.QM cs.CV cs.LG eess.IV stat.AP
This study forms the basis of a digital twin system of the knee joint, using advanced quantitative MRI (qMRI) and machine learning to advance precision health in osteoarthritis (OA) management and knee replacement (KR) prediction. We combined deep learning-based segmentation of knee joint structures with dimensionality reduction to create an embedded feature space of imaging biomarkers. Through cross-sectional cohort analysis and statistical modeling, we identified specific biomarkers, including variations in cartilage thickness and medial meniscus shape, that are significantly associated with OA incidence and KR outcomes. Integrating these findings into a comprehensive framework represents a considerable step toward personalized knee-joint digital twins, which could enhance therapeutic strategies and inform clinical decision-making in rheumatological care. This versatile and reliable infrastructure has the potential to be extended to broader clinical applications in precision health.
2501.15398
How Green are Neural Language Models? Analyzing Energy Consumption in Text Summarization Fine-tuning
cs.CL
Artificial intelligence systems significantly impact the environment, particularly in natural language processing (NLP) tasks. These tasks often require extensive computational resources to train deep neural networks, including large-scale language models containing billions of parameters. This study analyzes the trade-offs between energy consumption and performance across three neural language models: two pre-trained models (T5-base and BART-base), and one large language model (LLaMA 3-8B). These models were fine-tuned for the text summarization task, focusing on generating research paper highlights that encapsulate the core themes of each paper. A wide range of evaluation metrics, including ROUGE, METEOR, MoverScore, BERTScore, and SciBERTScore, were employed to assess their performance. Furthermore, the carbon footprint associated with fine-tuning each model was measured, offering a comprehensive assessment of their environmental impact. This research underscores the importance of incorporating environmental considerations into the design and implementation of neural language models and calls for the advancement of energy-efficient AI methodologies.
2501.15403
Scaling of hardware-compatible perturbative training algorithms
cs.LG cs.NE math.OC
In this work, we explore the capabilities of multiplexed gradient descent (MGD), a scalable and efficient perturbative zeroth-order training method for estimating the gradient of a loss function in hardware and training it via stochastic gradient descent. We extend the framework to include both weight and node perturbation, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. We investigate the time to train networks using MGD as a function of network size and task complexity. Previous research has suggested that perturbative training methods do not scale well to large problems, since in these methods the time to estimate the gradient scales linearly with the number of network parameters. However, in this work we show that the time to reach a target accuracy--that is, actually solve the problem of interest--does not follow this undesirable linear scaling, and in fact often decreases with network size. Furthermore, we demonstrate that MGD can be used to calculate a drop-in replacement for the gradient in stochastic gradient descent, and therefore optimization accelerators such as momentum can be used alongside MGD, ensuring compatibility with existing machine learning practices. Our results indicate that MGD can efficiently train large networks on hardware, achieving accuracy comparable to backpropagation, thus presenting a practical solution for future neuromorphic computing systems.
2501.15404
A Neurosymbolic Framework for Geometric Reduction of Binary Forms
cs.AI cs.LG
This paper compares Julia reduction and hyperbolic reduction with the aim of finding equivalent binary forms with minimal coefficients. We demonstrate that hyperbolic reduction generally outperforms Julia reduction, particularly in the cases of sextics and decimics, though neither method guarantees achieving the minimal form. We further propose an additional shift and scaling to approximate the minimal form more closely. Finally, we introduce a machine learning framework to identify optimal transformations that minimize the heights of binary forms. This study provides new insights into the geometry and algebra of binary forms and highlights the potential of AI in advancing symbolic computation and reduction techniques. The findings, supported by extensive computational experiments, lay the groundwork for hybrid approaches that integrate traditional reduction methods with data-driven techniques.
2501.15405
Semantic Layered Embedding Diffusion in Large Language Models for Multi-Contextual Consistency
cs.CL cs.AI
The Semantic Layered Embedding Diffusion (SLED) mechanism redefines the representation of hierarchical semantics within transformer-based architectures, enabling enhanced contextual consistency across a wide array of linguistic tasks. By introducing a multi-layered diffusion process grounded in spectral analysis, it achieves a complex balance between global and local semantic coherence. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in perplexity and BLEU scores, emphasizing the mechanism's ability to adapt effectively across diverse domains, including multilingual and cross-domain text generation. A rigorous mathematical framework underpins the embedding diffusion process, incorporating weighted adjacency matrices, kernel-based refinements, and dynamic layer-wise normalization. Error distribution analysis reveals that SLED addresses challenges in semantic alignment and coherence, outperforming baseline approaches across varied benchmarks. Scalability studies illustrate that its performance gains are maintained consistently across different model sizes, reflecting a practical balance between computational efficiency and linguistic precision. The implementation also achieves energy efficiency, reducing resource consumption during training and inference phases without compromising accuracy. Qualitative case studies further validate its adaptability to extended narratives and context-intensive scenarios, highlighting the mechanism's potential for real-world applications. SLED offers a different perspective on embedding design and its implications for advancing language modeling.
2501.15406
A Token-FCM based risk assessment method for complex engineering designs
cs.CE
Engineering design risks could cause unaffordable losses, and thus risk assessment plays a critical role in engineering design. On the other hand, the high complexity of modern engineering designs makes it difficult to assess risks effectively and accurately due to the complex two-way, dynamic causal-effect risk relations in engineering designs. To address this problem, this paper proposes a new risk assessment method called token fuzzy cognitive map (Token-FCM). Its basic idea is to model the two-way causal-risk relations with the FCM method, and then augment FCM with a token mechanism to model the dynamics in causal-effect risk relations. Furthermore, the fuzzy sets and the group decision-making method are introduced to initialize the Token-FCM method so that comprehensive and accurate risk assessments can be attained. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been demonstrated by a real example of engine design for a horizontal directional drilling machine.
2501.15407
Turn That Frown Upside Down: FaceID Customization via Cross-Training Data
cs.CV cs.AI cs.LG
Existing face identity (FaceID) customization methods perform well but are limited to generating identical faces as the input, while in real-world applications, users often desire images of the same person but with variations, such as different expressions (e.g., smiling, angry) or angles (e.g., side profile). This limitation arises from the lack of datasets with controlled input-output facial variations, restricting models' ability to learn effective modifications. To address this issue, we propose CrossFaceID, the first large-scale, high-quality, and publicly available dataset specifically designed to improve the facial modification capabilities of FaceID customization models. Specifically, CrossFaceID consists of 40,000 text-image pairs from approximately 2,000 persons, with each person represented by around 20 images showcasing diverse facial attributes such as poses, expressions, angles, and adornments. During the training stage, a specific face of a person is used as input, and the FaceID customization model is forced to generate another image of the same person but with altered facial features. This allows the FaceID customization model to acquire the ability to personalize and modify known facial features during the inference stage. Experiments show that models fine-tuned on the CrossFaceID dataset retain its performance in preserving FaceID fidelity while significantly improving its face customization capabilities. To facilitate further advancements in the FaceID customization field, our code, constructed datasets, and trained models are fully available to the public.
2501.15409
TdAttenMix: Top-Down Attention Guided Mixup
cs.CV cs.AI
CutMix is a data augmentation strategy that cuts and pastes image patches to mixup training data. Existing methods pick either random or salient areas which are often inconsistent to labels, thus misguiding the training model. By our knowledge, we integrate human gaze to guide cutmix for the first time. Since human attention is driven by both high-level recognition and low-level clues, we propose a controllable Top-down Attention Guided Module to obtain a general artificial attention which balances top-down and bottom-up attention. The proposed TdATttenMix then picks the patches and adjust the label mixing ratio that focuses on regions relevant to the current label. Experimental results demonstrate that our TdAttenMix outperforms existing state-of-the-art mixup methods across eight different benchmarks. Additionally, we introduce a new metric based on the human gaze and use this metric to investigate the issue of image-label inconsistency. Project page: \url{https://github.com/morning12138/TdAttenMix}
2501.15411
The Potential of Large Language Models in Supply Chain Management: Advancing Decision-Making, Efficiency, and Innovation
cs.CY cs.CL
The integration of large language models (LLMs) into supply chain management (SCM) is revolutionizing the industry by improving decision-making, predictive analytics, and operational efficiency. This white paper explores the transformative impact of LLMs on various SCM functions, including demand forecasting, inventory management, supplier relationship management, and logistics optimization. By leveraging advanced data analytics and real-time insights, LLMs enable organizations to optimize resources, reduce costs, and improve responsiveness to market changes. Key findings highlight the benefits of integrating LLMs with emerging technologies such as IoT, blockchain, and robotics, which together create smarter and more autonomous supply chains. Ethical considerations, including bias mitigation and data protection, are taken into account to ensure fair and transparent AI practices. In addition, the paper discusses the need to educate the workforce on how to manage new AI-driven processes and the long-term strategic benefits of adopting LLMs. Strategic recommendations for SCM professionals include investing in high-quality data management, promoting cross-functional collaboration, and aligning LLM initiatives with overall business goals. The findings highlight the potential of LLMs to drive innovation, sustainability, and competitive advantage in the ever-changing supply chain management landscape.
