A black-box spectral method is introduced for evaluating the adversarial robustness of a given machine learning (ML) model. Our approach, named SPADE, exploits bijective distance mapping between the input/output graphs constructed for approximating the manifolds corresponding to the input/output data. By leveraging the generalized Courant-Fischer theorem, we propose a SPADE score for evaluating the adversarial robustness of a given model, which is proved to be an upper bound of the best Lipschitz constant under the manifold setting. To reveal the most non-robust data samples highly vulnerable to adversarial attacks, we develop a spectral graph embedding procedure leveraging dominant generalized eigenvectors. This embedding step allows assigning each data sample a robustness score that can be further harnessed for more effective adversarial training. Our experiments show the proposed SPADE method leads to promising empirical results for neural network models adversarially trained with the MNIST and CIFAR-10 data sets.

This article introduces a neural network-based signal processing framework for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided wireless communications systems. By modeling radio-frequency (RF) impairments inside the "meta-atoms" of IRS (including nonlinearity and memory effects), we present an approach that generalizes the entire IRS-aided system as a reservoir computing (RC) system, an efficient recurrent neural network (RNN) operating in a state near the "edge of chaos". This framework enables us to take advantage of the nonlinearity of this "fabricated" wireless environment to overcome link degradation due to model mismatch. Accordingly, the randomness of the wireless channel and RF imperfections are naturally embedded into the RC framework, enabling the internal RC dynamics lying on the edge of chaos. Furthermore, several practical issues, such as channel state information acquisition, passive beamforming design, and physical layer reference signal design, are discussed.

Neural natural language generation (NLG) and understanding (NLU) models are data-hungry and require massive amounts of annotated data to be competitive. Recent frameworks address this bottleneck with generative models that synthesize weak labels at scale, where a small amount of training labels are expert-curated and the rest of the data is automatically annotated. We follow that approach, by automatically constructing a large-scale weakly-labeled data with a fine-tuned GPT-2, and employ a semi-supervised framework to jointly train the NLG and NLU models. The proposed framework adapts the parameter updates to the models according to the estimated label-quality. On both the E2E and Weather benchmarks, we show that this weakly supervised training paradigm is an effective approach under low resource scenarios and outperforming benchmark systems on both datasets when 100% of training data is used.

One of the main requirements of tumor extraction is the annotation and segmentation of tumor boundaries correctly. For this purpose, we present a threefold deep learning architecture. First classifiers are implemented with a deep convolutional neural network(CNN) andsecond a region-based convolutional neural network (R-CNN) is performed on the classified images to localize the tumor regions of interest. As the third and final stage, the concentratedtumor boundary is contoured for the segmentation process by using the Chan-Vesesegmentation algorithm. As the typical edge detection algorithms based on gradients of pixel intensity tend to fail in the medical image segmentation process, an active contour algorithm defined with the level set function is proposed. Specifically, Chan- Vese algorithm was applied to detect the tumor boundaries for the segmentation process. To evaluate the performance of the overall system, Dice Score,Rand Index (RI), Variation of Information (VOI), Global Consistency Error (GCE), Boundary Displacement Error (BDE), Mean absolute error (MAE), and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) werecalculated by comparing the segmented boundary area which is the final output of the proposed, against the demarcations of the subject specialists which is the gold standard. Overall performance of the proposed architecture for both glioma and meningioma segmentation is with average dice score of 0.92, (also, with RI of 0.9936, VOI of 0.0301, GCE of 0.004, BDE of 2.099, PSNR of 77.076 and MAE of 52.946), pointing to high reliability of the proposed architecture.

Many deep learning based 3D face reconstruction methods have been proposed recently, however, few of them have applications in games. Current game character customization systems either require players to manually adjust considerable face attributes to obtain the desired face, or have limited freedom of facial shape and texture. In this paper, we propose an automatic character face creation method that predicts both facial shape and texture from a single portrait, and it can be integrated into most existing 3D games. Although 3D Morphable Face Model (3DMM) based methods can restore accurate 3D faces from single images, the topology of 3DMM mesh is different from the meshes used in most games. To acquire fidelity texture, existing methods require a large amount of face texture data for training, while building such datasets is time-consuming and laborious. Besides, such a dataset collected under laboratory conditions may not generalized well to in-the-wild situations. To tackle these problems, we propose 1) a low-cost facial texture acquisition method, 2) a shape transfer algorithm that can transform the shape of a 3DMM mesh to games, and 3) a new pipeline for training 3D game face reconstruction networks. The proposed method not only can produce detailed and vivid game characters similar to the input portrait, but can also eliminate the influence of lighting and occlusions. Experiments show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods used in games.

Previous post: ML theory with bad drawings Next post: TBD, see also all seminar posts and course webpage. Lecture video (starts in slide 2 since I hit record button 30 seconds too late – sorry!) These are rough notes for the first lecture in my advanced topics in machine learning seminar. See the previous post for the introduction. This lecture's focus was on "classical" learing theory.

The Garrison (armies of militia) of libraries worldwide offer millions of books, such as the Library of Congress in D.C. has over 162 million books, and the New York Public library carries around 53 million books. A number of people have asked me through several of my channels and conferences -- how to find time to read books, and what can be done to read more books each month. Some audiences even feel that 43 machine learning books in a year are insufficient, and want more. I keep discovering new material every day on top of the antiquated books, which still offer good concepts. To get started, I would suggest disconnecting from Netflix, Amazon Video, and regular TV channels.

After two introductory tutorials, its time to build our first neural network! The network we are building solves a simple regression problem. Regression is a process where a model learns to predict a continuous value output for a given input data, e.g. Our objective is to build prediction model that predicts housing prices from a set of house features. We will use the Boston Housing dataset, which is collected by the U.S Census Service concerning housing in the area of Boston Mass.

Deborah Raji, a fellow at nonprofit Mozilla, and Genevieve Fried, who advises members of the US Congress on algorithmic accountability, examined over 130 facial-recognition data sets compiled over 43 years. They found that researchers, driven by the exploding data requirements of deep learning, gradually abandoned asking for people's consent. This has led more and more of people's personal photos to be incorporated into systems of surveillance without their knowledge. It has also led to far messier data sets: they may unintentionally include photos of minors, use racist and sexist labels, or have inconsistent quality and lighting. The trend could help explain the growing number of cases in which facial-recognition systems have failed with troubling consequences, such as the false arrests of two Black men in the Detroit area last year.

With large-scale integration of renewable generation and ubiquitous distributed energy resources (DERs), modern power systems confront a series of new challenges in operation and control, such as growing complexity, increasing uncertainty, and aggravating volatility. While the upside is that more and more data are available owing to the widely-deployed smart meters, smart sensors, and upgraded communication networks. As a result, data-driven control techniques, especially reinforcement learning (RL), have attracted surging attention in recent years. In this paper, we focus on RL and aim to provide a tutorial on various RL techniques and how they can be applied to the decision-making and control in power systems. In particular, we select three key applications, including frequency regulation, voltage control, and energy management, for illustration, and present the typical ways to model and tackle them with RL methods. We conclude by emphasizing two critical issues in the application of RL, i.e., safety and scalability. Several potential future directions are discussed as well.