While ML model training and inference are both GPU-intensive, CPU-based data processing is often the bottleneck. Distributed data processing systems based on the batch or stream processing models assume homogeneous resource requirements. They excel at CPU-based computation but either under-utilize heterogeneous resources or impose high overheads on failure and reconfiguration. We introduce the streaming batch model, a hybrid of the two models that enables efficient and fault-tolerant heterogeneous execution. The key idea is to execute one partition at a time to allow lineage-based recovery with dynamic resource allocation. This enables memory-efficient pipelining across heterogeneous resources, similar to stream processing, but also offers the elasticity and fault tolerance properties of batch processing. We present Ray Data, an implementation of the streaming batch model that improves throughput on heterogeneous batch inference pipelines by 3--8$\times$ compared to traditional batch and stream processing systems. When training Stable Diffusion, Ray Data matches the throughput of single-node ML data loaders while additionally leveraging distributed heterogeneous clusters to further improve training throughput by 31%.

Applying standard machine learning approaches for classification can produce unequal results across different demographic groups. When then used in real-world settings, these inequities can have negative societal impacts. This has motivated the development of various approaches to fair classification with machine learning models in recent years. In this paper, we consider the problem of modifying the predictions of a blackbox machine learning classifier in order to achieve fairness in a multiclass setting. To accomplish this, we extend the 'post-processing' approach in Hardt et al. 2016, which focuses on fairness for binary classification, to the setting of fair multiclass classification. We explore when our approach produces both fair and accurate predictions through systematic synthetic experiments and also evaluate discrimination-fairness tradeoffs on several publicly available real-world application datasets. We find that overall, our approach produces minor drops in accuracy and enforces fairness when the number of individuals in the dataset is high relative to the number of classes and protected groups.

Games have benchmarked AI methods since of a single game, discovering a few new variations on the inception of the field, with classic board games such existing research topics. The set of · Deckbuilding · Gameplaying · Player Modeling AI problems associated with video games has in recent decades expanded from simply playing games to win, to playing games in particular styles, generating game content, 1 Introduction modeling players etc. Different games pose very different challenges for AI systems, and several different For decades classic board games such as Chess, Checkers, AI challenges can typically be posed by the same and Go have dominated the landscape of AI and game. In this article we analyze the popular collectible games research. Often called the "drosophila of AI" in card game Hearthstone (Blizzard 2014) and describe reference to the drosophila fly's significance in biological a varied set of interesting AI challenges posed by this research, Chess in particular has been the subject game. Collectible card games are relatively understudied of hundreds of academic papers and decades of research in the AI community, despite their popularity and [18]. At the core of many of these approaches is designing the interesting challenges they pose. Analyzing a single algorithms to beat top human players. However, game in-depth in the manner we do here allows us to despite IBM's Deep Blue defeating Garry Kasparov in see the entire field of AI and Games through the lens the 1997 World Chess Championships and DeepMind's AlphaGo defeating Lee Sedol in the 2016 Google Deep-Mind Challenge Match [47], such programs have yet While there is value in designing algorithms to win (e.g.

Balancing an ever growing strategic game of high complexity, such as Hearthstone is a complex task. The target of making strategies diverse and customizable results in a delicate intricate system. Tuning over 2000 cards to generate the desired outcome without disrupting the existing environment becomes a laborious challenge. In this paper, we discuss the impacts that changes to existing cards can have on strategy in Hearthstone. By analyzing the win rate on match-ups across different decks, being played by different strategies, we propose to compare their performance before and after changes are made to improve or worsen different cards. Then, using an evolutionary algorithm, we search for a combination of changes to the card attributes that cause the decks to approach equal, 50% win rates. We then expand our evolutionary algorithm to a multi-objective solution to search for this result, while making the minimum amount of changes, and as a consequence disruption, to the existing cards. Lastly, we propose and evaluate metrics to serve as heuristics with which to decide which cards to target with balance changes.

We describe a search-based approach to generating new levels for bullet hell games, which are action games characterized by and requiring avoidance of a very large amount of projectiles. Levels are represented using a domain-specific description language, and search in the space defined by this language is performed by a novel variant of the Map-Elites algorithm which incorporates a feasible- infeasible approach to constraint satisfaction. Simulation-based evaluation is used to gauge the fitness of levels, using an agent based on best-first search. The performance of the agent can be tuned according to the two dimensions of strategy and dexterity, making it possible to search for level configurations that require a specific combination of both. As far as we know, this paper describes the first generator for this game genre, and includes several algorithmic innovations.

A variety of methods existing for generating synthetic electronic health records (EHRs), but they are not capable of generating unstructured text, like emergency department (ED) chief complaints, history of present illness or progress notes. Here, we use the encoder-decoder model, a deep learning algorithm that features in many contemporary machine translation systems, to generate synthetic chief complaints from discrete variables in EHRs, like age group, gender, and discharge diagnosis. After being trained end-to-end on authentic records, the model can generate realistic chief complaint text that preserves much of the epidemiological information in the original data. As a side effect of the model's optimization goal, these synthetic chief complaints are also free of relatively uncommon abbreviation and misspellings, and they include none of the personally-identifiable information (PII) that was in the training data, suggesting it may be used to support the de-identification of text in EHRs. When combined with algorithms like generative adversarial networks (GANs), our model could be used to generate fully-synthetic EHRs, facilitating data sharing between healthcare providers and researchers and improving our ability to develop machine learning methods tailored to the information in healthcare data.

This paper presents a demonstration of how AI can be useful in the game design and development process of a modern board game. By using an artificial intelligence algorithm to play a substantial amount of matches of the Ticket to Ride board game and collecting data, we can analyze several features of the gameplay as well as of the game board. Results revealed loopholes in the game's rules and pointed towards trends in how the game is played. We are then led to the conclusion that large scale simulation utilizing artificial intelligence can offer valuable information regarding modern board games and their designs that would ordinarily be prohibitively expensive or time-consuming to discover manually.

We describe an application of neural networks to predict the placements of resources in StarCraft II maps. Networks are trained on existing maps taken from databases of maps actively used in online competitions and tested on unseen maps with resources (minerals and vespene gas) removed. This method is potentially useful for AI-assisted game design tools, allowing the suggestion of resource and base placements consonant with implicit StarCraft II design principles for fully or partially sketched heightmaps. By varying the thresholds for the placement of resources, more or fewer resources can be created consistently with the pattern of a single map. We further propose that these networks can be used to help understand the design principles of StarCraft II maps, and by extension other, similar types of game content.