We present a comprehensive analysis of quantitatively evaluating explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) techniques for remote sensing image classification. Our approach leverages state-of-the-art machine learning approaches to perform remote sensing image classification across multiple modalities. We investigate the results of the models qualitatively through XAI methods. Additionally, we compare the XAI methods quantitatively through various categories of desired properties. Through our analysis, we offer insights and recommendations for selecting the most appropriate XAI method(s) to gain a deeper understanding of the models' decision-making processes. The code for this work is publicly available.

Urban Building Energy Modeling (UBEM) is an emerging method to investigate urban design and energy systems against the increasing energy demand at urban and neighborhood levels. However, current UBEM methods are mostly physic-based and time-consuming in multiple climate change scenarios. This work proposes CityTFT, a data-driven UBEM framework, to accurately model the energy demands in urban environments. With the empowerment of the underlying TFT framework and an augmented loss function, CityTFT could predict heating and cooling triggers in unseen climate dynamics with an F1 score of 99.98 \% while RMSE of loads of 13.57 kWh.

This paper studies task-oriented edge networks where multiple edge internet-of-things nodes execute machine learning tasks with the help of powerful deep neural networks (DNNs) at a network cloud. Separate edge nodes (ENs) result in a partially observable system where they can only get partitioned features of the global network states. These local observations need to be forwarded to the cloud via resource-constrained wireless fronthual links. Individual ENs compress their local observations into uplink fronthaul messages using task-oriented encoder DNNs. Then, the cloud carries out a remote inference task by leveraging received signals. Such a distributed topology requests a decentralized training and decentralized execution (DTDE) learning framework for designing edge-cloud cooperative inference rules and their decentralized training strategies. First, we develop fronthaul-cooperative DNN architecture along with proper uplink coordination protocols suitable for wireless fronthaul interconnection. Inspired by the nomographic function, an efficient cloud inference model becomes an integration of a number of shallow DNNs. This modulized architecture brings versatile calculations that are independent of the number of ENs. Next, we present a decentralized training algorithm of separate edge-cloud DNNs over downlink wireless fronthaul channels. An appropriate downlink coordination protocol is proposed, which backpropagates gradient vectors wirelessly from the cloud to the ENs.

We propose regularity as a novel reward signal for intrinsically-motivated reinforcement learning. Taking inspiration from child development, we postulate that striving for structure and order helps guide exploration towards a subspace of tasks that are not favored by naive uncertainty-based intrinsic rewards. Our generalized formulation of Regularity as Intrinsic Reward (RaIR) allows us to operationalize it within model-based reinforcement learning. In a synthetic environment, we showcase the plethora of structured patterns that can emerge from pursuing this regularity objective. We also demonstrate the strength of our method in a multiobject robotic manipulation environment. We incorporate RaIR into free play and use it to complement the model's epistemic uncertainty as an intrinsic reward. Doing so, we witness the autonomous construction of towers and other regular structures during free play, which leads to a substantial improvement in zero-shot downstream task performance on assembly tasks. Code and videos are available at https://sites.google.com/view/rair-project. Figure 1: Regularity as intrinsic reward yields ordered and symmetric patterns.

The ice shelves buttressing the Antarctic ice sheet determine the rate of ice-discharge into the surrounding oceans. The geometry of ice shelves, and hence their buttressing strength, is determined by ice flow as well as by the local surface accumulation and basal melt rates, governed by atmospheric and oceanic conditions. Contemporary methods resolve one of these rates, but typically not both. Moreover, there is little information of how they changed in time. We present a new method to simultaneously infer the surface accumulation and basal melt rates averaged over decadal and centennial timescales. We infer the spatial dependence of these rates along flow line transects using internal stratigraphy observed by radars, using a kinematic forward model of internal stratigraphy. We solve the inverse problem using simulation-based inference (SBI). SBI performs Bayesian inference by training neural networks on simulations of the forward model to approximate the posterior distribution, allowing us to also quantify uncertainties over the inferred parameters. We demonstrate the validity of our method on a synthetic example, and apply it to Ekstr\"om Ice Shelf, Antarctica, for which newly acquired radar measurements are available. We obtain posterior distributions of surface accumulation and basal melt averaging over 42, 84, 146, and 188 years before 2022. Our results suggest stable atmospheric and oceanographic conditions over this period in this catchment of Antarctica. Use of observed internal stratigraphy can separate the effects of surface accumulation and basal melt, allowing them to be interpreted in a historical context of the last centuries and beyond.

