Efficient Neural Architecture Search methods based on weight sharing have shown good promise in democratizing Neural Architecture Search for computer vision models. There is, however, an ongoing debate whether these efficient methods are significantly better than random search. Here we perform a thorough comparison between efficient and random search methods on a family of progressively larger and more challenging search spaces for image classification and detection on ImageNet and COCO. While the efficacies of both methods are problem-dependent, our experiments demonstrate that there are large, realistic tasks where efficient search methods can provide substantial gains over random search. In addition, we propose and evaluate techniques which improve the quality of searched architectures and reduce the need for manual hyper-parameter tuning. Source code and experiment data are available at https://github.com/google-research/google-research/tree/master/tunas

Given a vertex-weighted graph, the maximum weight independent set problem asks for a pair-wise non-adjacent set of vertices such that the sum of their weights is maximum. The branch-and-reduce paradigm is the de facto standard approach to solve the problem to optimality in practice. In this paradigm, data reduction rules are applied to decrease the problem size. These data reduction rules ensure that given an optimum solution on the new (smaller) input, one can quickly construct an optimum solution on the original input. We introduce new generalized data reduction and transformation rules for the problem. A key feature of our work is that some transformation rules can increase the size of the input. Surprisingly, these so-called increasing transformations can simplify the problem and also open up the reduction space to yield even smaller irreducible graphs later throughout the algorithm. In experiments, our algorithm computes significantly smaller irreducible graphs on all except one instance, solves more instances to optimality than previously possible, is up to two orders of magnitude faster than the best state-of-the-art solver, and finds higher-quality solutions than heuristic solvers DynWVC and HILS on many instances. While the increasing transformations are only efficient enough for preprocessing at this time, we see this as a critical initial step towards a new branch-and-transform paradigm.

In-person competition is a no-go in many disciplines amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but speed cubers will be still able to battle opponents remotely in the Rubik's Cube World Cup. Rubik's has revealed the Connected Cube, which links to your phone or tablet and tracks your solve times and progress in real-time. It's more of a traditional cube than GoCube, which is largely a STEM-focused toy. Both use the same platform and can connect to the Rubik's Arena community, which has almost 47,000 players. As such, amateur and professional cubers can take part in this year's World Cup without having to travel, as long as they have a Connected Cube or GoCube. Qualifiers start August 15th and run through October 10th.

Monotone submodular maximization with a knapsack constraint is NP-hard. Various approximation algorithms have been devised to address this optimization problem. In this paper, we revisit the widely known modified greedy algorithm. First, we show that this algorithm can achieve an approximation factor of $0.405$, which significantly improves the known factor of $0.357$ given by Wolsey or $(1-1/\mathrm{e})/2\approx 0.316$ given by Khuller et al. More importantly, our analysis uncovers a gap in Khuller et al.'s proof for the extensively mentioned approximation factor of $(1-1/\sqrt{\mathrm{e}})\approx 0.393$ in the literature to clarify a long time of misunderstanding on this issue. Second, we enhance the modified greedy algorithm to derive a data-dependent upper bound on the optimum. We empirically demonstrate the tightness of our upper bound with a real-world application. The bound enables us to obtain a data-dependent ratio typically much higher than $0.405$ between the solution value of the modified greedy algorithm and the optimum. It can also be used to significantly improve the efficiency of algorithms such as branch and bound.

E.g., its search space was shown to be compatible with symbolic Goal Recognition [Amado et al., 2018]. We achieved a new milestone in the difficult task One major drawback of the previous work was that it used of enabling agents to learn about their environment a non-descriptive, black-box neural model as the successor autonomously. Our neuro-symbolic architecture is generator. Not only that such a black-box model is incompatible trained end-to-end to produce a succinct and effective with the existing heuristic search techniques, but also, discrete state transition model from images since a neural network is able to model a very complex function, alone. Our target representation (the Planning Domain its direct translation into a compact logical formula via Definition Language) is already in a form that a rule-based transfer learning method turned out futile [Asai, off-the-shelf solvers can consume, and opens the 2019a]: The model complexity causes an exponentially large door to the rich array of modern heuristic search grounded action model that cannot be processed by the modern capabilities. We demonstrate how the sophisticated classical planners. Thus, obtaining the descriptive action innate prior we place on the learning process significantly models from the raw observations with minimal human interference reduces the complexity of the learned representation, is the next key milestone for expanding the scope of and reveals a connection to the graphtheoretic applying Automated Planning to the raw unstructured inputs.

