Canada

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.

AAAI 2024

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

networked dynamical systems

graph learning

structure learning

machine learning

causal inference

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. 

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.

Removing Interference and Recovering Content Imaginatively for Visible Watermark Removal

Arterial blood pressure (ABP) holds substantial promise for proactive cardiovascular health management. Notwithstanding its potential, the invasive nature of ABP measurements confines their utility primarily to clinical environments, limiting their applicability for continuous monitoring beyond medical facilities. The conversion of photoplethysmography (PPG) signals into ABP equivalents has garnered significant attention due to its potential in revolutionizing cardiovascular disease management. Recent strides in PPG-to-ABP prediction encompass the integration of generative and discriminative models. Despite these advances, the efficacy of these models is curtailed by the latent space shift predicament, stemming from alterations in PPG data distribution across disparate hardware and individuals, potentially leading to distorted ABP waveforms. To tackle this problem, we present an innovative solution named the Latent Space Constraint Transformer (LSCT), leveraging a quantized codebook to yield robust latent spaces by employing multiple discretizing bases. To facilitate improved reconstruction, the Correlation-boosted Attention Module (CAM) is introduced to systematically query pertinent bases on a global scale. Furthermore, to enhance expressive capacity, we propose the Multi-Spectrum Enhancement Knowledge (MSEK), which fosters local information flow within the channels of latent code and provides additional embedding for reconstruction. Through comprehensive experimentation on both publicly available datasets and a private downstream task dataset, the proposed approach demonstrates noteworthy performance enhancements compared to existing methods. Extensive ablation studies further substantiate the effectiveness of each introduced module.

Constraint Latent Space Matters: An Anti-anomalous Waveform Transformation Solution from Photoplethysmography to Arterial Blood Pressure | VIDEO

In recent years, graph-based fraud detection methods have garnered increasing attention for their superior ability to tackle the issue of camouflage in fraudulent scenarios. However, these methods often rely on a substantial proportion of samples as the training set, disregarding the reality of scarce annotated samples in real-life scenarios. As a theoretical framework within semi-supervised learning, the principle of consistency regularization posits that unlabeled samples should be classified into the same category as their own perturbations. Inspired by this principle, this study incorporates unlabeled samples as an auxiliary during model training, designing a novel barely supervised learning method to address the challenge of limited annotated samples in fraud detection. Specifically, to tackle the issue of camouflage in fraudulent scenarios, we employ disentangled representation learning based on edge information for a small subset of annotated nodes. This approach partitions node features into three distinct components representing different connected edges, providing a foundation for the subsequent augmentation of unlabeled samples. For the unlabeled nodes used in auxiliary training, we apply both strong and weak augmentation and design regularization losses to enhance the detection performance of the model in the context of extremely limited labeled samples. Across five publicly available datasets, the proposed model showcases its superior detection capability over baseline models.

Barely Supervised Learning for Graph-Based Fraud Detection

We aim to solve the problem of spatially localizing composite instructions referring to space: space grounding. Compared to current instance grounding, space grounding is challenging due to the ill-posedness of identifying locations referred to by discrete expressions and the compositional ambiguity of referring expressions. Therefore, we propose a novel probabilistic space-grounding methodology (LINGO-Space) that accurately identifies a probabilistic distribution of space being referred to and incrementally updates it, given subsequent referring expressions leveraging configurable polar distributions. Our evaluations show that the estimation using polar distributions enables a robot to ground locations successfully through 20 table-top manipulation benchmark tests. We also show that updating the distribution helps the grounding method accurately narrow the referring space. We finally demonstrate the robustness of the space grounding with simulated manipulation and real quadruped robot navigation tasks. Code and videos are available at https://lingo-space.github.io.

LINGO-Space: Language-Conditioned Incremental Grounding for Space | VIDEO

Detecting objects accurately from a large or open vocabulary necessitates the vision-language alignment on region representations. However, learning such a region-text alignment by obtaining high-quality box annotations with text labels or descriptions is expensive and infeasible. In contrast, collecting image-text pairs is simpler but lacks precise object location information to associate regions with texts. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called Contrastive Language-Image Mosaic (CLIM), which leverages large-scale image-text pairs effectively for aligning region and text representations. CLIM combines multiple images into a mosaicked image and treats each image as a ‘pseudo region’. The feature of each pseudo region is extracted and trained to be similar to the corresponding text embedding while dissimilar from others by a contrastive loss, enabling the model to learn the region-text alignment without costly box annotations. As a generally
applicable approach, CLIM consistently improves different open-vocabulary object detection methods that use caption supervision. Furthermore, CLIM can effectively enhance the region representation of vision-language models, thus providing stronger backbones for open-vocabulary object detectors. Our experimental results demonstrate that CLIM improves different baseline open-vocabulary object detectors by a large margin on both OV-COCO and OV-LVIS benchmarks. The code is available at https://github.com/wusize/CLIM.

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

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

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

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