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Supporting SENCOTEN Language Documentation Efforts with Automatic Speech Recognition

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The SENCOTEN language, spoken on the Saanich peninsula of southern Vancouver Island, is in the midst of vigorous language revitalization efforts to turn the tide of language loss as a result of colonial language policies. To support these on-the-ground efforts, the community is turning to digital technology. Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology holds great promise for accelerating language documentation and the creation of educational resources. However, developing ASR systems for SENCOTEN is challenging due to limited data and significant vocabulary variation from its polysynthetic structure and stress-driven metathesis. To address these challenges, we propose an ASR-driven documentation pipeline that leverages augmented speech data from a text-to-speech (TTS) system and cross-lingual transfer learning with Speech Foundation Models (SFMs). An n-gram language model is also incorporated via shallow fusion or n-best restoring to maximize the use of available data. Experiments on the SENCOTEN dataset show a word error rate (WER) of 19.34% and a character error rate (CER) of 5.09% on the test set with a 57.02% out-of-vocabulary (OOV) rate. After filtering minor cedilla-related errors, WER improves to 14.32% (26.48% on unseen words) and CER to 3.45%, demonstrating the potential of our ASR-driven pipeline to support SENCOTEN language documentation.


HMID-Net: An Exploration of Masked Image Modeling and Knowledge Distillation in Hyperbolic Space

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Visual and semantic concepts are often structured in a hierarchical manner. For instance, textual concept `cat' entails all images of cats. A recent study, MERU, successfully adapts multimodal learning techniques from Euclidean space to hyperbolic space, effectively capturing the visual-semantic hierarchy. However, a critical question remains: how can we more efficiently train a model to capture and leverage this hierarchy? In this paper, we propose the Hyperbolic Masked Image and Distillation Network (HMID-Net), a novel and efficient method that integrates Masked Image Modeling (MIM) and knowledge distillation techniques within hyperbolic space. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approach to leverage MIM and knowledge distillation in hyperbolic space to train highly efficient models. In addition, we introduce a distillation loss function specifically designed to facilitate effective knowledge transfer in hyperbolic space. Our experiments demonstrate that MIM and knowledge distillation techniques in hyperbolic space can achieve the same remarkable success as in Euclidean space. Extensive evaluations show that our method excels across a wide range of downstream tasks, significantly outperforming existing models like MERU and CLIP in both image classification and retrieval.


Learning Software Bug Reports: A Systematic Literature Review

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The recent advancement of artificial intelligence, especially machine learning (ML), has significantly impacted software engineering research, including bug report analysis. ML aims to automate the understanding, extraction, and correlation of information from bug reports. Despite its growing importance, there has been no comprehensive review in this area. In this paper, we present a systematic literature review covering 1,825 papers, selecting 204 for detailed analysis. We derive seven key findings: 1) Extensive use of CNN, LSTM, and $k$NN for bug report analysis, with advanced models like BERT underutilized due to their complexity. 2) Word2Vec and TF-IDF are popular for feature representation, with a rise in deep learning approaches. 3) Stop word removal is the most common preprocessing, with structural methods rising after 2020. 4) Eclipse and Mozilla are the most frequently evaluated software projects. 5) Bug categorization is the most common task, followed by bug localization and severity prediction. 6) There is increasing attention on specific bugs like non-functional and performance bugs. 7) Common evaluation metrics are F1-score, Recall, Precision, and Accuracy, with $k$-fold cross-validation preferred for model evaluation. 8) Many studies lack robust statistical tests. We also identify six promising future research directions to provide useful insights for practitioners.


Frequency-Aligned Knowledge Distillation for Lightweight Spatiotemporal Forecasting

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Spatiotemporal forecasting tasks, such as traffic flow, combustion dynamics, and weather forecasting, often require complex models that suffer from low training efficiency and high memory consumption. This paper proposes a lightweight framework, Spectral Decoupled Knowledge Distillation (termed SDKD), which transfers the multi-scale spatiotemporal representations from a complex teacher model to a more efficient lightweight student network. The teacher model follows an encoder-latent evolution-decoder architecture, where its latent evolution module decouples high-frequency details and low-frequency trends using convolution and Transformer (global low-frequency modeler). However, the multi-layer convolution and deconvolution structures result in slow training and high memory usage. To address these issues, we propose a frequency-aligned knowledge distillation strategy, which extracts multi-scale spectral features from the teacher's latent space, including both high and low frequency components, to guide the lightweight student model in capturing both local fine-grained variations and global evolution patterns. Experimental results show that SDKD significantly improves performance, achieving reductions of up to 81.3% in MSE and in MAE 52.3% on the Navier-Stokes equation dataset. The framework effectively captures both high-frequency variations and long-term trends while reducing computational complexity. Our codes are available at https://github.com/itsnotacie/SDKD


Bridging the Digital Divide: Small Language Models as a Pathway for Physics and Photonics Education in Underdeveloped Regions

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Limited infrastructure, scarce educational resources, and unreliable internet access often hinder physics and photonics education in underdeveloped regions. These barriers create deep inequities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. This article explores how Small Language Models (SLMs)-compact, AI-powered tools that can run offline on low-power devices, offering a scalable solution. By acting as virtual tutors, enabling native-language instruction, and supporting interactive learning, SLMs can help address the shortage of trained educators and laboratory access. By narrowing the digital divide through targeted investment in AI technologies, SLMs present a scalable and inclusive solution to advance STEM education and foster scientific empowerment in marginalized communities.


