Uncertainty
Improving Cooperation in Language Games with Bayesian Inference and the Cognitive Hierarchy
Bills, Joseph, Archibald, Christopher, Blaylock, Diego
In two-player cooperative games, agents can play together effectively when they have accurate assumptions about how their teammate will behave, but may perform poorly when these assumptions are inaccurate. In language games, failure may be due to disagreement in the understanding of either the semantics or pragmatics of an utterance. We model coarse uncertainty in semantics using a prior distribution of language models and uncertainty in pragmatics using the cognitive hierarchy, combining the two aspects into a single prior distribution over possible partner types. Fine-grained uncertainty in semantics is modeled using noise that is added to the embeddings of words in the language. To handle all forms of uncertainty we construct agents that learn the behavior of their partner using Bayesian inference and use this information to maximize the expected value of a heuristic function. We test this approach by constructing Bayesian agents for the game of Codenames, and show that they perform better in experiments where semantics is uncertain
Bayesian Surrogate Training on Multiple Data Sources: A Hybrid Modeling Strategy
Reiser, Philipp, Bรผrkner, Paul-Christian, Guthke, Anneli
Surrogate models are often used as computationally efficient approximations to complex simulation models, enabling tasks such as solving inverse problems, sensitivity analysis, and probabilistic forward predictions, which would otherwise be computationally infeasible. During training, surrogate parameters are fitted such that the surrogate reproduces the simulation model's outputs as closely as possible. However, the simulation model itself is merely a simplification of the real-world system, often missing relevant processes or suffering from misspecifications e.g., in inputs or boundary conditions. Hints about these might be captured in real-world measurement data, and yet, we typically ignore those hints during surrogate building. In this paper, we propose two novel probabilistic approaches to integrate simulation data and real-world measurement data during surrogate training. The first method trains separate surrogate models for each data source and combines their predictive distributions, while the second incorporates both data sources by training a single surrogate. We show the conceptual differences and benefits of the two approaches through both synthetic and real-world case studies. The results demonstrate the potential of these methods to improve predictive accuracy, predictive coverage, and to diagnose problems in the underlying simulation model. These insights can improve system understanding and future model development.
Scalable Temporal Anomaly Causality Discovery in Large Systems: Achieving Computational Efficiency with Binary Anomaly Flag Data
Asres, Mulugeta Weldezgina, Omlin, Christian Walter, Collaboration, The CMS-HCAL
Extracting anomaly causality facilitates diagnostics once monitoring systems detect system faults. Identifying anomaly causes in large systems involves investigating a more extensive set of monitoring variables across multiple subsystems. However, learning causal graphs comes with a significant computational burden that restrains the applicability of most existing methods in real-time and large-scale deployments. In addition, modern monitoring applications for large systems often generate large amounts of binary alarm flags, and the distinct characteristics of binary anomaly data -- the meaning of state transition and data sparsity -- challenge existing causality learning mechanisms. This study proposes an anomaly causal discovery approach (AnomalyCD), addressing the accuracy and computational challenges of generating causal graphs from binary flag data sets. The AnomalyCD framework presents several strategies, such as anomaly flag characteristics incorporating causality testing, sparse data and link compression, and edge pruning adjustment approaches. We validate the performance of this framework on two datasets: monitoring sensor data of the readout-box system of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at CERN, and a public data set for information technology monitoring. The results demonstrate the considerable reduction of the computation overhead and moderate enhancement of the accuracy of temporal causal discovery on binary anomaly data sets.
A comprehensive GeoAI review: Progress, Challenges and Outlooks
Boutayeb, Anasse, Lahsen-cherif, Iyad, Khadimi, Ahmed El
In recent years, Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI) has gained traction in the most relevant research works and industrial applications, while also becoming involved in various fields of use. This paper offers a comprehensive review of GeoAI as a synergistic concept applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods and models to geospatial data. A preliminary study is carried out, identifying the methodology of the work, the research motivations, the issues and the directions to be tracked, followed by exploring how GeoAI can be used in various interesting fields of application, such as precision agriculture, environmental monitoring, disaster management and urban planning. Next, a statistical and semantic analysis is carried out, followed by a clear and precise presentation of the challenges facing GeoAI. Then, a concrete exploration of the future prospects is provided, based on several informations gathered during the census. To sum up, this paper provides a complete overview of the correlation between AI and the geospatial domain, while mentioning the researches conducted in this context, and emphasizing the close relationship linking GeoAI with other advanced concepts such as geographic information systems (GIS) and large-scale geospatial data, known as big geodata. This will enable researchers and scientific community to assess the state of progress in this promising field, and will help other interested parties to gain a better understanding of the issues involved.
Bayesian inference of mean velocity fields and turbulence models from flow MRI
Kontogiannis, A., Nair, P., Loecher, M., Ennis, D. B., Marsden, A., Juniper, M. P.
We solve a Bayesian inverse Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) problem that assimilates mean flow data by jointly reconstructing the mean flow field and learning its unknown RANS parameters. We devise an algorithm that learns the most likely parameters of an algebraic effective viscosity model, and estimates their uncertainties, from mean flow data of a turbulent flow. We conduct a flow MRI experiment to obtain mean flow data of a confined turbulent jet in an idealized medical device known as the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) nozzle. The algorithm successfully reconstructs the mean flow field and learns the most likely turbulence model parameters without overfitting. The methodology accepts any turbulence model, be it algebraic (explicit) or multi-equation (implicit), as long as the model is differentiable, and naturally extends to unsteady turbulent flows.
