Leveraging sparse networks to connect successive layers in deep neural networks has recently been shown to provide benefits to large scale state-of-the-art models. However, network connectivity also plays a significant role on the learning performance of shallow networks, such as the classic Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBM). Efficiently finding sparse connectivity patterns that improve the learning performance of shallow networks is a fundamental problem. While recent principled approaches explicitly include network connections as model parameters that must be optimized, they often rely on explicit penalization or have network sparsity as a hyperparameter. This work presents the Network Connectivity Gradients (NCG), a method to find optimal connectivity patterns for RBMs based on the idea of network gradients: computing the gradient of every possible connection, given a specific connection pattern, and using the gradient to drive a continuous connection strength parameter that in turn is used to determine the connection pattern. Thus, learning RBM parameters and learning network connections is truly jointly performed, albeit with different learning rates, and without changes to the model's classic objective function. The method is applied to the MNIST and other data sets showing that better RBM models are found for the benchmark tasks of sample generation and input classification. Results also show that NCG is robust to network initialization, both adding and removing network connections while learning.

We propose Multivariate Quantile Function Forecaster (MQF$^2$), a global probabilistic forecasting method constructed using a multivariate quantile function and investigate its application to multi-horizon forecasting. Prior approaches are either autoregressive, implicitly capturing the dependency structure across time but exhibiting error accumulation with increasing forecast horizons, or multi-horizon sequence-to-sequence models, which do not exhibit error accumulation, but also do typically not model the dependency structure across time steps. MQF$^2$ combines the benefits of both approaches, by directly making predictions in the form of a multivariate quantile function, defined as the gradient of a convex function which we parametrize using input-convex neural networks. By design, the quantile function is monotone with respect to the input quantile levels and hence avoids quantile crossing. We provide two options to train MQF$^2$: with energy score or with maximum likelihood. Experimental results on real-world and synthetic datasets show that our model has comparable performance with state-of-the-art methods in terms of single time step metrics while capturing the time dependency structure.

We propose a learning-based robust predictive control algorithm that compensates for significant uncertainty in the dynamics for a class of discrete-time systems that are nominally linear with an additive nonlinear component. Such systems commonly model the nonlinear effects of an unknown environment on a nominal system. We optimize over a class of nonlinear feedback policies inspired by certainty equivalent "estimate-and-cancel" control laws pioneered in classical adaptive control to achieve significant performance improvements in the presence of uncertainties of large magnitude, a setting in which existing learning-based predictive control algorithms often struggle to guarantee safety. In contrast to previous work in robust adaptive MPC, our approach allows us to take advantage of structure (i.e., the numerical predictions) in the a priori unknown dynamics learned online through function approximation. Our approach also extends typical nonlinear adaptive control methods to systems with state and input constraints even when we cannot directly cancel the additive uncertain function from the dynamics. We apply contemporary statistical estimation techniques to certify the system's safety through persistent constraint satisfaction with high probability. Moreover, we propose using Bayesian meta-learning algorithms that learn calibrated model priors to help satisfy the assumptions of the control design in challenging settings. Finally, we show in simulation that our method can accommodate more significant unknown dynamics terms than existing methods and that the use of Bayesian meta-learning allows us to adapt to the test environments more rapidly.

This white paper lays out a vision of research and development in the field of artificial intelligence for the next decade (and beyond). Its denouement is a cyber-physical ecosystem of natural and synthetic sense-making, in which humans are integral participants$\unicode{x2014}$what we call ''shared intelligence''. This vision is premised on active inference, a formulation of adaptive behavior that can be read as a physics of intelligence, and which inherits from the physics of self-organization. In this context, we understand intelligence as the capacity to accumulate evidence for a generative model of one's sensed world$\unicode{x2014}$also known as self-evidencing. Formally, this corresponds to maximizing (Bayesian) model evidence, via belief updating over several scales: i.e., inference, learning, and model selection. Operationally, this self-evidencing can be realized via (variational) message passing or belief propagation on a factor graph. Crucially, active inference foregrounds an existential imperative of intelligent systems; namely, curiosity or the resolution of uncertainty. This same imperative underwrites belief sharing in ensembles of agents, in which certain aspects (i.e., factors) of each agent's generative world model provide a common ground or frame of reference. Active inference plays a foundational role in this ecology of belief sharing$\unicode{x2014}$leading to a formal account of collective intelligence that rests on shared narratives and goals. We also consider the kinds of communication protocols that must be developed to enable such an ecosystem of intelligences and motivate the development of a shared hyper-spatial modeling language and transaction protocol, as a first$\unicode{x2014}$and key$\unicode{x2014}$step towards such an ecology.

In the scope of "AI for Science", solving inverse problems is a longstanding challenge in materials and drug discovery, where the goal is to determine the hidden structures given a set of desirable properties. Deep generative models are recently proposed to solve inverse problems, but these currently use expensive forward operators and struggle in precisely localizing the exact solutions and fully exploring the parameter spaces without missing solutions. In this work, we propose a novel approach (called iPage) to accelerate the inverse learning process by leveraging probabilistic inference from deep invertible models and deterministic optimization via fast gradient descent. Given a target property, the learned invertible model provides a posterior over the parameter space; we identify these posterior samples as an intelligent prior initialization which enables us to narrow down the search space. We then perform gradient descent to calibrate the inverse solutions within a local region. Meanwhile, a space-filling sampling is imposed on the latent space to better explore and capture all possible solutions. We evaluate our approach on three benchmark tasks and two created datasets with real-world applications from quantum chemistry and additive manufacturing, and find our method achieves superior performance compared to several state-of-the-art baseline methods. The iPage code is available at https://github.com/jxzhangjhu/MatDesINNe.

