The current scenario of IoT is witnessing a constant increase on the volume of data, which is generated in constant stream, calling for novel architectural and logical solutions for processing it. Moving the data handling towards the edge of the computing spectrum guarantees better distribution of load and, in principle, lower latency and better privacy. However, managing such a structure is complex, especially when requirements, also referred to Service Level Objectives (SLOs), specified by applications' owners and infrastructure managers need to be ensured. Despite the rich number of proposals of Machine Learning (ML) based management solutions, researchers and practitioners yet struggle to guarantee long-term prediction and control, and accurate troubleshooting. Therefore, we present a novel ML paradigm based on Active Inference (AIF) -- a concept from neuroscience that describes how the brain constantly predicts and evaluates sensory information to decrease long-term surprise. We implement it and evaluate it in a heterogeneous real stream processing use case, where an AIF-based agent continuously optimizes the fulfillment of three SLOs for three autonomous driving services running on multiple devices. The agent used causal knowledge to gradually develop an understanding of how its actions are related to requirements fulfillment, and which configurations to favor. Through this approach, our agent requires up to thirty iterations to converge to the optimal solution, showing the capability of offering accurate results in a short amount of time. Furthermore, thanks to AIF and its causal structures, our method guarantees full transparency on the decision making, making the interpretation of the results and the troubleshooting effortless.

Detecting and measuring confounding effects from data is a key challenge in causal inference. Existing methods frequently assume causal sufficiency, disregarding the presence of unobserved confounding variables. Causal sufficiency is both unrealistic and empirically untestable. Additionally, existing methods make strong parametric assumptions about the underlying causal generative process to guarantee the identifiability of confounding variables. Relaxing the causal sufficiency and parametric assumptions and leveraging recent advancements in causal discovery and confounding analysis with non-i.i.d. data, we propose a comprehensive approach for detecting and measuring confounding. We consider various definitions of confounding and introduce tailored methodologies to achieve three objectives: (i) detecting and measuring confounding among a set of variables, (ii) separating observed and unobserved confounding effects, and (iii) understanding the relative strengths of confounding bias between different sets of variables. We present useful properties of a confounding measure and present measures that satisfy those properties. Empirical results support the theoretical analysis.

The paper introduces a Fuzzy-based Attention (Fuzzy Attention Layer) mechanism, a novel computational approach to enhance the interpretability and efficacy of neural models in psychological research. The proposed Fuzzy Attention Layer mechanism is integrated as a neural network layer within the Transformer Encoder model to facilitate the analysis of complex psychological phenomena through neural signals, such as those captured by functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). By leveraging fuzzy logic, the Fuzzy Attention Layer is capable of learning and identifying interpretable patterns of neural activity. This capability addresses a significant challenge when using Transformer: the lack of transparency in determining which specific brain activities most contribute to particular predictions. Our experimental results demonstrated on fNIRS data from subjects engaged in social interactions involving handholding reveal that the Fuzzy Attention Layer not only learns interpretable patterns of neural activity but also enhances model performance. Additionally, the learned patterns provide deeper insights into the neural correlates of interpersonal touch and emotional exchange. The application of our model shows promising potential in deciphering the subtle complexities of human social behaviors, thereby contributing significantly to the fields of social neuroscience and psychological AI.

B.1 Conditional convergence in distribution Suppose (X, d The proof of this Lemma is identical to the portmanteau lemma for weak convergence by replacing probabilities/expectations with conditional probabilities/expectations (for example, see [38, Section 2.1]). Lemma B.2. Suppose X, X X as m, and X is a constant a.s., then X A, where A is a constant. We can exchange the expectation and limit by the dominated convergence theorem. The result follows by taking ϵ 0. 4. Since X is a.s. For any K > 0, we have x x K is a bounded and continuous function. R. Because f g: X is a bounded and A. We now show that (X The result follows by an application of the continuous mapping theorem with the function (x, A) Ax. B.2 Model assumptions The following sets of assumptions are only used to prove the large-data limit results of Proposition 3.1, Proposition 3.2, and Proposition 3.3. We will always use a subscript m to indicate that the quantity is dependent on the data. For the remainder of this section we will assume the following regularity conditions.