Modeling Inter-Intra Heterogeneity for Graph Federated Learning
Yu, Wentao, Chen, Shuo, Tong, Yongxin, Gu, Tianlong, Gong, Chen
Heterogeneity is a fundamental and challenging issue in federated learning, especially for the graph data due to the complex relationships among the graph nodes. To deal with the heterogeneity, lots of existing methods perform the weighted federation based on their calculated similarities between pairwise clients (i.e., subgraphs). However, their inter-subgraph similarities estimated with the outputs of local models are less reliable, because the final outputs of local models may not comprehensively represent the real distribution of subgraph data. In addition, they ignore the critical intra-heterogeneity which usually exists within each subgraph itself. To address these issues, we propose a novel Federated learning method by integrally modeling the Inter-Intra Heterogeneity (FedIIH). For the inter-subgraph relationship, we propose a novel hierarchical variational model to infer the whole distribution of subgraph data in a multi-level form, so that we can accurately characterize the inter-subgraph similarities with the global perspective. For the intra-heterogeneity, we disentangle the subgraph into multiple latent factors and partition the model parameters into multiple parts, where each part corresponds to a single latent factor. Our FedIIH not only properly computes the distribution similarities between subgraphs, but also learns disentangled representations that are robust to irrelevant factors within subgraphs, so that it successfully considers the inter- and intra- heterogeneity simultaneously. Extensive experiments on six homophilic and five heterophilic graph datasets in both non-overlapping and overlapping settings demonstrate the effectiveness of our method when compared with nine state-of-the-art methods. Specifically, FedIIH averagely outperforms the second-best method by a large margin of 5.79% on all heterophilic datasets.
Supervised Score-Based Modeling by Gradient Boosting
Zhao, Changyuan, Du, Hongyang, Liu, Guangyuan, Niyato, Dusit
Score-based generative models can effectively learn the distribution of data by estimating the gradient of the distribution. Due to the multi-step denoising characteristic, researchers have recently considered combining score-based generative models with the gradient boosting algorithm, a multi-step supervised learning algorithm, to solve supervised learning tasks. However, existing generative model algorithms are often limited by the stochastic nature of the models and the long inference time, impacting prediction performances. Therefore, we propose a Supervised Score-based Model (SSM), which can be viewed as a gradient boosting algorithm combining score matching. We provide a theoretical analysis of learning and sampling for SSM to balance inference time and prediction accuracy. Via the ablation experiment in selected examples, we demonstrate the outstanding performances of the proposed techniques. Additionally, we compare our model with other probabilistic models, including Natural Gradient Boosting (NGboost), Classification and Regression Diffusion Models (CARD), Diffusion Boosted Trees (DBT), and non-probabilistic GBM models. The experimental results show that our model outperforms existing models in both accuracy and inference time.
Poisson Multi-Bernoulli Mixtures for Sets of Trajectories
Granstrรถm, Karl, Svensson, Lennart, Xia, Yuxuan, Williams, Jason, Garcรญa-Fernรกndez, รngel F.
The Poisson Multi-Bernoulli Mixture (PMBM) density is a conjugate multi-target density for the standard point target model with Poisson point process birth. This means that both the filtering and predicted densities for the set of targets are PMBM. In this paper, we first show that the PMBM density is also conjugate for sets of trajectories with the standard point target measurement model. Second, based on this theoretical foundation, we develop two trajectory PMBM filters that provide recursions to calculate the posterior density for the set of all trajectories that have ever been present in the surveillance area, and the posterior density of the set of trajectories present at the current time step in the surveillance area. These two filters therefore provide complete probabilistic information on the considered trajectories enabling optimal trajectory estimation. Third, we establish that the density of the set of trajectories in any time window, given the measurements in a possibly different time window, is also a PMBM. Finally, the trajectory PMBM filters are evaluated via simulations, and are shown to yield state-of-the-art performance compared to other multi-target tracking algorithms based on random finite sets and multiple hypothesis tracking.
Modeling the Heterogeneous Duration of User Interest in Time-Dependent Recommendation: A Hidden Semi-Markov Approach
Zhang, Haidong, Ni, Wancheng, Li, Xin, Yang, Yiping
Recommender systems are widely used for suggesting books, education materials, and products to users by exploring their behaviors. In reality, users' preferences often change over time, leading to studies on time-dependent recommender systems. However, most existing approaches that deal with time information remain primitive. In this paper, we extend existing methods and propose a hidden semi-Markov model to track the change of users' interests. Particularly, this model allows for capturing the different durations of user stays in a (latent) interest state, which can better model the heterogeneity of user interests and focuses. We derive an expectation maximization algorithm to estimate the parameters of the framework and predict users' actions. Experiments on three real-world datasets show that our model significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art time-dependent and static benchmark methods. Further analyses of the experiment results indicate that the performance improvement is related to the heterogeneity of state durations and the drift of user interests in the dataset.
Enhancing Off-Grid One-Bit DOA Estimation with Learning-Based Sparse Bayesian Approach for Non-Uniform Sparse Array
Hu, Yunqiao, Sun, Shunqiao, Zhang, Yimin D.
This paper tackles the challenge of one-bit off-grid direction of arrival (DOA) estimation in a single snapshot scenario based on a learning-based Bayesian approach. Firstly, we formulate the off-grid DOA estimation model, utilizing the first-order off-grid approximation, incorporating one-bit data quantization. Subsequently, we address this problem using the Sparse Bayesian based framework and solve iteratively. However, traditional Sparse Bayesian methods often face challenges such as high computational complexity and the need for extensive hyperparameter tuning. To balance estimation accuracy and computational efficiency, we propose a novel Learning-based Sparse Bayesian framework, which leverages an unrolled neural network architecture. This framework autonomously learns hyperparameters through supervised learning, offering more accurate off-grid DOA estimates and improved computational efficiency compared to some state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, the proposed approach is applicable to both uniform linear arrays and non-uniform sparse arrays. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.