Different agents may have different points of view. Following a popular approach in the artificial intelligence literature, this can be modelled by means of different abstract argumentation frameworks, each consisting of a set of arguments the agent is contemplating and a binary attack-relation between them. A question arising in this context is whether the diversity of views observed in such a profile of argumentation frameworks is consistent with the assumption that every individual argumentation framework is induced by a combination of, first, some basic factual attack-relation between the arguments and, second, the personal preferences of the agent concerned regarding the moral or social values the arguments under scrutiny relate to. We treat this question of rationalisability of a profile as an algorithmic problem and identify tractable and intractable cases. In doing so, we distinguish different constraints on admissible rationalisations, e.g., concerning the types of preferences used or the number of distinct values involved. We also distinguish two different semantics for rationalisability, which differ in the assumptions made on how agents treat attacks between arguments they do not report. This research agenda, bringing together ideas from abstract argumentation and social choice, is useful for understanding what types of profiles can reasonably be expected to occur in a multiagent system.

The AGM paradigm of belief change studies the dynamics of belief states in light of new information. Finding, or even approximating, those beliefs that are dependent on or relevant to a change is valuable because, for example, it can narrow the set of beliefs considered during belief change operations. A strong intuition in this area is captured by Gärdenforss preservation criterion (GPC), which suggests that formulas independent of a belief change should remain intact. GPC thus allows one to build dependence relations that are linked with belief change. Such dependence relations can in turn be used as a theoretical benchmark against which to evaluate other approximate dependence or relevance relations. Fariñas and Herzig axiomatize a dependence relation with respect to a belief set, and, based on GPC, they characterize the correspondence between AGM contraction functions and dependence relations. In this paper, we introduce base dependence as a relation between formulas with respect to a belief base, and prove a more general characterization that shows the correspondence between kernel contraction and base dependence. At this level of generalization, different types of base dependence emerge, which we show to be a result of possible redundancy in the belief base. We further show that one of these relations that emerge, strong base dependence, is parallel to saturated kernel contraction. We then prove that our latter characterization is a reversible generalization of Fariñas and Herzigs characterization. That is, in the special case when the underlying belief base is deductively closed (i.e., it is a belief set), strong base dependence reduces to dependence, and so do their respective characterizations. Finally, an intriguing feature of Fariñas and Herzigs formalism is that it meets other criteria for dependence, namely, Keyness conjunction criterion for dependence (CCD) and Gärdenforss conjunction criterion for independence (CCI). We prove that our base dependence formalism also meets these criteria. Even more interestingly, we offer a more specific criterion that implies both CCD and CCI, and show our base dependence formalism also meets this new criterion.

Low-rank modeling has many important applications in computer vision and machine learning. While the matrix rank is often approximated by the convex nuclear norm, the use of nonconvex low-rank regularizers has demonstrated better empirical performance. However, the resulting optimization problem is much more challenging. Recent state-of-the-art requires an expensive full SVD in each iteration. In this paper, we show that for many commonly-used nonconvex low-rank regularizers, a cutoff can be derived to automatically threshold the singular values obtained from the proximal operator. This allows such operator being efficiently approximated by power method. Based on it, we develop a proximal gradient algorithm (and its accelerated variant) with inexact proximal splitting and prove that a convergence rate of O(1/T) where T is the number of iterations is guaranteed. Furthermore, we show the proposed algorithm can be well parallelized, which achieves nearly linear speedup w.r.t the number of threads. Extensive experiments are performed on matrix completion and robust principal component analysis, which shows a significant speedup over the state-of-the-art. Moreover, the matrix solution obtained is more accurate and has a lower rank than that of the nuclear norm regularizer.

