Kullback-Leiber divergence has been widely used in Knowledge Distillation (KD) to compress Large Language Models (LLMs). Contrary to prior assertions that reverse Kullback-Leibler (RKL) divergence is mode-seeking and thus preferable over the mean-seeking forward Kullback-Leibler (FKL) divergence, this study empirically and theoretically demonstrates that neither mode-seeking nor mean-seeking properties manifest in KD for LLMs. Instead, RKL and FKL are found to share the same optimization objective and both converge after a sufficient number of epochs. However, due to practical constraints, LLMs are seldom trained for such an extensive number of epochs. Meanwhile, we further find that RKL focuses on the tail part of the distributions, while FKL focuses on the head part at the beginning epochs. Consequently, we propose a simple yet effective Adaptive Kullback-Leiber (AKL) divergence method, which adaptively allocates weights to combine FKL and RKL. Metric-based and GPT-4-based evaluations demonstrate that the proposed AKL outperforms the baselines across various tasks and improves the diversity and quality of generated responses.

Odometry is crucial for robot navigation, particularly in situations where global positioning methods like global positioning system (GPS) are unavailable. The main goal of odometry is to predict the robot's motion and accurately determine its current location. Various sensors, such as wheel encoder, inertial measurement unit (IMU), camera, radar, and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), are used for odometry in robotics. LiDAR, in particular, has gained attention for its ability to provide rich three-dimensional (3D) data and immunity to light variations. This survey aims to examine advancements in LiDAR odometry thoroughly. We start by exploring LiDAR technology and then scrutinize LiDAR odometry works, categorizing them based on their sensor integration approaches. These approaches include methods relying solely on LiDAR, those combining LiDAR with IMU, strategies involving multiple LiDARs, and methods fusing LiDAR with other sensor modalities. In conclusion, we address existing challenges and outline potential future directions in LiDAR odometry. Additionally, we analyze public datasets and evaluation methods for LiDAR odometry. To our knowledge, this survey is the first comprehensive exploration of LiDAR odometry.

Recent neural talking radiance field methods have shown great success in photorealistic audio-driven talking face synthesis. In this paper, we propose a novel interactive framework that utilizes human instructions to edit such implicit neural representations to achieve real-time personalized talking face generation. Given a short speech video, we first build an efficient talking radiance field, and then apply the latest conditional diffusion model for image editing based on the given instructions and guiding implicit representation optimization towards the editing target. To ensure audio-lip synchronization during the editing process, we propose an iterative dataset updating strategy and utilize a lip-edge loss to constrain changes in the lip region. We also introduce a lightweight refinement network for complementing image details and achieving controllable detail generation in the final rendered image. Our method also enables real-time rendering at up to 30FPS on consumer hardware. Multiple metrics and user verification show that our approach provides a significant improvement in rendering quality compared to state-of-the-art methods.

In our recently proposed Integrated Finite Element Neural Network (I-FENN) framework (Pantidis and Mobasher, 2023) we showcased how PINNs can be deployed on a finite element-level basis to swiftly approximate a state variable of interest, and we applied it in the context of non-local gradient-enhanced damage mechanics. In this paper, we enhance the rigour and performance of I-FENN by focusing on two crucial aspects of its PINN component: a) the error convergence analysis and b) the hyperparameter-performance relationship. Guided by the available theoretical formulations in the field, we introduce a systematic numerical approach based on a novel set of holistic performance metrics to answer both objectives. In the first objective, we explore in detail the convergence of the PINN training error and the global error against the network size and the training sample size. We demonstrate a consistent converging behavior of the two error types for any investigated combination of network complexity, dataset size and choice of hyperparameters, which empirically proves the conformance of the PINN setup and implementation to the available convergence theories. In the second objective, we establish an a-priori knowledge of the hyperparameters which favor higher predictive accuracy, lower computational effort, and the least chances of arriving at trivial solutions. The analysis leads to several outcomes that contribute to the better performance of I-FENN, and fills a long-standing gap in the PINN literature with regards to the numerical convergence of the network errors while accounting for commonly used optimizers (Adam and L-BFGS). The proposed analysis method can be directly extended to other ML applications in science and engineering. The code and data utilized in the analysis are posted publicly to aid the reproduction and extension of this research.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted the lives of minorities, such as members of the LGBTQ community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) due to pre-existing social disadvantages and health disparities. Although extensive research has been carried out on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on different aspects of the general population's lives, few studies are focused on the LGBTQ population. In this paper, we develop and evaluate two sets of machine learning classifiers using a pre-pandemic and a during-pandemic dataset to identify Twitter posts exhibiting minority stress, which is a unique pressure faced by the members of the LGBTQ population due to their sexual and gender identities. We demonstrate that our best pre- and during-pandemic models show strong and stable performance for detecting posts that contain minority stress. We investigate the linguistic differences in minority stress posts across pre- and during-pandemic periods. We find that anger words are strongly associated with minority stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore the impact of the pandemic on the emotional states of the LGBTQ population by adopting propensity score-based matching to perform a causal analysis. The results show that the LGBTQ population have a greater increase in the usage of cognitive words and worsened observable attribute in the usage of positive emotion words than the group of the general population with similar pre-pandemic behavioral attributes. Our findings have implications for the public health domain and policy-makers to provide adequate support, especially with respect to mental health, to the LGBTQ population during future crises.

Walmart has revealed it is using fully driverless trucks to bring groceries from a fulfillment center to one of its Arkansas supermarkets, in a move that will cut costs and address the ongoing labor shortage affecting retail supply chains. Twelve hours a day, apair of trucks are running on a seven-mile loop of public roads from a fulfillment center to the Walmart on Regional Airport Boulevard in Bentonville, Arkansas, where the mega-retailer is headquartered. From there customers can conveniently pick up their orders. Walmart started driverless deliveries in August using autonomous trucks from Palo Alto, California-based start-up Gatik, but waited to make the announcement until Monday, after two months of incident-free deliveries. The trucking industry has faced a record worker shortage since the pandemic started, Chris Spear, president of the American Trucking Associations, told CNN, with 80,000 drivers still needed.

Walmart will begin testing an autonomous vehicle delivery service this year that will allow customers to place orders online and have their groceries delivered by a driverless car. The pilot program is being launched in Austin, Texas; Miami, Florida: and Washington D.C. It's a partnership between the $560-billion mega-retailer and Ford, which will provide Ford Escape hybrids outfitted with Argo AI technology to make the deliveries. Argo AI, a co-venture between Ford and Volkswagen, will provide the cloud-based infrastructure to schedule drop-offs and safely route orders. Focusing on those three metro areas will show'the potential for autonomous vehicle delivery services at scale,' said Argo AI founder Bryan Salesky. Initial integration testing is expected to begin later this year, the companies said, and the service initially will be limited to specific areas in each city before being expanded over time.