Decision-Focused Learning with Directional Gradients

Summary: We propose a new decision-aware loss surrogate with theoretical guarantees on its accuracy with respect to the downstream decision loss.

Abstract: We propose a novel family of decision-aware surrogate losses, called Perturbation Gradient (PG) losses, for the predict-then-optimize framework. These losses directly approximate the downstream decision loss and can be optimized using off-the-shelf gradient-based methods. Importantly, unlike existing surrogate losses, the approximation error of our PG losses vanishes as the number of samples grows. This implies that optimizing our surrogate loss yields a best-in-class policy asymptotically, even in misspecified settings. This is the first such result in misspecified settings and we provide numerical evidence confirming our PG losses substantively outperform existing proposals when the underlying model is misspecified and the noise is not centrally symmetric. Insofar as misspecification is commonplace in practice -- especially when we might prefer a simpler, more interpretable model -- PG losses offer a novel, theoretically justified, method for computationally tractable decision-aware learning.


DINTR: Tracking via Diffusion-based Interpolation

Summary: This work proposes a generative methodology to formulate the object tracking task and an interpolation operation as a faster approach to the diffusion mechanics.

Abstract: Object tracking is a fundamental task in computer vision, requiring the localization of objects of interest across video frames. Diffusion models have shown remarkable capabilities in visual generation, making them well-suited for addressing several requirements of the tracking problem. This work proposes a novel diffusion-based methodology to formulate the tracking task. Firstly, their conditional process allows for injecting indications of the target object into the generation process. Secondly, diffusion mechanics can be developed to inherently model temporal correspondences, enabling the reconstruction of actual frames in video. However, existing diffusion models rely on extensive and unnecessary mapping to a Gaussian noise domain, which can be replaced by a more efficient and stable interpolation process. Our proposed interpolation mechanism draws inspiration from classic image-processing techniques, offering a more interpretable, stable, and faster approach tailored specifically for the object tracking task. By leveraging the strengths of diffusion models while circumventing their limitations, our Diffusion-based INterpolation TrackeR (DINTR) presents a promising new paradigm and achieves a superior multiplicity on seven benchmarks across five indicator representations.


TrAct: Making First-layer Pre-Activations Trainable

Summary: Making the training dynamics of the first layer of vision models similar to those of the embedding layer of language models.

Abstract: We consider the training of the first layer of vision models and notice the clear relationship between pixel values and gradient update magnitudes: the gradients arriving at the weights of a first layer are by definition directly proportional to (normalized) input pixel values. Thus, an image with low contrast has a smaller impact on learning than an image with higher contrast, and a very bright or very dark image has a stronger impact on the weights than an image with moderate brightness. In this work, we propose performing gradient descent on the embeddings produced by the first layer of the model. However, switching to discrete inputs with an embedding layer is not a reasonable option for vision models. Thus, we propose the conceptual procedure of (i) a gradient descent step on first layer activations to construct an activation proposal, and (ii) finding the optimal weights of the first layer, i.e., those weights which minimize the squared distance to the activation proposal. We provide a closed form solution of the procedure and adjust it for robust stochastic training while computing everything efficiently. Empirically, we find that TrAct (Training Activations) speeds up training by factors between 1.25x and 4x while requiring only a small computational overhead. We demonstrate the utility of TrAct with different optimizers for a range of different vision models including convolutional and transformer architectures.


Exponential Quantum Communication Advantage in Distributed Inference and Learning

Quantum computing;Communication complexity;distributed computation;graph neural networks

Summary: We prove that inference and gradient computation of distributed models that can be implemented on networked quantum computers enable exponential savings in communication.

Abstract: Training and inference with large machine learning models that far exceed the memory capacity of individual devices necessitates the design of distributed architectures, forcing one to contend with communication constraints. We present a framework for distributed computation over a quantum network in which data is encoded into specialized quantum states. We prove that for models within this framework, inference and training using gradient descent can be performed with exponentially less communication compared to their classical analogs, and with relatively modest overhead relative to standard gradient-based methods. We show that certain graph neural networks are particularly amenable to implementation within this framework, and moreover present empirical evidence that they perform well on standard benchmarks. To our knowledge, this is the first example of exponential quantum advantage for a generic class of machine learning problems that hold regardless of the data encoding cost. Moreover, we show that models in this class can encode highly nonlinear features of their inputs, and their expressivity increases exponentially with model depth. We also delineate the space of models for which exponential communication advantages hold by showing that they cannot hold for linear classification. Communication of quantum states that potentially limit the amount of information that can be extracted from them about the data and model parameters may also lead to improved privacy guarantees for distributed computation. Taken as a whole, these findings form a promising foundation for distributed machine learning over quantum networks.


Selective Explanations

Summary: We propose selective explanations to detect when amortized explainers produce low-quality explanations and introduce an optimized method to improve their quality.

Abstract: Feature attribution methods explain black-box machine learning (ML) models by assigning importance scores to input features. These methods can be computationally expensive for large ML models. To address this challenge, there have been increasing efforts to develop amortized explainers, where a ML model is trained to efficiently approximate computationally expensive feature attribution scores. Despite their efficiency, amortized explainers can produce misleading explanations. In this paper, we propose selective explanations to (i) detect when amortized explainers generate inaccurate explanations and (ii) improve the approximation of the explanation using a technique we call explanations with initial guess. Selective explanations allow practitioners to specify the fraction of samples that receive explanations with initial guess, offering a principled way to bridge the gap between amortized explainers (one inference) and more computationally costly approximations (multiple inferences). Our experiments on various models and datasets demonstrate that feature attributions via selective explanations strike a favorable balance between explanation quality and computational efficiency.


Biologically Inspired Learning Model for Instructed Vision

Biologically Plausible Deep Networks;Neuroscience;Synaptic Modulation;Instructed Vision

Summary: We present a biologically inspired learning model that performs instructed vision through guiding attention. Directing attention is an essential part of human vision and is also used incorporated in recent Vision Language Models (VLMs).

Abstract: As part of the effort to understand how the brain learns, ongoing research seeks to combine biological knowledge with current artificial intelligence (AI) modeling in an attempt to find an efficient biologically plausible learning scheme. Current models often use a cortical-like combination of bottom-up (BU) and top-down (TD) processing, where the TD part carries feedback signals for learning. However, in the visual cortex, the TD pathway plays a second major role in visual attention, by guiding the visual process toward locations and tasks of interest. A biological model should therefore integrate both learning and visual guidance. We introduce a model that uses a cortical-like combination of BU and TD processing that naturally integrates the two major functions of the TD stream. This integration is achieved through an appropriate connectivity pattern between the BU and TD streams, a novel processing cycle that uses the TD stream twice, and a 'Counter-Hebb' learning mechanism that operates across both streams. We show that the 'Counter-Hebb' mechanism can provide an exact backpropagation synaptic modification. Additionally, our model can effectively guide the visual stream to perform a task of interest, achieving competitive performance on standard multi-task learning benchmarks compared to AI models. The successful combination of learning and visual guidance could provide a new view on combining BU and TD processing in human vision and suggests possible directions for both biologically plausible models and artificial instructed models, such as vision-language models (VLMs).


An Information Theoretic Perspective on Conformal Prediction

conformal prediction;information theory;uncertainty quantification

Summary: We link conformal prediction to information theory, and thus derive a principled way to use side information in conformal prediction, and new upper bounds on the intrinsic uncertainty of the data-generating process, which improve conformal training.

Abstract: Conformal Prediction (CP) is a distribution-free uncertainty estimation framework that constructs prediction sets guaranteed to contain the true answer with a user-specified probability. Intuitively, the size of the prediction set encodes a general notion of uncertainty, with larger sets associated with higher degrees of uncertainty. In this work, we leverage information theory to connect conformal prediction to other notions of uncertainty. More precisely, we prove three different ways to upper bound the intrinsic uncertainty, as described by the conditional entropy of the target variable given the inputs, by combining CP with information theoretical inequalities. Moreover, we demonstrate two direct and useful applications of such connection between conformal prediction and information theory: (i) more principled and effective conformal training objectives that generalize previous approaches and enable end-to-end training of machine learning models from scratch, and (ii) a natural mechanism to incorporate side information into conformal prediction. We empirically validate both applications in centralized and federated learning settings, showing our theoretical results translate to lower inefficiency (average prediction set size) for popular CP methods.


Panacea: Pareto Alignment via Preference Adaptation for LLMs

large language models;alignment;multi-dimensional preference optimization;RLHF

Summary: This paper proposes Panacea, a simple yet effective method that achieves Pareto alignment with diverse human preferences with a single model.

Abstract: Current methods for large language model alignment typically use scalar human preference labels. However, this convention tends to oversimplify the multi-dimensional and heterogeneous nature of human preferences, leading to reduced expressivity and even misalignment. This paper presents Panacea, an innovative approach that reframes alignment as a multi-dimensional preference optimization problem. Panacea trains a single model capable of adapting online and Pareto-optimally to diverse sets of preferences without the need for further tuning. A major challenge here is using a low-dimensional preference vector to guide the model's behavior, despite it being governed by an overwhelmingly large number of parameters. To address this, Panacea is designed to use singular value decomposition (SVD)-based low-rank adaptation, which allows the preference vector to be simply injected online as singular values. Theoretically, we prove that Panacea recovers the entire Pareto front with common loss aggregation methods under mild conditions. Moreover, our experiments demonstrate, for the first time, the feasibility of aligning a single LLM to represent an exponentially vast spectrum of human preferences through various optimization methods. Our work marks a step forward in effectively and efficiently aligning models to diverse and intricate human preferences in a controllable and Pareto-optimal manner.


