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The problem of covariate-shift generalization has attracted intensive research attention. Previous stable learning algorithms employ sample reweighting schemes to decorrelate the covariates when there is no explicit domain information about training data. However, with finite samples, it is difficult to achieve the desirable weights that ensure perfect independence to get rid of the unstable variables. Besides, decorrelating within stable variables may bring about high variance of learned models because of the over-reduced effective sample size. A tremendous sample size is required for these algorithms to work. In this paper, with theoretical justification, we propose SVI (Sparse Variable Independence) for the covariate-shift generalization problem. We introduce sparsity constraint to compensate for the imperfectness of sample reweighting under the finite-sample setting in previous methods. Furthermore, we organically combine independence-based sample reweighting and sparsity-based variable selection in an iterative way to avoid decorrelating within stable variables, increasing the effective sample size to alleviate variance inflation. Experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate the improvement of covariate-shift generalization performance brought by SVI. 

AAAI 2023

Stable Learning via Sparse Variable Independence

sparsity constraint

sample reweighting

stable learning

out-of-distribution generalization

The purpose of the AAAI conference series is to promote research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and foster scientific exchange between researchers, practitioners, scientists, students, and engineers across the entirety of AI and its affiliated disciplines. AAAI-23 is the Thirty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The theme of this conference is to create collaborative bridges within and beyond AI. Like previous AAAI conferences, AAAI-23 will feature technical paper presentations, special tracks, invited speakers, workshops, tutorials, poster sessions, senior member presentations, competitions, and exhibit programs, and two new activities: a Bridge Program and a Lab Program. Many of these activities are tailored to the theme of bridges and all are selected according to the highest standards, with additional programs for students and young researchers. 
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The purpose of the AAAI conference series is to promote research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and foster scientific exchange between researchers, practitioners, scientists, students, and engineers across the entirety of AI and its affiliated disciplines.

poster

Contrastive learning (CL), a self-supervised learning approach, can effectively learn visual representations from unlabeled data. Given the CL training data, generative models can be trained to generate synthetic data to supplement the real data. Using both synthetic and real data for CL training has the potential to improve the quality of learned representations. However, synthetic data usually has lower quality than real data, and using synthetic data may not improve CL compared with using real data. To tackle this problem, we propose a data generation framework with two methods to improve CL training by joint sample generation and contrastive learning. The first approach generates hard samples for the main model. The generator is jointly learned with the main model to dynamically customize hard samples based on the training state of the main model. Besides, a pair of data generators are proposed to generate similar but distinct samples as positive pairs. In joint learning, the hardness of a positive pair is progressively increased by decreasing their similarity. Experimental results on multiple datasets show superior accuracy and data efficiency of the proposed data generation methods applied to CL. For example, about 4.0%, 3.5%, and 2.6% accuracy improvements for linear classification are observed on ImageNet-100, CIFAR-100, and CIFAR-10, respectively. Besides, up to 2× data efficiency for linear classification and up to 5× data efficiency for transfer learning are achieved.

Synthetic Data Can Also Teach: Synthesizing Effective Data for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning

As few-shot object detectors are often trained with abundant base samples and fine-tuned on few-shot novel examples, the learned models are usually biased to base classes and sensitive to the variance of novel examples. To address this issue, we propose a meta-learning framework with two novel feature aggregation schemes. More precisely, we first present a Class-Agnostic Aggregation (CAA) method, where the query and support features can be aggregated regardless of their categories. The interactions between different classes encourage class-agnostic representations and reduce confusion between base and novel classes.
Based on the CAA, we then propose a Variational Feature Aggregation (VFA) method, which encodes support examples into class-level support features for robust feature aggregation. We use a variational autoencoder to estimate class distributions and sample variational features from distributions that are more robust to the variance of support examples. Besides, we decouple classification and regression tasks so that VFA is performed on the classification branch without affecting object localization. Extensive experiments on PASCAL VOC and COCO demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms a strong baseline (up to 16%) and previous state-of-the-art methods (4% in average).

Few-Shot Object Detection via Variational Feature Aggregation

We study fully dynamic online selection problems in an adversarial/stochastic setting that includes Bayesian online selection, prophet inequalities, posted price mechanisms, and stochastic probing problems subject to combinatorial constraints.   In the classical ``incremental'' version of the problem, selected elements remain active until the end of the input sequence. On the other hand, in the fully dynamic version of the problem, elements stay active for a limited time interval, and then leave. This models, for example, the online matching of tasks to workers with task/worker-dependent working times, and sequential posted pricing of perishable goods. A successful approach to online selection problems in the adversarial setting is given by the notion of  Online Contention Resolution Scheme (OCRS), that uses  a priori information to formulate a linear relaxation of the underlying optimization problem, whose optimal fractional solution is rounded online for any adversarial order of the input sequence. Our main contribution is providing a general method for constructing an OCRS for fully dynamic online selection problems. Then, we show how to employ such OCRS to construct no-regret algorithms in a partial information model with semi-bandit feedback and adversarial inputs. 