2501.15415
OCSU: Optical Chemical Structure Understanding for Molecule-centric Scientific Discovery
cs.CV
Understanding the chemical structure from a graphical representation of a molecule is a challenging image caption task that would greatly benefit molecule-centric scientific discovery. Variations in molecular images and caption subtasks pose a significant challenge in both image representation learning and task modeling. Yet, existing methods only focus on a specific caption task that translates a molecular image into its graph structure, i.e., OCSR. In this paper, we propose the Optical Chemical Structure Understanding (OCSU) task, which extends OCSR to molecular image caption from motif level to molecule level and abstract level. We present two approaches for that, including an OCSR-based method and an end-to-end OCSR-free method. The proposed Double-Check achieves SOTA OCSR performance on real-world patent and journal article scenarios via attentive feature enhancement for local ambiguous atoms. Cascading with SMILES-based molecule understanding methods, it can leverage the power of existing task-specific models for OCSU. While Mol-VL is an end-to-end optimized VLM-based model. An OCSU dataset, Vis-CheBI20, is built based on the widely used CheBI20 dataset for training and evaluation. Extensive experimental results on Vis-CheBI20 demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches. Improving OCSR capability can lead to a better OCSU performance for OCSR-based approach, and the SOTA performance of Mol-VL demonstrates the great potential of end-to-end approach.
2501.15417
AnyEnhance: A Unified Generative Model with Prompt-Guidance and Self-Critic for Voice Enhancement
cs.SD cs.AI cs.LG eess.AS
We introduce AnyEnhance, a unified generative model for voice enhancement that processes both speech and singing voices. Based on a masked generative model, AnyEnhance is capable of handling both speech and singing voices, supporting a wide range of enhancement tasks including denoising, dereverberation, declipping, super-resolution, and target speaker extraction, all simultaneously and without fine-tuning. AnyEnhance introduces a prompt-guidance mechanism for in-context learning, which allows the model to natively accept a reference speaker's timbre. In this way, it could boost enhancement performance when a reference audio is available and enable the target speaker extraction task without altering the underlying architecture. Moreover, we also introduce a self-critic mechanism into the generative process for masked generative models, yielding higher-quality outputs through iterative self-assessment and refinement. Extensive experiments on various enhancement tasks demonstrate AnyEnhance outperforms existing methods in terms of both objective metrics and subjective listening tests. Demo audios are publicly available at https://amphionspace.github.io/anyenhance/.
2501.15418
Episodic Novelty Through Temporal Distance
cs.LG cs.AI
Exploration in sparse reward environments remains a significant challenge in reinforcement learning, particularly in Contextual Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs), where environments differ across episodes. Existing episodic intrinsic motivation methods for CMDPs primarily rely on count-based approaches, which are ineffective in large state spaces, or on similarity-based methods that lack appropriate metrics for state comparison. To address these shortcomings, we propose Episodic Novelty Through Temporal Distance (ETD), a novel approach that introduces temporal distance as a robust metric for state similarity and intrinsic reward computation. By employing contrastive learning, ETD accurately estimates temporal distances and derives intrinsic rewards based on the novelty of states within the current episode. Extensive experiments on various benchmark tasks demonstrate that ETD significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods, highlighting its effectiveness in enhancing exploration in sparse reward CMDPs.
2501.15420
Visual Generation Without Guidance
cs.CV cs.AI cs.LG
Classifier-Free Guidance (CFG) has been a default technique in various visual generative models, yet it requires inference from both conditional and unconditional models during sampling. We propose to build visual models that are free from guided sampling. The resulting algorithm, Guidance-Free Training (GFT), matches the performance of CFG while reducing sampling to a single model, halving the computational cost. Unlike previous distillation-based approaches that rely on pretrained CFG networks, GFT enables training directly from scratch. GFT is simple to implement. It retains the same maximum likelihood objective as CFG and differs mainly in the parameterization of conditional models. Implementing GFT requires only minimal modifications to existing codebases, as most design choices and hyperparameters are directly inherited from CFG. Our extensive experiments across five distinct visual models demonstrate the effectiveness and versatility of GFT. Across domains of diffusion, autoregressive, and masked-prediction modeling, GFT consistently achieves comparable or even lower FID scores, with similar diversity-fidelity trade-offs compared with CFG baselines, all while being guidance-free. Code will be available at https://github.com/thu-ml/GFT.
2501.15423
Stroke Lesion Segmentation using Multi-Stage Cross-Scale Attention
eess.IV cs.CV
Precise characterization of stroke lesions from MRI data has immense value in prognosticating clinical and cognitive outcomes following a stroke. Manual stroke lesion segmentation is time-consuming and requires the expertise of neurologists and neuroradiologists. Often, lesions are grossly characterized for their location and overall extent using bounding boxes without specific delineation of their boundaries. While such characterization provides some clinical value, to develop a precise mechanistic understanding of the impact of lesions on post-stroke vascular contributions to cognitive impairments and dementia (VCID), the stroke lesions need to be fully segmented with accurate boundaries. This work introduces the Multi-Stage Cross-Scale Attention (MSCSA) mechanism, applied to the U-Net family, to improve the mapping between brain structural features and lesions of varying sizes. Using the Anatomical Tracings of Lesions After Stroke (ATLAS) v2.0 dataset, MSCSA outperforms all baseline methods in both Dice and F1 scores on a subset focusing on small lesions, while maintaining competitive performance across the entire dataset. Notably, the ensemble strategy incorporating MSCSA achieves the highest scores for Dice and F1 on both the full dataset and the small lesion subset. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of MSCSA in segmenting small lesions and highlight its robustness across different training schemes for large stroke lesions. Our code is available at: https://github.com/nadluru/StrokeLesSeg.
2501.15425
An Empirically-parametrized Spatio-Temporal Extended-SIR Model for Combined Dilution and Vaccination Mitigation for Rabies Outbreaks in Wild Jackals
cs.IR physics.soc-ph
The transmission of zoonotic diseases between animals and humans poses an increasing threat. Rabies is a prominent example with various instances globally, facilitated by a surplus of meso-predators (commonly, facultative synanthropic species e.g., golden jackals [Canis aureus, hereafter jackals]) thanks to the abundance of anthropogenic resources leading to dense populations close to human establishments. To mitigate rabies outbreaks and prevent human infections, authorities target the jackal which is the main rabies vector in many regions, through the dissemination of oral vaccines in known jackals' activity centers, as well as opportunistic culling to reduce population density. Because dilution (i.e., culling) is not selective towards sick or un-vaccinated individuals, these two complementary epizootic intervention policies (EIPs) can interfere with each other. Nonetheless, there is only limited examination of the interactive effectiveness of these EIPs and their potential influence on rabies epizootic spread dynamics, highlighting the need to understand these measures and the spread of rabies in wild jackals. In this study, we introduce a novel spatio-temporal extended-SIR (susceptible-infected-recovered) model with a graph-based spatial framework for evaluating mitigation efficiency. We implement the model in a case study using a jackal population in northern Israel, and using spatial and movement data collected by Advanced Tracking and Localization of Animals in real-life Systems (ATLAS) telemetry. An agent-based simulation approach allows us to explore various biologically-realistic scenarios, and assess the impact of different EIPs configurations. Our model suggests that under biologically-realistic underlying assumptions and scenarios, the effectiveness of both EIPs is not influenced much by the jackal population size but is sensitive to their dispersal between activity centers.
2501.15426
FAVbot: An Autonomous Target Tracking Micro-Robot with Frequency Actuation Control
cs.RO cs.SY eess.SY
Robotic autonomy at centimeter scale requires compact and miniaturization-friendly actuation integrated with sensing and neural network processing assembly within a tiny form factor. Applications of such systems have witnessed significant advancements in recent years in fields such as healthcare, manufacturing, and post-disaster rescue. The system design at this scale puts stringent constraints on power consumption for both the sensory front-end and actuation back-end and the weight of the electronic assembly for robust operation. In this paper, we introduce FAVbot, the first autonomous mobile micro-robotic system integrated with a novel actuation mechanism and convolutional neural network (CNN) based computer vision - all integrated within a compact 3-cm form factor. The novel actuation mechanism utilizes mechanical resonance phenomenon to achieve frequency-controlled steering with a single piezoelectric actuator. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of FAVbot's frequency-controlled actuation, which offers a diverse selection of resonance modes with different motion characteristics. The actuation system is complemented with the vision front-end where a camera along with a microcontroller supports object detection for closed-loop control and autonomous target tracking. This enables adaptive navigation in dynamic environments. This work contributes to the evolving landscape of neural network-enabled micro-robotic systems showing the smallest autonomous robot built using controllable multi-directional single-actuator mechanism.