In the last decade or so we have seen tremendous progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is now in the real world, powering applications that have a large practical impact. Most of it is based on modeling, i.e. machine learning of statistical models that make it possible to predict what the right decision might be in future situations. For example, we now have object recognition, speech recognition, game playing, language understanding, and machine translation systems that rival human performance, and in many cases exceed it [28, 10, 9]. In each of these cases, massive amounts of supervised data exists, specifying the right answer to each input case.

This paper studies novel subgoaling relaxations for automated planning with propositional and numeric state variables. Subgoaling relaxations address one source of complexity of the planning problem: the requirement to satisfy conditions simultaneously. The core idea is to relax this requirement by recursively decomposing conditions into atomic subgoals that are considered in isolation. Such relaxations are typically used for pruning, or as the basis for computing admissible or inadmissible heuristic estimates to guide optimal or satisificing heuristic search planners. In the last decade or so, the subgoaling principle has underpinned the design of an abundance of relaxation-based heuristics whose formulations have greatly extended the reach of classical planning. This paper extends subgoaling relaxations to support numeric state variables and numeric conditions. We provide both theoretical and practical results, with the aim of reaching a good trade-off between accuracy and computation costs within a heuristic state-space search planner. Our experimental results validate the theoretical assumptions, and indicate that subgoaling substantially improves on the state of the art in optimal and satisficing numeric planning via forward state-space search.

In recent years, machine learning has been very successful in solving a wide range of problems. In particular, neural networks have reached human, and sometimes super-human, levels of ability in tasks such as language translation, object recognition, game playing, and even driving cars. Aerospike is the global leader in next-generation, real-time NoSQL data solutions for any scale. Aerospike's patented Hybrid Memory Architecture delivers an unbreakable competitive advantage by unlocking the full potential of modern hardware, delivering previously unimaginable value from vast amounts of data at the edge, to the core and in the cloud. With this growth in capability has come a growth in complexity. Data scientists and machine learning engineers must perform feature engineering, design model architectures, and optimize hyperparameters. Since the purpose of the machine learning is to automate a task normally done by humans, naturally the next step is to automate the tasks of data scientists and engineers. This area of research is called automated machine learning, or AutoML. There have been many exciting developments in AutoML recently, and it's important to take a look at the current state of the art and learn about what's happening now and what's coming up in the future. InfoQ reached out to the following subject matter experts in the industry to discuss the current state and future trends in AutoML space. InfoQ: What is AutoML and why is it important?

A key challenge in solving a combinatorial optimization problem is how to guide the agent (i.e., solver) to efficiently explore the enormous search space. Conventional approaches often rely on enumeration (e.g., exhaustive, random, or tabu search) or have to restrict the exploration to rather limited regions (e.g., a single path as in iterative algorithms). In this paper, we show it is possible to use machine learning to speedup the exploration. In particular, a value network is trained to evaluate solution candidates, which provides a useful structure (i.e., an approximate value surface) over the search space; this value network is then used to screen solutions to help a black-box optimization agent to initialize or restart so as to navigate through the search space towards desirable solutions. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed ``Learn to Restart'' algorithm achieves promising results in solving Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problems (CVRPs).

In this paper, we study a new Workforce Scheduling and Routing Problem, denoted Multiperiod Workforce Scheduling and Routing Problem with Dependent Tasks. In this problem, customers request services from a company. Each service is composed of dependent tasks, which are executed by teams of varying skills along one or more days. Tasks belonging to a service may be executed by different teams, and customers may be visited more than once a day, as long as precedences are not violated. The objective is to schedule and route teams so that the makespan is minimized, i.e., all services are completed in the minimum number of days. In order to solve this problem, we propose a Mixed-Integer Programming model, a constructive algorithm and heuristic algorithms based on the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) metaheuristic. The presence of precedence constraints makes it difficult to develop efficient local search algorithms. This motivates the choice of the ACO metaheuristic, which is effective in guiding the construction process towards good solutions. Computational results show that the model is capable of consistently solving problems with up to about 20 customers and 60 tasks. In most cases, the best performing ACO algorithm was able to match the best solution provided by the model in a fraction of its computational time.