Performance Analysis
ProbSelect: Stochastic Client Selection for GPU-Accelerated Compute Devices in the 3D Continuum
Stanisic, Andrija, Nastic, Stefan
Abstract--Integration of edge, cloud and space devices into a unified 3D continuum imposes significant challenges for client selection in federated learning systems. Traditional approaches rely on continuous monitoring and historical data collection, which becomes impractical in dynamic environments where satellites and mobile devices frequently change operational conditions. Furthermore, existing solutions primarily consider CPU-based computation, failing to capture complex characteristics of GPU-accelerated training that is prevalent across the 3D continuum. This paper introduces ProbSelect, a novel approach utilizing analytical modeling and probabilistic forecasting for client selection on GPU-accelerated devices, without requiring historical data or continuous monitoring. Extensive evaluation across diverse GPU architectures and workloads demonstrates that ProbSelect improves SLO compliance by 13.77% on average while achieving 72.5% computational waste reduction compared to baseline approaches.
Relation as a Prior: A Novel Paradigm for LLM-based Document-level Relation Extraction
Pi, Qiankun, Sun, Yepeng, Lu, Jicang, Fan, Qinlong, Huang, Ningbo, Wang, Shiyu
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated their remarkable capabilities in document understanding. However, recent research reveals that LLMs still exhibit performance gaps in Document-level Relation Extraction (DocRE) as requiring fine-grained comprehension. The commonly adopted "extract entities then predict relations" paradigm in LLM-based methods leads to these gaps due to two main reasons: (1) Numerous unrelated entity pairs introduce noise and interfere with the relation prediction for truly related entity pairs. (2) Although LLMs have identified semantic associations between entities, relation labels beyond the predefined set are still treated as prediction errors. To address these challenges, we propose a novel Relation as a Prior (RelPrior) paradigm for LLM-based DocRE. For challenge (1), RelPrior utilizes binary relation as a prior to extract and determine whether two entities are correlated, thereby filtering out irrelevant entity pairs and reducing prediction noise. For challenge (2), RelPrior utilizes predefined relation as a prior to match entities for triples extraction instead of directly predicting relation. Thus, it avoids misjudgment caused by strict predefined relation labeling. Extensive experiments on two benchmarks demonstrate that RelPrior achieves state-of-the-art performance, surpassing existing LLM-based methods.
HybridGuard: Enhancing Minority-Class Intrusion Detection in Dew-Enabled Edge-of-Things Networks
Kara, Binayak, Sahua, Ujjwal, Thomas, Ciza, Sahoo, Jyoti Prakash
Securing Dew-Enabled Edge-of-Things (EoT) networks against sophisticated intrusions is a critical challenge. This paper presents HybridGuard, a framework that integrates machine learning and deep learning to improve intrusion detection. HybridGuard addresses data imbalance through mutual information based feature selection, ensuring that the most relevant features are used to improve detection performance, especially for minority attack classes. The framework leverages Wasserstein Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks with Gradient Penalty (WCGAN-GP) to further reduce class imbalance and enhance detection precision. It adopts a two-phase architecture called DualNetShield to support advanced traffic analysis and anomaly detection, improving the granular identification of threats in complex EoT environments. HybridGuard is evaluated on the UNSW-NB15, CIC-IDS-2017, and IOTID20 datasets, where it demonstrates strong performance across diverse attack scenarios and outperforms existing solutions in adapting to evolving cybersecurity threats. This approach establishes HybridGuard as an effective tool for protecting EoT networks against modern intrusions.
Filtered-ViT: A Robust Defense Against Multiple Adversarial Patch Attacks
Khanal, Aja, Faid, Ahmed, Narayan, Apurva
Deep learning vision systems are increasingly deployed in safety-critical domains such as healthcare, yet they remain vulnerable to small adversarial patches that can trigger mis-classifications. Most existing defenses assume a single patch and fail when multiple localized disruptions occur, the type of scenario adversaries and real-world artifacts often exploit. We propose Filtered-ViT, a new vision transformer architecture that integrates SMART V ector Median Filtering (SMART - VMF), a spatially adaptive, multi-scale, robustness-aware mechanism that enables selective suppression of corrupted regions while preserving semantic detail. On ImageNet with LaV AN multi-patch attacks, Filtered-ViT achieves 79.8% clean accuracy and 46.3% robust accuracy under four simultaneous 1% patches, outperforming existing defenses. Beyond synthetic benchmarks, a real-world case study on radiographic medical imagery shows that Filtered-ViT mitigates natural artifacts such as occlusions and scanner noise without degrading diagnostic content. This establishes Filtered-ViT as the first transformer to demonstrate unified robustness against both adversarial and naturally occurring patch-like disruptions, charting a path toward reliable vision systems in truly high-stakes environments.
