New objects are continuously emerging in the dynamically changing world and a real-world artificial intelligence system should be capable of continual and effectual adaptation to new emerging classes without forgetting old ones. In view of this, in this paper we tackle a challenging and practical continual learning scenario named few-shot class-incremental learning (FSCIL), in which labeled data are given for classes in a base session but very limited labeled instances are available for new incremental classes. To address this problem, we propose a novel and succinct approach by introducing deep dictionary learning which is a hybrid learning architecture that combines dictionary learning and visual representation learning to provide a better space for characterizing different classes. We simultaneously optimize the dictionary and the feature extraction backbone in the base session, while only finetune the dictionary in the incremental session for adaptation to novel classes, which can alleviate the forgetting on base classes compared to finetuning the entire model. To further facilitate future adaptation, we also incorporate multiple pseudo classes into the base session training so that certain space projected by dictionary can be reserved for future new concepts. The extensive experimental results on CIFAR100, miniImageNet and CUB200 validate the effectiveness of our approach compared to other SOTA methods.
We introduce S$^2$VS, a video similarity learning approach with self-supervision. Self-Supervised Learning (SSL) is typically used to train deep models on a proxy task so as to have strong transferability on target tasks after fine-tuning. Here, in contrast to prior work, SSL is used to perform video similarity learning and address multiple retrieval and detection tasks at once with no use of labeled data. This is achieved by learning via instance-discrimination with task-tailored augmentations and the widely used InfoNCE loss together with an additional loss operating jointly on self-similarity and hard-negative similarity. We benchmark our method on tasks where video relevance is defined with varying granularity, ranging from video copies to videos depicting the same incident or event. We learn a single universal model that achieves state-of-the-art performance on all tasks, surpassing previously proposed methods that use labeled data. The code and pretrained models are publicly available at: //github.com/gkordo/s2vs
Multi-view learning (MVL) has gained great success in integrating information from multiple perspectives of a dataset to improve downstream task performance. To make MVL methods more practical in an open-ended environment, this paper investigates a novel paradigm called multi-view class incremental learning (MVCIL), where a single model incrementally classifies new classes from a continual stream of views, requiring no access to earlier views of data. However, MVCIL is challenged by the catastrophic forgetting of old information and the interference with learning new concepts. To address this, we first develop a randomization-based representation learning technique serving for feature extraction to guarantee their separate view-optimal working states, during which multiple views belonging to a class are presented sequentially; Then, we integrate them one by one in the orthogonality fusion subspace spanned by the extracted features; Finally, we introduce selective weight consolidation for learning-without-forgetting decision-making while encountering new classes. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets validate the effectiveness of our approach.
Deep models, e.g., CNNs and Vision Transformers, have achieved impressive achievements in many vision tasks in the closed world. However, novel classes emerge from time to time in our ever-changing world, requiring a learning system to acquire new knowledge continually. For example, a robot needs to understand new instructions, and an opinion monitoring system should analyze emerging topics every day. Class-Incremental Learning (CIL) enables the learner to incorporate the knowledge of new classes incrementally and build a universal classifier among all seen classes. Correspondingly, when directly training the model with new class instances, a fatal problem occurs -- the model tends to catastrophically forget the characteristics of former ones, and its performance drastically degrades. There have been numerous efforts to tackle catastrophic forgetting in the machine learning community. In this paper, we survey comprehensively recent advances in deep class-incremental learning and summarize these methods from three aspects, i.e., data-centric, model-centric, and algorithm-centric. We also provide a rigorous and unified evaluation of 16 methods in benchmark image classification tasks to find out the characteristics of different algorithms empirically. Furthermore, we notice that the current comparison protocol ignores the influence of memory budget in model storage, which may result in unfair comparison and biased results. Hence, we advocate fair comparison by aligning the memory budget in evaluation, as well as several memory-agnostic performance measures. The source code to reproduce these evaluations is available at //github.com/zhoudw-zdw/CIL_Survey/
In recent years, larger and deeper models are springing up and continuously pushing state-of-the-art (SOTA) results across various fields like natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision (CV). However, despite promising results, it needs to be noted that the computations required by SOTA models have been increased at an exponential rate. Massive computations not only have a surprisingly large carbon footprint but also have negative effects on research inclusiveness and deployment on real-world applications. Green deep learning is an increasingly hot research field that appeals to researchers to pay attention to energy usage and carbon emission during model training and inference. The target is to yield novel results with lightweight and efficient technologies. Many technologies can be used to achieve this goal, like model compression and knowledge distillation. This paper focuses on presenting a systematic review of the development of Green deep learning technologies. We classify these approaches into four categories: (1) compact networks, (2) energy-efficient training strategies, (3) energy-efficient inference approaches, and (4) efficient data usage. For each category, we discuss the progress that has been achieved and the unresolved challenges.
Deep learning on graphs has attracted significant interests recently. However, most of the works have focused on (semi-) supervised learning, resulting in shortcomings including heavy label reliance, poor generalization, and weak robustness. To address these issues, self-supervised learning (SSL), which extracts informative knowledge through well-designed pretext tasks without relying on manual labels, has become a promising and trending learning paradigm for graph data. Different from SSL on other domains like computer vision and natural language processing, SSL on graphs has an exclusive background, design ideas, and taxonomies. Under the umbrella of graph self-supervised learning, we present a timely and comprehensive review of the existing approaches which employ SSL techniques for graph data. We construct a unified framework that mathematically formalizes the paradigm of graph SSL. According to the objectives of pretext tasks, we divide these approaches into four categories: generation-based, auxiliary property-based, contrast-based, and hybrid approaches. We further conclude the applications of graph SSL across various research fields and summarize the commonly used datasets, evaluation benchmark, performance comparison and open-source codes of graph SSL. Finally, we discuss the remaining challenges and potential future directions in this research field.
