Canada

This article focuses on the development and evaluation of Small-sized Czech sentence embedding models. Small models are important components for real-time industry applications in resource-constrained environments. Given the limited availability of labeled Czech data, alternative approaches, including pre-training, knowledge distillation, and unsupervised contrastive fine-tuning, are investigated. Comprehensive intrinsic and extrinsic analyses are conducted, showcasing the competitive performance of our models compared to significantly larger counterparts, with approximately 8 times smaller size and 5 times faster speed than conventional Base-sized models. To promote cooperation and reproducibility, both the models and the evaluation pipeline are made publicly accessible. Ultimately, this article presents practical applications of the developed sentence embedding models in Seznam.cz, the Czech search engine. These models have effectively replaced previous counterparts, enhancing the overall search experience for instance, in organic search, featured snippets, and image search. This transition has yielded improved performance.

AAAI 2024

Some Like It Small: Czech Semantic Embedding Models for Industry Applications | VIDEO

business/marketing/advertising/e-commerce

sentence-level semantics and textual inference

sentence embeddings

sentiment analysis

text classification

language models

The purpose of the AAAI conference is to promote research in artificial intelligence (AI) and scientific exchange among AI researchers, practitioners, scientists, and engineers in affiliated disciplines. 

AAAI 2022

technical paper

We are pleased to announce the Thirty-Eighth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-24), which will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia at the Vancouver Convention Centre – West Building from 20-27 February, 2024.

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-24 will feature technical paper presentations, special tracks, invited speakers, workshops, tutorials, poster sessions, senior member presentations, competitions, and exhibit programs, and a range of other activities to be announced.

We expect for AAAI-24 to be an in-person conference – one author of all accepted papers will be expected to present work in person unless there are exceptional circumstances that prevent this.<br><br><br><br>

In order to access the AAAI-24 event page you need to register [here](https://aaai.org/aaai-conference/registration/)

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. 

Long-term and high-dose prescription opioid use places individuals at risk for opioid misuse, opioid use disorder (OUD), and overdose. Existing methods for monitoring opioid use and detecting misuse rely on self-reports, which are prone to reporting bias, and toxicology testing, which may be infeasible in outpatient settings. Although wearable technologies for monitoring day-to-day health metrics have gained significant traction in recent years due to their ease of use, flexibility, and advancements in sensor technology, their application within the opioid use space remains underexplored. In the current work, we demonstrate that oral opioid administrations can be detected using physiological signals collected from a wrist sensor. More importantly, we show that models informed by opioid pharmacokinetics increase reliability in predicting the timing of opioid administrations. Forty-two individuals who were prescribed opioids as a part of their medical treatment in-hospital and after discharge were enrolled. Participants wore a wrist sensor throughout the study, while opioid administrations were tracked using electronic medical records and self-reports. We collected 1,983 hours of sensor data containing 187 opioid administrations from the inpatient setting and 927 hours of sensor data containing 40 opioid administrations from the outpatient setting. We demonstrate that a self-supervised pre-trained model, capable of learning the canonical time series of plasma concentration of the drug derived from opioid pharmacokinetics, can reliably detect opioid administration in both settings. Our work suggests the potential of pharmacokinetic-informed, data-driven models to objectively detect opioid use in daily life.

Pharmacokinetics-Informed Neural Network for Predicting Opioid Administration Moments with Wearable Sensors

In neural memory decoding, a concept being mentally recalled is identified using brain data. Recently, the feasibility of neural memory decoding with EEG data has been demonstrated. Here we propose a new application – neural information retrieval – that uses neural memory decoding to allow a document to be retrieved merely by thinking about it. In this paper we describe neural memory decoding, define the application of neural information retrieval, present experimental results related to the practicality of the application, and discuss issues of deployment and data privacy.

Neural Bookmarks: Information Retrieval with Deep Learning and EEG Data

Incarceration-diversion programs have proven effective in reducing recidivism. Accurate prediction of the number of individuals with different characteristics in the program and their program outcomes based on given eligibility criteria is crucial for successful implementation, because this prediction serves as the foundation for determining the appropriate program size and the consequent staffing requirements. However, this task poses challenges due to the complexities arising from varied outcomes and lengths-of-stay for the diverse individuals in incarceration-diversion programs. In collaboration with an Illinois government agency, we develop a framework to address these issues. Our framework combines ML and queueing model simulation, providing accurate predictions for the program census and interpretable insights into program dynamics and the impact of different decisions in counterfactual scenarios. Additionally, we deploy a user-friendly web app beta-version that allows program managers to visualize census data by counties and race groups. We showcase two decision support use cases: Changing program admission criteria and launching similar programs in new counties.

