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Enhanced First and Zeroth Order Variance Reduced Algorithms for Min-Max Optimization

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Min-max optimization captures many important machine learning problems such as robust adversarial learning and inverse reinforcement learning, and nonconvex-strongly-concave min-max optimization has been an active line of research. Specifically, a novel variance reduction algorithm SREDA was proposed recently by (Luo et al. 2020) to solve such a problem, and was shown to achieve the optimal complexity dependence on the required accuracy level $\epsilon$. Despite the superior theoretical performance, the convergence guarantee of SREDA requires stringent initialization accuracy and an $\epsilon$-dependent stepsize for controlling the per-iteration progress, so that SREDA can run very slowly in practice. This paper develops a novel analytical framework that guarantees the SREDA's optimal complexity performance for a much enhanced algorithm SREDA-Boost, which has less restrictive initialization requirement and an accuracy-independent (and much bigger) stepsize. Hence, SREDA-Boost runs substantially faster in experiments than SREDA. We further apply SREDA-Boost to propose a zeroth-order variance reduction algorithm named ZO-SREDA-Boost for the scenario that has access only to the information about function values not gradients, and show that ZO-SREDA-Boost outperforms the best known complexity dependence on $\epsilon$. This is the first study that applies the variance reduction technique to zeroth-order algorithm for min-max optimization problems.


Class-Attentive Diffusion Network for Semi-Supervised Classification

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We propose Aggregation with Class-Attentive Diffusion (AggCAD), a novel aggregation scheme for semi-supervised classification on graphs, which enables the model to embed more favorable node representations for better class separation. To this end, we propose a novel Class-Attentive Diffusion (CAD) which strengthens attention to intra-class nodes and attenuates attention to inter-class nodes. In contrast to the existing diffusion methods with a transition matrix determined solely by the graph structure, CAD considers both the node features and the graph structure with the design of the class-attentive transition matrix which utilizes the classifier. In addition, we further propose an adaptive scheme for AggCAD that leverages different reflection ratios of the diffusion result for each node depending on the local class-context. As the main advantage, AggCAD alleviates the problem of undesired mixing of inter-class features caused by discrepancies between node labels and the graph structure. Built on AggCAD, we construct Class-Attentive Diffusion Network for semi-supervised classification. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate the validity of AggCAD and the results show that the proposed method significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on three benchmark datasets.


Learning to Track Dynamic Targets in Partially Known Environments

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We solve active target tracking, one of the essential tasks in autonomous systems, using a deep reinforcement learning (RL) approach. In this problem, an autonomous agent is tasked with acquiring information about targets of interests using its onboard sensors. The classical challenges in this problem are system model dependence and the difficulty of computing information-theoretic cost functions for a long planning horizon. RL provides solutions for these challenges as the length of its effective planning horizon does not affect the computational complexity, and it drops the strong dependency of an algorithm on system models. In particular, we introduce Active Tracking Target Network (ATTN), a unified RL policy that is capable of solving major sub-tasks of active target tracking -- in-sight tracking, navigation, and exploration. The policy shows robust behavior for tracking agile and anomalous targets with a partially known target model. Additionally, the same policy is able to navigate in obstacle environments to reach distant targets as well as explore the environment when targets are positioned in unexpected locations.


Stochastic Bandits with Linear Constraints

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We study a constrained contextual linear bandit setting, where the goal of the agent is to produce a sequence of policies, whose expected cumulative reward over the course of $T$ rounds is maximum, and each has an expected cost below a certain threshold $\tau$. We propose an upper-confidence bound algorithm for this problem, called optimistic pessimistic linear bandit (OPLB), and prove an $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(\frac{d\sqrt{T}}{\tau-c_0})$ bound on its $T$-round regret, where the denominator is the difference between the constraint threshold and the cost of a known feasible action. We further specialize our results to multi-armed bandits and propose a computationally efficient algorithm for this setting. We prove a regret bound of $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(\frac{\sqrt{KT}}{\tau - c_0})$ for this algorithm in $K$-armed bandits, which is a $\sqrt{K}$ improvement over the regret bound we obtain by simply casting multi-armed bandits as an instance of contextual linear bandits and using the regret bound of OPLB. We also prove a lower-bound for the problem studied in the paper and provide simulations to validate our theoretical results.