Understanding the Gains from Repeated Self-Distillation

Summary: Using linear regression to characterize how large the performance gain can be from repeated applications of self-distillation

Abstract:
Self-Distillation is a special type of knowledge distillation where the student model has the same architecture as the teacher model. Despite using the same architecture and the same training data, self-distillation has been empirically observed to improve performance, especially when applied repeatedly. For such a process, there is a fundamental question of interest: How much gain is possible by applying multiple steps of self-distillation? To investigate this relative gain, we propose using the simple but canonical task of linear regression. Our analysis shows that the excess risk achieved by multi-step self-distillation can significantly improve upon a single step of self-distillation, reducing the excess risk by a factor of
d
, where
d
is the input dimension. Empirical results on regression tasks from the UCI repository show a reduction in the learnt model's risk (MSE) by up to
47
%.


Dual Lagrangian Learning for Conic Optimization

Conic optimization;optimization proxies;duality;self-supervised learning

Summary: This paper presents a principled methodology for learning dual conic optimization proxies with dual feasibility guarantees.

Abstract: This paper presents Dual Lagrangian Learning (DLL), a principled learning methodology for dual conic optimization proxies. DLL leverages conic duality and the representation power of ML models to provide high-duality, dual-feasible solutions, and therefore valid Lagrangian dual bounds, for linear and nonlinear conic optimization problems. The paper introduces a systematic dual completion procedure, differentiable conic projection layers, and a self-supervised learning framework based on Lagrangian duality. It also provides closed-form dual completion formulae for broad classes of conic problems, which eliminate the need for costly implicit layers. The effectiveness of DLL is demonstrated on linear and nonlinear conic optimization problems. The proposed methodology significantly outperforms a state-of-the-art learning-based method, and achieves 1000x speedups over commercial interior-point solvers with optimality gaps under 0.5% on average.


Automated Label Unification for Multi-Dataset Semantic Segmentation with GNNs

Semantic Segmentation;Multi-dataset Training;Graph Neural Networks

Summary: We propose a novel approach that leverages graph neural networks to automatically construct a unified label space for training semantic segmentation models across multiple datasets.

Abstract: Deep supervised models possess significant capability to assimilate extensive training data, thereby presenting an opportunity to enhance model performance through training on multiple datasets. However, conflicts arising from different label spaces among datasets may adversely affect model performance. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to automatically construct a unified label space across multiple datasets using graph neural networks. This enables semantic segmentation models to be trained simultaneously on multiple datasets, resulting in performance improvements. Unlike existing methods, our approach facilitates seamless training without the need for additional manual reannotation or taxonomy reconciliation. This significantly enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of multi-dataset segmentation model training. The results demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms other multi-dataset training methods when trained on seven datasets simultaneously, and achieves state-of-the-art performance on the WildDash 2 benchmark. Our code can be found in https://github.com/Mrhonor/AutoUniSeg.


Amortizing intractable inference in diffusion models for vision, language, and control

diffusion;inverse problems;conditional generation;language models;infilling;discrete diffusion;offline RL;planning;GFlowNet

Summary: An asymptotically unbiased objective for sampling from the product of a diffusion prior with a constraint, applied to vision, language, and RL.

Abstract:
Diffusion models have emerged as effective distribution estimators in vision, language, and reinforcement learning, but their use as priors in downstream tasks poses an intractable posterior inference problem. This paper studies amortized sampling of the posterior over data,
x
∼
p
p
o
s
t
(
x
)
∝
p
(
x
)
r
(
x
)
, in a model that consists of a diffusion generative model prior
p
(
x
)
and a black-box constraint or likelihood function
r
(
x
)
. We state and prove the asymptotic correctness of a data-free learning objective, relative trajectory balance, for training a diffusion model that samples from this posterior, a problem that existing methods solve only approximately or in restricted cases. Relative trajectory balance arises from the generative flow network perspective on diffusion models, which allows the use of deep reinforcement learning techniques to improve mode coverage. Experiments illustrate the broad potential of unbiased inference of arbitrary posteriors under diffusion priors: in vision (classifier guidance), language (infilling under a discrete diffusion LLM), and multimodal data (text-to-image generation). Beyond generative modeling, we apply relative trajectory balance to the problem of continuous control with a score-based behavior prior, achieving state-of-the-art results on benchmarks in offline reinforcement learning. Code is available at this link.


Gene-Gene Relationship Modeling Based on Genetic Evidence for Single-Cell RNA-Seq Data Imputation

Summary: We propose a novel scRNA-seq data imputation scheme based on genetic evidence.

Abstract:
Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technologies enable the exploration of cellular heterogeneity and facilitate the construction of cell atlases. However, scRNA-seq data often contain a large portion of missing values (false zeros) or noisy values, hindering downstream analyses. To recover these false zeros, propagation-based imputation methods have been proposed using
k
-NN graphs. However they model only associating relationships among genes within a cell, while, according to well-known genetic evidence, there are both associating and dissociating relationships among genes. To apply this genetic evidence to gene-gene relationship modeling, this paper proposes a novel imputation method that newly employs dissociating relationships in addition to associating relationships. Our method constructs a
k
-NN graph to additionally model dissociating relationships via the negation of a given cell-gene matrix. Moreover, our method standardizes the value distribution (mean and variance) of each gene to have standard distributions regardless of the gene. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that the proposed method achieves exceptional performance gains over state-of-the-art methods in both cell clustering and gene expression recovery across six scRNA-seq datasets, validating the significance of using complete gene-gene relationships in accordance with genetic evidence. The source code is available at https://github.com/daehoum1/scCR.


Diffeomorphic interpolation for efficient persistence-based topological optimization

Persistent Homology;Persistence Diagrams;Optimization;Topological Data Analysis

Summary: We propose a diffeomorphic interpolation of (typically sparse) gradients appearing in Topological Data Analysis, yielding substantially faster and smoother optimization schemes.

Abstract:
Topological Data Analysis (TDA) provides a pipeline to extract quantitative and powerful topological descriptors from structured objects. This enables the definition of topological loss functions, which assert to which extent a given object exhibits some topological properties. One can then use these losses to perform topological optimization via gradient descent routines. While theoretically sounded, topological optimization faces an important challenge: gradients tend to be extremely sparse, in the sense that the loss function typically depends (locally) on only very few coordinates of the input object, yielding dramatically slow optimization schemes in practice.
In this work, focusing on the central case of topological optimization for point clouds, we propose to overcome this limitation using diffeomorphic interpolation, turning sparse gradients into smooth vector fields defined on the whole space. In particular, this approach combines efficiently with subsampling techniques routinely used in TDA, as the diffeomorphism derived from the gradient computed on the subsample can be used to update the coordinates of the full and possibly large input object. We then illustrate the usefulness of our approach on black-box autoencoder (AE) regularization, where we aim at applying some topological priors on the latent spaces associated to fixed, black-box AE models without modifying their (unknown) architectures and parameters. We empirically show that, while vanilla topological optimization has to be re-run every time that new data comes out of the black-box models, learning a diffeomorphic flow can be done once and then re-applied to new data in linear time. Moreover, reverting the flow allows us to generate data by sampling the topologically-optimized latent space directly, allowing for better interpretability of the model.


TALoS: Enhancing Semantic Scene Completion via Test-time Adaptation on the Line of Sight

semantic scene completion;test-time adaptation;point cloud

Summary: We propose TALoS, a novel test-time adaptation approach for SSC that leverages situational information available in driving environments.

Abstract: Semantic Scene Completion (SSC) aims to perform geometric completion and semantic segmentation simultaneously. Despite the promising results achieved by existing studies, the inherently ill-posed nature of the task presents significant challenges in diverse driving scenarios. This paper introduces TALoS, a novel test-time adaptation approach for SSC that excavates the information available in driving environments. Specifically, we focus on that observations made at a certain moment can serve as Ground Truth (GT) for scene completion at another moment. Given the characteristics of the LiDAR sensor, an observation of an object at a certain location confirms both 1) the occupation of that location and 2) the absence of obstacles along the line of sight from the LiDAR to that point. TALoS utilizes these observations to obtain self-supervision about occupancy and emptiness, guiding the model to adapt to the scene in test time. In a similar manner, we aggregate reliable SSC predictions among multiple moments and leverage them as semantic pseudo-GT for adaptation. Further, to leverage future observations that are not accessible at the current time, we present a dual optimization scheme using the model in which the update is delayed until the future observation is available. Evaluations on the SemanticKITTI validation and test sets demonstrate that TALoS significantly improves the performance of the pre-trained SSC model.


Federated Fine-tuning of Large Language Models under Heterogeneous Tasks and Client Resources

Federated Learning;Large Language Models;Parameter Efficient Fine-tuning

Summary: We propose FlexLoRA, an aggregation scheme for federated learning of LLMs that dynamically adjusts LoRA ranks to harness the full potential of diverse client resources, enhancing generalization, and validated on thousands of heterogeneous clients.

