Education
Distribution-aware Online Continual Learning for Urban Spatio-Temporal Forecasting
Wang, Chengxin, Tan, Gary, Roy, Swagato Barman, Ooi, Beng Chin
Urban spatio-temporal (ST) forecasting is crucial for various urban applications such as intelligent scheduling and trip planning. Previous studies focus on modeling ST correlations among urban locations in offline settings, which often neglect the non-stationary nature of urban ST data, particularly, distribution shifts over time. This oversight can lead to degraded performance in real-world scenarios. In this paper, we first analyze the distribution shifts in urban ST data, and then introduce DOST, a novel online continual learning framework tailored for ST data characteristics. DOST employs an adaptive ST network equipped with a variable-independent adapter to address the unique distribution shifts at each urban location dynamically. Further, to accommodate the gradual nature of these shifts, we also develop an awake-hibernate learning strategy that intermittently fine-tunes the adapter during the online phase to reduce computational overhead. This strategy integrates a streaming memory update mechanism designed for urban ST sequential data, enabling effective network adaptation to new patterns while preventing catastrophic forgetting. Experimental results confirm DOST's superiority over state-of-the-art models on four real-world datasets, providing online forecasts within an average of 0.1 seconds and achieving a 12.89% reduction in forecast errors compared to baseline models.
Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Reading Music Systems
Calvo-Zaragoza, Jorge, Pacha, Alexander, Shatri, Elona
The International Workshop on Reading Music Systems (WoRMS) is a workshop that tries to connect researchers who develop systems for reading music, such as in the field of Optical Music Recognition, with other researchers and practitioners that could benefit from such systems, like librarians or musicologists. The relevant topics of interest for the workshop include, but are not limited to: Music reading systems; Optical music recognition; Datasets and performance evaluation; Image processing on music scores; Writer identification; Authoring, editing, storing and presentation systems for music scores; Multi-modal systems; Novel input-methods for music to produce written music; Web-based Music Information Retrieval services; Applications and projects; Use-cases related to written music. These are the proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Reading Music Systems, held Online on November 22nd 2024.
LeanAgent: Lifelong Learning for Formal Theorem Proving
Kumarappan, Adarsh, Tiwari, Mo, Song, Peiyang, George, Robert Joseph, Xiao, Chaowei, Anandkumar, Anima
Large Language Models (LLMs) have been successful in mathematical reasoning tasks such as formal theorem proving when integrated with interactive proof assistants like Lean. Existing approaches involve training or fine-tuning an LLM on a specific dataset to perform well on particular domains, such as undergraduate-level mathematics. These methods struggle with generalizability to advanced mathematics. A fundamental limitation is that these approaches operate on static domains, failing to capture how mathematicians often work across multiple domains and projects simultaneously or cyclically. We present LeanAgent, a novel lifelong learning framework for formal theorem proving that continuously generalizes to and improves on ever-expanding mathematical knowledge without forgetting previously learned knowledge. LeanAgent introduces several key innovations, including a curriculum learning strategy that optimizes the learning trajectory in terms of mathematical difficulty, a dynamic database for efficient management of evolving mathematical knowledge, and progressive training to balance stability and plasticity. LeanAgent successfully proves 155 theorems previously unproved formally by humans across 23 diverse Lean repositories, many from advanced mathematics. It performs significantly better than the static LLM baseline, proving challenging theorems in domains like abstract algebra and algebraic topology while showcasing a clear progression of learning from basic concepts to advanced topics. In addition, we analyze LeanAgent's superior performance on key lifelong learning metrics. LeanAgent achieves exceptional scores in stability and backward transfer, where learning new tasks improves performance on previously learned tasks. This emphasizes LeanAgent's continuous generalizability and improvement, explaining its superior theorem-proving performance.
Advancing Transformative Education: Generative AI as a Catalyst for Equity and Innovation
Bura, Chiranjeevi, Myakala, Praveen Kumar
Generative AI is transforming education by enabling personalized learning, enhancing administrative efficiency, and fostering creative engagement. This paper explores the opportunities and challenges these tools bring to pedagogy, proposing actionable frameworks to address existing equity gaps. Ethical considerations such as algorithmic bias, data privacy, and AI role in human centric education are emphasized. The findings underscore the need for responsible AI integration that ensures accessibility, equity, and innovation in educational systems.
Understanding the Effect of Algorithm Transparency of Model Explanations in Text-to-SQL Semantic Parsing
Rai, Daking, Weiland, Rydia R., Herrera, Kayla Margaret Gabriella, Shaw, Tyler H., Yao, Ziyu
Explaining the decisions of AI has become vital for fostering appropriate user trust in these systems. This paper investigates explanations for a structured prediction task called ``text-to-SQL Semantic Parsing'', which translates a natural language question into a structured query language (SQL) program. In this task setting, we designed three levels of model explanation, each exposing a different amount of the model's decision-making details (called ``algorithm transparency''), and investigated how different model explanations could potentially yield different impacts on the user experience. Our study with $\sim$100 participants shows that (1) the low-/high-transparency explanations often lead to less/more user reliance on the model decisions, whereas the medium-transparency explanations strike a good balance. We also show that (2) only the medium-transparency participant group was able to engage further in the interaction and exhibit increasing performance over time, and that (3) they showed the least changes in trust before and after the study.
