Government
Taxonomy Inference for Tabular Data Using Large Language Models
Wu, Zhenyu, Chen, Jiaoyan, Paton, Norman W.
Taxonomy inference for tabular data is a critical task of schema inference, aiming at discovering entity types (i.e., concepts) of the tables and building their hierarchy. It can play an important role in data management, data exploration, ontology learning, and many data-centric applications. Existing schema inference systems focus more on XML, JSON or RDF data, and often rely on lexical formats and structures of the data for calculating similarities, with limited exploitation of the semantics of the text across a table. Motivated by recent works on taxonomy completion and construction using Large Language Models (LLMs), this paper presents two LLM-based methods for taxonomy inference for tables: (i) EmTT which em beds columns by fine-tuning with contrastive learning encoder-alone LLMs like BERT and utilises clustering for hierarchy construction, and (ii) GeTT which ge nerates table entity types and their hierarchy by iterative prompting using a decoder-alone LLM like GPT-4. Extensive evaluation on three real-world datasets with six metrics covering different aspects of the output taxonomies has demonstrated that EmTT and GeTT can both produce taxonomies with strong consistency relative to the Ground Truth.
The Coralscapes Dataset: Semantic Scene Understanding in Coral Reefs
Sauder, Jonathan, Domazetoski, Viktor, Banc-Prandi, Guilhem, Perna, Gabriela, Meibom, Anders, Tuia, Devis
Coral reefs are declining worldwide due to climate change and local stressors. To inform effective conservation or restoration, monitoring at the highest possible spatial and temporal resolution is necessary. Conventional coral reef surveying methods are limited in scalability due to their reliance on expert labor time, motivating the use of computer vision tools to automate the identification and abundance estimation of live corals from images. However, the design and evaluation of such tools has been impeded by the lack of large high quality datasets. We release the Coralscapes dataset, the first general-purpose dense semantic segmentation dataset for coral reefs, covering 2075 images, 39 benthic classes, and 174k segmentation masks annotated by experts. Coralscapes has a similar scope and the same structure as the widely used Cityscapes dataset for urban scene segmentation, allowing benchmarking of semantic segmentation models in a new challenging domain which requires expert knowledge to annotate. We benchmark a wide range of semantic segmentation models, and find that transfer learning from Coralscapes to existing smaller datasets consistently leads to state-of-the-art performance. Coralscapes will catalyze research on efficient, scalable, and standardized coral reef surveying methods based on computer vision, and holds the potential to streamline the development of underwater ecological robotics.
ImF: Implicit Fingerprint for Large Language Models
jiaxuan, Wu, Wanli, Peng, hang, Fu, Yiming, Xue, juan, Wen
Training large language models (LLMs) is resource-intensive and expensive, making intellectual property (IP) protection essential. Most existing model fingerprint methods inject fingerprints into LLMs to protect model ownership. These methods create fingerprint pairs with weak semantic correlations, lacking the contextual coherence and semantic relatedness founded in normal question-answer (QA) pairs in LLMs. In this paper, we propose a Generation Revision Intervention (GRI) attack that can effectively exploit this flaw to erase fingerprints, highlighting the need for more secure model fingerprint methods. Thus, we propose a novel injected fingerprint paradigm called Implicit Fingerprints (ImF). ImF constructs fingerprint pairs with strong semantic correlations, disguising them as natural QA pairs within LLMs. This ensures the fingerprints are consistent with normal model behavior, making them indistinguishable and robust against detection and removal. Our experiment on multiple LLMs demonstrates that ImF retains high verification success rates under adversarial conditions, offering a reliable solution for protecting LLM ownership.
Mysterious glowing orbs 'coming from mothership' off Florida coast spark fears of another drone invasion
Mysterious glowing orbs have been spotted flying off the coast of Florida - months after New Jersey was invaded by drones. Residents of Daytona Beach have described the unidentified objects rising directly from the ocean and flying over the surface of the water. One extremely viral video from March 17 at around 10pm captured what appeared to be a large object moving toward land, and the flare of light surrounding it gradually dissipating to reveal the shape of an aircraft. While many have dismissed it as simply a passenger plane, locals have shared similar videos online claiming the objects moved in unconventional ways. One particularly extraordinary theory has surfaced on social media, where locals say a'group of whistleblowers' claiming to be'military personnel and sailors' told them the US Navy discovered a'huge' underwater mothership that they believe is producing the orbs.
