Law
COCO-Counterfactuals: Automatically Constructed Counterfactual Examples for Image-Text Pairs
Despite their demonstrated utility for NLP, multimodal counterfactual examples have been relatively unexplored due to the difficulty of creating paired image-text data with minimal counterfactual changes. To address this challenge, we introduce a scalable framework for automatic generation of counterfactual examples using text-to-image diffusion models.
The curious case of the disappearing Lamborghinis
A new wave of theft is rocking the luxury car industry--mixing high-tech with old-school chop-shop techniques to snag vehicles while they're in transport. When Sam Zahr first saw the gray Rolls-Royce Dawn convertible with orange interior and orange roof, he knew he'd found a perfect addition to his fleet. "It was very appealing to our clientele," he told me. As the director of operations at Dream Luxury Rental, he outfits customers in the Detroit area looking to ride in style to a wedding, a graduation, or any other event with high-end vehicles--Rolls-Royces, Lamborghinis, Bentleys, Mercedes G-Wagons, and more. But before he could rent out the Rolls, Zahr needed to get the car to Detroit from Miami, where he bought it from a used-car dealer. His team posted the convertible on Central Dispatch, an online marketplace that's popular among car dealers, manufacturers, and owners who want to arrange vehicle shipments. It's not too complicated, at least in theory: A typical listing includes the type of vehicle, zip codes of the origin and destination, dates for pickup and delivery, and the fee. Anyone with a Central Dispatch account can see the job, and an individual carrier or transport broker who wants it can call the number on the listing. Zahr's team got a call from a transport company that wanted the job. They agreed on the price and scheduled pickup for January 17, 2025.