An emerging area of research aims to learn deep generative models with limited training data. Prior generative models like GANs and diffusion models require a lot of data to perform well, and their performance degrades when they are trained on only a small amount of data. A recent technique called Implicit Maximum Likelihood Estimation (IMLE) has been adapted to the few-shot setting, achieving state-of-the-art performance. However, current IMLE-based approaches encounter challenges due to inadequate correspondence between the latent codes selected for training and those drawn during inference. This results in suboptimal test-time performance. We theoretically show a way to address this issue and propose RS-IMLE, a novel approach that changes the prior distribution used for training. This leads to substantially higher quality image generation compared to existing GAN and IMLE-based methods, as validated by comprehensive experiments conducted on nine few-shot image datasets.

Optimal decision-making under partial observability requires reasoning about the uncertainty of the environment's hidden state. However, most reinforcement learning architectures handle partial observability with sequence models that have no internal mechanism to incorporate uncertainty in their hidden state representation, such as recurrent neural networks, deterministic state-space models and transformers. Inspired by advances in probabilistic world models for reinforcement learning, we propose a standalone Kalman filter layer that performs closed-form Gaussian inference in linear state-space models and train it end-to-end within a model-free architecture to maximize returns. Similar to efficient linear recurrent layers, the Kalman filter layer processes sequential data using a parallel scan, which scales logarithmically with the sequence length. By design, Kalman filter layers are a drop-in replacement for other recurrent layers in standard model-free architectures, but importantly they include an explicit mechanism for probabilistic filtering of the latent state representation. Experiments in a wide variety of tasks with partial observability show that Kalman filter layers excel in problems where uncertainty reasoning is key for decision-making, outperforming other stateful models.

The random vector functional link (RVFL) network is a prominent classification model with strong generalization ability. However, RVFL treats all samples uniformly, ignoring whether they are pure or noisy, and its scalability is limited due to the need for inverting the entire training matrix. To address these issues, we propose granular ball RVFL (GB-RVFL) model, which uses granular balls (GBs) as inputs instead of training samples. This approach enhances scalability by requiring only the inverse of the GB center matrix and improves robustness against noise and outliers through the coarse granularity of GBs. Furthermore, RVFL overlooks the dataset's geometric structure. To address this, we propose graph embedding GB-RVFL (GE-GB-RVFL) model, which fuses granular computing and graph embedding (GE) to preserve the topological structure of GBs. The proposed GB-RVFL and GE-GB-RVFL models are evaluated on KEEL, UCI, NDC and biomedical datasets, demonstrating superior performance compared to baseline models.

Conditional generative models represent a significant advancement in the field of machine learning, allowing for the controlled synthesis of data by incorporating additional information into the generation process. In this work we introduce a novel Schr\"odinger bridge based deep generative method for learning conditional distributions. We start from a unit-time diffusion process governed by a stochastic differential equation (SDE) that transforms a fixed point at time $0$ into a desired target conditional distribution at time $1$. For effective implementation, we discretize the SDE with Euler-Maruyama method where we estimate the drift term nonparametrically using a deep neural network. We apply our method to both low-dimensional and high-dimensional conditional generation problems. The numerical studies demonstrate that though our method does not directly provide the conditional density estimation, the samples generated by this method exhibit higher quality compared to those obtained by several existing methods. Moreover, the generated samples can be effectively utilized to estimate the conditional density and related statistical quantities, such as conditional mean and conditional standard deviation.

Structural transformation, the shift from agrarian economies to more diversified industrial and service-based systems, is a key driver of economic development. However, in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), data scarcity and unreliability hinder accurate assessments of this process. This paper presents a novel statistical framework designed to address these challenges by integrating Bayesian hierarchical modeling, machine learning-based data imputation, and factor analysis. The framework is specifically tailored for conditions of data sparsity and is capable of providing robust insights into sectoral productivity and employment shifts across diverse economies. By utilizing Bayesian models, uncertainties in data are effectively managed, while machine learning techniques impute missing data points, ensuring the integrity of the analysis. Factor analysis reduces the dimensionality of complex datasets, distilling them into core economic structures. The proposed framework has been validated through extensive simulations, demonstrating its ability to predict structural changes even when up to 60\% of data is missing. This approach offers policymakers and researchers a valuable tool for making informed decisions in environments where data quality is limited, contributing to the broader understanding of economic development in LMICs.