Combining Machine Learning and Queueing Theory for Data-Driven Incarceration-Diversion Program Management | VIDEO

Harnessing the wide-spread availability of cell phones, many nonprofits have launched mobile health (mHealth) programs to deliver information via voice or text to beneficiaries in underserved communities, with maternal and infant health being a key area of such mHealth programs. Unfortunately, dwindling listenership is a major challenge, requiring targeted interventions using limited resources. This paper focuses on Kilkari, the world's largest mHealth program for maternal and child care -- with over 3 million active subscribers at a time --  launched by India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and run by the non-profit ARMMAN. We present a system called CHAHAK that aims to reduce automated dropouts as well as boost engagement with the program through the strategic allocation of interventions to beneficiaries. Past work in a similar domain has focused on a much smaller scale mHealth program and used markovian restless multiarmed bandits to optimize a single limited intervention resource. However this paper demonstrates the challenges in adopting a markovian approach in Kilkari; therefore CHAHAK instead relies on non-markovian time-series restless bandits, and optimizes a layered set of multiple interventions to improve listenership. We use real Kilkari data from the Odisha state in India to show CHAHAK's effectiveness in harnessing multiple interventions to boost listenership, benefiting marginalized communities. When deployed CHAHAK will assist the largest maternal mHealth program to date.

Improving Health Information Access in the World’s Largest Maternal Mobile Health Program via Bandit Algorithms

A significant challenge in image-guided surgery is the accurate measurement task of relevant structures such as vessel segments, resection margins, or bowel lengths. While this task is an essential component of many surgeries, it involves substantial human effort and is prone to inaccuracies. In this paper, we develop a novel human-AI-based method for laparoscopic measurements utilizing stereo vision that has been guided by practicing surgeons. Based on a holistic qualitative requirements analysis, this work proposes a comprehensive measurement method, which comprises state-of-the-art machine learning architectures, such as RAFT-Stereo and YOLOv8. The developed method is assessed in various realistic experimental evaluation environments. Our results outline the potential of our method achieving high accuracies in distance measurements with errors below 1 mm. Furthermore, on-surface measurements demonstrate robustness when applied in challenging environments with textureless regions. Overall, by addressing the inherent challenges of image-guided surgery, we lay the foundation for a more robust and accurate solution for intra- and postoperative measurements, enabling more precise, safe, and efficient surgical procedures.

Redefining the Laparoscopic Spatial Sense: AI-Based Intra- and Postoperative Measurement from Stereoimages | VIDEO

Large-scale population displacements arising from conflict-induced forced migration generate uncertainty and introduce several policy challenges. Addressing these concerns requires an interdisciplinary approach that integrates knowledge from both computational modeling and social sciences. We propose a generalized computational agent-based modeling framework grounded by Theory of Planned Behavior to model conflict-induced migration outflows within Ukraine during the start of that conflict in 2022. Existing migration modeling frameworks that attempt to address policy implications primarily focus on destination while leaving absent a generalized computational framework grounded by social theory focused on the conflict-induced region. We propose an agent-based framework utilizing a spatiotemporal gravity model and a Bi-threshold model over a Graph Dynamical System to update migration status of agents in conflict-induced regions at fine temporal and spatial granularity. This approach significantly outperforms previous work when examining the case of Russian invasion in Ukraine. Policy implications of the proposed framework are demonstrated by modeling the migration behavior of Ukrainian civilians attempting to flee from regions encircled by Russian forces. We also showcase the generalizability of the model by simulating a past conflict in Burundi, an alternative conflict setting. Results demonstrate the utility of the framework for assessing conflict-induced migration in varied settings as well as identifying vulnerable civilian populations.

A Generalizable Theory-Driven Agent-Based Framework to Study Conflict-Induced Forced Migration

Digital mental health (DMH) interventions, such as text-message-based lessons and activities, offer immense potential for accessible mental health support. While these interventions can be effective, real-world experimental testing can further enhance their design and impact. Adaptive experimentation, utilizing algorithms like Thompson Sampling for (contextual) multi-armed bandit (MAB) problems, can lead to continuous improvement and personalization. However, it remains unclear when these algorithms can simultaneously increase user experience rewards and facilitate appropriate data collection for social-behavioral scientists to analyze with sufficient statistical confidence. Although a growing body of research addresses the practical and statistical aspects of MAB and other adaptive algorithms, further exploration is needed to assess their impact across diverse real-world contexts. This paper presents a software system developed over two years that allows text-messaging intervention components to be adapted using bandit and other algorithms while collecting data for side-by-side comparison with traditional uniform random non-adaptive experiments. We evaluate the system by deploying a text-message-based DMH intervention to 1100 users, recruited through a large mental health non-profit organization, and share the path forward for deploying this system at scale. This system not only enables applications in mental health but could also serve as a model testbed for adaptive experimentation algorithms in other domains.

