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Attention-based Adversarial Robust Distillation in Radio Signal Classifications for Low-Power IoT Devices

Zhang, Lu, Lambotharan, Sangarapillai, Zheng, Gan, Liao, Guisheng, AsSadhan, Basil, Roli, Fabio

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

--Due to great success of transformers in many applications such as natural language processing and computer vision, transformers have been successfully applied in automatic modulation classification. We have shown that transformer-based radio signal classification is vulnerable to imperceptible and carefully crafted attacks called adversarial examples. Therefore, we propose a defense system against adversarial examples in transformer-based modulation classifications. Considering the need for computationally efficient architecture particularly for Internet of Things (IoT)-based applications or operation of devices in environment where power supply is limited, we propose a compact transformer for modulation classification. The advantages of robust training such as adversarial training in transformers may not be attainable in compact transformers. By demonstrating this, we propose a novel compact transformer that can enhance robustness in the presence of adversarial attacks. The new method is aimed at transferring the adversarial attention map from the robustly trained large transformer to a compact transformer . The proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art techniques for the considered white-box scenarios including fast gradient method and projected gradient descent attacks. We have provided reasoning of the underlying working mechanisms and investigated the transferability of the adversarial examples between different architectures. The proposed method has the potential to protect the transformer from the transferability of adversarial examples.


SealQA: Raising the Bar for Reasoning in Search-Augmented Language Models

Pham, Thinh, Nguyen, Nguyen, Zunjare, Pratibha, Chen, Weiyuan, Tseng, Yu-Min, Vu, Tu

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

We introduce SealQA, a new challenge benchmark for evaluating SEarch-Augmented Language models on fact-seeking questions where web search yields conflicting, noisy, or unhelpful results. SealQA comes in three flavors: (1) Seal-0 (main) and (2) Seal-Hard, which assess factual accuracy and reasoning capabilities, with Seal-0 focusing on the most challenging questions where chat models (e.g., GPT-4.1) typically achieve near-zero accuracy; and (3) LongSeal, which extends SealQA to test long-context, multi-document reasoning in "needle-in-a-haystack" settings. Our evaluation reveals critical limitations in current models: Even frontier LLMs perform poorly across all SealQA flavors. On Seal-0, frontier agentic models equipped with tools like o3 and o4-mini achieve only 17.1% and 6.3% accuracy, respectively, at their best reasoning efforts. We find that advanced reasoning models such as DeepSeek-R1-671B and o3-mini are highly vulnerable to noisy search results. Notably, increasing test-time compute does not yield reliable gains across o3-mini, o4-mini, and o3, with performance often plateauing or even declining early. Additionally, while recent models are less affected by the "lost-in-the-middle" issue, they still fail to reliably identify relevant documents in LongSeal when faced with numerous distractors. To facilitate future work, we release SealQA at huggingface.co/datasets/vtllms/sealqa.


Sparse Bayesian structure learning with “dependent relevance determination” priors

Anqi Wu, Mijung Park, Oluwasanmi O. Koyejo, Jonathan W. Pillow

Neural Information Processing Systems

In many problem settings, parameter vectors are not merely sparse, but dependent in such a way that non-zero coefficients tend to cluster together. We refer to this form of dependency as "region sparsity". Classical sparse regression methods, such as the lasso and automatic relevance determination (ARD), model parameters as independent a priori, and therefore do not exploit such dependencies. Here we introduce a hierarchical model for smooth, region-sparse weight vectors and tensors in a linear regression setting. Our approach represents a hierarchical extension of the relevance determination framework, where we add a transformed Gaussian process to model the dependencies between the prior variances of regression weights. We combine this with a structured model of the prior variances of Fourier coefficients, which eliminates unnecessary high frequencies. The resulting prior encourages weights to be region-sparse in two different bases simultaneously. We develop efficient approximate inference methods and show substantial improvements over comparable methods (e.g., group lasso and smooth RVM) for both simulated and real datasets from brain imaging.