Voxelwise classification is a popular and effective method for tissue quantification in brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. However, there are often large differences over sets of MRI scans due to how they were acquired (i.e. field strength, vendor, protocol), that lead to variation in, among others, pixel intensities, tissue contrast, signal-to-noise ratio, resolution, slice thickness and magnetic field inhomogeneities. Classifiers trained on data from a specific scanner fail or under-perform when applied to data that was differently acquired. In order to address this lack of generalization, we propose a Siamese neural network (MRAI-net) to learn a representation that minimizes the between-scanner variation, while maintaining the contrast between brain tissues necessary for brain tissue quantification. The proposed MRAI-net was evaluated on both simulated and real MRI data. After learning the MR acquisition invariant representation, any supervised classifier can be applied. In this paper we showed that applying a linear classifier on the MRAI representation outperforms supervised convolutional neural network classifiers for tissue classification when little target training data is available.

We propose a protocol to perform generalized quantum reinforcement learning with quantum technologies. At variance with recent results on quantum reinforcement learning with superconducting circuits [L. Lamata, Sci. Rep. 7, 1609 (2017)], in our current protocol coherent feedback during the learning process is not required, enabling its implementation in a wide variety of quantum systems. We consider diverse possible scenarios for an agent, an environment, and a register that connects them, involving multiqubit and multilevel systems, as well as open-system dynamics. We finally propose possible implementations of this protocol in trapped ions and superconducting circuits. The field of quantum reinforcement learning with quantum technologies will enable enhanced quantum control, as well as more efficient machine learning calculations.

IKERBASQUE, Basque F oundation for Science, Mar ıa D ıaz de Haro 3, E-48013 Bilbao, Spain We propose a method to build quantum memristors in quantum photonic platforms. We firstly design an effective beam splitter, which is tunable in real-time, by means of a Mach-Zehnder-type array with two equal 50:50 beam splitters and a tunable retarder, which allows us to control its reflectivity. Then, we show that this tunable beam splitter, when equipped with weak measurements and classical feedback, behaves as a quantum memristor. Indeed, in order to prove its quantumness, we show how to codify quantum information in the coherent beams. Moreover, we estimate the memory capability of the quantum memristor.

We present a scalable and robust Bayesian inference method for linear state space models. The method is applied to demand forecasting in the context of a large e-commerce platform, paying special attention to intermittent and bursty target statistics. Inference is approximated by the Newton-Raphson algorithm, reduced to linear-time Kalman smoothing, which allows us to operate on several orders of magnitude larger problems than previous related work. In a study on large real-world sales datasets, our method outperforms competing approaches on fast and medium moving items.

Regularized empirical risk minimization using kernels and their corresponding reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHSs) plays an important role in machine learning. However, the actually used kernel often depends on one or on a few hyperparameters or the kernel is even data dependent in a much more complicated manner. Examples are Gaussian RBF kernels, kernel learning, and hierarchical Gaussian kernels which were recently proposed for deep learning. Therefore, the actually used kernel is often computed by a grid search or in an iterative manner and can often only be considered as an approximation to the "ideal" or "optimal" kernel. The paper gives conditions under which classical kernel based methods based on a convex Lipschitz loss function and on a bounded and smooth kernel are stable, if the probability measure $P$, the regularization parameter $\lambda$, and the kernel $k$ may slightly change in a simultaneous manner. Similar results are also given for pairwise learning. Therefore, the topic of this paper is somewhat more general than in classical robust statistics, where usually only the influence of small perturbations of the probability measure $P$ on the estimated function is considered.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging in applications like autonomous vehicles and medical assistance devices. But even when the technology is ready to use and has been shown to meet customer demands, there's still a great deal of skepticism among consumers. For example, a survey of more than 1,000 car buyers in Germany showed that only 5% would prefer a fully autonomous vehicle. We can find a similar number of skeptics of AI-enabled medical diagnosis systems, such as IBM's Watson. The public's lack of trust in AI applications may cause us to collectively neglect the possible advantages we could gain from them.

AI could fundamentally change the nature of patient care delivery. Are consumers and clinicians prepared for this much-anticipated innovation? Today's unprecedented increase in the volume of patient healthcare data has left the industry struggling to put that data to practical use. Artificial intelligence (AI), with its capability to draw "intelligent" inferences based on vast amounts of raw data, may hold the solution. Smart devices and robotics are already making tentative inroads to the healthcare marketplace.