2501.15427
OpenCharacter: Training Customizable Role-Playing LLMs with Large-Scale Synthetic Personas
cs.CL
Customizable role-playing in large language models (LLMs), also known as character generalization, is gaining increasing attention for its versatility and cost-efficiency in developing and deploying role-playing dialogue agents. This study explores a large-scale data synthesis approach to equip LLMs with character generalization capabilities. We begin by synthesizing large-scale character profiles using personas from Persona Hub and then explore two strategies: response rewriting and response generation, to create character-aligned instructional responses. To validate the effectiveness of our synthetic instruction tuning data for character generalization, we perform supervised fine-tuning (SFT) using the LLaMA-3 8B model. Our best-performing model strengthens the original LLaMA-3 8B Instruct model and achieves performance comparable to GPT-4o models on role-playing dialogue. We release our synthetic characters and instruction-tuning dialogues to support public research.
2501.15429
An Aspect Performance-aware Hypergraph Neural Network for Review-based Recommendation
cs.IR
Online reviews allow consumers to provide detailed feedback on various aspects of items. Existing methods utilize these aspects to model users' fine-grained preferences for specific item features through graph neural networks. We argue that the performance of items on different aspects is important for making precise recommendations, which has not been taken into account by existing approaches, due to lack of data. In this paper, we propose an aspect performance-aware hypergraph neural network (APH) for the review-based recommendation, which learns the performance of items from the conflicting sentiment polarity of user reviews. Specifically, APH comprehensively models the relationships among users, items, aspects, and sentiment polarity by systematically constructing an aspect hypergraph based on user reviews. In addition, APH aggregates aspects representing users and items by employing an aspect performance-aware hypergraph aggregation method. It aggregates the sentiment polarities from multiple users by jointly considering user preferences and the semantics of their sentiments, determining the weights of sentiment polarities to infer the performance of items on various aspects. Such performances are then used as weights to aggregate neighboring aspects. Experiments on six real-world datasets demonstrate that APH improves MSE, Precision@5, and Recall@5 by an average of 2.30%, 4.89%, and 1.60% over the best baseline. The source code and data are available at https://github.com/dianziliu/APH.
2501.15430
Evaluating Simple Debiasing Techniques in RoBERTa-based Hate Speech Detection Models
cs.CL
The hate speech detection task is known to suffer from bias against African American English (AAE) dialect text, due to the annotation bias present in the underlying hate speech datasets used to train these models. This leads to a disparity where normal AAE text is more likely to be misclassified as abusive/hateful compared to non-AAE text. Simple debiasing techniques have been developed in the past to counter this sort of disparity, and in this work, we apply and evaluate these techniques in the scope of RoBERTa-based encoders. Experimental results suggest that the success of these techniques depends heavily on the methods used for training dataset construction, but with proper consideration of representation bias, they can reduce the disparity seen among dialect subgroups on the hate speech detection task.
2501.15431
Self-supervised Benchmark Lottery on ImageNet: Do Marginal Improvements Translate to Improvements on Similar Datasets?
cs.CV cs.AI cs.LG
Machine learning (ML) research strongly relies on benchmarks in order to determine the relative effectiveness of newly proposed models. Recently, a number of prominent research effort argued that a number of models that improve the state-of-the-art by a small margin tend to do so by winning what they call a "benchmark lottery". An important benchmark in the field of machine learning and computer vision is the ImageNet where newly proposed models are often showcased based on their performance on this dataset. Given the large number of self-supervised learning (SSL) frameworks that has been proposed in the past couple of years each coming with marginal improvements on the ImageNet dataset, in this work, we evaluate whether those marginal improvements on ImageNet translate to improvements on similar datasets or not. To do so, we investigate twelve popular SSL frameworks on five ImageNet variants and discover that models that seem to perform well on ImageNet may experience significant performance declines on similar datasets. Specifically, state-of-the-art frameworks such as DINO and Swav, which are praised for their performance, exhibit substantial drops in performance while MoCo and Barlow Twins displays comparatively good results. As a result, we argue that otherwise good and desirable properties of models remain hidden when benchmarking is only performed on the ImageNet validation set, making us call for more adequate benchmarking. To avoid the "benchmark lottery" on ImageNet and to ensure a fair benchmarking process, we investigate the usage of a unified metric that takes into account the performance of models on other ImageNet variant datasets.
2501.15434
Mitigating Spurious Negative Pairs for Robust Industrial Anomaly Detection
cs.CV
Despite significant progress in Anomaly Detection (AD), the robustness of existing detection methods against adversarial attacks remains a challenge, compromising their reliability in critical real-world applications such as autonomous driving. This issue primarily arises from the AD setup, which assumes that training data is limited to a group of unlabeled normal samples, making the detectors vulnerable to adversarial anomaly samples during testing. Additionally, implementing adversarial training as a safeguard encounters difficulties, such as formulating an effective objective function without access to labels. An ideal objective function for adversarial training in AD should promote strong perturbations both within and between the normal and anomaly groups to maximize margin between normal and anomaly distribution. To address these issues, we first propose crafting a pseudo-anomaly group derived from normal group samples. Then, we demonstrate that adversarial training with contrastive loss could serve as an ideal objective function, as it creates both inter- and intra-group perturbations. However, we notice that spurious negative pairs compromise the conventional contrastive loss to achieve robust AD. Spurious negative pairs are those that should be closely mapped but are erroneously separated. These pairs introduce noise and misguide the direction of inter-group adversarial perturbations. To overcome the effect of spurious negative pairs, we define opposite pairs and adversarially pull them apart to strengthen inter-group perturbations. Experimental results demonstrate our superior performance in both clean and adversarial scenarios, with a 26.1% improvement in robust detection across various challenging benchmark datasets. The implementation of our work is available at: https://github.com/rohban-lab/COBRA.
2501.15435
Making Sense Of Distributed Representations With Activation Spectroscopy
cs.LG cs.CV
In the study of neural network interpretability, there is growing evidence to suggest that relevant features are encoded across many neurons in a distributed fashion. Making sense of these distributed representations without knowledge of the network's encoding strategy is a combinatorial task that is not guaranteed to be tractable. This work explores one feasible path to both detecting and tracing the joint influence of neurons in a distributed representation. We term this approach Activation Spectroscopy (ActSpec), owing to its analysis of the pseudo-Boolean Fourier spectrum defined over the activation patterns of a network layer. The sub-network defined between a given layer and an output logit is cast as a special class of pseudo-Boolean function. The contributions of each subset of neurons in the specified layer can be quantified through the function's Fourier coefficients. We propose a combinatorial optimization procedure to search for Fourier coefficients that are simultaneously high-valued, and non-redundant. This procedure can be viewed as an extension of the Goldreich-Levin algorithm which incorporates additional problem-specific constraints. The resulting coefficients specify a collection of subsets, which are used to test the degree to which a representation is distributed. We verify our approach in a number of synthetic settings and compare against existing interpretability benchmarks. We conclude with a number of experimental evaluations on an MNIST classifier, and a transformer-based network for sentiment analysis.
2501.15438
Cross-Modal Transfer from Memes to Videos: Addressing Data Scarcity in Hateful Video Detection
cs.CV cs.MM
Detecting hate speech in online content is essential to ensuring safer digital spaces. While significant progress has been made in text and meme modalities, video-based hate speech detection remains under-explored, hindered by a lack of annotated datasets and the high cost of video annotation. This gap is particularly problematic given the growing reliance on large models, which demand substantial amounts of training data. To address this challenge, we leverage meme datasets as both a substitution and an augmentation strategy for training hateful video detection models. Our approach introduces a human-assisted reannotation pipeline to align meme dataset labels with video datasets, ensuring consistency with minimal labeling effort. Using two state-of-the-art vision-language models, we demonstrate that meme data can substitute for video data in resource-scarce scenarios and augment video datasets to achieve further performance gains. Our results consistently outperform state-of-the-art benchmarks, showcasing the potential of cross-modal transfer learning for advancing hateful video detection. Dataset and code are available at https://github.com/Social-AI-Studio/CrossModalTransferLearning.
2501.15440
Dfilled: Repurposing Edge-Enhancing Diffusion for Guided DSM Void Filling
cs.CV
Digital Surface Models (DSMs) are essential for accurately representing Earth's topography in geospatial analyses. DSMs capture detailed elevations of natural and manmade features, crucial for applications like urban planning, vegetation studies, and 3D reconstruction. However, DSMs derived from stereo satellite imagery often contain voids or missing data due to occlusions, shadows, and lowsignal areas. Previous studies have primarily focused on void filling for digital elevation models (DEMs) and Digital Terrain Models (DTMs), employing methods such as inverse distance weighting (IDW), kriging, and spline interpolation. While effective for simpler terrains, these approaches often fail to handle the intricate structures present in DSMs. To overcome these limitations, we introduce Dfilled, a guided DSM void filling method that leverages optical remote sensing images through edge-enhancing diffusion. Dfilled repurposes deep anisotropic diffusion models, which originally designed for super-resolution tasks, to inpaint DSMs. Additionally, we utilize Perlin noise to create inpainting masks that mimic natural void patterns in DSMs. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that Dfilled surpasses traditional interpolation methods and deep learning approaches in DSM void filling tasks. Both quantitative and qualitative assessments highlight the method's ability to manage complex features and deliver accurate, visually coherent results.