Abstract: Federated Learning (FL) has recently been applied to the parameter-efficient fine-tuning of Large Language Models (LLMs). While promising, it raises significant challenges due to the heterogeneous resources and data distributions of clients.This study introduces FlexLoRA, a simple yet effective aggregation scheme for LLM fine-tuning, which mitigates the "buckets effect" in traditional FL that restricts the potential of clients with ample resources by tying them to the capabilities of the least-resourced participants. FlexLoRA allows for dynamic adjustment of local LoRA ranks, fostering the development of a global model imbued with broader, less task-specific knowledge. By synthesizing a full-size LoRA weight from individual client contributions and employing Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) for weight redistribution, FlexLoRA fully leverages heterogeneous client resources. Involving thousands of clients performing heterogeneous NLP tasks and client resources, our experiments validate the efficacy of FlexLoRA, with the federated global model achieving consistently better improvement over SOTA FL methods in downstream NLP task performance across various heterogeneous distributions. FlexLoRA's practicality is further underscored by our theoretical analysis and its seamless integration with existing LoRA-based FL methods, offering a path toward cross-device, privacy-preserving federated tuning for LLMs.


CigTime: Corrective Instruction Generation Through Inverse Motion Editing

Summary: We created a model that generates corrective instructions to guide users from their current motion to a desired target motion, showing significant improvements over baselines. The code and trained models will be publicly available.

Abstract: Recent advancements in models linking natural language with human motions have shown significant promise in motion generation and editing based on instructional text. Motivated by applications in sports coaching and motor skill learning, we investigate the inverse problem: generating corrective instructional text, leveraging motion editing and generation models. We introduce a novel approach that, given a user’s current motion (source) and the desired motion (target), generates text instructions to guide the user towards achieving the target motion. We leverage large language models to generate corrective texts and utilize existing motion generation and editing frameworks to compile datasets of triplets (source motion, target motion, and corrective text). Using this data, we propose a new motion-language model for generating corrective instructions. We present both qualitative and quantitative results across a diverse range of applications that largely improve upon baselines. Our approach demonstrates its effectiveness in instructional scenarios, offering text-based guidance to correct and enhance user performance.


Learning to Understand: Identifying Interactions via the Möbius Transform

Shapley Value;Importance Scores;Transforms;Signal Processing;Interactions;Group Testing

Summary: Learning explainable representations of functions efficiently using ideas from signal processing and group testing

Abstract:
One of the key challenges in machine learning is to find interpretable representations of learned functions. The Möbius transform is essential for this purpose, as its coefficients correspond to unique importance scores for sets of input variables. This transform is closely related to widely used game-theoretic notions of importance like the Shapley and Bhanzaf value, but it also captures crucial higher-order interactions. Although computing the Möbius Transform of a function with
n
inputs involves
2
n
coefficients, it becomes tractable when the function is sparse and of low-degree as we show is the case for many real-world functions. Under these conditions, the complexity of the transform computation is significantly reduced. When there are
K
non-zero coefficients, our algorithm recovers the Möbius transform in
O
(
K
n
)
samples and
O
(
K
n
2
)
time asymptotically under certain assumptions, the first non-adaptive algorithm to do so. We also uncover a surprising connection between group testing and the Möbius transform. For functions where all interactions involve at most
t
inputs, we use group testing results to compute the Möbius transform with
O
(
K
t
log

n
)
sample complexity and
O
(
K
poly
(
n
)
)
time. A robust version of this algorithm withstands noise and maintains this complexity. This marks the first
n
sub-linear query complexity, noise-tolerant algorithm for the Möbius transform. While our algorithms are conceptualized in an idealized setting, they indicate that the Möbius transform is a potent tool for interpreting deep learning models.


Metric Space Magnitude for Evaluating the Diversity of Latent Representations

diversity evaluation;generative model evaluation;metric space magnitude;geometric machine learning

Summary: We develop novel diversity measures for evaluating latent representations based on metric space magnitude, a novel geometric invariant.

Abstract: The magnitude of a metric space is a novel invariant that provides a measure of the 'effective size' of a space across multiple scales, while also capturing numerous geometrical properties, such as curvature, density, or entropy. We develop a family of magnitude-based measures of the intrinsic diversity of latent representations, formalising a novel notion of dissimilarity between magnitude functions of finite metric spaces. Our measures are provably stable under perturbations of the data, can be efficiently calculated, and enable a rigorous multi-scale characterisation and comparison of latent representations. We show their utility and superior performance across different domains and tasks, including the automated estimation of diversity, the detection of mode collapse, and the evaluation of generative models for text, image, and graph data.


SARAD: Spatial Association-Aware Anomaly Detection and Diagnosis for Multivariate Time Series

multivariate time series;anomaly detection;anomaly diagnosis;spatial associations

Summary: An approach that leverages spatial information to improve the detection and diagnosis of time series anomalies.

Abstract: Anomaly detection in time series data is fundamental to the design, deployment, and evaluation of industrial control systems. Temporal modeling has been the natural focus of anomaly detection approaches for time series data. However, the focus on temporal modeling can obscure or dilute the spatial information that can be used to capture complex interactions in multivariate time series. In this paper, we propose SARAD, an approach that leverages spatial information beyond data autoencoding errors to improve the detection and diagnosis of anomalies. SARAD trains a Transformer to learn the spatial associations, the pairwise inter-feature relationships which ubiquitously characterize such feedback-controlled systems. As new associations form and old ones dissolve, SARAD applies subseries division to capture their changes over time. Anomalies exhibit association descending patterns, a key phenomenon we exclusively observe and attribute to the disruptive nature of anomalies detaching anomalous features from others. To exploit the phenomenon and yet dismiss non-anomalous descent, SARAD performs anomaly detection via autoencoding in the association space. We present experimental results to demonstrate that SARAD achieves state-of-the-art performance, providing robust anomaly detection and a nuanced understanding of anomalous events.


Brain-JEPA: Brain Dynamics Foundation Model with Gradient Positioning and Spatiotemporal Masking

Summary: Brain-JEPA is a state-of-the-art brain dynamics foundation model enhancing brain activity analysis, it achieves superior performance on different downstream tasks with broad applicability.

Abstract: We introduce Brain-JEPA, a brain dynamics foundation model with the Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA). This pioneering model achieves state-of-the-art performance in demographic prediction, disease diagnosis/prognosis, and trait prediction through fine-tuning. Furthermore, it excels in off-the-shelf evaluations (e.g., linear probing) and demonstrates superior generalizability across different ethnic groups, surpassing the previous large model for brain activity significantly. Brain-JEPA incorporates two innovative techniques: Brain Gradient Positioning and Spatiotemporal Masking. Brain Gradient Positioning introduces a functional coordinate system for brain functional parcellation, enhancing the positional encoding of different Regions of Interest (ROIs). Spatiotemporal Masking, tailored to the unique characteristics of fMRI data, addresses the challenge of heterogeneous time-series patches. These methodologies enhance model performance and advance our understanding of the neural circuits underlying cognition. Overall, Brain-JEPA is paving the way to address pivotal questions of building brain functional coordinate system and masking brain activity at the AI-neuroscience interface, and setting a potentially new paradigm in brain activity analysis through downstream adaptation.


Diversify, Contextualize, and Adapt: Efficient Entropy Modeling for Neural Image Codec

Summary: We propose a fast and effective entropy model for neural image codec by efficiently leveraging sufficient contextual information.

Abstract: Designing a fast and effective entropy model is challenging but essential for practical application of neural codecs. Beyond spatial autoregressive entropy models, more efficient backward adaptation-based entropy models have been recently developed. They not only reduce decoding time by using smaller number of modeling steps but also maintain or even improve rate--distortion performance by leveraging more diverse contexts for backward adaptation. Despite their significant progress, we argue that their performance has been limited by the simple adoption of the design convention for forward adaptation: using only a single type of hyper latent representation, which does not provide sufficient contextual information, especially in the first modeling step. In this paper, we propose a simple yet effective entropy modeling framework that leverages sufficient contexts for forward adaptation without compromising on bit-rate. Specifically, we introduce a strategy of diversifying hyper latent representations for forward adaptation, i.e., using two additional types of contexts along with the existing single type of context. In addition, we present a method to effectively use the diverse contexts for contextualizing the current elements to be encoded/decoded. By addressing the limitation of the previous approach, our proposed framework leads to significant performance improvements. Experimental results on popular datasets show that our proposed framework consistently improves rate-distortion performance across various bit-rate regions, e.g., 3.73% BD-rate gain over the state-of-the-art baseline on the Kodak dataset.


Dual Cone Gradient Descent for Training Physics-Informed Neural Networks

physics-informed neural networks;multi-objective optimization;scientific machine learning;gradient descent

Summary: We introduce a novel optimization algorithm, named dual cone gradient descent, for training PINNs.

Abstract: Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) have emerged as a prominent approach for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) by minimizing a combined loss function that incorporates both boundary loss and PDE residual loss. Despite their remarkable empirical performance in various scientific computing tasks, PINNs often fail to generate reasonable solutions, and such pathological behaviors remain difficult to explain and resolve. In this paper, we identify that PINNs can be adversely trained when gradients of each loss function exhibit a significant imbalance in their magnitudes and present a negative inner product value. To address these issues, we propose a novel optimization framework, Dual Cone Gradient Descent (DCGD), which adjusts the direction of the updated gradient to ensure it falls within a dual cone region. This region is defined as a set of vectors where the inner products with both the gradients of the PDE residual loss and the boundary loss are non-negative. Theoretically, we analyze the convergence properties of DCGD algorithms in a non-convex setting. On a variety of benchmark equations, we demonstrate that DCGD outperforms other optimization algorithms in terms of various evaluation metrics. In particular, DCGD achieves superior predictive accuracy and enhances the stability of training for failure modes of PINNs and complex PDEs, compared to existing optimally tuned models. Moreover, DCGD can be further improved by combining it with popular strategies for PINNs, including learning rate annealing and the Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK).


