Industry
Towards Provably Unlearnable Examples via Bayes Error Optimisation
Zhang, Ruihan, Sun, Jun, Lim, Ee-Peng, Zhang, Peixin
The recent success of machine learning models, especially large-scale classifiers and language models, relies heavily on training with massive data. These data are often collected from online sources. This raises serious concerns about the protection of user data, as individuals may not have given consent for their data to be used in training. To address this concern, recent studies introduce the concept of unlearnable examples, i.e., data instances that appear natural but are intentionally altered to prevent models from effectively learning from them. While existing methods demonstrate empirical effectiveness, they typically rely on heuristic trials and lack formal guarantees. Besides, when unlearnable examples are mixed with clean data, as is often the case in practice, their unlearnability disappears. In this work, we propose a novel approach to constructing unlearnable examples by systematically maximising the Bayes error, a measurement of irreducible classification error. We develop an optimisation-based approach and provide an efficient solution using projected gradient ascent. Our method provably increases the Bayes error and remains effective when the unlearning examples are mixed with clean samples. Experimental results across multiple datasets and model architectures are consistent with our theoretical analysis and show that our approach can restrict data learnability, effectively in practice.
oboro: Text-to-Image Synthesis on Limited Data using Flow-based Diffusion Transformer with MMH Attention
Mizutani, Ryusuke, Matano, Kazuaki, Kadowaki, Tsugumi, Tenya, Haruki, Layris, null, nuigurumi, null, Hashimoto, Koki, Tanaka, Yu
This project was conducted as a 2nd-term adopted project of the "Post-5G Information and Communication System Infrastructure Enhancement R&D Project Development of Competitive Generative AI Foundation Models (GENIAC)," a business of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). To address challenges such as labor shortages in Japan's anime production industry, this project aims to develop an image generation model from scratch. This report details the technical specifications of the developed image generation model, "oboro:." We have developed "oboro:," a new image generation model built from scratch, using only copyright-cleared images for training. A key characteristic is its architecture, designed to generate high-quality images even from limited datasets. The foundation model weights and inference code are publicly available alongside this report. This project marks the first release of an open-source, commercially-oriented image generation AI fully developed in Japan. AiHUB originated from the OSS community; by maintaining transparency in our development process, we aim to contribute to Japan's AI researcher and engineer community and promote the domestic AI development ecosystem.
Good flavor search in $SU(5)$: a machine learning approach
Abu-Ajamieh, Fayez, Kawai, Shinsuke, Okada, Nobuchika
We revisit the fermion mass problem of the $SU(5)$ grand unified theory using machine learning techniques. The original $SU(5)$ model proposed by Georgi and Glashow is incompatible with the observed fermion mass spectrum. Two remedies are known to resolve this discrepancy, one is through introducing a new interaction via a 45-dimensional field, and the other via a 24-dimensional field. We investigate which modification is more natural, defining naturalness as proximity to the original Georgi-Glashow $SU(5)$ model. Our analysis shows that, in both supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric scenarios, the model incorporating the interaction with the 24-dimensional field is more natural under this criterion. We then generalise these models by introducing a continuous parameter $y$, which takes the value 3 for the 45-dimensional field and 1.5 for the 24-dimensional field. Numerical optimisation reveals that $y \approx 0.8$ yields the closest match to the original $SU(5)$ model, indicating that this value corresponds to the most natural model according to our definition.
ProbSelect: Stochastic Client Selection for GPU-Accelerated Compute Devices in the 3D Continuum
Stanisic, Andrija, Nastic, Stefan
Abstract--Integration of edge, cloud and space devices into a unified 3D continuum imposes significant challenges for client selection in federated learning systems. Traditional approaches rely on continuous monitoring and historical data collection, which becomes impractical in dynamic environments where satellites and mobile devices frequently change operational conditions. Furthermore, existing solutions primarily consider CPU-based computation, failing to capture complex characteristics of GPU-accelerated training that is prevalent across the 3D continuum. This paper introduces ProbSelect, a novel approach utilizing analytical modeling and probabilistic forecasting for client selection on GPU-accelerated devices, without requiring historical data or continuous monitoring. Extensive evaluation across diverse GPU architectures and workloads demonstrates that ProbSelect improves SLO compliance by 13.77% on average while achieving 72.5% computational waste reduction compared to baseline approaches.