2501.15442
Overview of the Amphion Toolkit (v0.2)
cs.SD cs.AI eess.AS
Amphion is an open-source toolkit for Audio, Music, and Speech Generation, designed to lower the entry barrier for junior researchers and engineers in these fields. It provides a versatile framework that supports a variety of generation tasks and models. In this report, we introduce Amphion v0.2, the second major release developed in 2024. This release features a 100K-hour open-source multilingual dataset, a robust data preparation pipeline, and novel models for tasks such as text-to-speech, audio coding, and voice conversion. Furthermore, the report includes multiple tutorials that guide users through the functionalities and usage of the newly released models.
2501.15443
InfoBFR: Real-World Blind Face Restoration via Information Bottleneck
cs.CV
Blind face restoration (BFR) is a highly challenging problem due to the uncertainty of data degradation patterns. Current BFR methods have realized certain restored productions but with inherent neural degradations that limit real-world generalization in complicated scenarios. In this paper, we propose a plug-and-play framework InfoBFR to tackle neural degradations, e.g., prior bias, topological distortion, textural distortion, and artifact residues, which achieves high-generalization face restoration in diverse wild and heterogeneous scenes. Specifically, based on the results from pre-trained BFR models, InfoBFR considers information compression using manifold information bottleneck (MIB) and information compensation with efficient diffusion LoRA to conduct information optimization. InfoBFR effectively synthesizes high-fidelity faces without attribute and identity distortions. Comprehensive experimental results demonstrate the superiority of InfoBFR over state-of-the-art GAN-based and diffusion-based BFR methods, with around 70ms consumption, 16M trainable parameters, and nearly 85% BFR-boosting. It is promising that InfoBFR will be the first plug-and-play restorer universally employed by diverse BFR models to conquer neural degradations.
2501.15445
StochSync: Stochastic Diffusion Synchronization for Image Generation in Arbitrary Spaces
cs.CV cs.AI
We propose a zero-shot method for generating images in arbitrary spaces (e.g., a sphere for 360{\deg} panoramas and a mesh surface for texture) using a pretrained image diffusion model. The zero-shot generation of various visual content using a pretrained image diffusion model has been explored mainly in two directions. First, Diffusion Synchronization-performing reverse diffusion processes jointly across different projected spaces while synchronizing them in the target space-generates high-quality outputs when enough conditioning is provided, but it struggles in its absence. Second, Score Distillation Sampling-gradually updating the target space data through gradient descent-results in better coherence but often lacks detail. In this paper, we reveal for the first time the interconnection between these two methods while highlighting their differences. To this end, we propose StochSync, a novel approach that combines the strengths of both, enabling effective performance with weak conditioning. Our experiments demonstrate that StochSync provides the best performance in 360{\deg} panorama generation (where image conditioning is not given), outperforming previous finetuning-based methods, and also delivers comparable results in 3D mesh texturing (where depth conditioning is provided) with previous methods.
2501.15446
Token Democracy: The Architectural Limits of Alignment in Transformer-Based Language Models
cs.CL cs.AI
Modern language models paradoxically combine unprecedented capability with persistent vulnerability in that they can draft poetry yet cannot reliably refuse harmful requests. We reveal this fragility stems not from inadequate training, but from a fundamental architectural limitation: transformers process all tokens as equals. Transformers operate as computational democracies, granting equal voice to all tokens. This is a design tragically unsuited for AGI, where we cannot risk adversarial "candidates" hijacking the system. Through formal analysis, we demonstrate that safety instructions fundamentally lack privileged status in transformer architectures, that they compete with adversarial inputs in the same computational arena, making robust alignment through prompting or fine-tuning inherently limited. This "token democracy" explains why jailbreaks bypass even extensively safety-trained models and why positional shifts erode prompt effectiveness. Our work systematizes practitioners' tacit knowledge into an architectural critique, showing current alignment approaches create mere preferences, not constraints.
2501.15448
SQ-DM: Accelerating Diffusion Models with Aggressive Quantization and Temporal Sparsity
cs.CV cs.AI cs.AR cs.LG
Diffusion models have gained significant popularity in image generation tasks. However, generating high-quality content remains notably slow because it requires running model inference over many time steps. To accelerate these models, we propose to aggressively quantize both weights and activations, while simultaneously promoting significant activation sparsity. We further observe that the stated sparsity pattern varies among different channels and evolves across time steps. To support this quantization and sparsity scheme, we present a novel diffusion model accelerator featuring a heterogeneous mixed-precision dense-sparse architecture, channel-last address mapping, and a time-step-aware sparsity detector for efficient handling of the sparsity pattern. Our 4-bit quantization technique demonstrates superior generation quality compared to existing 4-bit methods. Our custom accelerator achieves 6.91x speed-up and 51.5% energy reduction compared to traditional dense accelerators.
2501.15449
Breaking the SSL-AL Barrier: A Synergistic Semi-Supervised Active Learning Framework for 3D Object Detection
cs.CV
To address the annotation burden in LiDAR-based 3D object detection, active learning (AL) methods offer a promising solution. However, traditional active learning approaches solely rely on a small amount of labeled data to train an initial model for data selection, overlooking the potential of leveraging the abundance of unlabeled data. Recently, attempts to integrate semi-supervised learning (SSL) into AL with the goal of leveraging unlabeled data have faced challenges in effectively resolving the conflict between the two paradigms, resulting in less satisfactory performance. To tackle this conflict, we propose a Synergistic Semi-Supervised Active Learning framework, dubbed as S-SSAL. Specifically, from the perspective of SSL, we propose a Collaborative PseudoScene Pre-training (CPSP) method that effectively learns from unlabeled data without introducing adverse effects. From the perspective of AL, we design a Collaborative Active Learning (CAL) method, which complements the uncertainty and diversity methods by model cascading. This allows us to fully exploit the potential of the CPSP pre-trained model. Extensive experiments conducted on KITTI and Waymo demonstrate the effectiveness of our S-SSAL framework. Notably, on the KITTI dataset, utilizing only 2% labeled data, S-SSAL can achieve performance comparable to models trained on the full dataset.
2501.15450
FlatTrack: Eye-tracking with ultra-thin lensless cameras
eess.IV cs.CV
Existing eye trackers use cameras based on thick compound optical elements, necessitating the cameras to be placed at focusing distance from the eyes. This results in the overall bulk of wearable eye trackers, especially for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) headsets. We overcome this limitation by building a compact flat eye gaze tracker using mask-based lensless cameras. These cameras, in combination with co-designed lightweight deep neural network algorithm, can be placed in extreme close proximity to the eye, within the eyeglasses frame, resulting in ultra-flat and lightweight eye gaze tracker system. We collect a large dataset of near-eye lensless camera measurements along with their calibrated gaze directions for training the gaze tracking network. Through real and simulation experiments, we show that the proposed gaze tracking system performs on par with conventional lens-based trackers while maintaining a significantly flatter and more compact form-factor. Moreover, our gaze regressor boasts real-time (>125 fps) performance for gaze tracking.
2501.15451
STATE ToxiCN: A Benchmark for Span-level Target-Aware Toxicity Extraction in Chinese Hate Speech Detection
cs.CL
The proliferation of hate speech has caused significant harm to society. The intensity and directionality of hate are closely tied to the target and argument it is associated with. However, research on hate speech detection in Chinese has lagged behind, and existing datasets lack span-level fine-grained annotations. Furthermore, the lack of research on Chinese hateful slang poses a significant challenge. In this paper, we provide a solution for fine-grained detection of Chinese hate speech. First, we construct a dataset containing Target-Argument-Hateful-Group quadruples (STATE ToxiCN), which is the first span-level Chinese hate speech dataset. Secondly, we evaluate the span-level hate speech detection performance of existing models using STATE ToxiCN. Finally, we conduct the first study on Chinese hateful slang and evaluate the ability of LLMs to detect such expressions. Our work contributes valuable resources and insights to advance span-level hate speech detection in Chinese.
2501.15452
Identifying Critical Tokens for Accurate Predictions in Transformer-based Medical Imaging Models
cs.CV cs.AI
With the advancements in self-supervised learning (SSL), transformer-based computer vision models have recently demonstrated superior results compared to convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and are poised to dominate the field of artificial intelligence (AI)-based medical imaging in the upcoming years. Nevertheless, similar to CNNs, unveiling the decision-making process of transformer-based models remains a challenge. In this work, we take a step towards demystifying the decision-making process of transformer-based medical imaging models and propose Token Insight, a novel method that identifies the critical tokens that contribute to the prediction made by the model. Our method relies on the principled approach of token discarding native to transformer-based models, requires no additional module, and can be applied to any transformer model. Using the proposed approach, we quantify the importance of each token based on its contribution to the prediction and enable a more nuanced understanding of the model's decisions. Our experimental results which are showcased on the problem of colonic polyp identification using both supervised and self-supervised pretrained vision transformers indicate that Token Insight contributes to a more transparent and interpretable transformer-based medical imaging model, fostering trust and facilitating broader adoption in clinical settings.