Least Squares Regression Can Exhibit Under-Parameterized Double Descent

Learning Theory;Generalization;Random Matrix Theory;High Dimensional Statistics

Summary: We show that the current theory for double descent is incomplete

Abstract: The relationship between the number of training data points, the number of parameters, and the generalization capabilities of models has been widely studied. Previous work has shown that double descent can occur in the over-parameterized regime and that the standard bias-variance trade-off holds in the under-parameterized regime. These works provide multiple reasons for the existence of the peak. We postulate that the location of the peak depends on the technical properties of both the spectrum as well as the eigenvectors of the sample covariance. We present two simple examples that provably exhibit double descent in the under-parameterized regime and do not seem to occur for reasons provided in prior work.


Breaking Determinism: Fuzzy Modeling of Sequential Recommendation Using Discrete State Space Diffusion Model

Sequential Recommendation;Discrete Diffusion Model

Summary: Our paper introduces DDSR, a novel model leveraging discrete diffusion processes to enhance the accuracy of sequential recommendations by capturing the inherent randomness of user behavior.

Abstract: Sequential recommendation (SR) aims to predict items that users may be interested in based on their historical behavior sequences. We revisit SR from a novel information-theoretic perspective and find that conventional sequential modeling methods fail to adequately capture the randomness and unpredictability of user behavior. Inspired by fuzzy information processing theory, this paper introduces the DDSR model, which uses fuzzy sets of interaction sequences to overcome the limitations and better capture the evolution of users' real interests. Formally based on diffusion transition processes in discrete state spaces, which is unlike common diffusion models such as DDPM that operate in continuous domains. It is better suited for discrete data, using structured transitions instead of arbitrary noise introduction to avoid information loss. Additionally, to address the inefficiency of matrix transformations due to the vast discrete space, we use semantic labels derived from quantization or RQ-VAE to replace item IDs, enhancing efficiency and improving cold start issues. Testing on three public benchmark datasets shows that DDSR outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods in various settings, demonstrating its potential and effectiveness in handling SR tasks.


Detecting Bugs with Substantial Monetary Consequences by LLM and Rule-based Reasoning

LLM;rule based reasoning;smart contract;accounting bugs

Summary: We develop ABAuditor, a hybrid LLM and rule-based reasoning system to detect bugs with substantial monetary consequence.

Abstract: Financial transactions are increasingly being handled by automated programs called smart contracts. However, one challenge in the adaptation of smart contracts is the presence of vulnerabilities, which can cause significant monetary loss. In 2024, $247.88 M was lost in 20 smart contract exploits. According to a recent study, accounting bugs (i.e., incorrect implementations of domain-specific financial models) are the most prevalent type of vulnerability, and are one of the most difficult to find, requiring substantial human efforts. While Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown promise in identifying these bugs, they often suffer from lack of generalization of vulnerability types, hallucinations, and problems with representing smart contracts in limited token context space. This paper proposes a hybrid system combining LLMs and rule-based reasoning to detect accounting error vulnerabilities in smart contracts. In particular, it utilizes the understanding capabilities of LLMs to annotate the financial meaning of variables in smart contracts, and employs rule-based reasoning to propagate the information throughout a contract's logic and to validate potential vulnerabilities. To remedy hallucinations, we propose a feedback loop where validation is performed by providing the reasoning trace of vulnerabilities to the LLM for iterative self-reflection. We achieve 75.6% accuracy on the labelling of financial meanings against human annotations. Furthermore, we achieve a recall of 90.5% from running on 23 real-world smart contract projects containing 21 accounting error vulnerabilities. Finally, we apply the automated technique on 8 recent projects, finding 4 known and 2 unknown bugs.


Towards Scalable and Stable Parallelization of Nonlinear RNNs

RNNs;Newton's method;Parallel algorithms;Scalability;Numerical Stability

Summary: We introduce methods for parallelizing the evaluation of RNNs that are scalable and numerically stable with quasi-Newton methods and trust regions.

Abstract: Transformers and linear state space models can be evaluated in parallel on modern hardware, but evaluating nonlinear RNNs appears to be an inherently sequential problem. Recently, however, Lim et al. '24 developed an approach called DEER, which evaluates nonlinear RNNs in parallel by posing the states as the solution to a fixed-point problem. They derived a parallel form of Newton's method to solve the fixed-point problem and achieved significant speedups over sequential evaluation. However, the computational complexity of DEER is cubic in the state size, and the algorithm can suffer from numerical instability. We address these limitations with two novel contributions. To reduce the computational complexity, we apply quasi-Newton approximations and show they converge comparably to Newton, use less memory, and are faster. To stabilize DEER, we leverage a connection between the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm and Kalman smoothing, which we call ELK. This connection allows us to stabilize Newton's method while using efficient parallelized Kalman smoothing algorithms to retain performance. Through several experiments, we show that these innovations allow for parallel evaluation of nonlinear RNNs at larger scales and with greater stability.


Understanding Multi-Granularity for Open-Vocabulary Part Segmentation

Summary: PartCLIPSeg is a novel framework that enhances open-vocabulary part segmentation by utilizing object-level contexts and attention control, significantly outperforming existing methods on major datasets.

Abstract: Open-vocabulary part segmentation (OVPS) is an emerging research area focused on segmenting fine-grained entities using diverse and previously unseen vocabularies. Our study highlights the inherent complexities of part segmentation due to intricate boundaries and diverse granularity, reflecting the knowledge-based nature of part identification. To address these challenges, we propose PartCLIPSeg, a novel framework utilizing generalized parts and object-level contexts to mitigate the lack of generalization in fine-grained parts. PartCLIPSeg integrates competitive part relationships and attention control, alleviating ambiguous boundaries and underrepresented parts. Experimental results demonstrate that PartCLIPSeg outperforms existing state-of-the-art OVPS methods, offering refined segmentation and an advanced understanding of part relationships within images. Through extensive experiments, our model demonstrated a significant improvement over the state-of-the-art models on the Pascal-Part-116, ADE20K-Part-234, and PartImageNet datasets.


Fixed Confidence Best Arm Identification in the Bayesian Setting

Multi-armed bandit;Best arm identification

Summary: Fixed-confidence best arm identification in the Bayesian setting, where the mean vector is drawn from a known prior.

Abstract: We consider the fixed-confidence best arm identification (FC-BAI) problem in the Bayesian setting. This problem aims to find the arm of the largest mean with a fixed confidence level when the bandit model has been sampled from the known prior. Most studies on the FC-BAI problem have been conducted in the frequentist setting, where the bandit model is predetermined before the game starts. We show that the traditional FC-BAI algorithms studied in the frequentist setting, such as track-and-stop and top-two algorithms, result in arbitrarily suboptimal performances in the Bayesian setting. We also obtain a lower bound of the expected number of samples in the Bayesian setting and introduce a variant of successive elimination that has a matching performance with the lower bound up to a logarithmic factor. Simulations verify the theoretical results.


Low-Rank Optimal Transport through Factor Relaxation with Latent Coupling

Summary: A general framework for low rank optimal transport using a latent coupling matrix and relaxed projections.

Abstract: Optimal transport (OT) is a general framework for finding a minimum-cost transport plan, or coupling, between probability distributions, and has many applications in machine learning. A key challenge in applying OT to massive datasets is the quadratic scaling of the coupling matrix with the size of the dataset. [Forrow et al. 2019] introduced a factored coupling for the k-Wasserstein barycenter problem, which [Scetbon et al. 2021] adapted to solve the primal low-rank OT problem. We derive an alternative parameterization of the low-rank problem based on the latent coupling (LC) factorization previously introduced by [Lin et al. 2021] generalizing [Forrow et al. 2019]. The LC factorization has multiple advantages for low-rank OT including decoupling the problem into three OT problems and greater flexibility and interpretability. We leverage these advantages to derive a new algorithm Factor Relaxation with Latent Coupling (FRLC), which uses coordinate mirror descent to compute the LC factorization. FRLC handles multiple OT objectives (Wasserstein, Gromov-Wasserstein, Fused Gromov-Wasserstein), and marginal constraints (balanced, unbalanced, and semi-relaxed) with linear space complexity. We provide theoretical results on FRLC, and demonstrate superior performance on diverse applications -- including graph clustering and spatial transcriptomics -- while demonstrating its interpretability.


Autobidder's Dilemma: Why More Sophisticated Autobidders Lead to Worse Auction Efficiency

ad auctions;autobidding;non-uniform bidding;price of anarchy

Summary: We show that automated first-price auctions become more inefficient with more sophisticated autobidders.

Abstract:
The recent increasing adoption of autobidding has inspired the growing interest in analyzing the performance of classic mechanism with value-maximizing autobidders both theoretically and empirically. It is known that optimal welfare can be obtained in first-price auctions if autobidders are restricted to uniform bid-scaling and the price of anarchy is
2
when non-uniform bid-scaling strategies are allowed.
In this paper, we provide a fine-grained price of anarchy analysis for non-uniform bid-scaling strategies in first-price auctions, demonstrating the reason why more powerful (individual) non-uniform bid-scaling strategies may lead to worse (aggregated) performance in social welfare. Our theoretical results match recent empirical findings that a higher level of non-uniform bid-scaling leads to lower welfare performance in first-price auctions.


