Real-world systems are often characterized by high-dimensional nonlinear dynamics, making them challenging to control in real time. While reduced-order models (ROMs) are frequently employed in model-based control schemes, dimensionality reduction introduces model uncertainty which can potentially compromise the stability and safety of the original high-dimensional system. In this work, we propose a novel reduced-order model predictive control (ROMPC) scheme to solve constrained optimal control problems for nonlinear, high-dimensional systems. To address the challenges of using ROMs in predictive control schemes, we derive an error bounding system that dynamically accounts for model reduction error. Using these bounds, we design a robust MPC scheme that ensures robust constraint satisfaction, recursive feasibility, and asymptotic stability. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method in simulations on a high-dimensional soft robot with nearly 10,000 states.
Quantum circuit mapping is a crucial process in the quantum circuit compilation pipeline, facilitating the transformation of a logical quantum circuit into a list of instructions directly executable on a target quantum system. Recent research has introduced a post-compilation step known as remapping, which seeks to reconfigure the initial circuit mapping to mitigate quantum circuit errors arising from system variability. As quantum processors continue to scale in size, the efficiency of quantum circuit mapping and the overall compilation process has become of paramount importance. In this work, we introduce a quantum circuit remapping algorithm that leverages the intrinsic symmetries in quantum processors, making it well-suited for large-scale quantum systems. This algorithm identifies all topologically equivalent circuit mappings by constraining the search space using symmetries and accelerates the scoring of each mapping using vector computation. Notably, this symmetry-based circuit remapping algorithm exhibits linear scaling with the number of qubits in the target quantum hardware and is proven to be optimal in terms of its time complexity. Moreover, we conduct a comparative analysis against existing methods in the literature, demonstrating the superior performance of our symmetry-based method on state-of-the-art quantum hardware architectures and highlighting the practical utility of our algorithm, particularly for quantum processors with millions of qubits.
Computational simulation is increasingly relied upon for high-consequence engineering decisions, and a foundational element to solid mechanics simulations, such as finite element analysis (FEA), is a credible constitutive or material model. Calibration of these complex models is an essential step; however, the selection, calibration and validation of material models is often a discrete, multi-stage process that is decoupled from material characterization activities, which means the data collected does not always align with the data that is needed. To address this issue, an integrated workflow for delivering an enhanced characterization and calibration procedure (Interlaced Characterization and Calibration (ICC)) is introduced. This framework leverages Bayesian optimal experimental design (BOED) to select the optimal load path for a cruciform specimen in order to collect the most informative data for model calibration. The critical first piece of algorithm development is to demonstrate the active experimental design for a fast model with simulated data. For this demonstration, a material point simulator that models a plane stress elastoplastic material subject to bi-axial loading was chosen. The ICC framework is demonstrated on two exemplar problems in which BOED is used to determine which load step to take, e.g., in which direction to increment the strain, at each iteration of the characterization and calibration cycle. Calibration results from data obtained by adaptively selecting the load path within the ICC algorithm are compared to results from data generated under two naive static load paths that were chosen a priori based on human intuition. In these exemplar problems, data generated in an adaptive setting resulted in calibrated model parameters with reduced measures of uncertainty compared to the static settings.
Safe deployment of time-series classifiers for real-world applications relies on the ability to detect the data which is not generated from the same distribution as training data. This task is referred to as out-of-distribution (OOD) detection. We consider the novel problem of OOD detection for the time-series domain. We discuss the unique challenges posed by time-series data and explain why prior methods from the image domain will perform poorly. Motivated by these challenges, this paper proposes a novel {\em Seasonal Ratio Scoring (SRS)} approach. SRS consists of three key algorithmic steps. First, each input is decomposed into class-wise semantic component and remainder. Second, this decomposition is employed to estimate the class-wise conditional likelihoods of the input and remainder using deep generative models. The seasonal ratio score is computed from these estimates. Third, a threshold interval is identified from the in-distribution data to detect OOD examples. Experiments on diverse real-world benchmarks demonstrate that the SRS method is well-suited for time-series OOD detection when compared to baseline methods. Open-source code for SRS method is provided at //github.com/tahabelkhouja/SRS
The emergence of WebAssembly allows attackers to hide the malicious functionalities of JavaScript malware in cross-language interoperations, termed JavaScript-WebAssembly multilingual malware (JWMM). However, existing anti-virus solutions based on static program analysis are still limited to monolingual code. As a result, their detection effectiveness decreases significantly against JWMM. The detection of JWMM is challenging due to the complex interoperations and semantic diversity between JavaScript and WebAssembly. To bridge this gap, we present JWBinder, the first technique aimed at enhancing the static detection of JWMM. JWBinder performs a language-specific data-flow analysis to capture the cross-language interoperations and then characterizes the functionalities of JWMM through a unified high-level structure called Inter-language Program Dependency Graph. The extensive evaluation on one of the most representative real-world anti-virus platforms, VirusTotal, shows that \system effectively enhances anti-virus systems from various vendors and increases the overall successful detection rate against JWMM from 49.1\% to 86.2\%. Additionally, we assess the side effects and runtime overhead of JWBinder, corroborating its practical viability in real-world applications.