From Mind to Machine: The Rise of Manus AI as a Fully Autonomous Digital Agent

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Manus AI is a general-purpose AI agent introduced in early 2025, marking a significant advancement in autonomous artificial intelligence. Developed by the Chinese startup Monica.im, Manus is designed to bridge the gap between "mind" and "hand" - combining the reasoning and planning capabilities of large language models with the ability to execute complex, end-to-end tasks that produce tangible outcomes. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of Manus AI, exploring its core technical architecture, diverse applications across sectors such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing, robotics, and gaming, as well as its key strengths, current limitations, and future potential. Positioned as a preview of what lies ahead, Manus AI represents a shift toward intelligent agents that can translate high-level intentions into real-world actions, heralding a new era of human-AI collaboration.


Conformalized Regression for Continuous Bounded Outcomes

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Regression problems with bounded continuous outcomes frequently arise in real-world statistical and machine learning applications, such as the analysis of rates and proportions. A central challenge in this setting is predicting a response associated with a new covariate value. Most of the existing statistical and machine learning literature has focused either on point prediction of bounded outcomes or on interval prediction based on asymptotic approximations. We develop conformal prediction intervals for bounded outcomes based on transformation models and beta regression. We introduce tailored non-conformity measures based on residuals that are aligned with the underlying models, and account for the inherent heteroscedasticity in regression settings with bounded outcomes. We present a theoretical result on asymptotic marginal and conditional validity in the context of full conformal prediction, which remains valid under model misspecification. For split conformal prediction, we provide an empirical coverage analysis based on a comprehensive simulation study. The simulation study demonstrates that both methods provide valid finite-sample predictive coverage, including settings with model misspecification. Finally, we demonstrate the practical performance of the proposed conformal prediction intervals on real data and compare them with bootstrap-based alternatives.


Edge Intelligence with Spiking Neural Networks

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The convergence of artificial intelligence and edge computing has spurred growing interest in enabling intelligent services directly on resource-constrained devices. While traditional deep learning models require significant computational resources and centralized data management, the resulting latency, bandwidth consumption, and privacy concerns have exposed critical limitations in cloud-centric paradigms. Brain-inspired computing, particularly Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), offers a promising alternative by emulating biological neuronal dynamics to achieve low-power, event-driven computation. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of Edge Intelligence based on SNNs (EdgeSNNs), examining their potential to address the challenges of on-device learning, inference, and security in edge scenarios. We present a systematic taxonomy of EdgeSNN foundations, encompassing neuron models, learning algorithms, and supporting hardware platforms. Three representative practical considerations of EdgeSNN are discussed in depth: on-device inference using lightweight SNN models, resource-aware training and updating under non-stationary data conditions, and secure and privacy-preserving issues. Furthermore, we highlight the limitations of evaluating EdgeSNNs on conventional hardware and introduce a dual-track benchmarking strategy to support fair comparisons and hardware-aware optimization. Through this study, we aim to bridge the gap between brain-inspired learning and practical edge deployment, offering insights into current advancements, open challenges, and future research directions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first dedicated and comprehensive survey on EdgeSNNs, providing an essential reference for researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of neuromorphic computing and edge intelligence.


Byzantine-resilient federated online learning for Gaussian process regression

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In this paper, we study Byzantine-resilient federated online learning for Gaussian process regression (GPR). We develop a Byzantine-resilient federated GPR algorithm that allows a cloud and a group of agents to collaboratively learn a latent function and improve the learning performances where some agents exhibit Byzantine failures, i.e., arbitrary and potentially adversarial behavior. Each agent-based local GPR sends potentially compromised local predictions to the cloud, and the cloud-based aggregated GPR computes a global model by a Byzantine-resilient product of experts aggregation rule. Then the cloud broadcasts the current global model to all the agents. Agent-based fused GPR refines local predictions by fusing the received global model with that of the agent-based local GPR. Moreover, we quantify the learning accuracy improvements of the agent-based fused GPR over the agent-based local GPR. Experiments on a toy example and two medium-scale real-world datasets are conducted to demonstrate the performances of the proposed algorithm.


Reframing attention as a reinforcement learning problem for causal discovery

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Formal frameworks of causality have operated largely parallel to modern trends in deep reinforcement learning (RL). However, there has been a revival of interest in formally grounding the representations learned by neural networks in causal concepts. Yet, most attempts at neural models of causality assume static causal graphs and ignore the dynamic nature of causal interactions. In this work, we introduce Causal Process framework as a novel theory for representing dynamic hypotheses about causal structure. Furthermore, we present Causal Process Model as an implementation of this framework. This allows us to reformulate the attention mechanism popularized by Transformer networks within an RL setting with the goal to infer interpretable causal processes from visual observations. Here, causal inference corresponds to constructing a causal graph hypothesis which itself becomes an RL task nested within the original RL problem. To create an instance of such hypothesis, we employ RL agents. These agents establish links between units similar to the original Transformer attention mechanism. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in an RL environment where we outperform current alternatives in causal representation learning and agent performance, and uniquely recover graphs of dynamic causal processes.