An engine not a camera: Measuring performative power of online search

Performativity;Power;Digital Markets;Search Engine;Ranking;Online Experiment

Summary: We design and conduct an online experiment to get quantitative insights into the ability of search engines to steer web traffic

Abstract: The power of digital platforms is at the center of major ongoing policy and regulatory efforts. To advance existing debates, we designed and executed an experiment to measure the performative power of online search providers. Instantiated in our setting, performative power quantifies the ability of a search engine to steer web traffic by rearranging results. To operationalize this definition we developed a browser extension that performs unassuming randomized experiments in the background. These randomized experiments emulate updates to the search algorithm and identify the causal effect of different content arrangements on clicks. Analyzing tens of thousands of clicks, we discuss what our robust quantitative findings say about the power of online search engines, using the Google Shopping antitrust investigation as a case study. More broadly, we envision our work to serve as a blueprint for how the recent definition of performative power can help integrate quantitative insights from online experiments with future investigations into the economic power of digital platforms.


LESS: Label-Efficient and Single-Stage Referring 3D Segmentation

Summary: We design the first single stage referring 3D segmentation network, which trains on simpler labels and perform better.

Abstract: Referring 3D Segmentation is a visual-language task that segments all points of the specified object from a 3D point cloud described by a sentence of query. Previous works perform a two-stage paradigm, first conducting language-agnostic instance segmentation then matching with given text query. However, the semantic concepts from text query and visual cues are separately interacted during the training, and both instance and semantic labels for each object are required, which is time consuming and human-labor intensive. To mitigate these issues, we propose a novel Referring 3D Segmentation pipeline, Label-Efficient and Single-Stage, dubbed LESS, which is only under the supervision of efficient binary mask. Specifically, we design a Point-Word Cross-Modal Alignment module for aligning the fine-grained features of points and textual embedding. Query Mask Predictor module and Query-Sentence Alignment module are introduced for coarse-grained alignment between masks and query. Furthermore, we propose an area regularization loss, which coarsely reduces irrelevant background predictions on a large scale. Besides, a point-to-point contrastive loss is proposed concentrating on distinguishing points with subtly similar features. Through extensive experiments, we achieve state-of-the-art performance on ScanRefer dataset by surpassing the previous methods about 3.7% mIoU using only binary labels. Code is available at https://github.com/mellody11/LESS.


GraphMorph: Tubular Structure Extraction by Morphing Predicted Graphs

Image Segmentation;Tubular Structure Extraction;Branch-level Features;Graph Representation

Summary: We propose GraphMorph, which enhances tubular structure extraction by focusing on branch-level features, using a Graph Decoder and Morph Module to achieve topologically accurate predictions, and demonstrating effectiveness across multiple datasets.

Abstract: Accurately restoring topology is both challenging and crucial in tubular structure extraction tasks, such as blood vessel segmentation and road network extraction. Diverging from traditional approaches based on pixel-level classification, our proposed method, named GraphMorph, focuses on branch-level features of tubular structures to achieve more topologically accurate predictions. GraphMorph comprises two main components: a Graph Decoder and a Morph Module. Utilizing multi-scale features extracted from an image patch by the segmentation network, the Graph Decoder facilitates the learning of branch-level features and generates a graph that accurately represents the tubular structure in this patch. The Morph Module processes two primary inputs: the graph and the centerline probability map, provided by the Graph Decoder and the segmentation network, respectively. Employing a novel SkeletonDijkstra algorithm, the Morph Module produces a centerline mask that aligns with the predicted graph. Furthermore, we observe that employing centerline masks predicted by GraphMorph significantly reduces false positives in the segmentation task, which is achieved by a simple yet effective post-processing strategy. The efficacy of our method in the centerline extraction and segmentation tasks has been substantiated through experimental evaluations across various datasets. Source code will be released soon.


Vision-Language Models are Strong Noisy Label Detectors

label-noise learning;sample selection;semi-supervised learning

Summary: This paper proposes a denoising fine-tuning framework to adapt vision-language models on noisy downstream tasks.

Abstract: Recent research on fine-tuning vision-language models has demonstrated impressive performance in various downstream tasks. However, the challenge of obtaining accurately labeled data in real-world applications poses a significant obstacle during the fine-tuning process. To address this challenge, this paper presents a Denoising Fine-Tuning framework, called DeFT, for adapting vision-language models. DeFT utilizes the robust alignment of textual and visual features pre-trained on millions of auxiliary image-text pairs to sieve out noisy labels. The proposed framework establishes a noisy label detector by learning positive and negative textual prompts for each class. The positive prompt seeks to reveal distinctive features of the class, while the negative prompt serves as a learnable threshold for separating clean and noisy samples. We employ parameter-efficient fine-tuning for the adaptation of a pre-trained visual encoder to promote its alignment with the learned textual prompts. As a general framework, DeFT can seamlessly fine-tune many pre-trained models to downstream tasks by utilizing carefully selected clean samples. Experimental results on seven synthetic and real-world noisy datasets validate the effectiveness of DeFT in both noisy label detection and image classification. Our source code can be found in the supplementary material.


Policy-shaped prediction: avoiding distractions in model-based reinforcement learning

machine learning;model based reinforcement learning;reinforcement learning;segment anything model

Summary: Reduce the impact of distractors on model-based RL using gradient-based interpretability with segmentation-based aggregation.

Abstract: Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) is a promising route to sample-efficient policy optimization. However, a known vulnerability of reconstruction-based MBRL consists of scenarios in which detailed aspects of the world are highly predictable, but irrelevant to learning a good policy. Such scenarios can lead the model to exhaust its capacity on meaningless content, at the cost of neglecting important environment dynamics. While existing approaches attempt to solve this problem, we highlight its continuing impact on leading MBRL methods ---including DreamerV3 and DreamerPro--- with a novel environment where background distractions are intricate, predictable, and useless for planning future actions. To address this challenge we develop a method for focusing the capacity of the world model through a synergy of a pretrained segmentation model, a task-aware reconstruction loss, and adversarial learning. Our method outperforms a variety of other approaches designed to reduce the impact of distractors, and is an advance towards robust model-based reinforcement learning.


A Bayesian Approach for Personalized Federated Learning in Heterogeneous Settings

Summary: This paper presents a Bayesian approach for personalized FL in heterogeneous settings to enable personalized, privacy-preserving models on decentralized devices, handling challenges like small datasets, model heterogeneity, and privacy constraints.

Abstract: Federated learning (FL), through its privacy-preserving collaborative learning approach, has significantly empowered decentralized devices. However, constraints in either data and/or computational resources among participating clients introduce several challenges in learning, including the inability to train large model architectures, heightened risks of overfitting, and more. In this work, we present a novel FL framework grounded in Bayesian learning to address these challenges. Our approach involves training personalized Bayesian models at each client tailored to the unique complexities of the clients' datasets and efficiently collaborating across these clients. By leveraging Bayesian neural networks and their uncertainty quantification capabilities, our local training procedure robustly learns from small datasets. And the novel collaboration procedure utilizing priors in the functional (output) space of the networks facilitates collaboration across models of varying sizes, enabling the framework to adapt well in heterogeneous data and computational settings. Furthermore, we present a differentially private version of the algorithm, accompanied by formal differential privacy guarantees that apply without any assumptions on the learning algorithm. Through experiments on popular FL datasets, we demonstrate that our approach outperforms strong baselines in both homogeneous and heterogeneous settings, and under strict privacy constraints.


HippoRAG: Neurobiologically Inspired Long-Term Memory for Large Language Models

retrieval-augmented generation;RAG;long-term memory;neurobiological inspired;hippocampal memory indexing theory

Summary: In this work, we introduce a new RAG framework inspired by human long-term memory which integrates knowledge across documents in ways that current RAG methods cannot, allowing it to outperform these baselines on several multi-hop QA benchmarks.

Abstract: In order to thrive in hostile and ever-changing natural environments, mammalian brains evolved to store large amounts of knowledge about the world and continually integrate new information while avoiding catastrophic forgetting. Despite the impressive accomplishments, large language models (LLMs), even with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), still struggle to efficiently and effectively integrate a large amount of new experiences after pre-training. In this work, we introduce HippoRAG, a novel retrieval framework inspired by the hippocampal indexing theory of human long-term memory to enable deeper and more efficient knowledge integration over new experiences. HippoRAG synergistically orchestrates LLMs, knowledge graphs, and the Personalized PageRank algorithm to mimic the different roles of neocortex and hippocampus in human memory. We compare HippoRAG with existing RAG methods on multi-hop question answering (QA) and show that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods remarkably, by up to 20%. Single-step retrieval with HippoRAG achieves comparable or better performance than iterative retrieval like IRCoT while being 10-20 times cheaper and 6-13 times faster, and integrating HippoRAG into IRCoT brings further substantial gains. Finally, we show that our method can tackle new types of scenarios that are out of reach of existing methods.


Convergence of $\text{log}(1/\epsilon)$ for Gradient-Based Algorithms in Zero-Sum Games without the Condition Number: A Smoothed Analysis

smoothed complexity;zero-sum games;optimistic gradient descent;linear convergence

Summary: We show that a certain class of first-order methods attain polynomial smoothed complexity in zero-sum games.

