Statistical Learning
RelevAI-Reviewer: A Benchmark on AI Reviewers for Survey Paper Relevance
Couto, Paulo Henrique, Ho, Quang Phuoc, Kumari, Nageeta, Rachmat, Benedictus Kent, Khuong, Thanh Gia Hieu, Ullah, Ihsan, Sun-Hosoya, Lisheng
Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly the widespread adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs), have significantly enhanced text analysis capabilities. This technological evolution offers considerable promise for automating the review of scientific papers, a task traditionally managed through peer review by fellow researchers. Despite its critical role in maintaining research quality, the conventional peer-review process is often slow and subject to biases, potentially impeding the swift propagation of scientific knowledge. In this paper, we propose RelevAI-Reviewer, an automatic system that conceptualizes the task of survey paper review as a classification problem, aimed at assessing the relevance of a paper in relation to a specified prompt, analogous to a "call for papers". To address this, we introduce a novel dataset comprised of 25,164 instances. Each instance contains one prompt and four candidate papers, each varying in relevance to the prompt. The objective is to develop a machine learning (ML) model capable of determining the relevance of each paper and identifying the most pertinent one. We explore various baseline approaches, including traditional ML classifiers like Support Vector Machine (SVM) and advanced language models such as BERT. Preliminary findings indicate that the BERT-based end-to-end classifier surpasses other conventional ML methods in performance. We present this problem as a public challenge to foster engagement and interest in this area of research.
The Significance of Latent Data Divergence in Predicting System Degradation
Fernandes, Miguel, Silva, Catarina, Cardoso, Alberto, Ribeiro, Bernardete
Condition-Based Maintenance is pivotal in enabling the early detection of potential failures in engineering systems, where precise prediction of the Remaining Useful Life is essential for effective maintenance and operation. However, a predominant focus in the field centers on predicting the Remaining Useful Life using unprocessed or minimally processed data, frequently neglecting the intricate dynamics inherent in the dataset. In this work we introduce a novel methodology grounded in the analysis of statistical similarity within latent data from system components. Leveraging a specifically designed architecture based on a Vector Quantized Variational Autoencoder, we create a sequence of discrete vectors which is used to estimate system-specific priors. We infer the similarity between systems by evaluating the divergence of these priors, offering a nuanced understanding of individual system behaviors. The efficacy of our approach is demonstrated through experiments on the NASA commercial modular aero-propulsion system simulation (C-MAPSS) dataset. Our validation not only underscores the potential of our method in advancing the study of latent statistical divergence but also demonstrates its superiority over existing techniques.
GROD: Enhancing Generalization of Transformer with Out-of-Distribution Detection
Transformer networks excel in natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision (CV) tasks. However, they face challenges in generalizing to Out-of-Distribution (OOD) datasets, that is, data whose distribution differs from that seen during training. The OOD detection aims to distinguish data that deviates from the expected distribution, while maintaining optimal performance on in-distribution (ID) data. This paper introduces a novel approach based on OOD detection, termed the Generate Rounded OOD Data (GROD) algorithm, which significantly bolsters the generalization performance of transformer networks across various tasks. GROD is motivated by our new OOD detection Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) Theory for transformer. The transformer has learnability in terms of OOD detection that is, when the data is sufficient the outlier can be well represented. By penalizing the misclassification of OOD data within the loss function and generating synthetic outliers, GROD guarantees learnability and refines the decision boundaries between inlier and outlier. This strategy demonstrates robust adaptability and general applicability across different data types. Evaluated across diverse OOD detection tasks in NLP and CV, GROD achieves SOTA regardless of data format. On average, it reduces the SOTA FPR@95 from 21.97% to 0.12%, and improves AUROC from 93.62% to 99.98% on image classification tasks, and the SOTA FPR@95 by 12.89% and AUROC by 2.27% in detecting semantic text outliers. The code is available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/GROD-OOD-Detection-with-transformers-B70F.
