South America
A Probabilistic Fluctuation based Membership Inference Attack for Diffusion Models
Fu, Wenjie, Wang, Huandong, Gao, Chen, Liu, Guanghua, Li, Yong, Jiang, Tao
Membership Inference Attack (MIA) identifies whether a record exists in a machine learning model's training set by querying the model. MIAs on the classic classification models have been well-studied, and recent works have started to explore how to transplant MIA onto generative models. Our investigation indicates that existing MIAs designed for generative models mainly depend on the overfitting in target models. However, overfitting can be avoided by employing various regularization techniques, whereas existing MIAs demonstrate poor performance in practice. Unlike overfitting, memorization is essential for deep learning models to attain optimal performance, making it a more prevalent phenomenon. Memorization in generative models leads to an increasing trend in the probability distribution of generating records around the member record. Therefore, we propose a Probabilistic Fluctuation Assessing Membership Inference Attack (PFAMI), a black-box MIA that infers memberships by detecting these trends via analyzing the overall probabilistic fluctuations around given records. We conduct extensive experiments across multiple generative models and datasets, which demonstrate PFAMI can improve the attack success rate (ASR) by about 27.9% when compared with the best baseline.
Kernel Density Matrices for Probabilistic Deep Learning
González, Fabio A., Ramos-Pollán, Raúl, Gallego-Mejia, Joseph A.
This paper introduces a novel approach to probabilistic deep learning, kernel density matrices, which provide a simpler yet effective mechanism for representing joint probability distributions of both continuous and discrete random variables. In quantum mechanics, a density matrix is the most general way to describe the state of a quantum system. This work extends the concept of density matrices by allowing them to be defined in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space. This abstraction allows the construction of differentiable models for density estimation, inference, and sampling, and enables their integration into end-to-end deep neural models. In doing so, we provide a versatile representation of marginal and joint probability distributions that allows us to develop a differentiable, compositional, and reversible inference procedure that covers a wide range of machine learning tasks, including density estimation, discriminative learning, and generative modeling. The broad applicability of the framework is illustrated by two examples: an image classification model that can be naturally transformed into a conditional generative model, and a model for learning with label proportions that demonstrates the framework's ability to deal with uncertainty in the training samples.
Interactive Imitation Learning of Bimanual Movement Primitives
Franzese, Giovanni, Rosa, Leandro de Souza, Verburg, Tim, Peternel, Luka, Kober, Jens
Abstract--Performing bimanual tasks with dual robotic setups can drastically increase the impact on industrial and daily life applications. However, performing a bimanual task brings many challenges, like synchronization and coordination of the singlearm policies. This article proposes the Safe, Interactive Movement Primitives Learning (SIMPLe) algorithm, to teach and correct single or dual arm impedance policies directly from human kinesthetic demonstrations. Moreover, it proposes a novel graph encoding of the policy based on Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) where the single-arm motion is guaranteed to converge close to the trajectory and then towards the demonstrated goal. Factory assembly, logistics, and household applications of bimanual robots have been known for decades [7], [8]. Modern society is faced with the lack of workforce in various However, the increased number of Degrees of Freedom repetitive jobs like re-shelving products in supermarkets (DoFs) (the curse of dimensionality) implies an increased or handling heavy luggage in airports. Robots appear to be teaching complexity and the necessity of skilled human teachers the most promising solution to mitigate the negative effects of who knows how to interface with the bimanual robotic the declining workforce and perform these various complex platform. To work in variable and unstructured environments, In this paper we contribute with the Safe Interactive Movement robots must be dexterous and intelligent to quickly learn the Primitive Learning (SIMPLe) algorithm and propose: job while interacting safely with other robots, objects, and humans.
ChatGPT gets better marks than students in some university courses
ChatGPT may be as good as or better than students at assessments in around a quarter of university courses. However, this generally only applies to questions with a clear answer that require memory recall, rather than critical analysis. Yasir Zaki and his team at New York University Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates contacted colleagues in other departments asking them to provide assessment questions from courses taught at the university, including computer science, psychology, political science and business. These colleagues also provided real student answers to the questions. The questions were then run through the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, which supplied its own responses.