Optimisation problems, particularly combinatorial optimisation problems, are difficult to solve due to their complexity and hardness. Such problems have been successfully solved by evolutionary and swarm intelligence algorithms, especially in binary format. However, the approximation may suffer due to the the issues in balance between exploration and exploitation activities (EvE), which remain as the major challenge in this context. Although the complementary usage of multiple operators is becoming more popular for managing EvE with adaptive operator selection schemes, a bespoke adaptive selection system is still an important topic in research. Reinforcement Learning (RL) has recently been proposed as a way to customise and shape up a highly effective adaptive selection system. However, it is still challenging to handle the problem in terms of scalability. This paper proposes and assesses a RL-based novel approach to help develop a generalised framework for gaining, processing, and utilising the experiences for both the immediate and future use. The experimental results support the proposed approach with a certain level of success.

In this study, we introduce JarviX, a sophisticated data analytics framework. JarviX is designed to employ Large Language Models (LLMs) to facilitate an automated guide and execute high-precision data analyzes on tabular datasets. This framework emphasizes the significance of varying column types, capitalizing on state-of-the-art LLMs to generate concise data insight summaries, propose relevant analysis inquiries, visualize data effectively, and provide comprehensive explanations for results drawn from an extensive data analysis pipeline. Moreover, JarviX incorporates an automated machine learning (AutoML) pipeline for predictive modeling. This integration forms a comprehensive and automated optimization cycle, which proves particularly advantageous for optimizing machine configuration. The efficacy and adaptability of JarviX are substantiated through a series of practical use case studies.

We study a subclass of $n$-player stochastic games, namely, stochastic games with independent chains and unknown transition matrices. In this class of games, players control their own internal Markov chains whose transitions do not depend on the states/actions of other players. However, players' decisions are coupled through their payoff functions. We assume players can receive only realizations of their payoffs, and that the players can not observe the states and actions of other players, nor do they know the transition probability matrices of their own Markov chain. Relying on a compact dual formulation of the game based on occupancy measures and the technique of confidence set to maintain high-probability estimates of the unknown transition matrices, we propose a fully decentralized mirror descent algorithm to learn an $\epsilon$-NE for this class of games. The proposed algorithm has the desired properties of independence, scalability, and convergence. Specifically, under no assumptions on the reward functions, we show the proposed algorithm converges in polynomial time in a weaker distance (namely, the averaged Nikaido-Isoda gap) to the set of $\epsilon$-NE policies with arbitrarily high probability. Moreover, assuming the existence of a variationally stable Nash equilibrium policy, we show that the proposed algorithm converges asymptotically to the stable $\epsilon$-NE policy with arbitrarily high probability. In addition to Markov potential games and linear-quadratic stochastic games, this work provides another subclass of $n$-player stochastic games that, under some mild assumptions, admit polynomial-time learning algorithms for finding their stationary $\epsilon$-NE policies.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been clearly established as a technology with the potential to revolutionize fields from healthcare to finance - if developed and deployed responsibly. This is the topic of responsible AI, which emphasizes the need to develop trustworthy AI systems that minimize bias, protect privacy, support security, and enhance transparency and accountability. Explainable AI (XAI) has been broadly considered as a building block for responsible AI (RAI), with most of the literature considering it as a solution for improved transparency. This work proposes that XAI and responsible AI are significantly more deeply entwined. In this work, we explore state-of-the-art literature on RAI and XAI technologies. Based on our findings, we demonstrate that XAI can be utilized to ensure fairness, robustness, privacy, security, and transparency in a wide range of contexts. Our findings lead us to conclude that XAI is an essential foundation for every pillar of RAI.

The alignment tuning process of large language models (LLMs) typically involves instruction learning through supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and preference tuning via reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). A recent study, LIMA (Zhou et al. 2023), shows that using merely 1K examples for SFT can achieve significant alignment performance as well, suggesting that the effect of alignment tuning might be "superficial." This raises questions about how exactly the alignment tuning transforms a base LLM. We analyze the effect of alignment tuning by examining the token distribution shift between base LLMs and their aligned counterpart. Our findings reveal that base LLMs and their alignment-tuned versions perform nearly identically in decoding on the majority of token positions. Most distribution shifts occur with stylistic tokens. These direct evidence strongly supports the Superficial Alignment Hypothesis suggested by LIMA. Based on these findings, we rethink the alignment of LLMs by posing the research question: how effectively can we align base LLMs without SFT or RLHF? To address this, we introduce a simple, tuning-free alignment method, URIAL. URIAL achieves effective alignment purely through in-context learning (ICL) with base LLMs, requiring as few as three constant stylistic examples and a system prompt. We conduct a fine-grained and interpretable evaluation on a diverse set of examples, named JUST-EVAL-INSTRUCT. Results demonstrate that base LLMs with URIAL can match or even surpass the performance of LLMs aligned with SFT or SFT+RLHF. We show that the gap between tuning-free and tuning-based alignment methods can be significantly reduced through strategic prompting and ICL. Our findings on the superficial nature of alignment tuning and results with URIAL suggest that deeper analysis and theoretical understanding of alignment is crucial to future LLM research.