Canada

In this paper, the worst-case probability measure over the data is introduced as a tool for characterizing the generalization capabilities of machine learning algorithms. More specifically, the worst-case probability measure is a Gibbs probability measure and the unique solution to the maximization of the expected loss under a relative entropy constraint with respect to a reference probability measure. Fundamental generalization metrics, such as the sensitivity of the expected loss, the sensitivity of the empirical risk, and the generalization gap are shown to have closed-form expressions involving the worst-case data-generating probability measure. Existing results for the Gibbs algorithm, such as characterizing the generalization gap as a sum of mutual information and lautum information, up to a constant factor, are recovered. A novel parallel is established between the worst-case data-generating probability measure and the Gibbs algorithm. Specifically, the Gibbs probability measure is identified as a fundamental commonality of the model space and the data space for machine learning algorithms.

AAAI 2024

Generalization Analysis of Machine Learning Algorithms via the Worst-Case Data-Generating Probability Measure | VIDEO

generalization gap

ml: learning theory

ml: optimization

sensitivity

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. 

technical paper

We study reinforcement learning (RL) in episodic MDPs with adversarial full-information losses and the unknown transition. Instead of the classical static regret, we adopt \emph{dynamic regret} as the performance measure which benchmarks the learner's performance with \emph{changing} policies, making it more suitable for non-stationary environments. The primary challenge is to handle the uncertainties of unknown transition and unknown non-stationarity of environments simultaneously. We propose a general framework to decouple the two sources of uncertainties and show the dynamic regret bound naturally decomposes into two terms, one due to constructing confidence sets to handle the unknown transition and the other due to choosing sub-optimal policies under the unknown non-stationarity. To this end, we first employ the two-layer online ensemble structure to handle the adaptation error due to the unknown non-stationarity, which is model-agnostic. Subsequently, we instantiate the framework to three fundamental MDP models, including tabular MDPs, linear MDPs and linear mixture MDPs, and present corresponding approaches to control the exploration error due to the unknown transition. We provide dynamic regret guarantees respectively and show they are optimal in terms of the number of episodes $K$ and the non-stationarity $\bar{P}_K$ by establishing matching lower bounds. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that achieves the optimal (w.r.t. $K$ and $\bar{P}_K$) dynamic regret \emph{without} prior knowledge about the non-stationarity of environments for adversarial MDPs with the unknown transition.

Dynamic Regret of Adversarial MDPs with Unknown Transition and Linear Function Approximation

Recently, there has been growing interest in using Large Language Models (LLMs) for scientific research. Numerous benchmarks have been proposed to evaluate the ability of LLMs for scientific research. However, current benchmarks are mostly based on pre-collected objective questions. This design suffers from data leakage problem and lacks the evaluation of subjective Q/A ability. In this paper, we propose SciEval, a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary evaluation benchmark to address these issues. Based on Bloom's taxonomy, SciEval covers four dimensions to systematically evaluate scientific research ability. In particular, we design a "dynamic" subset based on scientific principles to prevent evaluation from potential data leakage. Both objective and subjective questions are included in SciEval. These characteristics make SciEval a more effective benchmark for scientific research ability evaluation of LLMs. Comprehensive experiments on most advanced LLMs show that, although GPT-4 achieves SOTA performance compared to other LLMs, there is still substantial room for improvement, especially for dynamic questions. The codes and data are publicly available on https://github.com/OpenDFM/SciEval.

SciEval: A Multi-Level Large Language Model Evaluation Benchmark for Scientific Research | VIDEO

We present a fast, scalable, data-driven approach for solving relaxations of 0-1 integer linear programs. We use a combination of graph neural networks (GNN) and the Lagrange decomposition based algorithm of Abbas et al 2022. We make the latter differentiable for end-to-end training and use GNNs to predict its algorithmic parameters. This allows to retain the algorithm's theoretical properties including dual feasibility and guaranteed non-decrease in the lower bound while improving it via training. We overcome suboptimal fixed points of the basic solver by additional non-parametric GNN update steps maintaining dual feasibility. For training we use an unsupervised loss. We train on smaller problems and test on larger ones showing strong generalization performance with a GNN comprising only around 10k parameters. Our solver achieves significantly faster performance and better dual objectives than its non-learned version, achieving close to optimal objective values of LP relaxations of very large structured prediction problems and on selected combinatorial ones. In particular, we achieve better objective values than specialized approximate solvers for specific problem classes while retaining their efficiency. Our solver has better any-time performance over a large time period compared to a commercial solver.

