While fine-tuning pretrained models has become common practice, these models often underperform outside their specific domains. Recently developed model merging techniques enable the direct integration of multiple models, each fine-tuned for distinct tasks, into a single model. This strategy promotes multitasking capabilities without requiring retraining on the original datasets. However, existing methods fall short in addressing potential conflicts and complex correlations between tasks, especially in parameter-level adjustments, posing a challenge in effectively balancing parameter competition across various tasks. This paper introduces an innovative technique named PCB-Merging (Parameter Competition Balancing), a lightweight and training-free technique that adjusts the coefficients of each parameter for effective model merging. PCB-Merging employs intra-balancing to gauge parameter significance within individual tasks and inter-balancing to assess parameter similarities across different tasks. Parameters with low importance scores are dropped, and the remaining ones are rescaled to form the final merged model. We assessed our approach in diverse merging scenarios, including cross-task, cross-domain, and cross-training configurations, as well as out-of-domain generalization. The experimental results reveal that our approach achieves substantial performance enhancements across multiple modalities, domains, model sizes, number of tasks, fine-tuning forms, and large language models, outperforming existing model merging methods. The code is publicly available at: \url{https://github.com/duguodong7/pcb-merging}.

Equipping machine learning models with ethical and legal constraints is a serious issue; without this, the future of machine learning is at risk. This paper takes a step forward in this direction and focuses on ensuring machine learning models deliver fair decisions. In legal scholarships, the notion of fairness itself is evolving and multi-faceted. We set an overarching goal to develop a unified machine learning framework that is able to handle any definitions of fairness, their combinations, and also new definitions that might be stipulated in the future. To achieve our goal, we recycle two well-established machine learning techniques, privileged learning and distribution matching, and harmonize them for satisfying multi-faceted fairness definitions.

The reason behind the unfair outcomes of AI is often rooted in biased datasets. Therefore, this work presents a framework for addressing fairness by debiasing datasets containing a (non-)binary protected attribute. The framework proposes a combinatorial optimization problem where heuristics such as genetic algorithms can be used to solve for the stated fairness objectives. The framework addresses this by finding a data subset that minimizes a certain discrimination measure. Depending on a user-defined setting, the framework enables different use cases, such as data removal, the addition of synthetic data, or exclusive use of synthetic data. The exclusive use of synthetic data in particular enhances the framework's ability to preserve privacy while optimizing for fairness. In a comprehensive evaluation, we demonstrate that under our framework, genetic algorithms can effectively yield fairer datasets compared to the original data. In contrast to prior work, the framework exhibits a high degree of flexibility as it is metric- and task-agnostic, can be applied to both binary or non-binary protected attributes, and demonstrates efficient runtime.

Robots-based smart pharmacies are essential for modern healthcare systems, enabling efficient drug delivery. However, a critical challenge exists in the robotic handling of drugs with varying shapes and overlapping positions, which previous studies have not adequately addressed. To enhance the robotic arm's ability to grasp chaotic, overlapping, and variously shaped drugs, this paper proposed a novel framework combining a multi-stage grasping network with an adaptive robotics mechanism. The framework first preprocessed images using an improved Super-Resolution Convolutional Neural Network (SRCNN) algorithm, and then employed the proposed YOLOv5+E-A-SPPFCSPC+BIFPNC (YOLO-EASB) instance segmentation algorithm for precise drug segmentation. The most suitable drugs for grasping can be determined by assessing the completeness of the segmentation masks. Then, these segmented drugs were processed by our improved Adaptive Feature Fusion and Grasp-Aware Network (IAFFGA-Net) with the optimized loss function, which ensures accurate picking actions even in complex environments. To control the robot grasping, a time-optimal robotic arm trajectory planning algorithm that combines an improved ant colony algorithm with 3-5-3 interpolation was developed, further improving efficiency while ensuring smooth trajectories. Finally, this system was implemented and validated within an adaptive collaborative robot setup, which dynamically adjusts to different production environments and task requirements. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our multi-stage grasping network in optimizing smart pharmacy operations, while also showcasing its remarkable adaptability and effectiveness in practical applications.

The rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have revolutionized smart healthcare, driving innovations in wearable technologies, continuous monitoring devices, and intelligent diagnostic systems. However, security, explainability, robustness, and performance optimization challenges remain critical barriers to widespread adoption in clinical environments. This research presents an innovative algorithmic method using the Adaptive Feature Evaluator (AFE) algorithm to improve feature selection in healthcare datasets and overcome problems. AFE integrating Genetic Algorithms (GA), Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), and Permutation Combination Techniques (PCT), the algorithm optimizes Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS), thereby enhancing predictive accuracy and interpretability. The proposed method is validated across three diverse healthcare datasets using six distinct machine learning algorithms, demonstrating its robustness and superiority over conventional feature selection techniques. The results underscore the transformative potential of AFE in smart healthcare, enabling personalized and transparent patient care. Notably, the AFE algorithm, when combined with a Multi-layer Perceptron (MLP), achieved an accuracy of up to 98.5%, highlighting its capability to improve clinical decision-making processes in real-world healthcare applications.