Serverless Computing
Full automation of IT infrastructure and the delivery of efficient IT operations as billed services have been long-standing goals of the computing industry since at least the 1960s. A newcomer--serverless computing--emerged in the late 2010s with characteristics claimed to be different from those of established IT services, including Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) clouds. Even though serverless computing has gained significant attention in industry and academia over the past five years, there is still no consensus about its unique distinguishing characteristics and precise understanding of how these characteristics differ from classical cloud computing. What is serverless computing, and what are its implications? Market analysts are agreed that serverless computing has strong market potential, with projected compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) varying between 21% and 28% through 20284,25,33,35,49 and a projected market value of $36.8 billion49 by that time. Early adopters are attracted by expected cost reductions (47%), reduced operation effort (34%), and scalability (34%).17 In research, the number of peer-reviewed publications connected to serverless computing has risen steadily since 2017.46 In industry, the term is heavily used in cloud provider advertisements and even in the naming of specific products or services. Yet despite this enthusiasm, there exists no common and precise understanding of what serverless is (and of what it is not). Indeed, existing definitions of serverless computing are largely inconsistent and unspecific, which leads to confusion in the use of not only this term but also related terms such as cloud computing, cloud-native, Container-as-a-Service (CaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Function-as-a-Service (FaaS), and Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS).12 As an extended discussion during a 2021 Dagstuhl Seminar2 and our analysis of existing definitions of serverless computing reveal, current definitions focus on a variety of aspects, from abstractions to practical concerns, from computational to financial, from separation of concerns to how concerns should be enacted, and so on. These definitions do not provide consensus, and they are omissive in essential points or even diverge.
Extreme Risk Mitigation in Reinforcement Learning using Extreme Value Theory
NS, Karthik Somayaji, Wang, Yu, Schram, Malachi, Drgona, Jan, Halappanavar, Mahantesh, Liu, Frank, Li, Peng
Risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RL) has garnered significant attention in recent years due to the growing interest in deploying RL agents in real-world scenarios. A critical aspect of risk awareness involves modeling highly rare risk events (rewards) that could potentially lead to catastrophic outcomes. These infrequent occurrences present a formidable challenge for data-driven methods aiming to capture such risky events accurately. While risk-aware RL techniques do exist, their level of risk aversion heavily relies on the precision of the state-action value function estimation when modeling these rare occurrences. Our work proposes to enhance the resilience of RL agents when faced with very rare and risky events by focusing on refining the predictions of the extreme values predicted by the state-action value function distribution. To achieve this, we formulate the extreme values of the state-action value function distribution as parameterized distributions, drawing inspiration from the principles of extreme value theory (EVT). This approach effectively addresses the issue of infrequent occurrence by leveraging EVT-based parameterization. Importantly, we theoretically demonstrate the advantages of employing these parameterized distributions in contrast to other risk-averse algorithms. Our evaluations show that the proposed method outperforms other risk averse RL algorithms on a diverse range of benchmark tasks, each encompassing distinct risk scenarios.
Short Run Transit Route Planning Decision Support System Using a Deep Learning-Based Weighted Graph
Shalit, Nadav, Fire, Michael, Kagan, Dima, Ben-Elia, Eran
Public transport routing plays a crucial role in transit network design, ensuring a satisfactory level of service for passengers. However, current routing solutions rely on traditional operational research heuristics, which can be time-consuming to implement and lack the ability to provide quick solutions. Here, we propose a novel deep learning-based methodology for a decision support system that enables public transport (PT) planners to identify short-term route improvements rapidly. By seamlessly adjusting specific sections of routes between two stops during specific times of the day, our method effectively reduces times and enhances PT services. Leveraging diverse data sources such as GTFS and smart card data, we extract features and model the transportation network as a directed graph. Using self-supervision, we train a deep learning model for predicting lateness values for road segments. These lateness values are then utilized as edge weights in the transportation graph, enabling efficient path searching. Through evaluating the method on Tel Aviv, we are able to reduce times on more than 9\% of the routes. The improved routes included both intraurban and suburban routes showcasing a fact highlighting the model's versatility. The findings emphasize the potential of our data-driven decision support system to enhance public transport and city logistics, promoting greater efficiency and reliability in PT services.
