Technology
Unique3D: High-Quality and Efficient 3D Mesh Generation from a Single Image
In this work, we introduce Unique3D, a novel image-to-3D framework for efficiently generating high-quality 3D meshes from single-view images, featuring state-of-the-art generation fidelity and strong generalizability. Previous methods based on Score Distillation Sampling (SDS) can produce diversified 3D results by distilling 3D knowledge from large 2D diffusion models, but they usually suffer from long per-case optimization time with inconsistent issues. Recent works address the problem and generate better 3D results either by finetuning a multi-view diffusion model or training a fast feed-forward model. However, they still lack intricate textures and complex geometries due to inconsistency and limited generated resolution. To simultaneously achieve high fidelity, consistency, and efficiency in single image-to-3D, we propose a novel framework Unique3D that includes a multi-view diffusion model with a corresponding normal diffusion model to generate multi-view images with their normal maps, a multi-level upscale process to progressively improve the resolution of generated orthographic multi-views, as well as an instant and consistent mesh reconstruction algorithm called ISOMER, which fully integrates the color and geometric priors into mesh results. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our Unique3D significantly outperforms other image-to-3D baselines in terms of geometric and textural details.
Adaptive Passive-Aggressive Framework for Online Regression with Side Information
The Passive-Aggressive (PA) method is widely used in online regression problems for handling large-scale streaming data, typically updating model parameters in a passive-aggressive manner based on whether the error exceeds a predefined threshold. However, this approach struggles with determining optimal thresholds and adapting to complex scenarios with side information, where tracking accuracy is not the sole metric in the regression model. To address these challenges, we introduce a novel adaptive framework that allows finer adjustments to the weight vector in PA using side information. This framework adaptively selects the threshold parameter in PA, theoretically ensuring convergence to the optimal setting. Additionally, we present an efficient implementation of our algorithm that significantly reduces computational complexity. Numerical experiments show that our model achieves outstanding performance associated with the side information while maintaining low tracking error, demonstrating marked improvements over traditional PA methods across various scenarios.
Invariant Tokenization of Crystalline Materials for Language Model Enabled Generation
We consider the problem of crystal materials generation using language models (LMs). A key step is to convert 3D crystal structures into 1D sequences to be processed by LMs. Prior studies used the crystallographic information framework (CIF) file stream, which fails to ensure SE(3) and periodic invariance and may not lead to unique sequence representations for a given crystal structure. Here, we propose a novel method, known as Mat2Seq, to tackle this challenge. Mat2Seq converts 3D crystal structures into 1D sequences and ensures that different mathematical descriptions of the same crystal are represented in a single unique sequence, thereby provably achieving SE(3) and periodic invariance. Experimental results show that, with language models, Mat2Seq achieves promising performance in crystal structure generation as compared with prior methods.
Confidence Regulation Neurons in Language Models
Despite their widespread use, the mechanisms by which large language models (LLMs) represent and regulate uncertainty in next-token predictions remain largely unexplored. This study investigates two critical components believed to influence this uncertainty: the recently discovered entropy neurons and a new set of components that we term token frequency neurons. Entropy neurons are characterized by an unusually high weight norm and influence the final layer normalization (LayerNorm) scale to effectively scale down the logits. Our work shows that entropy neurons operate by writing onto an \textit{unembedding null space}, allowing them to impact the residual stream norm with minimal direct effect on the logits themselves. We observe the presence of entropy neurons across a range of models, up to 7 billion parameters. On the other hand, token frequency neurons, which we discover and describe here for the first time, boost or suppress each token's logit proportionally to its log frequency, thereby shifting the output distribution towards or away from the unigram distribution. Finally, we present a detailed case study where entropy neurons actively manage confidence: the setting of induction, i.e. detecting and continuing repeated subsequences.
Tolerant Algorithms for Learning with Arbitrary Covariate Shift
We study the problem of learning under arbitrary distribution shift, where the learner is trained on a labeled set from one distribution but evaluated on a different, potentially adversarially generated test distribution. We focus on two frameworks: [GKKM'20], allowing abstention on adversarially generated parts of the test distribution, and [KSV'23], permitting abstention on the entire test distribution if distribution shift is detected. All prior known algorithms either rely on learning primitives that are computationally hard even for simple function classes, or end up abstaining entirely even in the presence of a tiny amount of distribution shift. We address both these challenges for natural function classes, including intersections of halfspaces and decision trees, and standard training distributions, including Gaussians. For PQ learning, we give efficient learning algorithms, while for TDS learning, our algorithms can tolerate moderate amounts of distribution shift. At the core of our approach is an improved analysis of spectral outlier-removal techniques from learning with nasty noise. Our analysis can (1) handle arbitrarily large fraction of outliers, which is crucial for handling arbitrary distribution shifts, and (2) obtain stronger bounds on polynomial moments of the distribution after outlier removal, yielding new insights into polynomial regression under distribution shifts. Lastly, our techniques lead to novel results for tolerant [RV'23], and learning with nasty noise.
