AIDE: Fastand Communication Efficient Distributed Optimization.arXive-prints,

We propose two novel tricks to tackle this challenge.

It allows for both latent confounders and selection variables, although inthis paper we assume the absence of selection variables.

Functional bilevel optimization (FBO) provides a powerful framework for hierarchical learning in function spaces, yet current methods are limited to static offline settings and perform suboptimally in online, non-stationary scenarios. We propose SmoothFBO, the first algorithm for non-stationary FBO with both theoretical guarantees and practical scalability. SmoothFBO introduces a time-smoothed stochastic hypergradient estimator that reduces variance through a window parameter, enabling stable outer-loop updates with sublinear regret. Importantly, the classical parametric bilevel case is a special reduction of our framework, making SmoothFBO a natural extension to online, non-stationary settings. Empirically, SmoothFBO consistently outperforms existing FBO methods in non-stationary hyperparameter optimization and model-based reinforcement learning, demonstrating its practical effectiveness. Together, these results establish SmoothFBO as a general, theoretically grounded, and practically viable foundation for bilevel optimization in online, non-stationary scenarios.

Learning models that can handle distribution shifts is a key challenge in domain generalization. Invariance learning, an approach that focuses on identifying features invariant across environments, improves model generalization by capturing stable relationships, which may represent causal effects when the data distribution is encoded within a structural equation model (SEM) and satisfies modularity conditions. This has led to a growing body of work that builds on invariance learning, leveraging the inherent heterogeneity across environments to develop methods that provide causal explanations while enhancing robust prediction. However, in many practical scenarios, obtaining complete outcome data from each environment is challenging due to the high cost or complexity of data collection. This limitation in available data hinders the development of models that fully leverage environmental heterogeneity, making it crucial to address missing outcomes to improve both causal insights and robust prediction. In this work, we derive an estimator from the invariance objective under missing outcomes. We establish non-asymptotic guarantees on variable selection property and $\ell_2$ error convergence rates, which are influenced by the proportion of missing data and the quality of imputation models across environments. We evaluate the performance of the new estimator through extensive simulations and demonstrate its application using the UCI Bike Sharing dataset to predict the count of bike rentals. The results show that despite relying on a biased imputation model, the estimator is efficient and achieves lower prediction error, provided the bias is within a reasonable range.

As the markets for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and mixed reality (MR) headsets continue to grow, recent research has increasingly explored their integration, which enables more intuitive, immersive, and situationally aware control systems. We present IGUANA, an MR-based immersive guidance, navigation, and control system for consumer UAVs. IGUANA introduces three key elements beyond conventional control interfaces: (1) a 3D terrain map interface with draggable waypoint markers and live camera preview for high-level control, (2) a novel spatial control metaphor that uses a virtual ball as a physical analogy for low-level control, and (3) a spatial overlay that helps track the UAV when it is not visible with the naked eye or visual line of sight is interrupted. We conducted a user study to evaluate our design, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and found that (1) the 3D map interface is intuitive and easy to use, relieving users from manual control and suggesting improved accuracy and consistency with lower perceived workload relative to conventional dual-stick controller, (2) the virtual ball interface is intuitive but limited by the lack of physical feedback, and (3) the spatial overlay is very useful in enhancing the users' situational awareness.

Abstract-- Locating human-object interaction (HOI) actions within video serves as the foundation for multiple downstream tasks, such as human behavior analysis and human-robot skill transfer . Current temporal action localization methods typically rely on annotated action and object categories of interactions for optimization, which leads to domain bias and low deployment efficiency. Although some recent works have achieved zero-shot temporal action localization (ZS-T AL) with large vision-language models (VLMs), their coarse-grained estimations and open-loop pipelines hinder further performance improvements for temporal interaction localization (TIL). T o address these issues, we propose a novel zero-shot TIL approach dubbed EgoLoc to locate the timings of grasp actions for human-object interaction in egocentric videos. EgoLoc introduces a self-adaptive sampling strategy to generate reasonable visual prompts for VLM reasoning. In addition, EgoLoc generates closed-loop feedback from visual and dynamic cues to further refine the localization results. Comprehensive experiments on the publicly available dataset and our newly proposed benchmark demonstrate that EgoLoc achieves better temporal interaction localization for egocentric videos compared to state-of-the-art baselines. We will release our code and relevant data as open-source at https://github.com/IRMVLab/EgoLoc.

Step-wise explanations can explain logic puzzles and other satisfaction problems by showing how to derive decisions step by step. Each step consists of a set of constraints that derive an assignment to one or more decision variables. However, many candidate explanation steps exist, with different sets of constraints and different decisions they derive. To identify the most comprehensible one, a user-defined objective function is required to quantify the quality of each step. However, defining a good objective function is challenging. Here, interactive preference elicitation methods from the wider machine learning community can offer a way to learn user preferences from pairwise comparisons. We investigate the feasibility of this approach for step-wise explanations and address several limitations that distinguish it from elicitation for standard combinatorial problems. First, because the explanation quality is measured using multiple sub-objectives that can vary a lot in scale, we propose two dynamic normalization techniques to rescale these features and stabilize the learning process. We also observed that many generated comparisons involve similar explanations. For this reason, we introduce MACHOP (Multi-Armed CHOice Perceptron), a novel query generation strategy that integrates non-domination constraints with upper confidence bound-based diversification. We evaluate the elicitation techniques on Sudokus and Logic-Grid puzzles using artificial users, and validate them with a real-user evaluation. In both settings, MACHOP consistently produces higher-quality explanations than the standard approach.

Social media has exacerbated the promotion of Western beauty norms, leading to negative self-image, particularly in women and girls, and causing harm such as body dysmorphia. Increasingly content on the internet has been artificially generated, leading to concerns that these norms are being exaggerated. The aim of this work is to study how generative AI models may encode 'beauty' and erase 'ugliness', and discuss the implications of this for society. To investigate these aims, we create two image generation pipelines: a text-to-image model and a text-to-language model-to image model. We develop a structured beauty taxonomy which we use to prompt three language models (LMs) and two text-to-image models to cumulatively generate 5984 images using our two pipelines. We then recruit women and non-binary social media users to evaluate 1200 of the images through a Likert-scale within-subjects study. Participants show high agreement in their ratings. Our results show that 86.5% of generated images depicted people with lighter skin tones, 22% contained explicit content despite Safe for Work (SFW) training, and 74% were rated as being in a younger age demographic. In particular, the images of non-binary individuals were rated as both younger and more hypersexualised, indicating troubling intersectional effects. Notably, prompts encoded with 'negative' or 'ugly' beauty traits (such as "a wide nose") consistently produced higher Not SFW (NSFW) ratings regardless of gender. This work sheds light on the pervasive demographic biases related to beauty standards present in generative AI models -- biases that are actively perpetuated by model developers, such as via negative prompting. We conclude by discussing the implications of this on society, which include pollution of the data streams and active erasure of features that do not fall inside the stereotype of what is considered beautiful by developers.