Abstract:
Gradient-based algorithms have shown great promise in solving large (two-player) zero-sum games. However, their success has been mostly confined to the low-precision regime since the number of iterations grows polynomially in
1
/
ϵ
, where
ϵ
>
0
is the duality gap. While it has been well-documented that linear convergence---an iteration complexity scaling as
log
(
1
/
ϵ
)
---can be attained even with gradient-based algorithms, that comes at the cost of introducing a dependency on certain condition number-like quantities which can be exponentially large in the description of the game. To address this shortcoming, we examine the iteration complexity of several gradient-based algorithms in the celebrated framework of smoothed analysis, and we show that they have polynomial smoothed complexity, in that their number of iterations grows as a polynomial in the dimensions of the game,
log
(
1
/
ϵ
)
, and
1
/
σ
, where
σ
measures the magnitude of the smoothing perturbation. Our result applies to optimistic gradient and extra-gradient descent/ascent, as well as a certain iterative variant of Nesterov's smoothing technique. From a technical standpoint, the proof proceeds by characterizing and performing a smoothed analysis of a certain error bound, the key ingredient driving linear convergence in zero-sum games. En route, our characterization also makes a natural connection between the convergence rate of such algorithms and perturbation-stability properties of the equilibrium, which is of interest beyond the model of smoothed complexity.


RGFN: Synthesizable Molecular Generation Using GFlowNets

Summary: Molecular generation with GFlowNets in the chemical reaction space, ensuring synthesizability out-of-the-box

Abstract: Generative models hold great promise for small molecule discovery, significantly increasing the size of search space compared to traditional in silico screening libraries. However, most existing machine learning methods for small molecule generation suffer from poor synthesizability of candidate compounds, making experimental validation difficult. In this paper we propose Reaction-GFlowNet (RGFN), an extension of the GFlowNet framework that operates directly in the space of chemical reactions, thereby allowing out-of-the-box synthesizability while maintaining comparable quality of generated candidates. We demonstrate that with the proposed set of reactions and building blocks, it is possible to obtain a search space of molecules orders of magnitude larger than existing screening libraries coupled with low cost of synthesis. We also show that the approach scales to very large fragment libraries, further increasing the number of potential molecules. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach across a range of oracle models, including pretrained proxy models and GPU-accelerated docking.


Constant Acceleration Flow

Generative model;Rectified flow;Fast generation

Summary: We introduce the Constant Acceleration Flow (CAF) to enhance generative models, outperforming previous methods in speed and precision with new strategies.

Abstract: Rectified flow and reflow procedures have significantly advanced fast generation by progressively straightening ordinary differential equation (ODE) flows under the assumption that image and noise pairs, known as coupling, can be approximated by straight trajectories with constant velocity. However, we observe that the constant velocity modeling and reflow procedures have limitations in accurately learning to couple with flow crossing, leading to suboptimal few-step generation. To overcome the limitations, we introduce the Constant Acceleration Flow (CAF), a novel framework based on a simple constant acceleration equation. Additionally, we propose two techniques to improve estimation accuracy: initial velocity conditioning for the acceleration model and a reflow process for the initial velocity. Our comparative studies show that CAF not only outperforms rectified flow with reflow procedures in terms of speed and accuracy but also demonstrates substantial improvements in preserving coupling for fast generation.


Unlocking the Potential of Global Human Expertise

Summary: Framework to address global challenges: (1) Distill diverse human solutions, (2) Recombine and elaborate upon them with evolution.

Abstract: Solving societal problems on a global scale requires the collection and processing of ideas and methods from diverse sets of international experts. As the number and diversity of human experts increase, so does the likelihood that elements in this collective knowledge can be combined and refined to discover novel and better solutions. However, it is difficult to identify, combine, and refine complementary information in an increasingly large and diverse knowledge base. This paper argues that artificial intelligence (AI) can play a crucial role in this process. An evolutionary AI framework, termed RHEA, fills this role by distilling knowledge from diverse models created by human experts into equivalent neural networks, which are then recombined and refined in a population-based search. The framework was implemented in a formal synthetic domain, demonstrating that it is transparent and systematic. It was then applied to the results of the XPRIZE Pandemic Response Challenge, in which over 100 teams of experts across 23 countries submitted models based on diverse methodologies to predict COVID-19 cases and suggest non-pharmaceutical intervention policies for 235 nations, states, and regions across the globe. Building upon this expert knowledge, by recombining and refining the 169 resulting policy suggestion models, RHEA discovered a broader and more effective set of policies than either AI or human experts alone, as evaluated based on real-world data. The results thus suggest that AI can play a crucial role in realizing the potential of human expertise in global problem-solving.


Belief-State Query Policies for User-Aligned POMDPs

POMDPs;sequential decision making;user-preferences in POMDPs

Summary: A new framework showing feasibility results, algorithms and empirical analysis for policy representations that support user-aligned POMDP planning

Abstract: Planning in real-world settings often entails addressing partial observability while aligning with users' requirements. We present a novel framework for expressing users' constraints and preferences about agent behavior in a partially observable setting using parameterized belief-state query (BSQ) policies in the setting of goal-oriented partially observable Markov decision processes (gPOMDPs). We present the first formal analysis of such constraints and prove that while the expected cost function of a parameterized BSQ policy w.r.t its parameters is not convex, it is piecewise constant and yields an implicit discrete parameter search space that is finite for finite horizons. This theoretical result leads to novel algorithms that optimize gPOMDP agent behavior with guaranteed user alignment. Analysis proves that our algorithms converge to the optimal user-aligned behavior in the limit. Empirical results show that parameterized BSQ policies provide a computationally feasible approach for user-aligned planning in partially observable settings.


Interpretable Lightweight Transformer via Unrolling of Learned Graph Smoothness Priors

Algorithm Unrolling;Graph Smoothness Prior;White-box Transformer

Abstract:
We build interpretable and lightweight transformer-like neural networks by unrolling iterative optimization algorithms that minimize graph smoothness priors---the quadratic graph Laplacian regularizer (GLR) and the
ℓ
1
-norm graph total variation (GTV)---subject to an interpolation constraint. The crucial insight is that a normalized signal-dependent graph learning module amounts to a variant of the basic self-attention mechanism in conventional transformers. Unlike "black-box" transformers that require learning of large key, query and value matrices to compute scaled dot products as affinities and subsequent output embeddings, resulting in huge parameter sets, our unrolled networks employ shallow CNNs to learn low-dimensional features per node to establish pairwise Mahalanobis distances and construct sparse similarity graphs. At each layer, given a learned graph, the target interpolated signal is simply a low-pass filtered output derived from the minimization of an assumed graph smoothness prior, leading to a dramatic reduction in parameter count. Experiments for two image interpolation applications verify the restoration performance, parameter efficiency and robustness to covariate shift of our graph-based unrolled networks compared to conventional transformers.


$C^2M^3$: Cycle-Consistent Multi-Model Merging

model merging;linear mode connectivity;deep learning

Summary: Based on the conjecture that all modes found by SGD live in the same basin up to permutations, we propose a novel weight-matching procedure based on the Frank-Wolfe algorithm that ensures cycle consistency of the permutations.

Abstract:
In this paper, we present a novel data-free method for merging neural networks in weight space. Our method optimizes for the permutations of network neurons while ensuring global coherence across all layers, and it outperforms recent layer-local approaches in a set of challenging scenarios. We then generalize the formulation to the
N
-models scenario to enforce cycle consistency of the permutations with guarantees, allowing circular compositions of permutations to be computed without accumulating error along the path. We qualitatively and quantitatively motivate the need for such a constraint, showing its benefits when merging homogeneous sets of models in scenarios spanning varying architectures and datasets. We finally show that, when coupled with activation renormalization, the approach yields the best results in the task.


No Regrets: Investigating and Improving Regret Approximations for Curriculum Discovery

Summary: An improved score function for unsupervised environment design in binary outcome settings, which we use to train agents for real-world tasks, and an improved adversarial evaluation protocol that assesses policy robustness.

Abstract: What data or environments to use for training to improve downstream performance is a longstanding and very topical question in reinforcement learning. In particular, Unsupervised Environment Design (UED) methods have gained recent attention as their adaptive curricula promise to enable agents to be robust to in- and out-of-distribution tasks. This work investigates how existing UED methods select training environments, focusing on task prioritisation metrics. Surprisingly, despite methods aiming to maximise regret in theory, the practical approximations do not correlate with regret but with success rate. As a result, a significant portion of an agent's experience comes from environments it has already mastered, offering little to no contribution toward enhancing its abilities. Put differently, current methods fail to predict intuitive measures of learnability. Specifically, they are unable to consistently identify those scenarios that the agent can sometimes solve, but not always. Based on our analysis, we develop a method that directly trains on scenarios with high learnability. This simple and intuitive approach outperforms existing UED methods in several binary-outcome environments, including the standard domain of Minigrid and a novel setting closely inspired by a real-world robotics problem. We further introduce a new adversarial evaluation procedure for directly measuring robustness, closely mirroring the conditional value at risk (CVaR). We open-source all our code and present visualisations of final policies here: https://github.com/amacrutherford/sampling-for-learnability.


Causal Effect Identification in a Sub-Population with Latent Variables

Causal Effect Identification;Selection Bias;Latent Variables

Summary: We consider the s-ID problem in the presence of latent variables.

Abstract: The s-ID problem seeks to compute a causal effect in a specific sub-population from the observational data pertaining to the same sub population (Abouei et al., 2023). This problem has been addressed when all the variables in the system are observable. In this paper, we consider an extension of the s-ID problem that allows for the presence of latent variables. To tackle the challenges induced by the presence of latent variables in a sub-population, we first extend the classical relevant graphical definitions, such as c-components and Hedges, initially defined for the so-called ID problem (Pearl, 1995; Tian & Pearl, 2002), to their new counterparts. Subsequently, we propose a sound algorithm for the s-ID problem with latent variables.


