Despite the success of CNNs, selecting the optimal architecture for a given task remains an open problem. Instead of aiming to select a single optimal architecture, we propose a "fabric" that embeds an exponentially large number of architectures. The fabric consists of a 3D trellis that connects response maps at different layers, scales, and channels with a sparse homogeneous local connectivity pattern.

Modern discriminative predictors have been shown to match natural intelligences inspecific perceptual tasks in image classification, object and part detection, boundary extraction, etc. However, a major advantage that natural intelligences still have is that they work well for all perceptual problems together, solving them efficiently and coherently in an integrated manner. In order to capture some of these advantages in machine perception, we ask two questions: whether deep neural networks can learn universal image representations, useful not only for a single task but for all of them, and how the solutions to the different tasks can be integrated in this framework. We answer by proposing a new architecture, which we call multinet, in which not only deep image features are shared between tasks, but where tasks can interact in a recurrent manner by encoding the results of their analysis in a common shared representation of the data. In this manner, we show that the performance of individual tasks in standard benchmarks can be improved first by sharing features between them and then, more significantly, by integrating their solutions in the common representation.

Neural Information Processing Systems http://nips.cc/

Autocorrelation is a defining characteristic of time-series data, where each observation is statistically dependent on its predecessors. In the context of deep time-series forecasting, autocorrelation arises in both the input history and the label sequences, presenting two central research challenges: (1) designing neural architectures that model autocorrelation in history sequences, and (2) devising learning objectives that model autocorrelation in label sequences. Recent studies have made strides in tackling these challenges, but a systematic survey examining both aspects remains lacking. To bridge this gap, this paper provides a comprehensive review of deep time-series forecasting from the perspective of autocorrelation modeling. In contrast to existing surveys, this work makes two distinctive contributions. First, it proposes a novel taxonomy that encompasses recent literature on both model architectures and learning objectives -- whereas prior surveys neglect or inadequately discuss the latter aspect. Second, it offers a thorough analysis of the motivations, insights, and progression of the surveyed literature from a unified, autocorrelation-centric perspective, providing a holistic overview of the evolution of deep time-series forecasting. The full list of papers and resources is available at https://github.com/Master-PLC/Awesome-TSF-Papers.

We study the problem of synthesizing a number of likely future frames from a single input image. In contrast to traditional methods, which have tackled this problem in a deterministic or non-parametric way, we propose to model future frames in a probabilistic manner. Our probabilistic model makes it possible for us to sample and synthesize many possible future frames from a single input image. To synthesize realistic movement of objects, we propose a novel network structure, namely a Cross Convolutional Network; this network encodes image and motion information as feature maps and convolutional kernels, respectively. In experiments, our model performs well on synthetic data, such as 2D shapes and animated game sprites, as well as on real-world video frames. We also show that our model can be applied to visual analogy-making, and present an analysis of the learned network representations.

Training generalist agents capable of solving diverse tasks is challenging, often requiring large datasets of expert demonstrations. This is particularly problematic in robotics, where each data point requires physical execution of actions in the real world. Thus, there is a pressing need for architectures that can effectively leverage the available training data. In this work, we present BAKU, a simple transformer architecture that enables efficient learning of multi-task robot policies. BAKU builds upon recent advancements in offline imitation learning and meticulously combines observation trunks, action chunking, multi-sensory observations, and action heads to substantially improve upon prior work.

As generative large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT gain widespread adoption in various domains, their potential to propagate and amplify social biases, particularly in high-stakes areas such as the labor market, has become a pressing concern. AI algorithms are not only widely used in the selection of job applicants, individual job seekers may also make use of generative LLMs to help develop their job application materials. Against this backdrop, this research builds on a novel experimental design to examine social biases within ChatGPT-generated job applications in response to real job advertisements. By simulating the process of job application creation, we examine the language patterns and biases that emerge when the model is prompted with diverse job postings. Notably, we present a novel bias evaluation framework based on Masked Language Models to quantitatively assess social bias based on validated inventories of social cues/words, enabling a systematic analysis of the language used. Our findings show that the increasing adoption of generative AI, not only by employers but also increasingly by individual job seekers, can reinforce and exacerbate gender and social inequalities in the labor market through the use of biased and gendered language.

Since the inception of the classicalist vs. connectionist debate, it has been argued that the ability to systematically combine symbol-like entities into compositional representations is crucial for human intelligence. In connectionist systems, the field of disentanglement has gained prominence for its ability to produce explicitly compositional representations; however, it relies on a fundamentally representation of compositional structure that clashes with the foundations of deep learning. To resolve this tension, we extend Smolensky's Tensor Product Representation (TPR) and introduce, a representational form that encodes compositional structure in an inherently manner, along with, a theoretically-principled architecture designed specifically to learn Soft TPRs. Comprehensive evaluations in the visual representation learning domain demonstrate that the Soft TPR framework consistently outperforms conventional disentanglement alternatives -- achieving state-of-the-art disentanglement, boosting representation learner convergence, and delivering superior sample efficiency and low-sample regime performance in downstream tasks.

Performing eigendecomposition during neural network training is essential for tasks such as dimensionality reduction, network compression, image denoising, and graph learning. However, eigendecomposition is computationally expensive as it is orders of magnitude slower than other neural network operations. To address this challenge, we propose a novel approach called amortized eigendecomposition that relaxes the exact eigendecomposition by introducing an additional loss term called eigen loss. Our approach offers significant speed improvements by replacing the computationally expensive eigendecomposition with a more affordable QR decomposition at each iteration. Theoretical analysis guarantees that the desired eigenpair is attained as optima of the eigen loss. Empirical studies on nuclear norm regularization, latent-space principal component analysis, and graphs adversarial learning demonstrate significant improvements in training efficiency while producing nearly identical outcomes to conventional approaches. This novel methodology promises to integrate eigendecomposition efficiently into neural network training, overcoming existing computational challenges and unlocking new potential for advanced deep learning applications.

Particle-based Bayesian deep learning often requires a similarity metric to compare two networks. However, naive similarity metrics lack permutation invariance and are inappropriate for comparing networks. Centered Kernel Alignment (CKA) on feature kernels has been proposed to compare deep networks but has not been used as an optimization objective in Bayesian deep learning. In this paper, we explore the use of CKA in Bayesian deep learning to generate diverse ensembles and hypernetworks that output a network posterior. Noting that CKA projects kernels onto a unit hypersphere and that directly optimizing the CKA objective leads to diminishing gradients when two networks are very similar. We propose adopting the approach of hyperspherical energy (HE) on top of CKA kernels to address this drawback and improve training stability. Additionally, by leveraging CKA-based feature kernels, we derive feature repulsive terms applied to synthetically generated outlier examples. Experiments on both diverse ensembles and hypernetworks show that our approach significantly outperforms baselines in terms of uncertainty quantification in both synthetic and realistic outlier detection tasks.