Dementia is a neuropsychiatric brain disorder that usually occurs when one or more brain cells stop working partially or at all. Diagnosis of this disorder in the early phases of the disease is a vital task to rescue patients lives from bad consequences and provide them with better healthcare. Machine learning methods have been proven to be accurate in predicting dementia in the early phases of the disease. The prediction of dementia depends heavily on the type of collected data which usually are gathered from Normalized Whole Brain Volume (nWBV) and Atlas Scaling Factor (ASF) which are normally measured and corrected from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRIs). Other biological features such as age and gender can also help in the diagnosis of dementia. Although many studies use machine learning for predicting dementia, we could not reach a conclusion on the stability of these methods for which one is more accurate under different experimental conditions. Therefore, this paper investigates the conclusion stability regarding the performance of machine learning algorithms for dementia prediction. To accomplish this, a large number of experiments were run using 7 machine learning algorithms and two feature reduction algorithms namely, Information Gain (IG) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). To examine the stability of these algorithms, thresholds of feature selection were changed for the IG from 20% to 100% and the PCA dimension from 2 to 8. This has resulted in 7x9 + 7x7= 112 experiments. In each experiment, various classification evaluation data were recorded. The obtained results show that among seven algorithms the support vector machine and Naive Bayes are the most stable algorithms while changing the selection threshold. Also, it was found that using IG would seem more efficient than using PCA for predicting Dementia.

Best-of-N (BoN) Average Displacement Error (ADE)/ Final Displacement Error (FDE) is the most used metric for evaluating trajectory prediction models. Yet, the BoN does not quantify the whole generated samples, resulting in an incomplete view of the model's prediction quality and performance. We propose a new metric, Average Mahalanobis Distance (AMD) to tackle this issue. AMD is a metric that quantifies how close the whole generated samples are to the ground truth. We also introduce the Average Maximum Eigenvalue (AMV) metric that quantifies the overall spread of the predictions. Our metrics are validated empirically by showing that the ADE/FDE is not sensitive to distribution shifts, giving a biased sense of accuracy, unlike the AMD/AMV metrics. We introduce the usage of Implicit Maximum Likelihood Estimation (IMLE) as a replacement for traditional generative models to train our model, Social-Implicit. IMLE training mechanism aligns with AMD/AMV objective of predicting trajectories that are close to the ground truth with a tight spread. Social-Implicit is a memory efficient deep model with only 5.8K parameters that runs in real time of about 580Hz and achieves competitive results.

This post contains a list of the AI-related seminars that are scheduled to take place between 9 September 2022 and 31 October 2022. All events detailed here are free and open for anyone to attend virtually. AI ethics with Devdatt Dubhashi – Dangers, known and unknown with AI and Big Tech, and how to combat them Speakers: Devdatt Dubhashi Organised by: Chalmers University Register here. Title to be confirmed Speaker: To be confirmed Organised by: Carnegie Mellon University Subscribe here. Deep learning for sequence design with a few data points Speaker: Andrew White Organised by: University of Michigan Medical School Zoom link can be found here.

Machine learning methods are increasingly widely used in high-risk settings such as healthcare, transportation, and finance. In these settings, it is important that a model produces calibrated uncertainty to reflect its own confidence and avoid failures. In this paper we survey recent works on uncertainty quantification (UQ) for deep learning, in particular distribution-free Conformal Prediction method for its mathematical properties and wide applicability. We will cover the theoretical guarantees of conformal methods, introduce techniques that improve calibration and efficiency for UQ in the context of spatiotemporal data, and discuss the role of UQ in the context of safe decision making.

The method is constructed as an analogue of the train/test split in correlation-based machine learning and as an enhancement of current causal validation strategies that are consistent with the logic of scientific discovery. The effectiveness of the method is illustrated using Pearl's sprinkler example, before a thorough simulation-based investigation is conducted. Limits of the technique are identified by studying exemplary failing scenarios, which are furthermore used to propose a list of topics for future research and improvements of the presented version of quantitative probing. The code for integrating quantitative probing into causal analysis, as well as the code for the presented simulation-based studies of the effectiveness of quantitative probing is provided in two separate open-source Python packages.