Kineto-Dynamical Planning and Accurate Execution of Minimum-Time Maneuvers on Three-Dimensional Circuits

Piccinini, Mattia, Taddei, Sebastiano, Betz, Johannes, Biral, Francesco

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Online planning and execution of minimum-time maneuvers on three-dimensional (3D) circuits is an open challenge in autonomous vehicle racing. In this paper, we present an artificial race driver (ARD) to learn the vehicle dynamics, plan and execute minimum-time maneuvers on a 3D track. ARD integrates a novel kineto-dynamical (KD) vehicle model for trajectory planning with economic nonlinear model predictive control (E-NMPC). We use a high-fidelity vehicle simulator (VS) to compare the closed-loop ARD results with a minimum-lap-time optimal control problem (MLT-VS), solved offline with the same VS. Our ARD sets lap times close to the MLT-VS, and the new KD model outperforms a literature benchmark. Finally, we study the vehicle trajectories, to assess the re-planning capabilities of ARD under execution errors. A video with the main results is available as supplementary material.


Ward: Provable RAG Dataset Inference via LLM Watermarks

Jovanović, Nikola, Staab, Robin, Baader, Maximilian, Vechev, Martin

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) improves LLMs by enabling them to incorporate external data during generation. This raises concerns for data owners regarding unauthorized use of their content in RAG systems. Despite its importance, the challenge of detecting such unauthorized usage remains underexplored, with existing datasets and methodologies from adjacent fields being ill-suited for its study. In this work, we take several steps to bridge this gap. To facilitate research on this challenge, we further introduce a novel dataset specifically designed for benchmarking RAG-DI methods under realistic conditions, and propose a set of baseline approaches. Our work provides a foundation for future studies of RAG-DI and highlights LLM watermarks as a promising approach to this problem. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has emerged as a popular approach to mitigate limitations of large language models (LLMs), such as hallucinations, the high cost of adapting to new knowledge via fine-tuning, and the inability to back up claims by sources (Lewis et al., 2020). By integrating retrieval, LLMs gain in-context access to large corpora of high-quality, up-to-date data, enabling them to generate more accurate and source-supported responses. To maintain relevance, RAG providers must continuously update their corpus with new data. However, this raises concerns regarding the unauthorized usage of documents, particularly when publicly available documents are used without the owner's permission (Grynbaum & Mac, 2023; Wei et al., 2024a). There is currently no way to conclusively prove such unauthorized usage by a RAG system, and enforce an opt-out by the owner. RAG Dataset Inference (RAG-DI) We formalize the corresponding problem as RAG Dataset Inference (RAG-DI), where a data owner aims to detect unauthorized inclusion of their dataset within a RAG corpus via black-box queries, illustrated in Figure 1.


Sparse Bayesian structure learning with dependent relevance determination prior Anqi Wu1 Mijung Park 2 Jonathan W. Pillow

Neural Information Processing Systems

In many problem settings, parameter vectors are not merely sparse, but dependent in such a way that non-zero coefficients tend to cluster together. We refer to this form of dependency as "region sparsity". Classical sparse regression methods, such as the lasso and automatic relevance determination (ARD), model parameters as independent a priori, and therefore do not exploit such dependencies. Here we introduce a hierarchical model for smooth, region-sparse weight vectors and tensors in a linear regression setting. Our approach represents a hierarchical extension of the relevance determination framework, where we add a transformed Gaussian process to model the dependencies between the prior variances of regression weights. We combine this with a structured model of the prior variances of Fourier coefficients, which eliminates unnecessary high frequencies. The resulting prior encourages weights to be region-sparse in two different bases simultaneously. We develop efficient approximate inference methods and show substantial improvements over comparable methods (e.g., group lasso and smooth RVM) for both simulated and real datasets from brain imaging.


Distributed Submodular Cover: Succinctly Summarizing Massive Data

Neural Information Processing Systems

How can one find a subset, ideally as small as possible, that well represents a massive dataset? I.e., its corresponding utility, measured according to a suitable utility function, should be comparable to that of the whole dataset.