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Near-Optimal Algorithms for Private Online Optimization in the Realizable Regime

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

We consider online learning problems in the realizable setting, where there is a zero-loss solution, and propose new Differentially Private (DP) algorithms that obtain near-optimal regret bounds. For the problem of online prediction from experts, we design new algorithms that obtain near-optimal regret ${O} \big( \varepsilon^{-1} \log^{1.5}{d} \big)$ where $d$ is the number of experts. This significantly improves over the best existing regret bounds for the DP non-realizable setting which are ${O} \big( \varepsilon^{-1} \min\big\{d, T^{1/3}\log d\big\} \big)$. We also develop an adaptive algorithm for the small-loss setting with regret $O(L^\star\log d + \varepsilon^{-1} \log^{1.5}{d})$ where $L^\star$ is the total loss of the best expert. Additionally, we consider DP online convex optimization in the realizable setting and propose an algorithm with near-optimal regret $O \big(\varepsilon^{-1} d^{1.5} \big)$, as well as an algorithm for the smooth case with regret $O \big( \varepsilon^{-2/3} (dT)^{1/3} \big)$, both significantly improving over existing bounds in the non-realizable regime.


Should I Learn Coding as a Second Language?

WIRED

"I can't code, and this bums me out because--with so many books and courses and camps--there are so many opportunities to learn these days. I suspect I'll understand the machine revolution a lot better if I speak their language. Should I at least try?" Dear Decoder, Your desire to speak the "language" of machines reminds me of Ted Chiang's short story "The Evolution of Human Science." The story imagines a future in which nearly all academic disciplines have become dominated by superintelligent "metahumans" whose understanding of the world vastly surpasses that of human experts. Reports of new metahuman discoveries--although ostensibly written in English and published in scientific journals that anyone is welcome to read--are so complex and technically abstruse that human scientists have been relegated to a role akin to theologians, trying to interpret texts that are as obscure to them as the will of God was to medieval Scholastics.


Stanford CRFM

Stanford HAI

DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and others transformed the image generation space. We saw more powerful language models, PaLM, and of course ChatGPT. We saw foundation models being developed for speech, music, proteins, and many other data modalities. And, for the first time, these models are now being widely deployed and utilized by consumers to accomplish a wide breadth of useful tasks. What is clear is that while foundation models have opened up unprecedented new possibilities, they are also still raw, imperfect research artifacts that we do not entirely understand. In 2021, we founded the Center for Research on Foundation Models (CRFM), recognizing the critical role of foundation models. CRFM's mission is to understand and improve foundation models from both a technical and societal perspective.


Smashwords – Mind Over Machines. An A.I Toolkit for Educators – a book by Impresario Arts School

#artificialintelligence

This book provides a comprehensive guide for educators on how to integrate and teach artificial intelligence (AI) in the classroom, covering the history and evolution of AI, its impact on the future of work and education, critical thinking and problem-solving, ethical considerations, hands-on activities, and best practices for fostering responsible and innovative AI use among students.


How AI could influence learning across subjects, while becoming a crucial one itself

#artificialintelligence

The education industry is having to grapple with where artificial intelligence can fit into schools, from lesson plans to teacher training, since the technology has been propelled to the forefront of debates in recent months. The chatbot ChatGPT has caused shockwaves through the education industry over concerns about cheating and how students will learn, but the importance of AI in technological education has also been highlighted in the discussion. The introduction of AI could one day be integrated into all school subjects, not just computer science, experts say. And familiarity with the technology itself could soon become essential for students. "The way that we integrate AI education to the classroom is really an approach to connect artificial intelligence with core subjects like English, science, math, social studies, in addition to computer science and career technology education," Alex Kotran, co-founder and CEO of the AI Education Project, told The Hill.


Uncertainty Injection: A Deep Learning Method for Robust Optimization

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This paper proposes a paradigm of uncertainty injection for training deep learning model to solve robust optimization problems. The majority of existing studies on deep learning focus on the model learning capability, while assuming the quality and accuracy of the inputs data can be guaranteed. However, in realistic applications of deep learning for solving optimization problems, the accuracy of inputs, which are the problem parameters in this case, plays a large role. This is because, in many situations, it is often costly or sometime impossible to obtain the problem parameters accurately, and correspondingly, it is highly desirable to develop learning algorithms that can account for the uncertainties in the input and produce solutions that are robust against these uncertainties. This paper presents a novel uncertainty injection scheme for training machine learning models that are capable of implicitly accounting for the uncertainties and producing statistically robust solutions. We further identify the wireless communications as an application field where uncertainties are prevalent in problem parameters such as the channel coefficients. We show the effectiveness of the proposed training scheme in two applications: the robust power loading for multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) downlink transmissions; and the robust power control for device-to-device (D2D) networks.