ISO 14971 is the primary standard used for medical device risk management. While it specifies the requirements for medical device risk management, it does not specify a particular method for performing risk management. Hence, medical device manufacturers are free to develop or use any appropriate methods for managing the risk of medical devices. The most commonly used methods, such as Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), are unable to provide a reasonable basis for computing risk estimates when there are limited or no historical data available or where there is second-order uncertainty about the data. In this paper, we present a novel method for medical device risk management using hybrid Bayesian networks (BNs) that resolves the limitations of classical methods such as FTA and incorporates relevant factors affecting the risk of medical devices. The proposed BN method is generic but can be instantiated on a system-by-system basis, and we apply it to a Defibrillator device to demonstrate the process involved for medical device risk management during production and post-production. The example is validated against real-world data.

Automatic assessment of learner competencies is a fundamental task in intelligent tutoring systems. An assessment rubric typically and effectively describes relevant competencies and competence levels. This paper presents an approach to deriving a learner model directly from an assessment rubric defining some (partial) ordering of competence levels. The model is based on Bayesian networks and exploits logical gates with uncertainty (often referred to as noisy gates) to reduce the number of parameters of the model, so to simplify their elicitation by experts and allow real-time inference in intelligent tutoring systems. We illustrate how the approach can be applied to automatize the human assessment of an activity developed for testing computational thinking skills. The simple elicitation of the model starting from the assessment rubric opens up the possibility of quickly automating the assessment of several tasks, making them more easily exploitable in the context of adaptive assessment tools and intelligent tutoring systems.

In this paper, we discuss the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on alcohol consumption habit changes among healthcare workers in the United States. We utilize multiple supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods and models such as Decision Trees, Logistic Regression, Naive Bayes classifier, k-Nearest Neighbors, Support Vector Machines, Multilayer perceptron, XGBoost, CatBoost, LightGBM, Chi-Squared Test and mutual information method on a mental health survey data obtained from the University of Michigan Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research to find out relationships between COVID-19 related negative effects and alcohol consumption habit changes among healthcare workers. Our findings suggest that COVID-19-related school closures, COVID-19-related work schedule changes and COVID-related news exposure may lead to an increase in alcohol use among healthcare workers in the United States.

Neural networks (NNs) and decision trees (DTs) are both popular models of machine learning, yet coming with mutually exclusive advantages and limitations. To bring the best of the two worlds, a variety of approaches are proposed to integrate NNs and DTs explicitly or implicitly. In this survey, these approaches are organized in a school which we term as neural trees (NTs). This survey aims to present a comprehensive review of NTs and attempts to identify how they enhance the model interpretability. We first propose a thorough taxonomy of NTs that expresses the gradual integration and co-evolution of NNs and DTs. Afterward, we analyze NTs in terms of their interpretability and performance, and suggest possible solutions to the remaining challenges. Finally, this survey concludes with a discussion about other considerations like conditional computation and promising directions towards this field. A list of papers reviewed in this survey, along with their corresponding codes, is available at: https://github.com/zju-vipa/awesome-neural-trees

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are big topics these days, no matter what the domain is – finance, fintech, politics, health, education, science, blockchain, and so on. Would it still be possible to catch up if you missed the start and had only some basic knowledge in PHP or Javascript? It has even been used by some startups in the past five years as an opportunity to show off, so as to make their products and services more valuable to customers and investors. ML and AI can change everything if they are integrated into the value proposition. However, it is not something that should be taken lightly, ML is become more difficult to access as it requires specialists in AI and ML, and people who have studied the field, or who have dedicated time to be trained and certified on that subject, making it in certain cases harder for the general public to fully understand. There will be no mention of formulas, operations, series of numbers, or variances in this blog post. Since I am not a math nerd, I did not take the time to fully understand the deep skeleton of Machine Learning programs prior to this article, the probabilities, the calculations, the components, etc.