Abstract--The future 6G network is envisioned to be AI-native, and as such, ML models will be pervasive in support of optimizing performance, reducing energy consumption, and in coping with increasing complexity and heterogeneity. A key challenge is automating the process of finding optimal model architectures satisfying stringent requirements stemming from varying tasks, dynamicity and available resources in the infrastructure and deployment positions. In this paper, we describe and review the state-of-the-art in Neural Architecture Search and Transfer Learning and their applicability in networking. Further, we identify open research challenges and set directions with a specific focus on three main requirements with elements unique to the future network, namely combining NAS and TL, multi-objective search, and tabular data. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are technologies which are envisioned to have a prominent Transfer Learning (TL) is a key technology that can play a role in the future AI-native 6G network.

Generative Retrieval (GR) is an emerging paradigm in information retrieval that leverages generative models to directly map queries to relevant document identifiers (DocIDs) without the need for traditional query processing or document reranking. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of GR, highlighting key developments, indexing and retrieval strategies, and challenges. We discuss various document identifier strategies, including numerical and string-based identifiers, and explore different document representation methods. Our primary contribution lies in outlining future research directions that could profoundly impact the field: improving the quality of query generation, exploring learnable document identifiers, enhancing scalability, and integrating GR with multi-task learning frameworks. By examining state-of-the-art GR techniques and their applications, this survey aims to provide a foundational understanding of GR and inspire further innovations in this transformative approach to information retrieval. We also make the complementary materials such as paper collection publicly available at https://github.com/MiuLab/GenIR-Survey/

Creating engaging narratives from visual data is crucial for automated digital media consumption, assistive technologies, and interactive entertainment. This survey covers methodologies used in the generation of these narratives, focusing on their principles, strengths, and limitations. The survey also covers tasks related to automatic story generation, such as image and video captioning, and visual question answering, as well as story generation without visual inputs. These tasks share common challenges with visual story generation and have served as inspiration for the techniques used in the field. We analyze the main datasets and evaluation metrics, providing a critical perspective on their limitations.

Foundation models such as GPT-4 are fine-tuned to avoid unsafe or otherwise problematic behavior, such as helping to commit crimes or producing racist text. One approach to fine-tuning, called reinforcement learning from human feedback, learns from humans' expressed preferences over multiple outputs. Another approach is constitutional AI, in which the input from humans is a list of high-level principles. But how do we deal with potentially diverging input from humans? How can we aggregate the input into consistent data about "collective" preferences or otherwise use it to make collective choices about model behavior? In this paper, we argue that the field of social choice is well positioned to address these questions, and we discuss ways forward for this agenda, drawing on discussions in a recent workshop on Social Choice for AI Ethics and Safety held in Berkeley, CA, USA in December 2023.

Self-detection for Large Language Model (LLM) seeks to evaluate the LLM output trustability by leveraging LLM's own capabilities, alleviating the output hallucination issue. However, existing self-detection approaches only retrospectively evaluate answers generated by LLM, typically leading to the over-trust in incorrectly generated answers. To tackle this limitation, we propose a novel self-detection paradigm that considers the comprehensive answer space beyond LLM-generated answers. It thoroughly compares the trustability of multiple candidate answers to mitigate the over-trust in LLM-generated incorrect answers. Building upon this paradigm, we introduce a two-step framework, which firstly instructs LLM to reflect and provide justifications for each candidate answer, and then aggregates the justifications for comprehensive target answer evaluation. This framework can be seamlessly integrated with existing approaches for superior self-detection. Extensive experiments on six datasets spanning three tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly adopted in educational contexts to provide personalized support to students and teachers. The unprecedented capacity of LLM-based applications to understand and generate natural language can potentially improve instructional effectiveness and learning outcomes, but the integration of LLMs in education technology has renewed concerns over algorithmic bias which may exacerbate educational inequities. In this review, building on prior work on mapping the traditional machine learning life cycle, we provide a holistic map of the LLM life cycle from the initial development of LLMs to customizing pre-trained models for various applications in educational settings. We explain each step in the LLM life cycle and identify potential sources of bias that may arise in the context of education. We discuss why current measures of bias from traditional machine learning fail to transfer to LLM-generated content in education, such as tutoring conversations because the text is high-dimensional, there can be multiple correct responses, and tailoring responses may be pedagogically desirable rather than unfair. This review aims to clarify the complex nature of bias in LLM applications and provide practical guidance for their evaluation to promote educational equity.