IP-UNet: Intensity Projection UNet Architecture for 3D Medical Volume Segmentation
Aung, Nyothiri, Kechadi, Tahar, Chen, Liming, Dhelim, Sahraoui
CNNs have been widely applied for medical image analysis. However, limited memory capacity is one of the most common drawbacks of processing high-resolution 3D volumetric data. 3D volumes are usually cropped or downsized first before processing, which can result in a loss of resolution, increase class imbalance, and affect the performance of the segmentation algorithms. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end deep learning approach called IP-UNet. IP-UNet is a UNet-based model that performs multi-class segmentation on Intensity Projection (IP) of 3D volumetric data instead of the memory-consuming 3D volumes. IP-UNet uses limited memory capability for training without losing the original 3D image resolution. We compare the performance of three models in terms of segmentation accuracy and computational cost: 1) Slice-by-slice 2D segmentation of the CT scan images using a conventional 2D UNet model. 2) IP-UNet that operates on data obtained by merging the extracted Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP), Closest Vessel Projection (CVP), and Average Intensity Projection (AvgIP) representations of the source 3D volumes, then applying the UNet model on the output IP images. 3) 3D-UNet model directly reads the 3D volumes constructed from a series of CT scan images and outputs the 3D volume of the predicted segmentation. We test the performance of these methods on 3D volumetric images for automatic breast calcification detection. Experimental results show that IP-Unet can achieve similar segmentation accuracy with 3D-Unet but with much better performance. It reduces the training time by 70\% and memory consumption by 92\%.
Exploiting Time-Frequency Conformers for Music Audio Enhancement
Chae, Yunkee, Koo, Junghyun, Lee, Sungho, Lee, Kyogu
With the proliferation of video platforms on the internet, recording musical performances by mobile devices has become commonplace. However, these recordings often suffer from degradation such as noise and reverberation, which negatively impact the listening experience. Consequently, the necessity for music audio enhancement (referred to as music enhancement from this point onward), involving the transformation of degraded audio recordings into pristine high-quality music, has surged to augment the auditory experience. To address this issue, we propose a music enhancement system based on the Conformer architecture that has demonstrated outstanding performance in speech enhancement tasks. Our approach explores the attention mechanisms of the Conformer and examines their performance to discover the best approach for the music enhancement task. Our experimental results show that our proposed model achieves state-of-the-art performance on single-stem music enhancement. Furthermore, our system can perform general music enhancement with multi-track mixtures, which has not been examined in previous work.
Visual Crowd Analysis: Open Research Problems
Khan, Muhammad Asif, Menouar, Hamid, Hamila, Ridha
Over the last decade, there has been a remarkable surge in interest in automated crowd monitoring within the computer vision community. Modern deep-learning approaches have made it possible to develop fully-automated vision-based crowd-monitoring applications. However, despite the magnitude of the issue at hand, the significant technological advancements, and the consistent interest of the research community, there are still numerous challenges that need to be overcome. In this article, we delve into six major areas of visual crowd analysis, emphasizing the key developments in each of these areas. We outline the crucial unresolved issues that must be tackled in future works, in order to ensure that the field of automated crowd monitoring continues to progress and thrive. Several surveys related to this topic have been conducted in the past. Nonetheless, this article thoroughly examines and presents a more intuitive categorization of works, while also depicting the latest breakthroughs within the field, incorporating more recent studies carried out within the last few years in a concise manner. By carefully choosing prominent works with significant contributions in terms of novelty or performance gains, this paper presents a more comprehensive exposition of advancements in the current state-of-the-art.