DOGE-Train: Discrete Optimization on GPU with End-to-End Training

This paper considers learning the hidden causal network of a linear networked dynamical system (NDS) from the time series data at some of its nodes -- partial observability. The dynamics of the NDS are driven by colored noise that generates spurious associations across pairs of nodes, rendering the problem much harder. To address the challenge of noise correlation and partial observability, we assign to each pair of nodes a feature vector computed from the time series data of observed nodes. The feature embedding is engineered to yield structural consistency: there exists an affine hyperplane that consistently partitions the set of features, separating the feature vectors corresponding to connected pairs of nodes from those corresponding to disconnected pairs. The causal inference problem is thus addressed via clustering the designed features. We demonstrate with simple baseline supervised methods the competitive performance of the proposed causal inference mechanism under broad connectivity regimes and noise correlation levels, including a real world network.  Further, we devise novel technical guarantees of structural consistency for linear NDS under the considered regime.

Learning the Causal Structure of Networked Dynamical Systems under Latent Nodes and Structured Noise | VIDEO

Open Set Recognition (OSR) poses significant challenges in distinguishing known from unknown classes. In OSR, the overconfidence problem has become a persistent obstacle, where visual recognition models often misclassify unknown objects as known objects with high confidence. This issue stems from the fact that visual recognition models often lack the integration of common-sense knowledge, a feature that is naturally present in language-based models but lacking in visual recognition systems. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to enhance OSR performance by distilling common-sense knowledge into visual prompts. Utilizing text prompts that embody common-sense knowledge about known classes, the proposed visual prompt is learned by extracting semantic common-sense features and aligning them with image features from visual recognition models. The unique aspect of this work is the training of individual visual prompts for each class to encapsulate this common-sense knowledge. Our methodology is model-agnostic, capable of enhancing OSR across various visual recognition models, and computationally light as it focuses solely on training the visual prompts. This research introduces a method for addressing OSR, aiming at a more systematic integration of visual recognition systems with common-sense knowledge. The obtained results indicate an enhancement in recognition accuracy, suggesting the applicability of this approach in practical settings.

Improving Open Set Recognition via Visual Prompts Distilled from Common-Sense Knowledge

We present CrystalBox, a novel, model-agnostic, posthoc explainability framework for Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) controllers in the large family of input-driven environments which includes computer systems. We combine the natural decomposability of reward functions in input-driven environments with the explanatory power of decomposed returns. We propose an efficient algorithm to generate future-based explanations across both discrete and continuous control environments. Using applications such as adaptive bitrate streaming and congestion control, we demonstrate CrystalBox's capability to generate high-fidelity explanations. We further illustrate its higher utility across three practical use cases: contrastive explanations, network observability, and guided reward design, as opposed to prior explainability techniques that identify salient features.

CrystalBox: Future-Based Explanations for Input-Driven Deep RL Systems

Fashion image editing aims to edit an input image to obtain richer or distinct visual clothing matching effects. Existing global fashion image editing methods are difficult to achieve rich outfit combination effects while local fashion image editing is more in line with the needs of diverse and personalized outfit matching. The local editing techniques typically depend on text and auxiliary modalities (\emph{e.g.}, human poses, human keypoints, garment sketches, etc.) for image manipulation, where the auxiliary modalities essentially assist in locating the editing region. Since these auxiliary modalities usually involve additional efforts in practical application scenarios, text-driven fashion image editing shows high flexibility. In this paper, we propose \textit{TexFit}, a \textbf{Tex}t-driven \textbf{F}ashion \textbf{i}mage Edi\textbf{t}ing method using diffusion models, which performs the local image editing only with the easily accessible text. Our approach employs a text-based editing region location module to predict precise editing region in the fashion image. Then, we take the predicted region as the generation condition of diffusion models together with the text prompt to achieve precise local editing of fashion images while keeping the rest part intact. In addition, previous fashion datasets usually focus on global description, lacking local descriptive information that can guide the precise local editing. Therefore, we develop a new DFMM-Spotlight dataset by using region extraction and attribute combination strategies. It focuses locally on clothes and accessories, enabling local editing with text input. Experimental results on the DFMM-Spotlight dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of our model. Code and Datasets are available at \url{https://github.com/TongxinWong/TexFit}.