Smorobot Tank C1 robotic pool cleaner review: Short of greatness
This uniquely designed robot covers the basics of pool cleaning but not much else, and it struggles with some tasks. Smorobot is a new brand to us, but the manufacturer has seven different robotic pool cleaners already under its belt, including this one, the Smorobot Tank C1. As the name implies, this robot is intended to be a workhorse in the pool, promising a 150-minute runtime and maximum coverage of 2,500 square feet. The robot measures roughly 12 x 17 x 15 (HxWxL) inches in size and weighs 18 pounds. It's powered by a 7800mAh battery, which is on the small side for a robot of this size; but in my testing, it was invariably able to exceed its specified running time of 150 minutes, usually by about half an hour.
US to meet Ukraine again in Riyadh after talks with Russian delegation
United States officials are set to meet with their Ukrainian counterparts again after a round of talks with Russian negotiators on a partial ceasefire in Ukraine. A senior Ukrainian official told the AFP news agency that the meeting would be held later on Monday after US and Russian delegations wrap up their day's talks in Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh. Monday's US-Russia talks were primarily focused on ending attacks on Black Sea shipping, with a view to ushering in a broader ceasefire agreement that would bring an end to the three-year Russia-Ukraine war. US officials had already met the Ukrainian team on Sunday to discuss the protection of civilian and energy infrastructure, said Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who led the delegation and called the talks "productive". Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera's Assed Baig said Ukraine was now keen to see Russia agree to a deal that would protect Black Sea shipping, particularly "the cessation of shelling of Ukrainian ports Odesa, Kherson and Mykolaiv".
Using tech and AI could make government more efficient, says Starmer
The PM was asked by the BBC if he would consider changing the government's fiscal rules and responded: "No, because we had to stabilise the economy, which is what we did with the Budget." He added: "The difference is that the global situation has changed - I think most people would understand that in the last few weeks and months the international insecurity has got very real - that does impact domestically." The chancellor's rules, which she has argued will bring stability to the UK economy, are that day-to-day government costs will be paid for by tax income, rather than borrowing; and to get debt falling as a share of national income by the end of this parliament in 2029/30. Sir Keir said the government was "looking across the board" at spending, when asked by BBC 5 Live whether cuts would be announced for departments whose spending is not protected, such as the Ministry of Justice. "At the budget last year we made some record investments, and we're not going to undo that," he added, pointing to increased NHS spending.
US peace talks with Ukraine, Russia get underway in Saudi Arabia
Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff tells'Hannity' what's next in Russia-Ukraine peace talks after President Donald Trump's phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Peace talks between U.S. and Russian delegations aimed at ending the war in Ukraine are underway Monday in Saudi Arabia, according to media reports. The discussions come after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a delegation from his country had a "quite useful" meeting with an American team in Riyadh on Sunday. "Our team is working in a fully constructive manner, and the discussion is quite useful. The work of delegations continues. But no matter what we're discussing with our partners right now, Putin must be pushed to issue a real order to stop the strikes โ because the one who brought this war must be the one to take it back," Zelenskyy said.
Hot New Thermodynamic Chips Could Trump Classical Computers
Guillaume Verdon stands before me with a new kind of computer chip in his hand--a piece of hardware he believes is so important to the future of humanity that he's asked me not to reveal our exact location, for fear that his headquarters could become the target of industrial espionage. This much I can tell you: We're in an office a short drive from Boston, and the chip arrived from the foundry just a few days ago. It sits on a circuit board about the width of a Big Mac. The pinky-nail-sized piece of silicon itself is dotted with an exotic set of components: not the transistors of an ordinary semiconductor, nor the superconducting elements of a quantum chip, but the guts of a radically new paradigm called thermodynamic computing. Not unlike its quantum cousin, thermodynamic computing promises to move beyond the binary constraints of 1s and 0s.
Scans in shopping centres and AI - can ideas like these help save the NHS?
"We've seen around a 50% reduction in patients not attending for appointments," and the number of women accepting an invitation to have a routine breast screening appointment has risen "from 43% to just under 80% over the three years," she says. The centre, which offers a range of health checks and scans, was opened in 2022 under the last Conservative government. The current Labour government says many more services will now move out of hospital into the community. In Barnsley, that is already happening. Part of another shopping centre is being converted into a second, large health hub.