Fully Dynamic Online Selection through Online Contention Resolution Schemes

Every automaton can be decomposed into a cascade of basic automata. This is the Prime Decomposition Theorem by Krohn and Rhodes. We show that cascades allow for describing the sample complexity of automata in terms of their components. In particular, we show that the sample complexity is linear in the number of components and the maximum complexity of a single component, modulo logarithmic factors. This opens to the possibility of learning automata representing large dynamical systems consisting of many parts interacting with each other. It is in sharp contrast with the established understanding of the sample complexity of automata, described in terms of the overall number of states and input letters, which implies that it is only possible to learn automata where the number of states is linear in the amount of data available. Instead our results show that one can learn automata with a number of states that is exponential in the amount of data available.

Sample Complexity of Automata Cascades

Restless multi-armed bandits are often used to model budget-constrained resource allocation tasks where receipt of the resource is associated with an increased probability of a favorable state transition. Prior work assumes that individual arms only benefit if they receive the resource directly. However, many allocation tasks occur within communities and can be characterized by positive externalities that allow arms to derive partial benefit when their neighbor(s) receive the resource. We thus introduce networked restless bandits, a novel multi-armed bandit setting in which arms are both restless and embedded within a directed graph. We then present Greta, a graph-aware, Whittle index-based heuristic algorithm that can be used to efficiently construct a constrained reward-maximizing action vector at each timestep. Our empirical results demonstrate that Greta outperforms comparison policies across a range of hyperparameter values and graph topologies.

Networked Restless Bandits with Positive Externalities

Machine Learning is often challenged by insufficient labeled data. Previous methods employing implicit commonsense knowledge of pre-trained language models (PLMs) or pattern-based symbolic knowledge have achieved great success in mitigating manual annotation efforts. In this paper, we focus on the collaboration among different knowledge sources and present KICE, a Knowledge-evolving framework by Iterative Consolidation and Expansion with the guidance of PLMs and rule-based patterns. Specifically, starting with limited labeled data as seeds, KICE first builds a Rule Generator by prompt-tuning to stimulate the rich knowledge distributed in PLMs, generate seed rules, and initialize the rules set. Afterwards, based on the rule-labeled data, the task model is trained in a self-training pipeline where the knowledge in rules set is consolidated with self-learned high-confidence rules. Finally, for the low-confidence rules, KICE solicits human-enlightened understanding and expands the knowledge coverage for better task model training. Our framework is verified on relation extraction (RE) task, and the experiments on TACRED show that the model performance (F1) grows from 33.24% to 79.84% with the enrichment of knowledge, outperforming all the baselines including other knowledgeable methods.

KICE: A Knowledge Consolidation and Expansion Framework for Relation Extraction

Standard deep reinforcement learning (DRL) aims to maximize expected reward, considering collected experiences equally in formulating a policy. This differs from human decision-making, where gains and losses are valued differently and outlying outcomes are given increased consideration.  It also fails to capitalize on opportunities to improve safety and/or performance through the incorporation of distributional context. Several approaches to distributional DRL have been investigated, with one popular strategy being to evaluate the projected distribution of returns for possible actions.  We propose a more direct approach whereby risk-sensitive objectives, specified in terms of the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the distribution of full-episode rewards, are optimized. This approach allows for outcomes to be weighed based on relative quality, can be used for both continuous and discrete action spaces, and may naturally be applied in both constrained and unconstrained settings.  We show how to compute an asymptotically consistent estimate of the policy gradient for a broad class of risk-sensitive objectives via sampling, subsequently incorporating variance reduction and regularization measures to facilitate effective on-policy learning.  We then demonstrate that the use of moderately "pessimistic" risk profiles, which emphasize scenarios where the agent performs poorly, leads to enhanced exploration and a continual focus on addressing deficiencies.  We test the approach using different risk profiles in six OpenAI Safety Gym environments, comparing to state of the art on-policy methods.  Without cost constraints, we find that pessimistic risk profiles can be used to reduce cost while improving total reward accumulation.  With cost constraints, they are seen to provide higher positive rewards than risk-neutral approaches at the prescribed allowable cost.

A Risk-Sensitive Approach to Policy Optimization

Deepfake brings huge and potential negative impacts to our daily lives. As the real-life Deepfake videos circulated on the Internet become more authentic, most existing detection algorithms have failed since few visual differences can be observed between an authentic video and a Deepfake one. However, the forensic traces are always retained within the synthesized videos. In this study, we present a noise-based Deepfake detection model, NoiseDF for short, which focuses on the underlying forensic noise traces left behind the Deepfake videos. In particular, we enhance the RIDNet denoiser to extract noise traces and features from the cropped face and background squares of the video image frames. Meanwhile, we devise a novel Multi-Head Relative-Interaction method to evaluate the degree of interaction between the faces and backgrounds that plays a pivotal role in the Deepfake detection task. Besides outperforming the state-of-the-art models, the visualization of the extracted Deepfake forensic noise traces has further displayed the evidence and proved the robustness of our approach.

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Stable Learning via Sparse Variable Independence

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Synthetic Data Can Also Teach: Synthesizing Effective Data for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning

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