Neural Architecture Search (NAS) can automatically design promising neural architectures without artificial experience. Though itachievesgreat success, prohibitively high search cost is required to find a high-performance architecture, whichblocksitspractical implementation.

To use artificial intelligence and machine learning models wisely we must understand how they interact with the world, including how they depend causally on data inputs. In this work we develop Causal Dependence Plots (CDPs) to visualize how a model's predicted outcome depends on changes in a given predictor . Crucially, this differs from standard methods based on independence or holding other predictors constant, such as regression coefficients or Partial Dependence Plots (PDPs).

To use artificial intelligence and machine learning models wisely we must understand how they interact with the world, including how they depend causally on data inputs. In this work we develop Causal Dependence Plots (CDPs) to visualize how a model's predicted outcome depends on changes in a given predictor

We propose Convexity-Driven Projection (CDP), a boundary-free linear method for dimensionality reduction of point clouds that targets preserving detour-induced local non-convexity. CDP builds a $k$-NN graph, identifies admissible pairs whose Euclidean-to-shortest-path ratios are below a threshold, and aggregates their normalized directions to form a positive semidefinite non-convexity structure matrix. The projection uses the top-$k$ eigenvectors of the structure matrix. We give two verifiable guarantees. A pairwise a-posteriori certificate that bounds the post-projection distortion for each admissible pair, and an average-case spectral bound that links expected captured direction energy to the spectrum of the structure matrix, yielding quantile statements for typical distortion. Our evaluation protocol reports fixed- and reselected-pairs detour errors and certificate quantiles, enabling practitioners to check guarantees on their data.

To use artificial intelligence and machine learning models wisely we must understand how they interact with the world, including how they depend causally on data inputs. In this work we develop Causal Dependence Plots (CDPs) to visualize how a model's predicted outcome depends on changes in a given predictor along with consequent causal changes in other predictor variables. Crucially, this differs from standard methods based on independence or holding other predictors constant, such as regression coefficients or Partial Dependence Plots (PDPs). We demonstrate with simulations and real data experiments how CDPs can be combined in a modular way with methods for causal learning or sensitivity analysis. Since people often think causally about input-output dependence, CDPs can be powerful tools in the xAI or interpretable machine learning toolkit and contribute to applications like scientific machine learning and algorithmic fairness.

Recent advancements in image mixing and generative data augmentation have shown promise in enhancing image classification. However, these techniques face the challenge of balancing semantic fidelity with diversity. Specifically, image mixing involves interpolating two images to create a new one, but this pixel-level interpolation can compromise fidelity. Generative augmentation uses text-to-image generative models to synthesize or modify images, often limiting diversity to avoid generating out-of-distribution data that potentially affects accuracy. We propose that this fidelity-diversity dilemma partially stems from the whole-image paradigm of existing methods. Since an image comprises the class-dependent part (CDP) and the class-independent part (CIP), where each part has fundamentally different impacts on the image's fidelity, treating different parts uniformly can therefore be misleading. To address this fidelity-diversity dilemma, we introduce Decoupled Data Augmentation (De-DA), which resolves the dilemma by separating images into CDPs and CIPs and handling them adaptively. To maintain fidelity, we use generative models to modify real CDPs under controlled conditions, preserving semantic consistency. To enhance diversity, we replace the image's CIP with inter-class variants, creating diverse CDP-CIP combinations. Additionally, we implement an online randomized combination strategy during training to generate numerous distinct CDP-CIP combinations cost-effectively. Comprehensive empirical evaluations validate the effectiveness of our method.

Coalition formation is a key capability in multi-agent systems. An important problem in coalition formation is coalition structure generation: partitioning agents into coalitions to optimize the social welfare. This is a challenging problem that has been the subject of active research for the past three decades. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm, SMART, for the problem based on a hybridization of three innovative techniques. Two of these techniques are based on dynamic programming, where we show a powerful connection between the coalitions selected for evaluation and the performance of the algorithms. These algorithms use offline phases to optimize the choice of coalitions to evaluate. The third one uses branch-and-bound and integer partition graph search to explore the solution space. Our techniques bring a new way of approaching the problem and a new level of precision to the field. In experiments over several common value distributions, we show that the hybridization of these techniques in SMART is faster than the fastest prior algorithms (ODP-IP, BOSS) in generating optimal solutions across all the value distributions.

Graph contrastive learning (GCL), standing as the dominant paradigm in the realm of graph pre-training, has yielded considerable progress. Nonetheless, its capacity for out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization has been relatively underexplored. In this work, we point out that the traditional optimization of InfoNCE in GCL restricts the cross-domain pairs only to be negative samples, which inevitably enlarges the distribution gap between different domains. This violates the requirement of domain invariance under OOD scenario and consequently impairs the model's OOD generalization performance. To address this issue, we propose a novel strategy "Negative as Positive", where the most semantically similar crossdomain Figure 1: Left: Traditional GCLs perform badly under OOD negative pairs are treated as positive during GCL. Our scenario compared to IID one. Right: Pairwize-Domain-experimental results, spanning a wide array of datasets, confirm Discrepancy grows during GCL. that this method substantially improves the OOD generalization performance of GCL.