In Influence Maximization (IM), the objective is to -- given a budget -- select the optimal set of entities in a network to target with a treatment so as to maximize the total effect. For instance, in marketing, the objective is to target the set of customers that maximizes the total response rate, resulting from both direct treatment effects on targeted customers and indirect, spillover, effects that follow from targeting these customers. Recently, new methods to estimate treatment effects in the presence of network interference have been proposed. However, the issue of how to leverage these models to make better treatment allocation decisions has been largely overlooked. Traditionally, in Uplift Modeling (UM), entities are ranked according to estimated treatment effect, and the top entities are allocated treatment. Since, in a network context, entities influence each other, the UM ranking approach will be suboptimal. The problem of finding the optimal treatment allocation in a network setting is combinatorial and generally has to be solved heuristically. To fill the gap between IM and UM, we propose OTAPI: Optimizing Treatment Allocation in the Presence of Interference to find solutions to the IM problem using treatment effect estimates. OTAPI consists of two steps. First, a causal estimator is trained to predict treatment effects in a network setting. Second, this estimator is leveraged to identify an optimal treatment allocation by integrating it into classic IM algorithms. We demonstrate that this novel method outperforms classic IM and UM approaches on both synthetic and semi-synthetic datasets.

Discovering explicit governing equations of stochastic dynamical systems with both (Gaussian) Brownian noise and (non-Gaussian) L\'evy noise from data is chanllenging due to possible intricate functional forms and the inherent complexity of L\'evy motion. This present research endeavors to develop an evolutionary symbol sparse regression (ESSR) approach to extract non-Gaussian stochastic dynamical systems from sample path data, based on nonlocal Kramers-Moyal formulas, genetic programming, and sparse regression. More specifically, the genetic programming is employed to generate a diverse array of candidate functions, the sparse regression technique aims at learning the coefficients associated with these candidates, and the nonlocal Kramers-Moyal formulas serve as the foundation for constructing the fitness measure in genetic programming and the loss function in sparse regression. The efficacy and capabilities of this approach are showcased through its application to several illustrative models. This approach stands out as a potent instrument for deciphering non-Gaussian stochastic dynamics from available datasets, indicating a wide range of applications across different fields.

Multiobjective evolutionary learning (MOEL) has demonstrated its advantages of training fairer machine learning models considering a predefined set of conflicting objectives, including accuracy and different fairness measures. Recent works propose to construct a representative subset of fairness measures as optimisation objectives of MOEL throughout model training. However, the determination of a representative measure set relies on dataset, prior knowledge and requires substantial computational costs. What's more, those representative measures may differ across different model training processes. Instead of using a static predefined set determined before model training, this paper proposes to dynamically and adaptively determine a representative measure set online during model training. The dynamically determined representative set is then used as optimising objectives of the MOEL framework and can vary with time. Extensive experimental results on 12 well-known benchmark datasets demonstrate that our proposed framework achieves outstanding performance compared to state-of-the-art approaches for mitigating unfairness in terms of accuracy as well as 25 fairness measures although only a few of them were dynamically selected and used as optimisation objectives. The results indicate the importance of setting optimisation objectives dynamically during training.

As AI takes on pivotal roles in essential applications, like self-driving vehicles, healthcare diagnosis, and financial services, it becomes a tempting target for malicious actors [16]. This study aims to comprehensively explore the realm of offensive AI, shedding light on its multifaceted dimensions, the techniques involved, its consequences, and potential future implications. Cyberattacks have surged in both complexity and frequency. This is evidenced by the escalating costs associated with data breaches. In 2022, businesses incurred an average loss of $4.35 million, an increase of $0.11 million from the previous year and a 12.7% rise from 2020 [22]. Moreover, the volume of data breaches has reached historic highs, with approximately 15 million records exposed during the third quarter of 2022. Furthermore, the third quarter of 2022 witnessed an alarming 57,116 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks [78]. Against this backdrop, understanding and mitigating security risks in machine learning (ML) has emerged as a pivotal aspect of cybersecurity.

Perceiving the global field from sparse sensors has been a grand challenge in the monitoring, analysis, and design of physical systems. In this context, sensor placement optimization is a crucial issue. Most existing works require large and sufficient data to construct data-based criteria, which are intractable in data-free scenarios without numerical and experimental data. To this end, we propose a novel physics-driven sensor placement optimization (PSPO) method for temperature field reconstruction using a physics-based criterion to optimize sensor locations. In our methodological framework, we firstly derive the theoretical upper and lower bounds of the reconstruction error under noise scenarios by analyzing the optimal solution, proving that error bounds correlate with the condition number determined by sensor locations. Furthermore, the condition number, as the physics-based criterion, is used to optimize sensor locations by the genetic algorithm. Finally, the best sensors are validated by reconstruction models, including non-invasive end-to-end models, non-invasive reduced-order models, and physics-informed models. Experimental results, both on a numerical and an application case, demonstrate that the PSPO method significantly outperforms random and uniform selection methods, improving the reconstruction accuracy by nearly an order of magnitude. Moreover, the PSPO method can achieve comparable reconstruction accuracy to the existing data-driven placement optimization methods.