2501.15453
Data-adaptive Safety Rules for Training Reward Models
cs.CL
Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is commonly employed to tailor models to human preferences, especially to improve the safety of outputs from large language models (LLMs). Traditionally, this method depends on selecting preferred responses from pairs. However, due to the variability in human opinions and the challenges in directly comparing two responses, there is an increasing trend towards fine-grained annotation approaches that evaluate responses using multiple targeted metrics or rules. The challenge lies in efficiently choosing and applying these rules to handle the diverse range of preference data. In this paper, we propose a dynamic method that adaptively selects the most important rules for each response pair. We introduce a mathematical framework that utilizes the maximum discrepancy across paired responses and demonstrate theoretically that this approach maximizes the mutual information between the rule-based annotations and the underlying true preferences. We then train an 8B reward model using this adaptively labeled preference dataset and assess its efficacy using RewardBench. As of January 25, 2025, our model achieved the highest safety performance on the leaderboard, surpassing various larger models.
2501.15454
On the Discrimination and Consistency for Exemplar-Free Class Incremental Learning
cs.CV
Exemplar-free class incremental learning (EF-CIL) is a nontrivial task that requires continuously enriching model capability with new classes while maintaining previously learned knowledge without storing and replaying any old class exemplars. An emerging theory-guided framework for CIL trains task-specific models for a shared network, shifting the pressure of forgetting to task-id prediction. In EF-CIL, task-id prediction is more challenging due to the lack of inter-task interaction (e.g., replays of exemplars). To address this issue, we conduct a theoretical analysis of the importance and feasibility of preserving a discriminative and consistent feature space, upon which we propose a novel method termed DCNet. Concretely, it progressively maps class representations into a hyperspherical space, in which different classes are orthogonally distributed to achieve ample inter-class separation. Meanwhile, it also introduces compensatory training to adaptively adjust supervision intensity, thereby aligning the degree of intra-class aggregation. Extensive experiments and theoretical analysis verified the superiority of the proposed DCNet.
2501.15455
CD-Lamba: Boosting Remote Sensing Change Detection via a Cross-Temporal Locally Adaptive State Space Model
cs.CV
Mamba, with its advantages of global perception and linear complexity, has been widely applied to identify changes of the target regions within the remote sensing (RS) images captured under complex scenarios and varied conditions. However, existing remote sensing change detection (RSCD) approaches based on Mamba frequently struggle to effectively perceive the inherent locality of change regions as they direct flatten and scan RS images (i.e., the features of the same region of changes are not distributed continuously within the sequence but are mixed with features from other regions throughout the sequence). In this paper, we propose a novel locally adaptive SSM-based approach, termed CD-Lamba, which effectively enhances the locality of change detection while maintaining global perception. Specifically, our CD-Lamba includes a Locally Adaptive State-Space Scan (LASS) strategy for locality enhancement, a Cross-Temporal State-Space Scan (CTSS) strategy for bi-temporal feature fusion, and a Window Shifting and Perception (WSP) mechanism to enhance interactions across segmented windows. These strategies are integrated into a multi-scale Cross-Temporal Locally Adaptive State-Space Scan (CT-LASS) module to effectively highlight changes and refine changes' representations feature generation. CD-Lamba significantly enhances local-global spatio-temporal interactions in bi-temporal images, offering improved performance in RSCD tasks. Extensive experimental results show that CD-Lamba achieves state-of-the-art performance on four benchmark datasets with a satisfactory efficiency-accuracy trade-off. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/xwmaxwma/rschange.
2501.15458
Amortized Safe Active Learning for Real-Time Decision-Making: Pretrained Neural Policies from Simulated Nonparametric Functions
cs.LG
Active Learning (AL) is a sequential learning approach aiming at selecting the most informative data for model training. In many systems, safety constraints appear during data evaluation, requiring the development of safe AL methods. Key challenges of AL are the repeated model training and acquisition optimization required for data selection, which become particularly restrictive under safety constraints. This repeated effort often creates a bottleneck, especially in physical systems requiring real-time decision-making. In this paper, we propose a novel amortized safe AL framework. By leveraging a pretrained neural network policy, our method eliminates the need for repeated model training and acquisition optimization, achieving substantial speed improvements while maintaining competitive learning outcomes and safety awareness. The policy is trained entirely on synthetic data utilizing a novel safe AL objective. The resulting policy is highly versatile and adapts to a wide range of systems, as we demonstrate in our experiments. Furthermore, our framework is modular and we empirically show that we also achieve superior performance for unconstrained time-sensitive AL tasks if we omit the safety requirement.
2501.15461
Mamba-Based Graph Convolutional Networks: Tackling Over-smoothing with Selective State Space
cs.LG
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have shown great success in various graph-based learning tasks. However, it often faces the issue of over-smoothing as the model depth increases, which causes all node representations to converge to a single value and become indistinguishable. This issue stems from the inherent limitations of GNNs, which struggle to distinguish the importance of information from different neighborhoods. In this paper, we introduce MbaGCN, a novel graph convolutional architecture that draws inspiration from the Mamba paradigm-originally designed for sequence modeling. MbaGCN presents a new backbone for GNNs, consisting of three key components: the Message Aggregation Layer, the Selective State Space Transition Layer, and the Node State Prediction Layer. These components work in tandem to adaptively aggregate neighborhood information, providing greater flexibility and scalability for deep GNN models. While MbaGCN may not consistently outperform all existing methods on each dataset, it provides a foundational framework that demonstrates the effective integration of the Mamba paradigm into graph representation learning. Through extensive experiments on benchmark datasets, we demonstrate that MbaGCN paves the way for future advancements in graph neural network research.
2501.15463
Mind the Value-Action Gap: Do LLMs Act in Alignment with Their Values?
cs.HC cs.AI cs.CL
Existing research primarily evaluates the values of LLMs by examining their stated inclinations towards specific values. However, the "Value-Action Gap," a phenomenon rooted in environmental and social psychology, reveals discrepancies between individuals' stated values and their actions in real-world contexts. To what extent do LLMs exhibit a similar gap between their stated values and their actions informed by those values? This study introduces ValueActionLens, an evaluation framework to assess the alignment between LLMs' stated values and their value-informed actions. The framework encompasses the generation of a dataset comprising 14.8k value-informed actions across twelve cultures and eleven social topics, and two tasks to evaluate how well LLMs' stated value inclinations and value-informed actions align across three different alignment measures. Extensive experiments reveal that the alignment between LLMs' stated values and actions is sub-optimal, varying significantly across scenarios and models. Analysis of misaligned results identifies potential harms from certain value-action gaps. To predict the value-action gaps, we also uncover that leveraging reasoned explanations improves performance. These findings underscore the risks of relying solely on the LLMs' stated values to predict their behaviors and emphasize the importance of context-aware evaluations of LLM values and value-action gaps.
2501.15464
TractoGPT: A GPT architecture for White Matter Segmentation
cs.CV cs.AI
White matter bundle segmentation is crucial for studying brain structural connectivity, neurosurgical planning, and neurological disorders. White Matter Segmentation remains challenging due to structural similarity in streamlines, subject variability, symmetry in 2 hemispheres, etc. To address these challenges, we propose TractoGPT, a GPT-based architecture trained on streamline, cluster, and fusion data representations separately. TractoGPT is a fully-automatic method that generalizes across datasets and retains shape information of the white matter bundles. Experiments also show that TractoGPT outperforms state-of-the-art methods on average DICE, Overlap and Overreach scores. We use TractoInferno and 105HCP datasets and validate generalization across dataset.
2501.15465
Geometry of symplectic group and optimal EAQECC codes
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
A new type of link between geometry of symplectic group and entanglement-assisted (EA) quantum error-correcting codes (EAQECCs) is presented. Relations of symplectic subspaces and quaternary additive codes concerning parameters of EAQECCs are described. Thus, parameters of EA stabilizer codes are revealed in the nomenclature of additive codes. Our techniques enable us solve some open problems about optimal EAQECCs and entanglement-assisted quantum minimum distance separable (EAQMDS) codes, and are also useful for designing encoding and decoding quantum circuit of EA stabilizer codes.