Using Adaptive Bandit Experiments to Increase and Investigate Engagement in Mental Health

Automating the processing of health insurance claims to achieve "Straight-Through Processing" is one of the holy grails that all insurance companies aim to achieve. One of the major impediments to this automation is the difficulty in establishing the relationship between the underwriting exclusions that a policy has and the incoming claim's diagnosis information. Typically, policy underwriting exclusions are captured in free-text such as "Respiratory illnesses are excluded due to a pre-existing asthma condition". A medical claim coming from a hospital would have the diagnosis represented using the International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes from the World Health Organization. The complex and labour-intensive task of establishing the relationship between free-text underwriting exclusions in health insurance policies and medical diagnosis codes from health insurance claims is critical towards determining if a claim should be rejected due to underwriting exclusions. In this work, we present a novel framework that leverages both explicit and implicit domain knowledge present in medical ontologies and pre-trained language models respectively, to effectively establish the relationship between free-text describing medical conditions present in underwriting exclusions and the ICD-10CM diagnosis codes in health insurance claims. Termed KAMEL (Knowledge Aware Medical Entity Linkage), our proposed framework addresses the limitations faced by prior approaches when evaluated on real-world health insurance claims data. Our proposed framework have been deployed in several multi-national health insurance providers to automate their health insurance claims.

KAMEL: Knowledge Aware Medical Entity Linkage to Automate Health Insurance Claims Processing

In recent years, text-to-video retrieval methods based on CLIP have experienced rapid development. The primary direction of evolution is to exploit the much wider gamut of visual and textual cues to achieve alignment. Concretely, those methods with impressive performance often design a heavy fusion block for sentence (words)-video (frames) interaction, regardless of the prohibitive computation complexity. Nevertheless, these approaches are not optimal in terms of feature utilization and retrieval efficiency. To address this issue, we adopt multi-granularity visual feature learning, ensuring the model's comprehensiveness in capturing visual content features spanning from abstract to detailed levels during the training phase. To better leverage the multi-granularity features, we devise a two-stage retrieval architecture in the retrieval phase. This solution ingeniously balances the coarse and fine granularity of retrieval content. Moreover, it also strikes a harmonious equilibrium between retrieval effectiveness and efficiency. Specifically, in training phase, we design a parameter-free text-gated interaction block (TIB) for fine-grained video representation learning and embed an extra Pearson Constraint to optimize cross-modal representation learning. In retrieval phase, we use coarse-grained video representations for fast recall of top-k candidates, which are then reranked by fine-grained video representations. Extensive experiments on four benchmarks demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness. Notably, our method achieves comparable performance with the current state-of-the-art methods while being nearly 50 times faster.

Towards Efficient and Effective Text-to-Video Retrieval with Coarse-to-Fine Visual Representation Learning

Knowledge distillation (KD), a technique widely employed in computer vision, has emerged as a de facto standard for improving the performance of small neural networks. However, prevailing KD-based approaches in video tasks primarily focus on designing loss functions and fusing cross-modal information. This overlooks the spatial-temporal feature semantics, resulting in limited advancements in model compression. Addressing this gap, our paper introduces an innovative knowledge distillation framework, with the generative model for training a lightweight student model. In particular, the framework is organized into two steps: the initial phase is Feature Representation, wherein a generative model-based attention module is trained to represent feature semantics; Subsequently, the Generative-based Feature Distillation phase encompasses both Generative Distillation and Attention Distillation, with the objective of transferring attention-based feature semantics with the generative model. The efficacy of our approach is demonstrated through comprehensive experiments on diverse popular datasets, proving considerable enhancements in video action recognition task. Moreover, the effectiveness of our proposed framework is validated in the context of more intricate video action detection task. Our code is available at https://github.com/aaai-24/Generative-based-KD.

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Pharmacokinetics-Informed Neural Network for Predicting Opioid Administration Moments with Wearable Sensors

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