Detection-Rate-Emphasized Multi-objective Evolutionary Feature Selection for Network Intrusion Detection
Cheng, Zi-Hang, Shang, Haopu, Qian, Chao
Network intrusion detection is one of the most important issues in the field of cyber security, and various machine learning techniques have been applied to build intrusion detection systems. However, since the number of features to describe the network connections is often large, where some features are redundant or noisy, feature selection is necessary in such scenarios, which can both improve the efficiency and accuracy. Recently, some researchers focus on using multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) to select features. But usually, they only consider the number of features and classification accuracy as the objectives, resulting in unsatisfactory performance on a critical metric, detection rate. This will lead to the missing of many real attacks and bring huge losses to the network system. In this paper, we propose DR-MOFS to model the feature selection problem in network intrusion detection as a three-objective optimization problem, where the number of features, accuracy and detection rate are optimized simultaneously, and use MOEAs to solve it. Experiments on two popular network intrusion detection datasets NSL-KDD and UNSW-NB15 show that in most cases the proposed method can outperform previous methods, i.e., lead to fewer features, higher accuracy and detection rate.
DeTra: A Unified Model for Object Detection and Trajectory Forecasting
Casas, Sergio, Agro, Ben, Mao, Jiageng, Gilles, Thomas, Cui, Alexander, Li, Thomas, Urtasun, Raquel
The tasks of object detection and trajectory forecasting play a crucial role in understanding the scene for autonomous driving. These tasks are typically executed in a cascading manner, making them prone to compounding errors. Furthermore, there is usually a very thin interface between the two tasks, creating a lossy information bottleneck. To address these challenges, our approach formulates the union of the two tasks as a trajectory refinement problem, where the first pose is the detection (current time), and the subsequent poses are the waypoints of the multiple forecasts (future time). To tackle this unified task, we design a refinement transformer that infers the presence, pose, and multi-modal future behaviors of objects directly from LiDAR point clouds and high-definition maps. We call this model DeTra, short for object Detection and Trajectory forecasting. In our experiments, we observe that \ourmodel{} outperforms the state-of-the-art on Argoverse 2 Sensor and Waymo Open Dataset by a large margin, across a broad range of metrics. Last but not least, we perform extensive ablation studies that show the value of refinement for this task, that every proposed component contributes positively to its performance, and that key design choices were made.
Cognitively Inspired Energy-Based World Models
Gladstone, Alexi, Nanduru, Ganesh, Islam, Md Mofijul, Chadha, Aman, Li, Jundong, Iqbal, Tariq
One of the predominant methods for training world models is autoregressive prediction in the output space of the next element of a sequence. In Natural Language Processing (NLP), this takes the form of Large Language Models (LLMs) predicting the next token; in Computer Vision (CV), this takes the form of autoregressive models predicting the next frame/token/pixel. However, this approach differs from human cognition in several respects. First, human predictions about the future actively influence internal cognitive processes. Second, humans naturally evaluate the plausibility of predictions regarding future states. Based on this capability, and third, by assessing when predictions are sufficient, humans allocate a dynamic amount of time to make a prediction. This adaptive process is analogous to System 2 thinking in psychology. All these capabilities are fundamental to the success of humans at high-level reasoning and planning. Therefore, to address the limitations of traditional autoregressive models lacking these human-like capabilities, we introduce Energy-Based World Models (EBWM). EBWM involves training an Energy-Based Model (EBM) to predict the compatibility of a given context and a predicted future state. In doing so, EBWM enables models to achieve all three facets of human cognition described. Moreover, we developed a variant of the traditional autoregressive transformer tailored for Energy-Based models, termed the Energy-Based Transformer (EBT). Our results demonstrate that EBWM scales better with data and GPU Hours than traditional autoregressive transformers in CV, and that EBWM offers promising early scaling in NLP. Consequently, this approach offers an exciting path toward training future models capable of System 2 thinking and intelligently searching across state spaces.
DrivAerNet++: A Large-Scale Multimodal Car Dataset with Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulations and Deep Learning Benchmarks
Elrefaie, Mohamed, Morar, Florin, Dai, Angela, Ahmed, Faez
We present DrivAerNet++, the largest and most comprehensive multimodal dataset for aerodynamic car design. DrivAerNet++ comprises 8,000 diverse car designs modeled with high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The dataset includes diverse car configurations such as fastback, notchback, and estateback, with different underbody and wheel designs to represent both internal combustion engines and electric vehicles. Each entry in the dataset features detailed 3D meshes, parametric models, aerodynamic coefficients, and extensive flow and surface field data, along with segmented parts for car classification and point cloud data. This dataset supports a wide array of machine learning applications including data-driven design optimization, generative modeling, surrogate model training, CFD simulation acceleration, and geometric classification. With more than 39 TB of publicly available engineering data, DrivAerNet++ fills a significant gap in available resources, providing high-quality, diverse data to enhance model training, promote generalization, and accelerate automotive design processes. Along with rigorous dataset validation, we also provide ML benchmarking results on the task of aerodynamic drag prediction, showcasing the breadth of applications supported by our dataset. This dataset is set to significantly impact automotive design and broader engineering disciplines by fostering innovation and improving the fidelity of aerodynamic evaluations.