2501.15469
CISOL: An Open and Extensible Dataset for Table Structure Recognition in the Construction Industry
cs.CV
Reproducibility and replicability are critical pillars of empirical research, particularly in machine learning, where they depend not only on the availability of models, but also on the datasets used to train and evaluate those models. In this paper, we introduce the Construction Industry Steel Ordering List (CISOL) dataset, which was developed with a focus on transparency to ensure reproducibility, replicability, and extensibility. CISOL provides a valuable new research resource and highlights the importance of having diverse datasets, even in niche application domains such as table extraction in civil engineering. CISOL is unique in that it contains real-world civil engineering documents from industry, making it a distinctive contribution to the field. The dataset contains more than 120,000 annotated instances in over 800 document images, positioning it as a medium-sized dataset that provides a robust foundation for Table Structure Recognition (TSR) and Table Detection (TD) tasks. Benchmarking results show that CISOL achieves 67.22 mAP@0.5:0.95:0.05 using the YOLOv8 model, outperforming the TSR-specific TATR model. This highlights the effectiveness of CISOL as a benchmark for advancing TSR, especially in specialized domains.
2501.15470
Unveiling the Potential of Multimodal Retrieval Augmented Generation with Planning
cs.IR cs.MA
Multimodal Retrieval Augmented Generation (MRAG) systems, while promising for enhancing Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), often rely on rigid, single-step retrieval methods. This limitation hinders their ability to effectively address real-world scenarios that demand adaptive information acquisition and query refinement. To overcome this, we introduce the novel task of Multimodal Retrieval Augmented Generation Planning (MRAG Planning), focusing on optimizing MLLM performance while minimizing computational overhead. We present CogPlanner, a versatile framework inspired by human cognitive processes. CogPlanner iteratively refines queries and selects retrieval strategies, enabling both parallel and sequential modeling approaches. To rigorously evaluate MRAG Planning, we introduce CogBench, a new benchmark specifically designed for this task. CogBench facilitates the integration of lightweight CogPlanner with resource-efficient MLLMs. Our experimental findings demonstrate that CogPlanner surpasses existing MRAG baselines, achieving significant improvements in both accuracy and efficiency with minimal computational overhead.
2501.15471
Dynamic Regressor Extension and Mixing-based Re-design of Adaptive Observer for Affine Systems
eess.SY cs.SY
The dynamic regressor extension and mixing procedure is employed to redesign a conventional adaptive observer algorithm for affine systems. A reduced-order observer is designed without the construction of the state transition matrix. The dynamics of the regressor are redesigned to incorporate feedback from its extension, transforming the regressor dynamics into a perturbed damped nonlinear oscillator form. This introduces some flexibility in reducing the degradation of parameter convergence due to the lack of the transition matrix and in enhancing the excitation property of the extension matrix.
2501.15478
LoRAGuard: An Effective Black-box Watermarking Approach for LoRAs
cs.CR cs.LG
LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) has achieved remarkable success in the parameter-efficient fine-tuning of large models. The trained LoRA matrix can be integrated with the base model through addition or negation operation to improve performance on downstream tasks. However, the unauthorized use of LoRAs to generate harmful content highlights the need for effective mechanisms to trace their usage. A natural solution is to embed watermarks into LoRAs to detect unauthorized misuse. However, existing methods struggle when multiple LoRAs are combined or negation operation is applied, as these can significantly degrade watermark performance. In this paper, we introduce LoRAGuard, a novel black-box watermarking technique for detecting unauthorized misuse of LoRAs. To support both addition and negation operations, we propose the Yin-Yang watermark technique, where the Yin watermark is verified during negation operation and the Yang watermark during addition operation. Additionally, we propose a shadow-model-based watermark training approach that significantly improves effectiveness in scenarios involving multiple integrated LoRAs. Extensive experiments on both language and diffusion models show that LoRAGuard achieves nearly 100% watermark verification success and demonstrates strong effectiveness.
2501.15481
Query-based versus resource-based cache strategies in tag-based browsing systems
cs.CL
Tag-based browsing is a popular interaction model for navigating digital libraries. According to this model, users select descriptive tags to filter resources in the collections. Typical implementations of the model are based on inverted indexes. However, these implementations can require a considerable amount of set operations to update the browsing state. To palliate this inconven-ience, it is possible to adopt suitable cache strategies. In this paper we describe and compare two of these strategies: (i) a query-based strategy, according to which previously computed browsing states are indexed by sets of selected tags; and (ii) a resource-based strategy, according to which browsing states are in-dexed by sets of filtered resources. Our comparison focused on runtime perfor-mance, and was carried out empirically, using a real-world web-based collec-tion in the field of digital humanities. The results obtained show that the re-source-based strategy clearly outperforms the query-based one.
2501.15484
PhoTorch: A robust and generalized biochemical photosynthesis model fitting package based on PyTorch
cs.CE q-bio.QM
Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have greatly benefited plant phenotyping and predictive modeling. However, unrealized opportunities exist in leveraging AI advancements in model parameter optimization for parameter fitting in complex biophysical models. This work developed novel software, PhoTorch, for fitting parameters of the Farquhar, von Caemmerer, and Berry (FvCB) biochemical photosynthesis model based the parameter optimization components of the popular AI framework PyTorch. The primary novelty of the software lies in its computational efficiency, robustness of parameter estimation, and flexibility in handling different types of response curves and sub-model functional forms. PhoTorch can fit both steady-state and non-steady-state gas exchange data with high efficiency and accuracy. Its flexibility allows for optional fitting of temperature and light response parameters, and can simultaneously fit light response curves and standard A/Ci curves. These features are not available within presently available A/Ci curve fitting packages. Results illustrated the robustness and efficiency of PhoTorch in fitting A/Ci curves with high variability and some level of artifacts and noise. PhoTorch is more than four times faster than benchmark software, which may be relevant when processing many non-steady-state A/Ci curves with hundreds of data points per curve. PhoTorch provides researchers from various fields with a reliable and efficient tool for analyzing photosynthetic data. The Python package is openly accessible from the repository: https://github.com/GEMINI-Breeding/photorch.
2501.15485
Differentiable Low-computation Global Correlation Loss for Monotonicity Evaluation in Quality Assessment
eess.IV cs.CV
In this paper, we propose a global monotonicity consistency training strategy for quality assessment, which includes a differentiable, low-computation monotonicity evaluation loss function and a global perception training mechanism. Specifically, unlike conventional ranking loss and linear programming approaches that indirectly implement the Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient (SROCC) function, our method directly converts SROCC into a loss function by making the sorting operation within SROCC differentiable and functional. Furthermore, to mitigate the discrepancies between batch optimization during network training and global evaluation of SROCC, we introduce a memory bank mechanism. This mechanism stores gradient-free predicted results from previous batches and uses them in the current batch's training to prevent abrupt gradient changes. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method on both images and point clouds quality assessment tasks, demonstrating performance gains in both cases.
2501.15486
FedAlign: Federated Domain Generalization with Cross-Client Feature Alignment
cs.LG cs.AI cs.CV cs.DC
Federated Learning (FL) offers a decentralized paradigm for collaborative model training without direct data sharing, yet it poses unique challenges for Domain Generalization (DG), including strict privacy constraints, non-i.i.d. local data, and limited domain diversity. We introduce FedAlign, a lightweight, privacy-preserving framework designed to enhance DG in federated settings by simultaneously increasing feature diversity and promoting domain invariance. First, a cross-client feature extension module broadens local domain representations through domain-invariant feature perturbation and selective cross-client feature transfer, allowing each client to safely access a richer domain space. Second, a dual-stage alignment module refines global feature learning by aligning both feature embeddings and predictions across clients, thereby distilling robust, domain-invariant features. By integrating these modules, our method achieves superior generalization to unseen domains while maintaining data privacy and operating with minimal computational and communication overhead.
2501.15487
Multilevel Browsing of Folksonomy-Based Digital Collections
cs.CL
This paper describes how to extend the usual one-level tag selection navigation paradigm in folksonomy-based digital collections to a multilevel browsing one, according to which it is possible to incrementally narrow down the set of selected objects in a collection by sequentially adding more and more filtering tags. For this purpose, we present a browsing strategy based on finite automata. Also, we provide some experimental results concerning the application of the approach in Clavy, a system for managing digital collections with reconfigurable structures in digital humanities and educational settings.
2501.15488
Qualitative Mechanism Independence
cs.IT math.IT
We define what it means for a joint probability distribution to be compatible with a set of independent causal mechanisms, at a qualitative level -- or, more precisely, with a directed hypergraph ${\mathcal{A}}$, which is the qualitative structure of a probabilistic dependency graph (PDG). When ${\mathcal{A}}$ represents a qualitative Bayesian network, QIM-compatibility with ${\mathcal{A}}$ reduces to satisfying the appropriate conditional independencies. But giving semantics to hypergraphs using QIM-compatibility lets us do much more. For one thing, we can capture functional dependencies. For another, we can capture important aspects of causality using compatibility: we can use compatibility to understand cyclic causal graphs, and to demonstrate structural compatibility, we must essentially produce a causal model. Finally, QIM-compatibility has deep connections to information theory. Applying our notion to cyclic structures helps to clarify a longstanding conceptual issue in information theory.
