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Sparsity-based Feature Selection for Anomalous Subgroup Discovery

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Anomalous pattern detection aims to identify instances where deviation from normalcy is evident, and is widely applicable across domains. Multiple anomalous detection techniques have been proposed in the state of the art. However, there is a common lack of a principled and scalable feature selection method for efficient discovery. Existing feature selection techniques are often conducted by optimizing the performance of prediction outcomes rather than its systemic deviations from the expected. In this paper, we proposed a sparsity-based automated feature selection (SAFS) framework, which encodes systemic outcome deviations via the sparsity of feature-driven odds ratios. SAFS is a model-agnostic approach with usability across different discovery techniques. SAFS achieves more than $3\times$ reduction in computation time while maintaining detection performance when validated on publicly available critical care dataset. SAFS also results in a superior performance when compared against multiple baselines for feature selection.


Emerging Economies More Optimistic About Artificial Intelligence โ€“ Survey

#artificialintelligence

According to a new survey, six out of ten expect that products and services using artificial intelligence will profoundly change their daily life in the next three to five years and half feel that this has already happened. These are some of the findings of a 28-country survey conducted by Ipsos for the World Economic Forum of 19,504 adults under the age of 75 between November 19 and December 3, 2021. "In order to trust artificial intelligence, people must know and understand exactly what AI is, what it's doing, and its impact," said Kay Firth-Butterfield, Head of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at the World Economic Forum. "Leaders and companies must make transparent and trustworthy AI a priority as they implement this technology. At the World Economic Forum, we are focused on multi-stakeholder collaboration to optimize accountability, transparency, privacy and impartiality to create that trust. With the ability to solve many of society's pressing issues, we are focused on accelerating the benefits and mitigating the risks of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Only then can we gain public trust and benefit from the rewards of emerging tech like AI."


Archaeology: Search for the wreck of Shackleton's lost ship, the Endurance, to begin NEXT MONTH

Daily Mail - Science & tech

The expedition to find the wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance is set to sail next month, it was announced today on the centenary of the polar explorer's death. Endurance was one of two ships used by the Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914โ€“1917, which hoped to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic. Carrying an expedition crew of 28 men, the 144-foot-long Endurance was a three-masted schooner barque sturdily built for operations in polar waters. Aiming to land at Vahsel Bay, the vessel became stuck in pack ice on the Weddell Sea on January 18, 1915 -- where she and her crew would remain for many months. In late October, however, a drop in temperature from 42 F to -14 F saw the ice pack begin to steadily crush the Endurance, which finally sank on November 21, 1915.


Systematic assessment of the quality of fit of the stochastic block model for empirical networks

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We perform a systematic analysis of the quality of fit of the stochastic block model (SBM) for 275 empirical networks spanning a wide range of domains and orders of size magnitude. We employ posterior predictive model checking as a criterion to assess the quality of fit, which involves comparing networks generated by the inferred model with the empirical network, according to a set of network descriptors. We observe that the SBM is capable of providing an accurate description for the majority of networks considered, but falls short of saturating all modeling requirements. In particular, networks possessing a large diameter and slow-mixing random walks tend to be badly described by the SBM. However, contrary to what is often assumed, networks with a high abundance of triangles can be well described by the SBM in many cases. We demonstrate that simple network descriptors can be used to evaluate whether or not the SBM can provide a sufficiently accurate representation, potentially pointing to possible model extensions that can systematically improve the expressiveness of this class of models.


Convergence and Complexity of Stochastic Block Majorization-Minimization

arXiv.org Machine Learning

In this paper, we introduce stochastic block majorization-minimization, where the surrogates can now be only block multi-convex and a single block is optimized at a time within a diminishing radius. Relaxing the standard strong convexity requirements for surrogates in SMM, our framework gives wider applicability including online CANDECOMP/PARAFAC (CP) dictionary learning and yields greater computational efficiency especially when the problem dimension is large. We provide an extensive convergence analysis on the proposed algorithm, which we derive under possibly dependent data streams, relaxing the standard i.i.d. Our results provide first convergence rate bounds for various online matrix and tensor decomposition algorithms under a general Markovian data setting. Empirical loss minimization is a classical problem setting regarding parameter estimation with a growing number of observations, where one seeks to minimize a recursively defined empirical loss function as new data arrives. Some of its well-known applications include maximum likelihood estimation, or more generally, M-estimation [Gey94, GvdGW00, SB02], as well as the online dictionary learning literature [MBPS10, Mai13b, MMTV17, LNB20]. On the other hand, the expected loss minimization seeks to estimate a parameter by minimizing the loss function with respect to random data. It provides a general framework for stochastic optimization literature [SK07, Mar05, BB08, NJLS09]. Optimization algorithms for empirical or expected loss minimization are in nature'online', meaning that sampling new data points and adjusting the current estimation occurs recursively. Such onilne algorithms have proven to be particularly efficient in large-scale problems in statistics, optimization, and machine learning [Bot98, DS09, GL13, KB14].


How Incorta uses AI to address supply-chain issues

#artificialintelligence

Prior to this pandemic year of 2021, the term "supply chain" didn't raise many red flags for most consumers, frankly because they didn't have to think about it. Buyers were so accustomed to getting things on schedule that it rarely became a regular topic of conversation. That all changed in the second half of 2021. With the pandemic slowing down production lines and transportation in faraway places, the term "supply chain" is now regularly in headlines. This has been the greatest shock to global supply chains in modern history.


Legally speaking - Artificial Intelligence is not even close to human intelligence

#artificialintelligence

In public proceedings, the Legal Board of Appeal of the EPO confirmed that under the European Patent Convention (EPC), an inventor designated in a patent application must be a human being. This was the judgement in combined cases J 8/20 and J 9/20, where the board just dismissed the applicant's appeal. Here, both the applications were made by a Missouri physicist Stephen Thaler, whose AI-system DABUS had made the inventions. Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience, or DABUS, is a computer system programmed to invent by itself. It is, basically, a swarm of disconnected neutral nets that can continuously generate thought processes and even memories that can, over time, generate new and inventive outputs independently.


Shamim Nabuuma Kaliisa: survivor takes on cancer with AI

#artificialintelligence

When Shamim Nabuuma Kaliisa first had chest pain, she was in the second year of her medical degree at Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda). She was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was barely in her 20s. "Being told that you have cancer is one of the worst things anyone can hear", she told The Lancet Oncology. "It comes with a feeling of not having a future, with the imagination of pain until death." Luckily, at stage I, her breast cancer was treatable, but the pain she went through during the long treatment process was unbearable.


Drone attack on Iraq base foiled, 2nd one in 24 hours: Coalition

Al Jazeera

For the second time in 24 hours, a United States-led coalition fighting ISIL (ISIS) in Iraq says it has foiled a drone attack on a base hosting US troops. An official of the international military coalition said on Tuesday two armed drones were shot down as they approached the base in western Anbar province. "Two fixed-wing drones rigged with explosives were engaged and destroyed by defensive capabilities at the Iraqi Ain al-Asad airbase early this morning," the official was quoted as saying by news agencies. "The attempted attack was unsuccessful. All forces are accounted for."


'I'd been set up': the LGBTQ Kenyans 'catfished' for money via dating apps

The Guardian

One day after work last month, Tom Otieno* went to a shopping centre in Nairobi to pick up groceries before heading home. He got a call from someone he had been chatting to for a week on Grindr, a social networking app for gay, bi, trans and queer people. The man had already tried ringing several times during the day while Otieno was with colleagues and was keen to meet. Otieno, 29, mentioned where he was but said that he did not want to see the man. Then, as he was heading to his car, he got another call.