Improved Algorithms for Contextual Dynamic Pricing

Summary: We present a novel approach to dynamic pricing problems with covariates and prove improved regret bounds for both linear and non-parametric valuations.

Abstract:
In contextual dynamic pricing, a seller sequentially prices goods based on contextual information. Buyers will purchase products only if the prices are below their valuations. The goal of the seller is to design a pricing strategy that collects as much revenue as possible. We focus on two different valuation models. The first assumes that valuations linearly depend on the context and are further distorted by noise. Under minor regularity assumptions, our algorithm achieves an optimal regret bound of
O
~
(
T
2
/
3
)
, improving the existing results. The second model removes the linearity assumption, requiring only that the expected buyer valuation is
β
-H"older in the context. For this model, our algorithm obtains a regret
O
~
(
T
d
+
2
β
/
d
+
3
β
)
, where
d
is the dimension of the context space.


Are Self-Attentions Effective for Time Series Forecasting?

time series forecasting;learnable query;parameter sharing

Summary: Our paper introduces a new forecasting model, which removes self-attention and utilizes cross-attention in Transformers, enhancing forecasting accuracy and efficiency while outperforming existing models across various datasets.

Abstract: Time series forecasting is crucial for applications across multiple domains and various scenarios. Although Transformers have dramatically advanced the landscape of forecasting, their effectiveness remains debated. Recent findings have indicated that simpler linear models might outperform complex Transformer-based approaches, highlighting the potential for more streamlined architectures. In this paper, we shift the focus from evaluating the overall Transformer architecture to specifically examining the effectiveness of self-attention for time series forecasting. To this end, we introduce a new architecture, Cross-Attention-only Time Series transformer (CATS), that rethinks the traditional transformer framework by eliminating self-attention and leveraging cross-attention mechanisms instead. By establishing future horizon-dependent parameters as queries and enhanced parameter sharing, our model not only improves long-term forecasting accuracy but also reduces the number of parameters and memory usage. Extensive experiment across various datasets demonstrates that our model achieves superior performance with the lowest mean squared error and uses fewer parameters compared to existing models. The implementation of our model is available at: https://github.com/dongbeank/CATS.


Sm: enhanced localization in Multiple Instance Learning for medical imaging classification

Multiple Instance Learning;Transformers;Graph Neural Networks;Medical Imaging;Weakly Supervised Learning

Summary: We draw attention to the localization task in MIL and propose Sm, a principled operator to account for local interactions among instances that yields enhanced performance.

Abstract: Multiple Instance Learning (MIL) is widely used in medical imaging classification to reduce the labeling effort. While only bag labels are available for training, one typically seeks predictions at both bag and instance levels (classification and localization tasks, respectively). Early MIL methods treated the instances in a bag independently. Recent methods account for global and local dependencies among instances. Although they have yielded excellent results in classification, their performance in terms of localization is comparatively limited. We argue that these models have been designed to target the classification task, while implications at the instance level have not been deeply investigated. Motivated by a simple observation -- that neighboring instances are likely to have the same label -- we propose a novel, principled, and flexible mechanism to model local dependencies. It can be used alone or combined with any mechanism to model global dependencies (e.g., transformers). A thorough empirical validation shows that our module leads to state-of-the-art performance in localization while being competitive or superior in classification. Our code is at https://github.com/Franblueee/SmMIL.


Your contrastive learning problem is secretly a distribution alignment problem

Optimal transport;Distribution alignment;Noise contrastive estimation

Summary: In this work, we introduce a novel framework for representation learning that recasts contrastive estimation as a distribution alignment problem.

Abstract: Despite the success of contrastive learning (CL) in vision and language, its theoretical foundations and mechanisms for building representations remain poorly understood. In this work, we build connections between noise contrastive estimation losses widely used in CL and distribution alignment with entropic optimal transport (OT). This connection allows us to develop a family of different losses and multistep iterative variants for existing CL methods. Intuitively, by using more information from the distribution of latents, our approach allows a more distribution-aware manipulation of the relationships within augmented sample sets. We provide theoretical insights and experimental evidence demonstrating the benefits of our approach for generalized contrastive alignment. Through this framework, it is possible to leverage tools in OT to build unbalanced losses to handle noisy views and customize the representation space by changing the constraints on alignment. By reframing contrastive learning as an alignment problem and leveraging existing optimization tools for OT, our work provides new insights and connections between different self-supervised learning models in addition to new tools that can be more easily adapted to incorporate domain knowledge into learning.


Learn To be Efficient: Build Structured Sparsity in Large Language Models

LLM inference efficiency;Moefication;Contexual Sparsity

Summary: We propose a novel training algorithm to train efficiency-aware LLMs that have more structured contextual sparsity for fast inference.

Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable success with their billion-level parameters, yet they incur high inference overheads. The emergence of activation sparsity in LLMs provides a natural approach to reduce this cost by involving only parts of the parameters for inference. However, existing methods only focus on utilizing this naturally formed activation sparsity in a post-training setting, overlooking the potential for further amplifying this inherent sparsity. In this paper, we hypothesize that LLMs can learn to be efficient by achieving more structured activation sparsity. To achieve this, we introduce a novel training algorithm, Learn-To-be-Efficient (LTE), designed to train efficiency-aware LLMs to learn to activate fewer neurons and achieve a better trade-off between sparsity and performance. Furthermore, unlike SOTA MoEfication methods, which mainly focus on ReLU-based models, LTE can also be applied to LLMs like LLaMA using non-ReLU activations. Extensive evaluation on language understanding, language generation, and instruction tuning tasks show that LTE consistently outperforms SOTA baselines. Along with our hardware-aware custom kernel implementation, LTE reduces LLaMA2-7B inference latency by 25% at 50% sparsity.


Stochastic Concept Bottleneck Models

Summary: We propose a method for modeling concept dependencies that improves intervention effectiveness.

Abstract: Concept Bottleneck Models (CBMs) have emerged as a promising interpretable method whose final prediction is based on intermediate, human-understandable concepts rather than the raw input. Through time-consuming manual interventions, a user can correct wrongly predicted concept values to enhance the model's downstream performance. We propose Stochastic Concept Bottleneck Models (SCBMs), a novel approach that models concept dependencies. In SCBMs, a single-concept intervention affects all correlated concepts, thereby improving intervention effectiveness. Unlike previous approaches that model the concept relations via an autoregressive structure, we introduce an explicit, distributional parameterization that allows SCBMs to retain the CBMs' efficient training and inference procedure. Additionally, we leverage the parameterization to derive an effective intervention strategy based on the confidence region. We show empirically on synthetic tabular and natural image datasets that our approach improves intervention effectiveness significantly. Notably, we showcase the versatility and usability of SCBMs by examining a setting with CLIP-inferred concepts, alleviating the need for manual concept annotations.


Spiking Token Mixer: An event-driven friendly Former structure for spiking neural networks

spiking neural network; event-driven friendly; low energy consumption

Summary: We proposed the STMixer architecture, consisting exclusively of convolutional, fully connected layers, and residual path, is more advantageous for deployment in asynchronous scenarios.

Abstract: Spiking neural networks (SNNs), inspired by biological processes, use spike signals for inter-layer communication, presenting an energy-efficient alternative to traditional neural networks. To realize the theoretical advantages of SNNs in energy efficiency, it is essential to deploy them onto neuromorphic chips. On clock-driven synchronous chips, employing shorter time steps can enhance energy efficiency but reduce SNN performance. Compared to the clock-driven synchronous chip, the event-driven asynchronous chip achieves much lower energy consumption but only supports some specific network operations. Recently, a series of SNN projects have achieved tremendous success, significantly improving the SNN's performance. However, event-driven asynchronous chips do not support some of the proposed structures, making it impossible to integrate these SNNs into asynchronous hardware. In response to these problems, we propose the Spiking Token Mixer (STMixer) architecture, which consists exclusively of operations supported by asynchronous scenarios, including convolutional, fully connected layers and residual paths. Our series of experiments also demonstrates that STMixer achieves performance on par with spiking transformers in synchronous scenarios with very low timesteps. This indicates its ability to achieve the same level of performance with lower power consumption in synchronous scenarios. The codes are available at \url{https://github.com/brain-intelligence-lab/STMixer_demo}.


DeepDRK: Deep Dependency Regularized Knockoff for Feature Selection

Feature Selection;Deep Learning;Model-X Knockoff;FDR Control;Boosting Power

Summary: A pipeline that consists of a transformer-based model with novel regularizations to boost power while controlling the FDR during feature selection

Abstract: Model-X knockoff has garnered significant attention among various feature selection methods due to its guarantees for controlling the false discovery rate (FDR). Since its introduction in parametric design, knockoff techniques have evolved to handle arbitrary data distributions using deep learning-based generative models. However, we have observed limitations in the current implementations of the deep Model-X knockoff framework. Notably, the "swap property" that knockoffs require often faces challenges at the sample level, resulting in diminished selection power. To address these issues, we develop "Deep Dependency Regularized Knockoff (DeepDRK)," a distribution-free deep learning method that effectively balances FDR and power. In DeepDRK, we introduce a novel formulation of the knockoff model as a learning problem under multi-source adversarial attacks. By employing an innovative perturbation technique, we achieve lower FDR and higher power. Our model outperforms existing benchmarks across synthetic, semi-synthetic, and real-world datasets, particularly when sample sizes are small and data distributions are non-Gaussian.