With the rapid development of deep learning, Deep Spiking Neural Networks (DSNNs) have emerged as promising due to their unique spike event processing and asynchronous computation. When deployed on neuromorphic chips, DSNNs offer significant power advantages over Deep Artificial Neural Networks (DANNs) and eliminate time and energy consuming multiplications due to the binary nature of spikes (0 or 1). Additionally, DSNNs excel in processing temporal information, making them potentially superior for handling temporal data compared to DANNs. However, their deep network structure and numerous parameters result in high computational costs and energy consumption, limiting real-life deployment. To enhance DSNNs efficiency, researchers have adapted methods from DANNs, such as pruning, quantization, and knowledge distillation, and developed specific techniques like reducing spike firing and pruning time steps. While previous surveys have covered DSNNs algorithms, hardware deployment, and general overviews, focused research on DSNNs compression and efficiency has been lacking. This survey addresses this gap by concentrating on efficient DSNNs and their compression methods. It begins with an exploration of DSNNs' biological background and computational units, highlighting differences from DANNs. It then delves into various compression methods, including pruning, quantization, knowledge distillation, and reducing spike firing, and concludes with suggestions for future research directions.

In Artificial Intelligence, there is an increasing demand for adaptive models capable of dealing with a diverse spectrum of learning tasks, surpassing the limitations of systems devised to cope with a single task. The recent emergence of General-Purpose Artificial Intelligence Systems (GPAIS) poses model configuration and adaptability challenges at far greater complexity scales than the optimal design of traditional Machine Learning models. Evolutionary Computation (EC) has been a useful tool for both the design and optimization of Machine Learning models, endowing them with the capability to configure and/or adapt themselves to the task under consideration. Therefore, their application to GPAIS is a natural choice. This paper aims to analyze the role of EC in the field of GPAIS, exploring the use of EC for their design or enrichment. We also match GPAIS properties to Machine Learning areas in which EC has had a notable contribution, highlighting recent milestones of EC for GPAIS. Furthermore, we discuss the challenges of harnessing the benefits of EC for GPAIS, presenting different strategies to both design and improve GPAIS with EC, covering tangential areas, identifying research niches, and outlining potential research directions for EC and GPAIS.

Many machine learning and optimization algorithms are built upon the framework of stochastic approximation (SA), for which the selection of step-size (or learning rate) is essential for success. For the sake of clarity, this paper focuses on the special case $\alpha_n = \alpha_0 n^{-\rho}$ at iteration $n$, with $\rho \in [0,1]$ and $\alpha_0>0$ design parameters. It is most common in practice to take $\rho=0$ (constant step-size), while in more theoretically oriented papers a vanishing step-size is preferred. In particular, with $\rho \in (1/2, 1)$ it is known that on applying the averaging technique of Polyak and Ruppert, the mean-squared error (MSE) converges at the optimal rate of $O(1/n)$ and the covariance in the central limit theorem (CLT) is minimal in a precise sense. The paper revisits step-size selection in a general Markovian setting. Under readily verifiable assumptions, the following conclusions are obtained provided $0<\rho<1$: $\bullet$ Parameter estimates converge with probability one, and also in $L_p$ for any $p\ge 1$. $\bullet$ The MSE may converge very slowly for small $\rho$, of order $O(\alpha_n^2)$ even with averaging. $\bullet$ For linear stochastic approximation the source of slow convergence is identified: for any $\rho\in (0,1)$, averaging results in estimates for which the error $\textit{covariance}$ vanishes at the optimal rate, and moreover the CLT covariance is optimal in the sense of Polyak and Ruppert. However, necessary and sufficient conditions are obtained under which the $\textit{bias}$ converges to zero at rate $O(\alpha_n)$. This is the first paper to obtain such strong conclusions while allowing for $\rho \le 1/2$. A major conclusion is that the choice of $\rho =0$ or even $\rho<1/2$ is justified only in select settings -- In general, bias may preclude fast convergence.

Time series data in real-world scenarios contain a substantial amount of nonlinear information, which significantly interferes with the training process of models, leading to decreased prediction performance. Therefore, during the time series forecasting process, extracting the local and global time series patterns and understanding the potential nonlinear features among different time observations are highly significant. To address this challenge, we introduce multi-resolution convolution and deformable convolution operations. By enlarging the receptive field using convolution kernels with different dilation factors to capture temporal correlation information at different resolutions, and adaptively adjusting the sampling positions through additional offset vectors, we enhance the network's ability to capture potential nonlinear features among time observations. Building upon this, we propose ACNet, an adaptive convolutional network designed to effectively model the local and global temporal dependencies and the nonlinear features between observations in multivariate time series. Specifically, by extracting and fusing time series features at different resolutions, we capture both local contextual information and global patterns in the time series. The designed nonlinear feature adaptive extraction module captures the nonlinear features among different time observations in the time series. We evaluated the performance of ACNet across twelve real-world datasets. The results indicate that ACNet consistently achieves state-of-the-art performance in both short-term and long-term forecasting tasks with favorable runtime efficiency.