Open-Vocabulary Object Detection via Language Hierarchy
Recent studies on generalizable object detection have attracted increasing attention with additional weak supervision from large-scale datasets with image-level labels.However, weakly-supervised detection learning often suffers from image-to-box label mismatch, i.e., image-levellabels do not convey precise object information.We design Language Hierarchical Self-training (LHST) that introduces language hierarchy into weakly-supervised detector training for learning more generalizable detectors.LHST expands the image-level labels with language hierarchy and enables co-regularization between the expanded labels and self-training. Specifically, the expanded labels regularize self-training by providing richer supervision and mitigating the image-to-box label mismatch, while self-training allows assessing and selecting the expanded labels according to the predicted reliability.In addition, we design language hierarchical prompt generation that introduces language hierarchy into prompt generation which helps bridge the vocabulary gaps between training and testing.Extensive experiments show that the proposed techniques achieve superior generalization performance consistently across 14 widely studied object detection datasets.
SpaceByte: Towards Deleting Tokenization from Large Language Modeling
Tokenization is widely used in large language models because it significantly improves performance. However, tokenization imposes several disadvantages, such as performance biases, increased adversarial vulnerability, decreased character-level modeling performance, and increased modeling complexity. To address these disadvantages without sacrificing performance, we propose SpaceByte, a novel byte-level decoder architecture that closes the performance gap between byte-level and subword autoregressive language modeling. SpaceByte consists of a byte-level Transformer model, but with extra larger transformer blocks inserted in the middle of the layers. We find that performance is significantly improved by applying these larger blocks only after certain bytes, such as space characters, which typically denote word boundaries. Our experiments show that for a fixed training and inference compute budget, SpaceByte outperforms other byte-level architectures and roughly matches the performance of tokenized Transformer architectures.
Identifying Latent State-Transition Processes for Individualized Reinforcement Learning
The application of reinforcement learning (RL) involving interactions with individuals has grown significantly in recent years. These interactions, influenced by factors such as personal preferences and physiological differences, causally influence state transitions, ranging from health conditions in healthcare to learning progress in education. As a result, different individuals may exhibit different state-transition processes. Understanding individualized state-transition processes is essential for optimizing individualized policies. In practice, however, identifying these state-transition processes is challenging, as individual-specific factors often remain latent. In this paper, we establish the identifiability of these latent factors and introduce a practical method that effectively learns these processes from observed state-action trajectories. Experiments on various datasets show that the proposed method can effectively identify latent state-transition processes and facilitate the learning of individualized RL policies.
Almost Surely Asymptotically Constant Graph Neural Networks
We present a new angle on the expressive power of graph neural networks (GNNs) by studying how the predictions of real-valued GNN classifiers, such as those classifying graphs probabilistically, evolve as we apply them on larger graphs drawn from some random graph model. We show that the output converges to a constant function, which upper-bounds what these classifiers can uniformly express. This strong convergence phenomenon applies to a very wide class of GNNs, including state of the art models, with aggregates including mean and the attention-based mechanism of graph transformers. Our results apply to a broad class of random graph models, including sparse and dense variants of the Erdős-Rényi model, the stochastic block model, and the Barabási-Albert model. We empirically validate these findings, observing that the convergence phenomenon appears not only on random graphs but also on some real-world graphs.
A Method for Evaluating Hyperparameter Sensitivity in Reinforcement Learning
Often, small changes ina hyperparameter can lead to drastic changes in performance, and different environments require very different hyperparameter settings to achieve state-of-the-artperformance reported in the literature. We currently lack a scalable and widelyaccepted approach to characterizing these complex interactions. This work proposes a new empirical methodology for studying, comparing, and quantifying thesensitivity of an algorithm's performance to hyperparameter tuning for a given setof environments. We then demonstrate the utility of this methodology by assessingthe hyperparameter sensitivity of several commonly used normalization variants ofPPO. The results suggest that several algorithmic performance improvements may,in fact, be a result of an increased reliance on hyperparameter tuning.