Soft-TransFormers for Continual Learning
Inspired by Well-initialized Lottery Ticket Hypothesis (WLTH), which provides suboptimal fine-tuning solutions, we propose a novel fully fine-tuned continual learning (CL) method referred to as Soft-TransFormers (Soft-TF). Soft-TF sequentially learns and selects an optimal soft-network or subnetwork for each task. During sequential training in CL, Soft-TF jointly optimizes the weights of sparse layers to obtain task-adaptive soft (real-valued) networks or subnetworks (binary masks), while keeping the well-pre-trained layer parameters frozen. In inference, the identified task-adaptive network of Soft-TF masks the parameters of the pretrained network, mapping to an optimal solution for each task and minimizing Catastrophic Forgetting (CF) - the soft-masking preserves the knowledge of the pre-trained network. Extensive experiments on Vision Transformer (ViT) and CLIP demonstrate the effectiveness of Soft-TF, achieving state-of-the-art performance across various CL scenarios, including Class-Incremental Learning (CIL) and Task-Incremental Learning (TIL), supported by convergence theory. Continual Learning (CL), also known as Lifelong Learning (Thrun, 1995; Rusu et al., 2016; Zenke et al., 2017; Hassabis et al., 2017), is a learning paradigm where a series of tasks are learned sequentially. The principle objective of continual learning is to replicate human cognition, characterized by the ability to learn new concepts incrementally throughout one's lifespan. An optimal continual learning system could facilitate a positive forward and backward transfer, leveraging the knowledge gained from previous tasks to solve new ones, while also updating its understanding of previous tasks with the new knowledge.
Generative Context Distillation
Shin, Haebin, Ji, Lei, Gong, Yeyun, Kim, Sungdong, Choi, Eunbi, Seo, Minjoon
Prompts used in recent large language model based applications are often fixed and lengthy, leading to significant computational overhead. To address this challenge, we propose Generative Context Distillation (GCD), a lightweight prompt internalization method that employs a joint training approach. This method not only replicates the behavior of models with prompt inputs but also generates the content of the prompt along with reasons for why the model's behavior should change accordingly. We demonstrate that our approach effectively internalizes complex prompts across various agent-based application scenarios. For effective training without interactions with the dedicated environments, we introduce a data synthesis technique that autonomously collects conversational datasets by swapping the roles of the agent and environment. This method is especially useful in scenarios where only a predefined prompt is available without a corresponding training dataset. By internalizing complex prompts, Generative Context Distillation enables high-performance and efficient inference without the need for explicit prompts.
Research on Effectiveness Evaluation and Optimization of Baseball Teaching Method Based on Machine Learning
Sun, Shaoxuan, Yuan, Jingao, Yang, Yuelin
In modern physical education, data-driven evaluation methods have gradually attracted attention, especially the quantitative prediction of students' sports performance through machine learning model. The purpose of this study is to use a variety of machine learning models to regress and predict students' comprehensive scores in baseball training, so as to evaluate the effectiveness of the current baseball teaching methods and put forward targeted training optimization suggestions. We set up a model and evaluate the performance of students by collecting many characteristics, such as hitting times, running times and batting. The experimental results show that K-Neighbors Regressor and Gradient Boosting Regressor are excellent in comprehensive prediction accuracy and stability, and the R score and error index are significantly better than other models. In addition, through the analysis of feature importance, it is found that cumulative hits and cumulative runs are the key factors affecting students' comprehensive scores. Based on the results of this study, this paper puts forward some suggestions on optimizing training strategies to help students get better performance in baseball training. The results show that the data-driven teaching evaluation method can effectively support physical education and promote personalized and refined teaching plan design.
A Survey of Recent Advances and Challenges in Deep Audio-Visual Correlation Learning
Vilaca, Luis, Yu, Yi, Vinan, Paula
Audio-visual correlation learning aims to capture and understand natural phenomena between audio and visual data. The rapid growth of Deep Learning propelled the development of proposals that process audio-visual data and can be observed in the number of proposals in the past years. Thus encouraging the development of a comprehensive survey. Besides analyzing the models used in this context, we also discuss some tasks of definition and paradigm applied in AI multimedia. In addition, we investigate objective functions frequently used and discuss how audio-visual data is exploited in the optimization process, i.e., the different methodologies for representing knowledge in the audio-visual domain. In fact, we focus on how human-understandable mechanisms, i.e., structured knowledge that reflects comprehensible knowledge, can guide the learning process. Most importantly, we provide a summarization of the recent progress of Audio-Visual Correlation Learning (AVCL) and discuss the future research directions.
Understanding Student Acceptance, Trust, and Attitudes Toward AI-Generated Images for Educational Purposes
Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have broadened the applicability of AI-generated images across various sectors, including the creative industry and design. However, their utilization in educational contexts, particularly among undergraduate students in computer science and software engineering, remains underexplored. This study adopts an exploratory approach, employing questionnaires and interviews, to assess students' acceptance, trust, and positive attitudes towards AI-generated images for educational tasks such as presentations, reports, and web design. The results reveal high acceptance, trust, and positive attitudes among students who value the ease of use and potential academic benefits. However, concerns regarding the lack of technical precision, where the AI fails to accurately produce images as specified by prompts, moderately impact their practical application in detail-oriented educational tasks. These findings suggest a need for developing comprehensive guidelines that address ethical considerations and intellectual property issues, while also setting quality standards for AI-generated images to enhance their educational use. Enhancing the capabilities of AI tools to meet precise user specifications could foster creativity and improve educational outcomes in technical disciplines.