2501.15489
AI in Oncology: Transforming Cancer Detection through Machine Learning and Deep Learning Applications
cs.AI eess.IV q-bio.QM
Artificial intelligence (AI) has potential to revolutionize the field of oncology by enhancing the precision of cancer diagnosis, optimizing treatment strategies, and personalizing therapies for a variety of cancers. This review examines the limitations of conventional diagnostic techniques and explores the transformative role of AI in diagnosing and treating cancers such as lung, breast, colorectal, liver, stomach, esophageal, cervical, thyroid, prostate, and skin cancers. The primary objective of this paper is to highlight the significant advancements that AI algorithms have brought to oncology within the medical industry. By enabling early cancer detection, improving diagnostic accuracy, and facilitating targeted treatment delivery, AI contributes to substantial improvements in patient outcomes. The integration of AI in medical imaging, genomic analysis, and pathology enhances diagnostic precision and introduces a novel, less invasive approach to cancer screening. This not only boosts the effectiveness of medical facilities but also reduces operational costs. The study delves into the application of AI in radiomics for detailed cancer characterization, predictive analytics for identifying associated risks, and the development of algorithm-driven robots for immediate diagnosis. Furthermore, it investigates the impact of AI on addressing healthcare challenges, particularly in underserved and remote regions. The overarching goal of this platform is to support the development of expert recommendations and to provide universal, efficient diagnostic procedures. By reviewing existing research and clinical studies, this paper underscores the pivotal role of AI in improving the overall cancer care system. It emphasizes how AI-enabled systems can enhance clinical decision-making and expand treatment options, thereby underscoring the importance of AI in advancing precision oncology
2501.15492
Color Flow Imaging Microscopy Improves Identification of Stress Sources of Protein Aggregates in Biopharmaceuticals
cs.CV cs.AI
Protein-based therapeutics play a pivotal role in modern medicine targeting various diseases. Despite their therapeutic importance, these products can aggregate and form subvisible particles (SvPs), which can compromise their efficacy and trigger immunological responses, emphasizing the critical need for robust monitoring techniques. Flow Imaging Microscopy (FIM) has been a significant advancement in detecting SvPs, evolving from monochrome to more recently incorporating color imaging. Complementing SvP images obtained via FIM, deep learning techniques have recently been employed successfully for stress source identification of monochrome SvPs. In this study, we explore the potential of color FIM to enhance the characterization of stress sources in SvPs. To achieve this, we curate a new dataset comprising 16,000 SvPs from eight commercial monoclonal antibodies subjected to heat and mechanical stress. Using both supervised and self-supervised convolutional neural networks, as well as vision transformers in large-scale experiments, we demonstrate that deep learning with color FIM images consistently outperforms monochrome images, thus highlighting the potential of color FIM in stress source classification compared to its monochrome counterparts.
2501.15493
RLER-TTE: An Efficient and Effective Framework for En Route Travel Time Estimation with Reinforcement Learning
cs.LG
En Route Travel Time Estimation (ER-TTE) aims to learn driving patterns from traveled routes to achieve rapid and accurate real-time predictions. However, existing methods ignore the complexity and dynamism of real-world traffic systems, resulting in significant gaps in efficiency and accuracy in real-time scenarios. Addressing this issue is a critical yet challenging task. This paper proposes a novel framework that redefines the implementation path of ER-TTE to achieve highly efficient and effective predictions. Firstly, we introduce a novel pipeline consisting of a Decision Maker and a Predictor to rectify the inefficient prediction strategies of current methods. The Decision Maker performs efficient real-time decisions to determine whether the high-complexity prediction model in the Predictor needs to be invoked, and the Predictor recalculates the travel time or infers from historical prediction results based on these decisions. Next, to tackle the dynamic and uncertain real-time scenarios, we model the online decision-making problem as a Markov decision process and design an intelligent agent based on reinforcement learning for autonomous decision-making. Moreover, to fully exploit the spatio-temporal correlation between online data and offline data, we meticulously design feature representation and encoding techniques based on the attention mechanism. Finally, to improve the flawed training and evaluation strategies of existing methods, we propose an end-to-end training and evaluation approach, incorporating curriculum learning strategies to manage spatio-temporal data for more advanced training algorithms. Extensive evaluations on three real-world datasets confirm that our method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art solutions in both accuracy and efficiency.
2501.15495
Expert-Free Online Transfer Learning in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
cs.AI cs.LG cs.MA
Reinforcement Learning (RL) enables an intelligent agent to optimise its performance in a task by continuously taking action from an observed state and receiving a feedback from the environment in form of rewards. RL typically uses tables or linear approximators to map state-action tuples that maximises the reward. Combining RL with deep neural networks (DRL) significantly increases its scalability and enables it to address more complex problems than before. However, DRL also inherits downsides from both RL and deep learning. Despite DRL improves generalisation across similar state-action pairs when compared to simpler RL policy representations like tabular methods, it still requires the agent to adequately explore the state-action space. Additionally, deep methods require more training data, with the volume of data escalating with the complexity and size of the neural network. As a result, deep RL requires a long time to collect enough agent-environment samples and to successfully learn the underlying policy. Furthermore, often even a slight alteration to the task invalidates any previous acquired knowledge. To address these shortcomings, Transfer Learning (TL) has been introduced, which enables the use of external knowledge from other tasks or agents to enhance a learning process. The goal of TL is to reduce the learning complexity for an agent dealing with an unfamiliar task by simplifying the exploration process. This is achieved by lowering the amount of new information required by its learning model, resulting in a reduced overall convergence time...
2501.15499
One Model to Forecast Them All and in Entity Distributions Bind Them
cs.LG cs.SY eess.SY
Probabilistic forecasting in power systems often involves multi-entity datasets like households, feeders, and wind turbines, where generating reliable entity-specific forecasts presents significant challenges. Traditional approaches require training individual models for each entity, making them inefficient and hard to scale. This study addresses this problem using GUIDE-VAE, a conditional variational autoencoder that allows entity-specific probabilistic forecasting using a single model. GUIDE-VAE provides flexible outputs, ranging from interpretable point estimates to full probability distributions, thanks to its advanced covariance composition structure. These distributions capture uncertainty and temporal dependencies, offering richer insights than traditional methods. To evaluate our GUIDE-VAE-based forecaster, we use household electricity consumption data as a case study due to its multi-entity and highly stochastic nature. Experimental results demonstrate that GUIDE-VAE outperforms conventional quantile regression techniques across key metrics while ensuring scalability and versatility. These features make GUIDE-VAE a powerful and generalizable tool for probabilistic forecasting tasks, with potential applications beyond household electricity consumption.
2501.15503
Domain Adaptation from Generated Multi-Weather Images for Unsupervised Maritime Object Classification
cs.CV
The classification and recognition of maritime objects are crucial for enhancing maritime safety, monitoring, and intelligent sea environment prediction. However, existing unsupervised methods for maritime object classification often struggle with the long-tail data distributions in both object categories and weather conditions. In this paper, we construct a dataset named AIMO produced by large-scale generative models with diverse weather conditions and balanced object categories, and collect a dataset named RMO with real-world images where long-tail issue exists. We propose a novel domain adaptation approach that leverages AIMO (source domain) to address the problem of limited labeled data, unbalanced distribution and domain shift in RMO (target domain), and enhance the generalization of source features with the Vision-Language Models such as CLIP. Experimental results shows that the proposed method significantly improves the classification accuracy, particularly for samples within rare object categories and weather conditions. Datasets and codes will be publicly available at https://github.com/honoria0204/AIMO.
2501.15505
Unveiling the Potential of iMarkers: Invisible Fiducial Markers for Advanced Robotics
cs.RO cs.CV
Fiducial markers are widely used in various robotics tasks, facilitating enhanced navigation, object recognition, and scene understanding. Despite their advantages for robots and Augmented Reality (AR) applications, they often disrupt the visual aesthetics of environments because they are visible to humans, making them unsuitable for non-intrusive use cases. To address this gap, this paper presents "iMarkers"-innovative, unobtrusive fiducial markers detectable exclusively by robots equipped with specialized sensors. These markers offer high flexibility in production, allowing customization of their visibility range and encoding algorithms to suit various demands. The paper also introduces the hardware designs and software algorithms developed for detecting iMarkers, highlighting their adaptability and robustness in the detection and recognition stages. Various evaluations have demonstrated the effectiveness of iMarkers compared to conventional (printed) and blended fiducial markers and confirmed their applicability in diverse robotics scenarios.
2501.15509
FIT-Print: Towards False-claim-resistant Model Ownership Verification via Targeted Fingerprint
cs.CR cs.AI cs.LG
Model fingerprinting is a widely adopted approach to safeguard the intellectual property rights of open-source models by preventing their unauthorized reuse. It is promising and convenient since it does not necessitate modifying the protected model. In this paper, we revisit existing fingerprinting methods and reveal that they are vulnerable to false claim attacks where adversaries falsely assert ownership of any third-party model. We demonstrate that this vulnerability mostly stems from their untargeted nature, where they generally compare the outputs of given samples on different models instead of the similarities to specific references. Motivated by these findings, we propose a targeted fingerprinting paradigm (i.e., FIT-Print) to counteract false claim attacks. Specifically, FIT-Print transforms the fingerprint into a targeted signature via optimization. Building on the principles of FIT-Print, we develop bit-wise and list-wise black-box model fingerprinting methods, i.e., FIT-ModelDiff and FIT-LIME, which exploit the distance between model outputs and the feature attribution of specific samples as the fingerprint, respectively. Extensive experiments on benchmark models and datasets verify the effectiveness, conferrability, and resistance to false claim attacks of our FIT-Print.