Graphs are widely used as a popular representation of the network structure of connected data. Graph data can be found in a broad spectrum of application domains such as social systems, ecosystems, biological networks, knowledge graphs, and information systems. With the continuous penetration of artificial intelligence technologies, graph learning (i.e., machine learning on graphs) is gaining attention from both researchers and practitioners. Graph learning proves effective for many tasks, such as classification, link prediction, and matching. Generally, graph learning methods extract relevant features of graphs by taking advantage of machine learning algorithms. In this survey, we present a comprehensive overview on the state-of-the-art of graph learning. Special attention is paid to four categories of existing graph learning methods, including graph signal processing, matrix factorization, random walk, and deep learning. Major models and algorithms under these categories are reviewed respectively. We examine graph learning applications in areas such as text, images, science, knowledge graphs, and combinatorial optimization. In addition, we discuss several promising research directions in this field.
Artificial neural networks thrive in solving the classification problem for a particular rigid task, acquiring knowledge through generalized learning behaviour from a distinct training phase. The resulting network resembles a static entity of knowledge, with endeavours to extend this knowledge without targeting the original task resulting in a catastrophic forgetting. Continual learning shifts this paradigm towards networks that can continually accumulate knowledge over different tasks without the need to retrain from scratch. We focus on task incremental classification, where tasks arrive sequentially and are delineated by clear boundaries. Our main contributions concern 1) a taxonomy and extensive overview of the state-of-the-art, 2) a novel framework to continually determine the stability-plasticity trade-off of the continual learner, 3) a comprehensive experimental comparison of 11 state-of-the-art continual learning methods and 4 baselines. We empirically scrutinize method strengths and weaknesses on three benchmarks, considering Tiny Imagenet and large-scale unbalanced iNaturalist and a sequence of recognition datasets. We study the influence of model capacity, weight decay and dropout regularization, and the order in which the tasks are presented, and qualitatively compare methods in terms of required memory, computation time, and storage.
A comprehensive artificial intelligence system needs to not only perceive the environment with different `senses' (e.g., seeing and hearing) but also infer the world's conditional (or even causal) relations and corresponding uncertainty. The past decade has seen major advances in many perception tasks such as visual object recognition and speech recognition using deep learning models. For higher-level inference, however, probabilistic graphical models with their Bayesian nature are still more powerful and flexible. In recent years, Bayesian deep learning has emerged as a unified probabilistic framework to tightly integrate deep learning and Bayesian models. In this general framework, the perception of text or images using deep learning can boost the performance of higher-level inference and in turn, the feedback from the inference process is able to enhance the perception of text or images. This survey provides a comprehensive introduction to Bayesian deep learning and reviews its recent applications on recommender systems, topic models, control, etc. Besides, we also discuss the relationship and differences between Bayesian deep learning and other related topics such as Bayesian treatment of neural networks.
Meta-learning extracts the common knowledge acquired from learning different tasks and uses it for unseen tasks. It demonstrates a clear advantage on tasks that have insufficient training data, e.g., few-shot learning. In most meta-learning methods, tasks are implicitly related via the shared model or optimizer. In this paper, we show that a meta-learner that explicitly relates tasks on a graph describing the relations of their output dimensions (e.g., classes) can significantly improve the performance of few-shot learning. This type of graph is usually free or cheap to obtain but has rarely been explored in previous works. We study the prototype based few-shot classification, in which a prototype is generated for each class, such that the nearest neighbor search between the prototypes produces an accurate classification. We introduce "Gated Propagation Network (GPN)", which learns to propagate messages between prototypes of different classes on the graph, so that learning the prototype of each class benefits from the data of other related classes. In GPN, an attention mechanism is used for the aggregation of messages from neighboring classes, and a gate is deployed to choose between the aggregated messages and the message from the class itself. GPN is trained on a sequence of tasks from many-shot to few-shot generated by subgraph sampling. During training, it is able to reuse and update previously achieved prototypes from the memory in a life-long learning cycle. In experiments, we change the training-test discrepancy and test task generation settings for thorough evaluations. GPN outperforms recent meta-learning methods on two benchmark datasets in all studied cases.
The quest of `can machines think' and `can machines do what human do' are quests that drive the development of artificial intelligence. Although recent artificial intelligence succeeds in many data intensive applications, it still lacks the ability of learning from limited exemplars and fast generalizing to new tasks. To tackle this problem, one has to turn to machine learning, which supports the scientific study of artificial intelligence. Particularly, a machine learning problem called Few-Shot Learning (FSL) targets at this case. It can rapidly generalize to new tasks of limited supervised experience by turning to prior knowledge, which mimics human's ability to acquire knowledge from few examples through generalization and analogy. It has been seen as a test-bed for real artificial intelligence, a way to reduce laborious data gathering and computationally costly training, and antidote for rare cases learning. With extensive works on FSL emerging, we give a comprehensive survey for it. We first give the formal definition for FSL. Then we point out the core issues of FSL, which turns the problem from "how to solve FSL" to "how to deal with the core issues". Accordingly, existing works from the birth of FSL to the most recent published ones are categorized in a unified taxonomy, with thorough discussion of the pros and cons for different categories. Finally, we envision possible future directions for FSL in terms of problem setup, techniques, applications and theory, hoping to provide insights to both beginners and experienced researchers.