TexFit: Text-Driven Fashion Image Editing with Diffusion Models

To train generalizable Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents, researchers recently proposed the Unsupervised Environment Design (UED) framework, in which a teacher agent creates a very large number of training environments and a student agent trains on the experiences in these environments to be robust against unseen testing scenarios. For example, to train a student to master the “stepping over stumps” task, the teacher will create numerous training environments with varying stump heights and shapes. In this paper, we argue that UED neglects training efficiency and its need for very large number of environments (henceforth referred to as infinite horizon training) makes it less suitable to training robots and non-expert humans. In real-world applications where either creating new training scenarios is expensive or training efficiency is of critical importance, we want to maximize both the learning efficiency and learning outcome of the student. To achieve efficient finite horizon training, we propose a novel Markov Decision Process (MDP) formulation for the teacher agent, referred to as Unsupervised Training Sequence Design (UTSD). Specifically, we encode salient information from the student policy (e.g., behaviors and learning progress) into the teacher's state space, enabling the teacher to closely track the student's learning progress and consequently discover the optimal training sequences with finite lengths. Additionally, we explore the teacher's efficient adaptation to unseen students at test time by employing the context-based meta-learning approach, which leverages the teacher's past experiences with various students. Finally, we empirically demonstrate our teacher's capability to design efficient and effective training sequences for students with varying capabilities.

Unsupervised Training Sequence Design: Efficient and Generalizable Agent Training

Defocus blur, due to spatially-varying sizes and shapes, is hard to remove. Existing methods either are unable to effectively handle irregular defocus blur or fail to generalize well on other datasets.
In this work, we propose a divide-and-conquer approach to tackling this issue, which gives rise to a novel end-to-end deep learning method, called prior-and-prediction inverse kernel transformer (P2IKT), for single image defocus deblurring. Since most defocus blur can be approximated as Gaussian blur or its variants, we construct an inverse Gaussian kernel module in our method to enhance its generalization ability. At the same time, an inverse kernel prediction module is introduced in order to flexibly address the irregular blur that cannot be approximated by Gaussian blur. We further design a scale recurrent transformer, which estimates mixing coefficients for adaptively combining the results from the two modules and runs the scale recurrent ``coarse-to-fine" procedure for progressive defocus deblurring. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our P2IKT outperforms previous methods in terms of PSNR on multiple defocus deblurring datasets.

Prior and Prediction Inverse Kernel Transformer for Single Image Defocus Deblurring

Visible watermarks, while instrumental in protecting image copyrights, frequently distort the underlying content, complicating tasks like scene interpretation and image editing. Contemporary methodologies, despite their advancements, often amalgamate watermark removal and background recovery tasks within a singular branch, leading to residual watermarks in the predictions and ignoring cases where watermarks heavily obscure the background. To address these limitations, this study introduces the Removing Interference and Recovering Content Imaginatively (RIRCI) framework. RIRCI embodies a two-stage approach: the initial phase centers on discerning and segregating the watermark component, while the subsequent phase focuses on background content restoration. To achieve meticulous background restoration, our proposed model employs a dual-path network capable of fully exploring the intrinsic background information beneath semi-transparent watermarks and contextual information from unaffected regions surrounding watermarks. Moreover,  a Global and Local Context Interaction module is built upon multi-layer perceptrons and a bidirectional feature transformation mechanism for comprehensive representation modeling during the background restoration process. The efficacy of our approach is empirically validated across two large-scale datasets, and our findings reveal a marked enhancement over existing watermark removal techniques.

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Dynamic Regret of Adversarial MDPs with Unknown Transition and Linear Function Approximation

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