On the Role of Calibration in Benchmarking Algorithmic Fairness for Skin Cancer Detection
Dominique, Brandon, Lam, Prudence, Kurtansky, Nicholas, Weber, Jochen, Kose, Kivanc, Rotemberg, Veronica, Dy, Jennifer
Artificial Intelligence (AI) models have demonstrated expert-level performance in melanoma detection, yet their clinical adoption is hindered by performance disparities across demographic subgroups such as gender, race, and age. Previous efforts to benchmark the performance of AI models have primarily focused on assessing model performance using group fairness metrics that rely on the Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (AUROC), which does not provide insights into a model's ability to provide accurate estimates. In line with clinical assessments, this paper addresses this gap by incorporating calibration as a complementary benchmarking metric to AUROC-based fairness metrics. Calibration evaluates the alignment between predicted probabilities and observed event rates, offering deeper insights into subgroup biases. We assess the performance of the leading skin cancer detection algorithm of the ISIC 2020 Challenge on the ISIC 2020 Challenge dataset and the PROVE-AI dataset, and compare it with the second and third place models, focusing on subgroups defined by sex, race (Fitzpatrick Skin Tone), and age. Our findings reveal that while existing models enhance discriminative accuracy, they often over-diagnose risk and exhibit calibration issues when applied to new datasets. This study underscores the necessity for comprehensive model auditing strategies and extensive metadata collection to achieve equitable AI-driven healthcare solutions. All code is publicly available at https://github.com/bdominique/testing_strong_calibration.
AIA Forecaster: Technical Report
Alur, Rohan, Stadie, Bradly C., Kang, Daniel, Chen, Ryan, McManus, Matt, Rickert, Michael, Lee, Tyler, Federici, Michael, Zhu, Richard, Fogerty, Dennis, Williamson, Hayley, Lozinski, Nina, Linsky, Aaron, Sekhon, Jasjeet S.
This technical report describes the AIA Forecaster, a Large Language Model (LLM)-based system for judgmental forecasting using unstructured data. The AIA Forecaster approach combines three core elements: agentic search over high-quality news sources, a supervisor agent that reconciles disparate forecasts for the same event, and a set of statistical calibration techniques to counter behavioral biases in large language models. On the ForecastBench benchmark (Karger et al., 2024), the AIA Forecaster achieves performance equal to human superforecasters, surpassing prior LLM baselines. In addition to reporting on ForecastBench, we also introduce a more challenging forecasting benchmark sourced from liquid prediction markets. While the AIA Forecaster underperforms market consensus on this benchmark, an ensemble combining AIA Forecaster with market consensus outperforms consensus alone, demonstrating that our forecaster provides additive information. Our work establishes a new state of the art in AI forecasting and provides practical, transferable recommendations for future research. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that verifiably achieves expert-level forecasting at scale.
A Self-Improving Architecture for Dynamic Safety in Large Language Models
Context: The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into core software systems is accelerating. However, existing software architecture patterns are static, while current safety assurance methods are not scalable, leaving systems vulnerable to novel adversarial threats. Objective: To design, implement, and evaluate a novel software architecture that enables an AI-driven system to autonomously and continuously adapt its own safety protocols at runtime. Method: We propose the Self-Improving Safety Framework (SISF), a runtime architecture that couples an unprotected, unaligned base LLM (mistralai/Mistral-7B-v0.1) with a dynamic feedback loop. This loop consists of an AI Adjudicator (GPT-4o) for breach detection and a Policy Synthesis Module (GPT-4 Turbo) that autonomously generates new, generalized safety policies (both heuristic and semantic) in response to failures. Results: We conducted a dynamic learning evaluation using the 520-prompt AdvBench dataset. The unprotected model was 100% vulnerable. Our SISF, starting from zero policies, demonstrated a clear learning curve: it detected 237 breaches, autonomously synthesized 234 new policies, and reduced the overall Attack Success Rate (ASR) to 45.58%. In a subsequent test on 520 benign prompts, the SISF achieved a 0.00% False Positive Rate (FPR), proving its ability to adapt without compromising user utility. Conclusion: An architectural approach to AI safety, based on the principles of self-adaptation, is a viable and effective strategy. Our framework demonstrates a practical path towards building more robust, resilient, and scalable AI-driven systems, shifting safety assurance from a static, pre-deployment activity to an automated, runtime process.