Variational Distillation of Diffusion Policies into Mixture of Experts

Diverse Behavior Learning;Model Distillation;Diffusion Models;Variational Inference

Summary: This work introduces Variational Diffusion Distillation (VDD), a novel method for distilling denoising diffusion policies into a Mixture of Experts (MoE).

Abstract: This work introduces Variational Diffusion Distillation (VDD), a novel method that distills denoising diffusion policies into Mixtures of Experts (MoE) through variational inference. Diffusion Models are the current state-of-the-art in generative modeling due to their exceptional ability to accurately learn and represent complex, multi-modal distributions. This ability allows Diffusion Models to replicate the inherent diversity in human behavior, making them the preferred models in behavior learning such as Learning from Human Demonstrations (LfD). However, diffusion models come with some drawbacks, including the intractability of likelihoods and long inference times due to their iterative sampling process. The inference times, in particular, pose a significant challenge to real-time applications such as robot control. In contrast, MoEs effectively address the aforementioned issues while retaining the ability to represent complex distributions but are notoriously difficult to train. VDD is the first method that distills pre-trained diffusion models into MoE models, and hence, combines the expressiveness of Diffusion Models with the benefits of Mixture Models. Specifically, VDD leverages a decompositional upper bound of the variational objective that allows the training of each expert separately, resulting in a robust optimization scheme for MoEs. VDD demonstrates across nine complex behavior learning tasks, that it is able to: i) accurately distill complex distributions learned by the diffusion model, ii) outperform existing state-of-the-art distillation methods, and iii) surpass conventional methods for training MoE. The code and videos are available at https://intuitive-robots.github.io/vdd-website.


Time Makes Space: Emergence of Place Fields in Networks Encoding Temporally Continuous Sensory Experiences

Place Cells/Fields;Recurrent Neural Networks;Episodic Memory;Hippocampus

Summary: We model the CA3 region as a recurrent autoencoder that reconstructs sensory experiences from partial observations in simulated environments, and observed emergence of place fields reproducing key aspects of hippocampal phenomenology.

Abstract: The vertebrate hippocampus is thought to use recurrent connectivity in area CA3 to support episodic memory recall from partial cues. This brain area also contains place cells, whose location-selective firing fields implement maps supporting spatial memory. Here we show that place cells emerge in networks trained to remember temporally continuous sensory episodes. We model CA3 as a recurrent autoencoder that recalls and reconstructs sensory experiences from noisy and partially occluded observations by agents traversing simulated arenas. The agents move in realistic trajectories modeled from rodents and environments are modeled as continuously varying, high-dimensional, sensory experience maps (spatially smoothed Gaussian random fields). Training our autoencoder to accurately pattern-complete and reconstruct sensory experiences with a constraint on total activity causes spatially localized firing fields, i.e., place cells, to emerge in the encoding layer. The emergent place fields reproduce key aspects of hippocampal phenomenology: a) remapping (maintenance of and reversion to distinct learned maps in different environments), implemented via repositioning of experience manifolds in the network’s hidden layer, b) orthogonality of spatial representations in different arenas, c) robust place field emergence in differently shaped rooms, with single units showing multiple place fields in large or complex spaces, and (d) slow representational drift of place fields. We argue that these results arise because continuous traversal of space makes sensory experience temporally continuous. We make testable predictions: a) rapidly changing sensory context will disrupt place fields, b) place fields will form even if recurrent connections are blocked, but reversion to previously learned representations upon remapping will be abolished, c) the dimension of temporally smooth experience sets the dimensionality of place fields, including during virtual navigation of abstract spaces.


Public-data Assisted Private Stochastic Optimization: Power and Limitations

Differential Privacy;Public Data;Stochastic Optimization;Generalized Linear Model

Summary: We study the limits and capability of public-data assisted differentially private algorithms.

Abstract:
We study the limits and capability of public-data assisted differentially private (PA-DP) algorithms. Specifically, we focus on the problem of stochastic convex optimization (SCO) with either labeled or unlabeled public data. For complete/labeled public data, we show that any
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Kernel Language Entropy: Fine-grained Uncertainty Quantification for LLMs from Semantic Similarities

Summary: Kernel Language Entropy is a novel method for uncertainty quantification that utilizes semantic similarities in the form of kernels over the space of outputs.

Abstract: Uncertainty quantification in Large Language Models (LLMs) is crucial for applications where safety and reliability are important. In particular, uncertainty can be used to improve the trustworthiness of LLMs by detecting factually incorrect model responses, commonly called hallucinations. Critically, one should seek to capture the model's semantic uncertainty, i.e., the uncertainty over the meanings of LLM outputs, rather than uncertainty over lexical or syntactic variations that do not affect answer correctness. To address this problem, we propose Kernel Language Entropy (KLE), a novel method for uncertainty estimation in white- and black-box LLMs. KLE defines positive semidefinite unit trace kernels to encode the semantic similarities of LLM outputs and quantifies uncertainty using the von Neumann entropy. It considers pairwise semantic dependencies between answers (or semantic clusters), providing more fine-grained uncertainty estimates than previous methods based on hard clustering of answers. We theoretically prove that KLE generalizes the previous state-of-the-art method called semantic entropy and empirically demonstrate that it improves uncertainty quantification performance across multiple natural language generation datasets and LLM architectures.


Does Worst-Performing Agent Lead the Pack? Analyzing Agent Dynamics in Unified Distributed SGD

Distributed Optimization;Agent Dynamics;Federated Learning;Central Limit Theorem;Efficient Sampling

Summary: We provide an asymptotic analysis of the Unified Distributed SGD, including decentralized SGD and various Federated Learning algorithms, to study the impact of agents' sampling strategies on the overall convergence of the large-scale system.

Abstract: Distributed learning is essential to train machine learning algorithms across heterogeneous agents while maintaining data privacy. We conduct an asymptotic analysis of Unified Distributed SGD (UD-SGD), exploring a variety of communication patterns, including decentralized SGD and local SGD within Federated Learning (FL), as well as the increasing communication interval in the FL setting. In this study, we assess how different sampling strategies, such as i.i.d. sampling, shuffling, and Markovian sampling, affect the convergence speed of UD-SGD by considering the impact of agent dynamics on the limiting covariance matrix as described in the Central Limit Theorem (CLT). Our findings not only support existing theories on linear speedup and asymptotic network independence, but also theoretically and empirically show how efficient sampling strategies employed by individual agents contribute to overall convergence in UD-SGD. Simulations reveal that a few agents using highly efficient sampling can achieve or surpass the performance of the majority employing moderately improved strategies, providing new insights beyond traditional analyses focusing on the worst-performing agent.


Agent Planning with World Knowledge Model

world knowledge model;agent planning;large language models

Summary: We introduce parametric World Knowledge Model (WKM) which provides global prior task knowledge and local dynamic state knowledge to facilitate agent planning.

Abstract: Recent endeavors towards directly using large language models (LLMs) as agent models to execute interactive planning tasks have shown commendable results. Despite their achievements, however, they still struggle with brainless trial-and-error in global planning and generating hallucinatory actions in local planning due to their poor understanding of the "real" physical world. Imitating humans' mental world knowledge model which provides global prior knowledge before the task and maintains local dynamic knowledge during the task, in this paper, we introduce parametric World Knowledge Model (WKM) to facilitate agent planning. Concretely, we steer the agent model to self-synthesize knowledge from both expert and sampled trajectories. Then we develop WKM, providing prior task knowledge to guide the global planning and dynamic state knowledge to assist the local planning. Experimental results on three real-world simulated datasets with Mistral-7B, Gemma-7B, and Llama-3-8B demonstrate that our method can achieve superior performance compared to various strong baselines. Besides, we analyze to illustrate that our WKM can effectively alleviate the blind trial-and-error and hallucinatory action issues, providing strong support for the agent's understanding of the world. Other interesting findings include: 1) our instance-level task knowledge can generalize better to unseen tasks, 2) weak WKM can guide strong agent model planning, and 3) unified WKM training has promising potential for further development.


INDICT: Code Generation with Internal Dialogues of Critiques for Both Security and Helpfulness

code generation;safety;helpfulness;code security;large language model;critic;autonomous agent

Summary: We propose to improve code generation by both safety and helpfulness through a collaborative and autonomous system of dual tool-enhanced critics, providing knowledge-grounded critic feedbacks to support the LLM code generator.

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) for code are typically trained to align with natural language instructions to closely follow their intentions and requirements. However, in many practical scenarios, it becomes increasingly challenging for these models to navigate the intricate boundary between helpfulness and safety, especially against highly complex yet potentially malicious instructions. In this work, we introduce INDICT: a new framework that empowers LLMs with Internal Dialogues of Critiques for both safety and helpfulness guidance. The internal dialogue is a dual cooperative system between a safety-driven critic and a helpfulness-driven critic. Each critic provides analysis against the given task and corresponding generated response, equipped with external knowledge queried through relevant code snippets and tools like web search and code interpreter. We engage the dual critic system in both code generation stage as well as code execution stage, providing preemptive and post-hoc guidance respectively to LLMs. We evaluated INDICT on 8 diverse tasks across 8 programming languages from 5 benchmarks, using LLMs from 7B to 70B parameters. We observed that our approach can provide an advanced level of critiques of both safety and helpfulness analysis, significantly improving the quality of output codes (+10% absolute improvements in all models).