BIPPO: Budget-Aware Independent PPO for Energy-Efficient Federated Learning Services
Lackinger, Anna, Morichetta, Andrea, Frangoudis, Pantelis A., Dustdar, Schahram
Federated Learning (FL) is a promising machine learning solution in large-scale IoT systems, guaranteeing load distribution and privacy. However, FL does not natively consider infrastructure efficiency, a critical concern for systems operating in resource-constrained environments. Several Reinforcement Learning (RL) based solutions offer improved client selection for FL; however, they do not consider infrastructure challenges, such as resource limitations and device churn. Furthermore, the training of RL methods is often not designed for practical application, as these approaches frequently do not consider generalizability and are not optimized for energy efficiency. To fill this gap, we propose BIPPO (Budget-aware Independent Proximal Policy Optimization), which is an energy-efficient multi-agent RL solution that improves performance. We evaluate BIPPO on two image classification tasks run in a highly budget-constrained setting, with FL clients training on non-IID data, a challenging context for vanilla FL. The improved sampler of BIPPO enables it to increase the mean accuracy compared to non-RL mechanisms, traditional PPO, and IPPO. In addition, BIPPO only consumes a negligible proportion of the budget, which stays consistent even if the number of clients increases. Overall, BIPPO delivers a performant, stable, scalable, and sustainable solution for client selection in IoT-FL.
A robust methodology for long-term sustainability evaluation of Machine Learning models
Paz-Ruza, Jorge, Gama, Joรฃo, Alonso-Betanzos, Amparo, Guijarro-Berdiรฑas, Bertha
Among the many desirable properties of Artificial Intelligence systems, sustainability and efficiency have become increasingly important in the context of worsening climate change, massive water use in data centres, and the need for simpler, faster models in IoT settings. Consequently, there have been not few attempts to both promote and regulate the sustainability of Machine Learning models; the EU's AI Act indicates that the sustainability of AI - in terms of its environmental and social footprint-should be considered when developing and deploying AI pipelines [1], and manifests like that of UNESCO highlight sustainability as one of the core principles of the broader Responsible AI paradigm [2]. However, this seemingly consensual agreement on the importance of sustainability and efficiency for real-world AI systems and the social and regulatory efforts heavily contrasts with the practical applicability of such regulations; without looking further, the AI Act itself defines the requirement for sustainability, but does not indicate what metrics and evaluation pipelines should be considered for a robust, reliable, and practically relevant assessment of the environmental impact of a model. We argue that this lack of comprehensiveness in sustainability recommendations for AI systems does not stem from a careless or sloppy construction of the regulations themselves, but rather from an actual absence of suitable evaluation protocols that are formal, model-agnostic, reproducible, and grounded in real-life usage protocols for the ML lifecycle. The authors of this preprint are aware of a single regulatory standard for measuring AI sustainability, namely UNE 0086 [3], which limits evaluation to the epoch-batch training paradigm of supervised learning systems, rendering it useless for any task or type of learning that deviates from that standard. Although many researchers and companies have made it a habit to report efficiency figures and comparisons (e.g., in terms of emitted CO
Stuart-Landau Oscillatory Graph Neural Network
Zhang, Kaicheng, Reynolds, David N., Deidda, Piero, Tudisco, Francesco
Oscillatory Graph Neural Networks (OGNNs) are an emerging class of physics-inspired architectures designed to mitigate oversmoothing and vanishing gradient problems in deep GNNs. In this work, we introduce the Complex-Valued Stuart-Landau Graph Neural Network (SLGNN), a novel architecture grounded in Stuart-Landau oscillator dynamics. Stuart-Landau oscillators are canonical models of limit-cycle behavior near Hopf bifurcations, which are fundamental to synchronization theory and are widely used in e.g. neuroscience for mesoscopic brain modeling. Unlike harmonic oscillators and phase-only Kuramoto models, Stuart-Landau oscillators retain both amplitude and phase dynamics, enabling rich phenomena such as amplitude regulation and multistable synchronization. The proposed SLGNN generalizes existing phase-centric Kuramoto-based OGNNs by allowing node feature amplitudes to evolve dynamically according to Stuart-Landau dynamics, with explicit tunable hyperparameters (such as the Hopf-parameter and the coupling strength) providing additional control over the interplay between feature amplitudes and network structure. We conduct extensive experiments across node classification, graph classification, and graph regression tasks, demonstrating that SLGNN outperforms existing OGNNs and establishes a novel, expressive, and theoretically grounded framework for deep oscillatory architectures on graphs.