Spatio-temporal graph neural networks (STGNNs) have gained popularity as a powerful tool for effectively modeling spatio-temporal dependencies in diverse real-world urban applications, including intelligent transportation and public safety. However, the black-box nature of STGNNs limits their interpretability, hindering their application in scenarios related to urban resource allocation and policy formulation. To bridge this gap, we propose an Explainable Spatio-Temporal Graph Neural Networks (STExplainer) framework that enhances STGNNs with inherent explainability, enabling them to provide accurate predictions and faithful explanations simultaneously. Our framework integrates a unified spatio-temporal graph attention network with a positional information fusion layer as the STG encoder and decoder, respectively. Furthermore, we propose a structure distillation approach based on the Graph Information Bottleneck (GIB) principle with an explainable objective, which is instantiated by the STG encoder and decoder. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that our STExplainer outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in terms of predictive accuracy and explainability metrics (i.e., sparsity and fidelity) on traffic and crime prediction tasks. Furthermore, our model exhibits superior representation ability in alleviating data missing and sparsity issues. The implementation code is available at: //github.com/HKUDS/STExplainer.
Ising machines are a form of quantum-inspired processing-in-memory computer which has shown great promise for overcoming the limitations of traditional computing paradigms while operating at a fraction of the energy use. The process of designing Ising machines is known as the reverse Ising problem. Unfortunately, this problem is in general computationally intractable: it is a nonconvex mixed-integer linear programming problem which cannot be naively brute-forced except in the simplest cases due to exponential scaling of runtime with number of spins. We prove new theoretical results which allow us to reduce the search space to one with quadratic scaling. We utilize this theory to develop general purpose algorithmic solutions to the reverse Ising problem. In particular, we demonstrate Ising formulations of 3-bit and 4-bit integer multiplication which use fewer total spins than previously known methods by a factor of more than three. Our results increase the practicality of implementing such circuits on modern Ising hardware, where spins are at a premium.
Advances in artificial intelligence often stem from the development of new environments that abstract real-world situations into a form where research can be done conveniently. This paper contributes such an environment based on ideas inspired by elementary Microeconomics. Agents learn to produce resources in a spatially complex world, trade them with one another, and consume those that they prefer. We show that the emergent production, consumption, and pricing behaviors respond to environmental conditions in the directions predicted by supply and demand shifts in Microeconomics. We also demonstrate settings where the agents' emergent prices for goods vary over space, reflecting the local abundance of goods. After the price disparities emerge, some agents then discover a niche of transporting goods between regions with different prevailing prices -- a profitable strategy because they can buy goods where they are cheap and sell them where they are expensive. Finally, in a series of ablation experiments, we investigate how choices in the environmental rewards, bartering actions, agent architecture, and ability to consume tradable goods can either aid or inhibit the emergence of this economic behavior. This work is part of the environment development branch of a research program that aims to build human-like artificial general intelligence through multi-agent interactions in simulated societies. By exploring which environment features are needed for the basic phenomena of elementary microeconomics to emerge automatically from learning, we arrive at an environment that differs from those studied in prior multi-agent reinforcement learning work along several dimensions. For example, the model incorporates heterogeneous tastes and physical abilities, and agents negotiate with one another as a grounded form of communication.
Federated Learning (FL) is a decentralized machine-learning paradigm, in which a global server iteratively averages the model parameters of local users without accessing their data. User heterogeneity has imposed significant challenges to FL, which can incur drifted global models that are slow to converge. Knowledge Distillation has recently emerged to tackle this issue, by refining the server model using aggregated knowledge from heterogeneous users, other than directly averaging their model parameters. This approach, however, depends on a proxy dataset, making it impractical unless such a prerequisite is satisfied. Moreover, the ensemble knowledge is not fully utilized to guide local model learning, which may in turn affect the quality of the aggregated model. Inspired by the prior art, we propose a data-free knowledge distillation} approach to address heterogeneous FL, where the server learns a lightweight generator to ensemble user information in a data-free manner, which is then broadcasted to users, regulating local training using the learned knowledge as an inductive bias. Empirical studies powered by theoretical implications show that, our approach facilitates FL with better generalization performance using fewer communication rounds, compared with the state-of-the-art.
Learning latent representations of nodes in graphs is an important and ubiquitous task with widespread applications such as link prediction, node classification, and graph visualization. Previous methods on graph representation learning mainly focus on static graphs, however, many real-world graphs are dynamic and evolve over time. In this paper, we present Dynamic Self-Attention Network (DySAT), a novel neural architecture that operates on dynamic graphs and learns node representations that capture both structural properties and temporal evolutionary patterns. Specifically, DySAT computes node representations by jointly employing self-attention layers along two dimensions: structural neighborhood and temporal dynamics. We conduct link prediction experiments on two classes of graphs: communication networks and bipartite rating networks. Our experimental results show that DySAT has a significant performance gain over several different state-of-the-art graph embedding baselines.
Multi-relation Question Answering is a challenging task, due to the requirement of elaborated analysis on questions and reasoning over multiple fact triples in knowledge base. In this paper, we present a novel model called Interpretable Reasoning Network that employs an interpretable, hop-by-hop reasoning process for question answering. The model dynamically decides which part of an input question should be analyzed at each hop; predicts a relation that corresponds to the current parsed results; utilizes the predicted relation to update the question representation and the state of the reasoning process; and then drives the next-hop reasoning. Experiments show that our model yields state-of-the-art results on two datasets. More interestingly, the model can offer traceable and observable intermediate predictions for reasoning analysis and failure diagnosis.