2501.15510
Universal Image Restoration Pre-training via Degradation Classification
cs.CV
This paper proposes the Degradation Classification Pre-Training (DCPT), which enables models to learn how to classify the degradation type of input images for universal image restoration pre-training. Unlike the existing self-supervised pre-training methods, DCPT utilizes the degradation type of the input image as an extremely weak supervision, which can be effortlessly obtained, even intrinsic in all image restoration datasets. DCPT comprises two primary stages. Initially, image features are extracted from the encoder. Subsequently, a lightweight decoder, such as ResNet18, is leveraged to classify the degradation type of the input image solely based on the features extracted in the first stage, without utilizing the input image. The encoder is pre-trained with a straightforward yet potent DCPT, which is used to address universal image restoration and achieve outstanding performance. Following DCPT, both convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and transformers demonstrate performance improvements, with gains of up to 2.55 dB in the 10D all-in-one restoration task and 6.53 dB in the mixed degradation scenarios. Moreover, previous self-supervised pretraining methods, such as masked image modeling, discard the decoder after pre-training, while our DCPT utilizes the pre-trained parameters more effectively. This superiority arises from the degradation classifier acquired during DCPT, which facilitates transfer learning between models of identical architecture trained on diverse degradation types. Source code and models are available at https://github.com/MILab-PKU/dcpt.
2501.15513
TinyLLaVA-Video: A Simple Framework of Small-scale Large Multimodal Models for Video Understanding
cs.CV
We present the TinyLLaVA-Video, a video understanding model with parameters not exceeding 4B that processes video sequences in a simple manner, without the need for complex architectures, supporting both fps sampling and uniform frame sampling. Our model is characterized by modularity and scalability, allowing training and inference with limited computational resources and enabling users to replace components based on their needs. We validate the effectiveness of this framework through experiments, the best model achieving performance comparable to certain existing 7B models on multiple video understanding benchmarks. The code and training recipes are fully open source, with all components and training data publicly available. We hope this work can serve as a baseline for practitioners exploring small-scale multimodal models for video understanding. It is available at \url{https://github.com/ZhangXJ199/TinyLLaVA-Video}.
2501.15519
Fuzzy-aware Loss for Source-free Domain Adaptation in Visual Emotion Recognition
cs.CV cs.LG
Source-free domain adaptation in visual emotion recognition (SFDA-VER) is a highly challenging task that requires adapting VER models to the target domain without relying on source data, which is of great significance for data privacy protection. However, due to the unignorable disparities between visual emotion data and traditional image classification data, existing SFDA methods perform poorly on this task. In this paper, we investigate the SFDA-VER task from a fuzzy perspective and identify two key issues: fuzzy emotion labels and fuzzy pseudo-labels. These issues arise from the inherent uncertainty of emotion annotations and the potential mispredictions in pseudo-labels. To address these issues, we propose a novel fuzzy-aware loss (FAL) to enable the VER model to better learn and adapt to new domains under fuzzy labels. Specifically, FAL modifies the standard cross entropy loss and focuses on adjusting the losses of non-predicted categories, which prevents a large number of uncertain or incorrect predictions from overwhelming the VER model during adaptation. In addition, we provide a theoretical analysis of FAL and prove its robustness in handling the noise in generated pseudo-labels. Extensive experiments on 26 domain adaptation sub-tasks across three benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
2501.15520
Efficient Self-Supervised Grading of Prostate Cancer Pathology
cs.CV
Prostate cancer grading using the ISUP system (International Society of Urological Pathology) for treatment decisions is highly subjective and requires considerable expertise. Despite advances in computer-aided diagnosis systems, few have handled efficient ISUP grading on Whole Slide Images (WSIs) of prostate biopsies based only on slide-level labels. Some of the general challenges include managing gigapixel WSIs, obtaining patch-level annotations, and dealing with stain variability across centers. One of the main task-specific challenges faced by deep learning in ISUP grading, is the learning of patch-level features of Gleason patterns (GPs) based only on their slide labels. In this scenario, an efficient framework for ISUP grading is developed. The proposed TSOR is based on a novel Task-specific Self-supervised learning (SSL) model, which is fine-tuned using Ordinal Regression. Since the diversity of training samples plays a crucial role in SSL, a patch-level dataset is created to be relatively balanced w.r.t. the Gleason grades (GGs). This balanced dataset is used for pre-training, so that the model can effectively learn stain-agnostic features of the GP for better generalization. In medical image grading, it is desirable that misclassifications be as close as possible to the actual grade. From this perspective, the model is then fine-tuned for the task of ISUP grading using an ordinal regression-based approach. Experimental results on the most extensive multicenter prostate biopsies dataset (PANDA challenge), as well as the SICAP dataset, demonstrate the effectiveness of this novel framework compared to state-of-the-art methods.
2501.15522
Estimating Committor Functions via Deep Adaptive Sampling on Rare Transition Paths
stat.ML cs.LG q-bio.QM
The committor functions are central to investigating rare but important events in molecular simulations. It is known that computing the committor function suffers from the curse of dimensionality. Recently, using neural networks to estimate the committor function has gained attention due to its potential for high-dimensional problems. Training neural networks to approximate the committor function needs to sample transition data from straightforward simulations of rare events, which is very inefficient. The scarcity of transition data makes it challenging to approximate the committor function. To address this problem, we propose an efficient framework to generate data points in the transition state region that helps train neural networks to approximate the committor function. We design a Deep Adaptive Sampling method for TRansition paths (DASTR), where deep generative models are employed to generate samples to capture the information of transitions effectively. In particular, we treat a non-negative function in the integrand of the loss functional as an unnormalized probability density function and approximate it with the deep generative model. The new samples from the deep generative model are located in the transition state region and fewer samples are located in the other region. This distribution provides effective samples for approximating the committor function and significantly improves the accuracy. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method through both simulations and realistic examples.
2501.15529
UNIDOOR: A Universal Framework for Action-Level Backdoor Attacks in Deep Reinforcement Learning
cs.LG cs.AI cs.CR
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is widely applied to safety-critical decision-making scenarios. However, DRL is vulnerable to backdoor attacks, especially action-level backdoors, which pose significant threats through precise manipulation and flexible activation, risking outcomes like vehicle collisions or drone crashes. The key distinction of action-level backdoors lies in the utilization of the backdoor reward function to associate triggers with target actions. Nevertheless, existing studies typically rely on backdoor reward functions with fixed values or conditional flipping, which lack universality across diverse DRL tasks and backdoor designs, resulting in fluctuations or even failure in practice. This paper proposes the first universal action-level backdoor attack framework, called UNIDOOR, which enables adaptive exploration of backdoor reward functions through performance monitoring, eliminating the reliance on expert knowledge and grid search. We highlight that action tampering serves as a crucial component of action-level backdoor attacks in continuous action scenarios, as it addresses attack failures caused by low-frequency target actions. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that UNIDOOR significantly enhances the attack performance of action-level backdoors, showcasing its universality across diverse attack scenarios, including single/multiple agents, single/multiple backdoors, discrete/continuous action spaces, and sparse/dense reward signals. Furthermore, visualization results encompassing state distribution, neuron activation, and animations demonstrate the stealthiness of UNIDOOR. The source code of UNIDOOR can be found at https://github.com/maoubo/UNIDOOR.
2501.15536
Intelligent Surface Assisted Radar Stealth Against Unauthorized ISAC
cs.IT eess.SP math.IT
The integration of radar sensors and communication networks as envisioned for the 6G wireless networks poses significant security risks, e.g., the user position information can be released to an unauthorized dual-functional base station (DFBS). To address this issue, we propose an intelligent surface (IS)-assisted radar stealth technology that prevents adversarial sensing. Specifically, we modify the wireless channels by tuning the phase shifts of IS in order to protect the target user from unauthorized sensing without jeopardizing the wireless communication link. In principle, we wish to maximize the distortion between the estimated angle-of-arrival (AoA) by the DFBS and the ground truth given the minimum signal-to-noise-radio (SNR) constraint for communication. Toward this end, we propose characterizing the problem as a game played by the DFBS and the IS, in which the DFBS aims to maximize a particular utility while the IS aims to minimize the utility. Although the problem is nonconvex, this paper shows that it can be optimally solved in closed form from a geometric perspective. According to the simulations, the proposed closed-form algorithm outperforms the baseline methods significantly in combating unauthorized sensing while limiting the impacts on wireless communications.