Government
US senators urge regulators to probe potential AI antitrust violations
The US government has noticed the potentially negative effects of generative AI on areas like journalism and content creation. Senator Amy Klobuchar, along with seven Democrat colleagues, urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Justice Department to probe generative AI products like ChatGPT for potential antitrust violations, they wrote in a press release. "Recently, multiple dominant online platforms have introduced new generative AI features that answer user queries by summarizing, or, in some cases, merely regurgitating online content from other sources or platforms," the letter states. "The introduction of these new generative AI features further threatens the ability of journalists and other content creators to earn compensation for their vital work." The lawmakers went on to note that traditional search results lead users to publishers' websites while AI-generated summaries keep the users on the search platform "where that platform alone can profit from the user's attention through advertising and data collection."
Global blueprint for regulating military AI proving elusive
Despite growing concerns about the breakneck speed at which the world's armed forces are incorporating artificial intelligence into their weapons and systems, global cooperation in regulating the military use of the cutting-edge technology is proving elusive. The challenges were highlighted on Tuesday, the final day of the Responsible AI in the Military Domain (REAIM) summit in Seoul, as over a third of the 96 participating countries, including military powers such as China, Russia and Israel, refused to back a "blueprint for action" that puts a strong emphasis on human oversight. A total of 60 nations, including the United States and most of its allies, backed the declaration, but there is no guarantee they will adhere to it, experts warned, pointing to its nonbinding nature and the significant military advantages AI provides at a time of growing international tensions.
Harris mocked for exaggerated facial expressions as Trump spoke at debate: 'Comes across fake and weak'
Democrats, Republicans, and Independents react in-real time to an exchange between the 2024 candidates over a conservative transition plan known as Project 2025 and COVID pandemic policy. Vice President Kamala Harris was dragged on social media for her exaggerated facial expressions during the ABC News Presidential Debate against former President Trump on Tuesday. Harris' smirk was repeatedly captured on the split screen during Trump's turn to answer questions from the debate moderators. Both Harris' and Trump's microphones were muted when the other candidate was given time to speak, a rule the Harris campaign had tried to change. This left Harris with nothing but her facial gestures to express her contempt for the GOP nominee.
Portfolio Stress Testing and Value at Risk (VaR) Incorporating Current Market Conditions
Value at Risk (VaR) and stress testing are two of the most widely used approaches in portfolio risk management to estimate potential market value losses under adverse market moves. VaR quantifies potential loss in value over a specified horizon (such as one day or ten days) at a desired confidence level (such as 95'th percentile). In scenario design and stress testing, the goal is to construct extreme market scenarios such as those involving severe recession or a specific event of concern (such as a rapid increase in rates or a geopolitical event), and quantify potential impact of such scenarios on the portfolio. The goal of this paper is to propose an approach for incorporating prevailing market conditions in stress scenario design and estimation of VaR so that they provide more accurate and realistic insights about portfolio risk over the near term. The proposed approach is based on historical data where historical observations of market changes are given more weight if a certain period in history is "more similar" to the prevailing market conditions. Clusters of market conditions are identified using a Machine Learning approach called Variational Inference (VI) where for each cluster future changes in portfolio value are similar. VI based algorithm uses optimization techniques to obtain analytical approximations of the posterior probability density of cluster assignments (market regimes) and probabilities of different outcomes for changes in portfolio value. Covid related volatile period around the year 2020 is used to illustrate the performance of the proposed approach and in particular show how VaR and stress scenarios adapt quickly to changing market conditions. Another advantage of the proposed approach is that classification of market conditions into clusters can provide useful insights about portfolio performance under different market conditions.
Native vs Non-Native Language Prompting: A Comparative Analysis
Kmainasi, Mohamed Bayan, Khan, Rakif, Shahroor, Ali Ezzat, Bendou, Boushra, Hasanain, Maram, Alam, Firoj
Large language models (LLMs) have shown remarkable abilities in different fields, including standard Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. To elicit knowledge from LLMs, prompts play a key role, consisting of natural language instructions. Most open and closed source LLMs are trained on available labeled and unlabeled resources--digital content such as text, images, audio, and videos. Hence, these models have better knowledge for high-resourced languages but struggle with low-resourced languages. Since prompts play a crucial role in understanding their capabilities, the language used for prompts remains an important research question. Although there has been significant research in this area, it is still limited, and less has been explored for medium to low-resourced languages. In this study, we investigate different prompting strategies (native vs. non-native) on 11 different NLP tasks associated with 12 different Arabic datasets (9.7K data points). In total, we conducted 197 experiments involving 3 LLMs, 12 datasets, and 3 prompting strategies. Our findings suggest that, on average, the non-native prompt performs the best, followed by mixed and native prompts.
FIRAL: An Active Learning Algorithm for Multinomial Logistic Regression
We investigate theory and algorithms for pool-based active learning for multiclass classification using multinomial logistic regression. Using finite sample analysis, we prove that the Fisher Information Ratio (FIR) lower and upper bounds the excess risk. Based on our theoretical analysis, we propose an active learning algorithm that employs regret minimization to minimize the FIR. To verify our derived excess risk bounds, we conduct experiments on synthetic datasets. Furthermore, we compare FIRAL with five other methods and found that our scheme outperforms them: it consistently produces the smallest classification error in the multiclass logistic regression setting, as demonstrated through experiments on MNIST, CIFAR-10, and 50-class ImageNet.