StableMorph: High-Quality Face Morph Generation with Stable Diffusion
Kabbani, Wassim, Raja, Kiran, Ramachandra, Raghavendra, Busch, Christoph
Face morphing attacks threaten the integrity of biometric identity systems by enabling multiple individuals to share a single identity. T o develop and evaluate effective morphing attack detection (MAD) systems, we need access to high-quality, realistic morphed images that reflect the challenges posed in real-world scenarios. However, existing morph generation methods often produce images that are blurry, riddled with artifacts, or poorly constructed--making them easy to detect and not representative of the most dangerous attacks. In this work, we introduce StableMorph, a novel approach that generates highly realistic, artifact-free morphed face images using modern diffusion-based image synthesis. Unlike prior methods, StableMorph produces full-head images with sharp details, avoids common visual flaws, and offers unmatched control over visual attributes. Through extensive evaluation, we show that StableMorph images not only rival or exceed the quality of genuine face images, but also maintain a strong ability to fool face recognition systems--posing a greater challenge to existing MAD solutions and setting a new standard for morph quality in research and operational testing. StableMorph improves the evaluation of biometric security by creating more realistic and effective attacks and supports the development of more robust detection systems.
HipKittens: Fast and Furious AMD Kernels
Hu, William, Wadsworth, Drew, Siddens, Sean, Winata, Stanley, Fu, Daniel Y., Swann, Ryann, Osama, Muhammad, Rรฉ, Christopher, Arora, Simran
AMD GPUs offer state-of-the-art compute and memory bandwidth; however, peak performance AMD kernels are written in raw assembly. To address the difficulty of mapping AI algorithms to hardware, recent work proposes C++ embedded and PyTorch-inspired domain-specific languages like ThunderKittens (TK) to simplify high performance AI kernel development on NVIDIA hardware. We explore the extent to which such primitives -- for explicit tile-based programming with optimized memory accesses and fine-grained asynchronous execution across workers -- are NVIDIA-specific or general. We provide the first detailed study of the programming primitives that lead to performant AMD AI kernels, and we encapsulate these insights in the HipKittens (HK) programming framework. We find that tile-based abstractions used in prior DSLs generalize to AMD GPUs, however we need to rethink the algorithms that instantiate these abstractions for AMD. We validate the HK primitives across CDNA3 and CDNA4 AMD platforms. In evaluations, HK kernels compete with AMD's hand-optimized assembly kernels for GEMMs and attention, and consistently outperform compiler baselines. Moreover, assembly is difficult to scale to the breadth of AI workloads; reflecting this, in some settings HK outperforms all available kernel baselines by $1.2-2.4\times$ (e.g., $d=64$ attention, GQA backwards, memory-bound kernels). These findings help pave the way for a single, tile-based software layer for high-performance AI kernels that translates across GPU vendors. HipKittens is released at: https://github.com/HazyResearch/HipKittens.
An Integrated Fusion Framework for Ensemble Learning Leveraging Gradient Boosting and Fuzzy Rule-Based Models
Li, Jinbo, Liu, Peng, Chen, Long, Pedrycz, Witold, Ding, Weiping
The integration of different learning paradigms has long been a focus of machine learning research, aimed at overcoming the inherent limitations of individual methods. Fuzzy rule-based models excel in interpretability and have seen widespread application across diverse fields. However, they face challenges such as complex design specifications and scalability issues with large datasets. The fusion of different techniques and strategies, particularly Gradient Boosting, with Fuzzy Rule-Based Models offers a robust solution to these challenges. This paper proposes an Integrated Fusion Framework that merges the strengths of both paradigms to enhance model performance and interpretability. At each iteration, a Fuzzy Rule-Based Model is constructed and controlled by a dynamic factor to optimize its contribution to the overall ensemble. This control factor serves multiple purposes: it prevents model dominance, encourages diversity, acts as a regularization parameter, and provides a mechanism for dynamic tuning based on model performance, thus mitigating the risk of overfitting. Additionally, the framework incorporates a sample-based correction mechanism that allows for adaptive adjustments based on feedback from a validation set. Experimental results substantiate the efficacy of the presented gradient boosting framework for fuzzy rule-based models, demonstrating performance enhancement, especially in terms of mitigating overfitting and complexity typically associated with many rules. By leveraging an optimal factor to govern the contribution of each model, the framework improves performance, maintains interpretability, and simplifies the maintenance and update of the models.