EncCluster: Scalable Functional Encryption in Federated Learning through Weight Clustering and Probabilistic Filters
Tsouvalas, Vasileios, Mohammadi, Samaneh, Balador, Ali, Ozcelebi, Tanir, Flammini, Francesco, Meratnia, Nirvana
Federated Learning (FL) enables model training across decentralized devices by communicating solely local model updates to an aggregation server. Although such limited data sharing makes FL more secure than centralized approached, FL remains vulnerable to inference attacks during model update transmissions. Existing secure aggregation approaches rely on differential privacy or cryptographic schemes like Functional Encryption (FE) to safeguard individual client data. However, such strategies can reduce performance or introduce unacceptable computational and communication overheads on clients running on edge devices with limited resources. In this work, we present EncCluster, a novel method that integrates model compression through weight clustering with recent decentralized FE and privacy-enhancing data encoding using probabilistic filters to deliver strong privacy guarantees in FL without affecting model performance or adding unnecessary burdens to clients. We performed a comprehensive evaluation, spanning various datasets and architectures, to demonstrate EncCluster's scalability across encryption levels. Our findings reveal that EncCluster significantly reduces communication costs - below even conventional FedAvg - and accelerates encryption by more than four times over all baselines; at the same time, it maintains high model accuracy and enhanced privacy assurances.
CircuitVAE: Efficient and Scalable Latent Circuit Optimization
Song, Jialin, Swope, Aidan, Kirby, Robert, Roy, Rajarshi, Godil, Saad, Raiman, Jonathan, Catanzaro, Bryan
Automatically designing fast and space-efficient digital circuits is challenging because circuits are discrete, must exactly implement the desired logic, and are costly to simulate. We address these challenges with CircuitVAE, a search algorithm that embeds computation graphs in a continuous space and optimizes a learned surrogate of physical simulation by gradient descent. By carefully controlling overfitting of the simulation surrogate and ensuring diverse exploration, our algorithm is highly sample-efficient, yet gracefully scales to large problem instances and high sample budgets. We test CircuitVAE by designing binary adders across a large range of sizes, IO timing constraints, and sample budgets. Our method excels at designing large circuits, where other algorithms struggle: compared to reinforcement learning and genetic algorithms, CircuitVAE typically finds 64-bit adders which are smaller and faster using less than half the sample budget. We also find CircuitVAE can design state-of-the-art adders in a real-world chip, demonstrating that our method can outperform commercial tools in a realistic setting.
Enhancing Cross-Modal Fine-Tuning with Gradually Intermediate Modality Generation
Cai, Lincan, Li, Shuang, Ma, Wenxuan, Kang, Jingxuan, Xie, Binhui, Sun, Zixun, Zhu, Chengwei
Large-scale pretrained models have proven immensely valuable in handling data-intensive modalities like text and image. However, fine-tuning these models for certain specialized modalities, such as protein sequence and cosmic ray, poses challenges due to the significant modality discrepancy and scarcity of labeled data. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end method, PaRe, to enhance cross-modal fine-tuning, aiming to transfer a large-scale pretrained model to various target modalities. PaRe employs a gating mechanism to select key patches from both source and target data. Through a modality-agnostic Patch Replacement scheme, these patches are preserved and combined to construct data-rich intermediate modalities ranging from easy to hard. By gradually intermediate modality generation, we can not only effectively bridge the modality gap to enhance stability and transferability of cross-modal fine-tuning, but also address the challenge of limited data in the target modality by leveraging enriched intermediate modality data. Compared with hand-designed, general-purpose, task-specific, and state-of-the-art cross-modal fine-tuning approaches, PaRe demonstrates superior performance across three challenging benchmarks, encompassing more than ten modalities.