A Survey on Learnable Evolutionary Algorithms for Scalable Multiobjective Optimization

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Recent decades have witnessed great advancements in multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) for multiobjective optimization problems (MOPs). However, these progressively improved MOEAs have not necessarily been equipped with scalable and learnable problem-solving strategies for new and grand challenges brought by the scaling-up MOPs with continuously increasing complexity from diverse aspects, mainly including expensive cost of function evaluations, many objectives, large-scale search space, time-varying environments, and multi-task. Under different scenarios, divergent thinking is required in designing new powerful MOEAs for solving them effectively. In this context, research studies on learnable MOEAs with machine learning techniques have received extensive attention in the field of evolutionary computation. This paper begins with a general taxonomy of scaling-up MOPs and learnable MOEAs, followed by an analysis of the challenges that these MOPs pose to traditional MOEAs. Then, we synthetically overview recent advances of learnable MOEAs in solving various scaling-up MOPs, focusing primarily on four attractive directions (i.e., learnable evolutionary discriminators for environmental selection, learnable evolutionary generators for reproduction, learnable evolutionary evaluators for function evaluations, and learnable evolutionary transfer modules for sharing or reusing optimization experience). The insight of learnable MOEAs is offered to readers as a reference to the general track of the efforts in this field.


Escaping the Impossibility of Fairness: From Formal to Substantive Algorithmic Fairness

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Efforts to promote equitable public policy with algorithms appear to be fundamentally constrained by the "impossibility of fairness" (an incompatibility between mathematical definitions of fairness). This technical limitation raises a central question about algorithmic fairness: How can computer scientists and policymakers support equitable policy reforms with algorithms? In this article, I argue that promoting justice with algorithms requires reforming the methodology of algorithmic fairness. First, I diagnose the problems of the current methodology for algorithmic fairness, which I call "formal algorithmic fairness." Because formal algorithmic fairness restricts analysis to isolated decision-making procedures, it leads to the impossibility of fairness and to models that exacerbate oppression despite appearing "fair." Second, I draw on theories of substantive equality from law and philosophy to propose an alternative methodology, which I call "substantive algorithmic fairness." Because substantive algorithmic fairness takes a more expansive scope of analysis, it enables an escape from the impossibility of fairness and provides a rigorous guide for alleviating injustice with algorithms. In sum, substantive algorithmic fairness presents a new direction for algorithmic fairness: away from formal mathematical models of "fair" decision-making and toward substantive evaluations of whether and how algorithms can promote justice in practice.


Cross-Lingual Question Answering over Knowledge Base as Reading Comprehension

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Although many large-scale knowledge bases (KBs) claim to contain multilingual information, their support for many non-English languages is often incomplete. This incompleteness gives birth to the task of cross-lingual question answering over knowledge base (xKBQA), which aims to answer questions in languages different from that of the provided KB. One of the major challenges facing xKBQA is the high cost of data annotation, leading to limited resources available for further exploration. Another challenge is mapping KB schemas and natural language expressions in the questions under cross-lingual settings. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for xKBQA in a reading comprehension paradigm. We convert KB subgraphs into passages to narrow the gap between KB schemas and questions, which enables our model to benefit from recent advances in multilingual pre-trained language models (MPLMs) and cross-lingual machine reading comprehension (xMRC). Specifically, we use MPLMs, with considerable knowledge of cross-lingual mappings, for cross-lingual reading comprehension. Existing high-quality xMRC datasets can be further utilized to finetune our model, greatly alleviating the data scarcity issue in xKBQA. Extensive experiments on two xKBQA datasets in 12 languages show that our approach outperforms various baselines and achieves strong few-shot and zero-shot performance. Our dataset and code are released for further research.


User-Centric Evaluation of OCR Systems for Kwak'wala

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

There has been recent interest in improving optical character recognition (OCR) for endangered languages, particularly because a large number of documents and books in these languages are not in machine-readable formats. The performance of OCR systems is typically evaluated using automatic metrics such as character and word error rates. While error rates are useful for the comparison of different models and systems, they do not measure whether and how the transcriptions produced from OCR tools are useful to downstream users. In this paper, we present a human-centric evaluation of OCR systems, focusing on the Kwak'wala language as a case study. With a user study, we show that utilizing OCR reduces the time spent in the manual transcription of culturally valuable documents -- a task that is often undertaken by endangered language community members and researchers -- by over 50%. Our results demonstrate the potential benefits that OCR tools can have on downstream language documentation and revitalization efforts.