Towards Personalized Quantum Federated Learning for Anomaly Detection
Rahman, Ratun, Shaham, Sina, Nguyen, Dinh C.
Anomaly detection has a significant impact on applications such as video surveillance, medical diagnostics, and industrial monitoring, where anomalies frequently depend on context and anomaly-labeled data are limited. Quantum federated learning (QFL) overcomes these concerns by distributing model training among several quantum clients, consequently eliminating the requirement for centralized quantum storage and processing. However, in real-life quantum networks, clients frequently differ in terms of hardware capabilities, circuit designs, noise levels, and how classical data is encoded or preprocessed into quantum states. These differences create inherent heterogeneity across clients - not just in their data distributions, but also in their quantum processing behaviors. As a result, training a single global model becomes ineffective, especially when clients handle imbalanced or non-identically distributed (non-IID) data. To address this, we propose a new framework called personalized quantum federated learning (PQFL) for anomaly detection. PQFL enhances local model training at quantum clients using parameterized quantum circuits and classical optimizers, while introducing a quantum-centric personalization strategy that adapts each client's model to its own hardware characteristics and data representation. Extensive experiments show that PQFL significantly improves anomaly detection accuracy under diverse and realistic conditions. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, PQFL reduces false errors by up to 23%, and achieves gains of 24.2% in AUROC and 20.5% in AUPR, highlighting its effectiveness and scalability in practical quantum federated settings.
SAFENLIDB: A Privacy-Preserving Safety Alignment Framework for LLM-based Natural Language Database Interfaces
Liu, Ruiheng, Chen, XiaoBing, Zhang, Jinyu, Zhang, Qiongwen, Zhang, Yu, Yang, Bailong
The rapid advancement of Large Language Models (LLMs) has driven significant progress in Natural Language Interface to Database (NLIDB). However, the widespread adoption of LLMs has raised critical privacy and security concerns. During interactions, LLMs may unintentionally expose confidential database contents or be manipulated by attackers to exfiltrate data through seemingly benign queries. While current efforts typically rely on rule-based heuristics or LLM agents to mitigate this leakage risk, these methods still struggle with complex inference-based attacks, suffer from high false positive rates, and often compromise the reliability of SQL queries. To address these challenges, we propose \textsc{SafeNlidb}, a novel privacy-security alignment framework for LLM-based NLIDB. The framework features an automated pipeline that generates hybrid chain-of-thought interaction data from scratch, seamlessly combining implicit security reasoning with SQL generation. Additionally, we introduce reasoning warm-up and alternating preference optimization to overcome the multi-preference oscillations of Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), enabling LLMs to produce security-aware SQL through fine-grained reasoning without the need for human-annotated preference data. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method outperforms both larger-scale LLMs and ideal-setting baselines, achieving significant security improvements while preserving high utility. WARNING: This work may contain content that is offensive and harmful!
Feature Importance Guided Random Forest Learning with Simulated Annealing Based Hyperparameter Tuning
Balasubramanian, Kowshik, Williams, Andre, Butun, Ismail
Abstract--This paper introduces a novel framework for enhancing Random Forest classifiers by integrating probabilistic feature sampling and hyperparameter tuning via Simulated Annealing. The proposed framework exhibits substantial advancements in predictive accuracy and generalization, adeptly tackling the multifaceted challenges of robust classification across diverse domains, including credit risk evaluation, anomaly detection in IoT ecosystems, early-stage medical diagnostics, and high-dimensional biological data analysis. T o overcome the limitations of conventional Random Forests, we present an approach that places stronger emphasis on capturing the most relevant signals from data while enabling adaptive hyperparameter configuration. The model is guided towards features that contribute more meaningfully to classification and optimizing this with dynamic parameter tuning. The results demonstrate consistent accuracy improvements and meaningful insights into feature relevance, showcasing the efficacy of combining importance aware sampling and metaheuristic optimization. RFs are widely used ensemble learning methods known for their robustness, interpretability, scalability and performance across diverse machine learning tasks.