Pairwise Causal Discovery is the task of determining causal, anticausal, confounded or independence relationships from pairs of variables. Over the last few years, this challenging task has promoted not only the discovery of novel machine learning models aimed at solving the task, but also discussions on how learning the causal direction of variables may benefit machine learning overall. In this paper, we show that Quantitative Information Flow (QIF), a measure usually employed for measuring leakages of information from a system to an attacker, shows promising results as features for the task. In particular, experiments with real-world datasets indicate that QIF is statistically tied to the state of the art. Our initial results motivate further inquiries on how QIF relates to causality and what are its limitations.

Peer grading is a powerful pedagogical tool. It benefits students by giving them exposure to others' perspectives; helping them to internalize evaluation criteria by applying them critically to peer work Lu and Law (2012); and offering them feedback from equal-status learners Topping (2009). Just as importantly, it gives instructors a way to make classes more scalable by shifting (some) grading workload away from course staff; effectively, this again benefits students, by giving them more opportunities for their work to be evaluated. In order for peer grading systems to be both useful to instructors and acceptable to students, they must produce grades that are sufficiently similar to those that an instructor would have given. This is a challenging task because individual peer graders will be biased (consistently give generous or harsh grades); noisy (the same grader could grade an assignment differently on different days); and potentially strategic (some students will enter insincere peer grades unrelated to a submission's quality if they can get away with it). Addressing these interrelated challenges has been a topic of academic study in Computer Science for at least the last two decades. The first methods for aggregating peer grades--and many others introduced more recently--produce point estimates of each assignment's grade and each grader's quality (Walsh, 2014; Chakraborty et al., 2018; Prajapati et al., 2020; de Alfaro and Shavlovsky, 2014; Hamer et al., 2005). At their best, methods that produce point estimates maximize the likelihood of the data given a model, e.g., by assigning each grader a "reliability" parameter and iteratively updating these parameters to best describe the reported grades.

With the advancement of deep neural networks and computer vision-based Human Activity Recognition, employment of Point-Cloud Data technologies (LiDAR, mmWave) has seen a lot interests due to its privacy preserving nature. Given the high promise of accurate PCD technologies, we develop, PALMAR, a multiple-inhabitant activity recognition system by employing efficient signal processing and novel machine learning techniques to track individual person towards developing an adaptive multi-inhabitant tracking and HAR system. More specifically, we propose (i) a voxelized feature representation-based real-time PCD fine-tuning method, (ii) efficient clustering (DBSCAN and BIRCH), Adaptive Order Hidden Markov Model based multi-person tracking and crossover ambiguity reduction techniques and (iii) novel adaptive deep learning-based domain adaptation technique to improve the accuracy of HAR in presence of data scarcity and diversity (device, location and population diversity). We experimentally evaluate our framework and systems using (i) a real-time PCD collected by three devices (3D LiDAR and 79 GHz mmWave) from 6 participants, (ii) one publicly available 3D LiDAR activity data (28 participants) and (iii) an embedded hardware prototype system which provided promising HAR performances in multi-inhabitants (96%) scenario with a 63% improvement of multi-person tracking than state-of-art framework without losing significant system performances in the edge computing device.

Teleoperation is one of the longest-standing application fields in robotics. While full autonomy is still work in progress, the possibility to remotely operate a robot has already opened scenarios where humans can act in risky environments without endangering their own safety, such as when defusing explosives or decommissioning nuclear waste. It also allows one to be present and act even at great distance: underwater, in space, or inside a patient miles away from the surgeon. These are all critical applications, where skilled and qualified operators control the robot after receiving specific training to learn to use the system safely. The recent pandemic has yet made even more apparent the need for immersive telepresence and remote action also for non-expert users: not only could teleoperated robots take vitals or bring drugs to infectious patients, but we could assist our elderly living far away with chores like moving heavy stuff, or cooking, for example.

Machine learning (ML) has been increasingly used to aid aerodynamic shape optimization (ASO), thanks to the availability of aerodynamic data and continued developments in deep learning. We review the applications of ML in ASO to date and provide a perspective on the state-of-the-art and future directions. We first introduce conventional ASO and current challenges. Next, we introduce ML fundamentals and detail ML algorithms that have been successful in ASO. Then, we review ML applications to ASO addressing three aspects: compact geometric design space, fast aerodynamic analysis, and efficient optimization architecture. In addition to providing a comprehensive summary of the research, we comment on the practicality and effectiveness of the developed methods. We show how cutting-edge ML approaches can benefit ASO and address challenging demands, such as interactive design optimization. Practical large-scale design optimizations remain a challenge because of the high cost of ML training. Further research on coupling ML model construction with prior experience and knowledge, such as physics-informed ML, is recommended to solve large-scale ASO problems.