Module-wise Adaptive Adversarial Training for End-to-end Autonomous Driving
Zhang, Tianyuan, Wang, Lu, Kang, Jiaqi, Zhang, Xinwei, Liang, Siyuan, Chen, Yuwei, Liu, Aishan, Liu, Xianglong
Recent advances in deep learning have markedly improved autonomous driving (AD) models, particularly end-to-end systems that integrate perception, prediction, and planning stages, achieving state-of-the-art performance. However, these models remain vulnerable to adversarial attacks, where human-imperceptible perturbations can disrupt decision-making processes. While adversarial training is an effective method for enhancing model robustness against such attacks, no prior studies have focused on its application to end-to-end AD models. In this paper, we take the first step in adversarial training for end-to-end AD models and present a novel Module-wise Adaptive Adversarial Training (MA2T). However, extending conventional adversarial training to this context is highly non-trivial, as different stages within the model have distinct objectives and are strongly interconnected. To address these challenges, MA2T first introduces Module-wise Noise Injection, which injects noise before the input of different modules, targeting training models with the guidance of overall objectives rather than each independent module loss. Additionally, we introduce Dynamic Weight Accumulation Adaptation, which incorporates accumulated weight changes to adaptively learn and adjust the loss weights of each module based on their contributions (accumulated reduction rates) for better balance and robust training. To demonstrate the efficacy of our defense, we conduct extensive experiments on the widely-used nuScenes dataset across several end-to-end AD models under both white-box and black-box attacks, where our method outperforms other baselines by large margins (+5-10%). Moreover, we validate the robustness of our defense through closed-loop evaluation in the CARLA simulation environment, showing improved resilience even against natural corruption.
A Survey of Anomaly Detection in In-Vehicle Networks
รzdemir, รvgรผ, ฤฐลyapar, M. Tuฤberk, Karagรถz, Pฤฑnar, Schmidt, Klaus Werner, Demir, Demet, Karagรถz, N. Alpay
Modern vehicles are equipped with Electronic Control Units (ECU) that are used for controlling important vehicle functions including safety-critical operations. ECUs exchange information via in-vehicle communication buses, of which the Controller Area Network (CAN bus) is by far the most widespread representative. Problems that may occur in the vehicle's physical parts or malicious attacks may cause anomalies in the CAN traffic, impairing the correct vehicle operation. Therefore, the detection of such anomalies is vital for vehicle safety. This paper reviews the research on anomaly detection for in-vehicle networks, more specifically for the CAN bus. Our main focus is the evaluation of methods used for CAN bus anomaly detection together with the datasets used in such analysis. To provide the reader with a more comprehensive understanding of the subject, we first give a brief review of related studies on time series-based anomaly detection. Then, we conduct an extensive survey of recent deep learning-based techniques as well as conventional techniques for CAN bus anomaly detection. Our comprehensive analysis delves into anomaly detection algorithms employed in in-vehicle networks, specifically focusing on their learning paradigms, inherent strengths, and weaknesses, as well as their efficacy when applied to CAN bus datasets. Lastly, we highlight challenges and open research problems in CAN bus anomaly detection.
FIReStereo: Forest InfraRed Stereo Dataset for UAS Depth Perception in Visually Degraded Environments
Dhrafani, Devansh, Liu, Yifei, Jong, Andrew, Shin, Ukcheol, He, Yao, Harp, Tyler, Hu, Yaoyu, Oh, Jean, Scherer, Sebastian
Robust depth perception in visually-degraded environments is crucial for autonomous aerial systems. Thermal imaging cameras, which capture infrared radiation, are robust to visual degradation. However, due to lack of a large-scale dataset, the use of thermal cameras for unmanned aerial system (UAS) depth perception has remained largely unexplored. This paper presents a stereo thermal depth perception dataset for autonomous aerial perception applications. The dataset consists of stereo thermal images, LiDAR, IMU and ground truth depth maps captured in urban and forest settings under diverse conditions like day, night, rain, and smoke. We benchmark representative stereo depth estimation algorithms, offering insights into their performance in degraded conditions. Models trained on our dataset generalize well to unseen smoky conditions, highlighting the robustness of stereo thermal imaging for depth perception. We aim for this work to enhance robotic perception in disaster scenarios, allowing for exploration and operations in previously unreachable areas. The dataset and source code are available at https://firestereo.github.io.
SoK: Security and Privacy Risks of Medical AI
Chang, Yuanhaur, Liu, Han, Jaff, Evin, Lu, Chenyang, Zhang, Ning
The integration of technology and healthcare has ushered in a new era where software systems, powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, have become essential components of medical products and services. While these advancements hold great promise for enhancing patient care and healthcare delivery efficiency, they also expose sensitive medical data and system integrity to potential cyberattacks. This paper explores the security and privacy threats posed by AI/ML applications in healthcare. Through a thorough examination of existing research across a range of medical domains, we have identified significant gaps in understanding the adversarial attacks targeting medical AI systems. By outlining specific adversarial threat models for medical settings and identifying vulnerable application domains, we lay the groundwork for future research that investigates the security and resilience of AI-driven medical systems. Through our analysis of different threat models and feasibility studies on adversarial attacks in different medical domains, we provide compelling insights into the pressing need for cybersecurity research in the rapidly evolving field of AI healthcare technology.