Deep Learning Meets SAR

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Deep learning in remote sensing has become an international hype, but it is mostly limited to the evaluation of optical data. Although deep learning has been introduced in SAR data processing, despite successful first attempts, its huge potential remains locked. For example, to the best knowledge of the authors, there is no single example of deep learning in SAR that has been developed up to operational processing of big data or integrated into the production chain of any satellite mission. In this paper, we provide an introduction to the most relevant deep learning models and concepts, point out possible pitfalls by analyzing special characteristics of SAR data, review the state-of-the-art of deep learning applied to SAR in depth, summarize available benchmarks, and recommend some important future research directions. With this effort, we hope to stimulate more research in this interesting yet under-exploited research field.


Comparative Sentiment Analysis of App Reviews

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Google app market captures the school of thought of users via ratings and text reviews. The critique's viewpoint regarding an app is proportional to their satisfaction level. Consequently, this helps other users to gain insights before downloading or purchasing the apps. The potential information from the reviews can't be extracted manually, due to its exponential growth. Sentiment analysis, by machine learning algorithms employing NLP, is used to explicitly uncover and interpret the emotions. This study aims to perform the sentiment classification of the app reviews and identify the university students' behavior towards the app market. We applied machine learning algorithms using the TF-IDF text representation scheme and the performance was evaluated on the ensemble learning method. Our model was trained on Google reviews and tested on students' reviews. SVM recorded the maximum accuracy(93.37\%), F-score(0.88) on tri-gram + TF-IDF scheme. Bagging enhanced the performance of LR and NB with accuracy of 87.80\% and 85.5\% respectively.


Researchers taught a robot to suture by showing it surgery videos

Engadget

Stitching a patient back together after surgery is a vital but monotonous task for medics, often requiring them to repeat the same simple movements over and over hundreds of times. But thanks to a collaborative effort between Intel and the University of California, Berkeley, tomorrow's surgeons could offload that grunt work to robots -- like a macro, but for automated suturing. The UC Berkeley team, led by Dr. Ajay Tanwani, has developed a semi-supervised AI deep-learning system, dubbed Motion2Vec. This system is designed to watch publically surgical videos performed by actual doctors, break down the medic's movements when suturing (needle insertion, extraction and hand-off) and then mimic them with a high degree of accuracy. "There's a lot of appeal in learning from visual observations, compared to traditional interfaces for learning in a static way or learning from [mimicking] trajectories, because of the huge amount of information content available in existing videos," Tanwani told Engadget.


The Python Bible Everything You Need to Program in Python

#artificialintelligence

Online Courses Udemy Build 11 Projects and go from Beginner to Pro in Python with the World's Most Fun Project-Based Python Course! Created by Ziyad Yehia, Internet of Things Academy English, Portuguese [Auto-generated], 1 more Students also bought Bayesian Machine Learning in Python: A/B Testing Learn Python Programming Masterclass Spark and Python for Big Data with PySpark The Complete Python Masterclass: Learn Python From Scratch Complete Python Developer in 2020: Zero to Mastery Preview this course GET COUPON CODE Description Why you should take this Python course: It's Entertaining: No boring lectures, just me talking you through fun and useful tasks and making you laugh along the way. It's Memorable: You'll learn the "why" behind everything you do, so you remember the concepts and can use them on your own later. It's the Perfect Length: The course is just 9 hours long, so you'll actually be able to finish it and get your certificate. It's the Perfect Pace: You will learn the Python fundamentals at a pace tailored to beginners.


Radical AI podcast: featuring Sarah Myers West

AIHub

Hosted by Dylan Doyle-Burke and Jessie J Smith, Radical AI is a podcast featuring the voices of the future in the field of artificial intelligence ethics. In this episode Jess and Dylan chat to Sarah Myers West about "Racism and Sexism in AI Technology? How do we build technology that meets the needs of everyone? To answer these questions and more The Radical AI Podcast welcomes Dr Sarah Myers West to the show. Dr Sarah Myers West is a postdoctoral researcher at the AI Now Institute.


Qian Lin is teaching computers to "see"

#artificialintelligence

The past decade has seen the democratization of photography through the smartphone revolution, with more pictures taken every two minutes than were taken throughout the entirety of the 1800s, according to some estimates. In fact, InfoTrends predicts more than a trillion images will be taken this year alone. "Cameras generate so much data, and a lot of times you need immediate action and analysis from this data," she says. "This research area is one that I'm very passionate about and its increasingly becoming more important to HP." Lin and her team were the creators of Pixel Intelligence, a powerful portfolio of computer vision algorithms that helps print service providers make sense of visual data. The algorithms can find faces within an image or find the same face in multiple images with great accuracy.