Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have significantly improved the accuracy of intelligent applications on mobile devices. DNN surgery, which partitions DNN processing between mobile devices and multi-access edge computing (MEC) servers, can enable real-time inference despite the computational limitations of mobile devices. However, DNN surgery faces a critical challenge: determining the optimal computing resource demand from the server and the corresponding partition strategy, while considering both inference latency and MEC server usage costs. This problem is compounded by two factors: (1) the finite computing capacity of the MEC server, which is shared among multiple devices, leading to inter-dependent demands, and (2) the shift in modern DNN architecture from chains to directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), which complicates potential solutions. In this paper, we introduce a novel Decentralized DNN Surgery (DDS) framework. We formulate the partition strategy as a min-cut and propose a resource allocation game to adaptively schedule the demands of mobile devices in an MEC environment. We prove the existence of a Nash Equilibrium (NE), and develop an iterative algorithm to efficiently reach the NE for each device. Our extensive experiments demonstrate that DDS can effectively handle varying MEC scenarios, achieving up to 1.25$\times$ acceleration compared to the state-of-the-art algorithm.
Generative Language Models (GLMs) have shown impressive performance in tasks such as text generation, understanding, and reasoning. However, the large model size poses challenges for practical deployment. To solve this problem, Quantization-Aware Training (QAT) has become increasingly popular. However, current QAT methods for generative models have resulted in a noticeable loss of accuracy. To counteract this issue, we propose a novel knowledge distillation method specifically designed for GLMs. Our method, called token-scaled logit distillation, prevents overfitting and provides superior learning from the teacher model and ground truth. This research marks the first evaluation of ternary weight quantization-aware training of large-scale GLMs with less than 1.0 degradation in perplexity and no loss of accuracy in a reasoning task.
As surgical interventions trend towards minimally invasive approaches, Concentric Tube Robots (CTRs) have been explored for various interventions such as brain, eye, fetoscopic, lung, cardiac and prostate surgeries. Arranged concentrically, each tube is rotated and translated independently to move the robot end-effector position, making kinematics and control challenging. Classical model-based approaches have been previously investigated with developments in deep learning based approaches outperforming more classical approaches in both forward kinematics and shape estimation. We propose a deep reinforcement learning approach to control where we generalise across two to four systems, an element not yet achieved in any other deep learning approach for CTRs. In this way we explore the likely robustness of the control approach. Also investigated is the impact of rotational constraints applied on tube actuation and the effects on error metrics. We evaluate inverse kinematics errors and tracking error for path following tasks and compare the results to those achieved using state of the art methods. Additionally, as current results are performed in simulation, we also investigate a domain transfer approach known as domain randomization and evaluate error metrics as an initial step towards hardware implementation. Finally, we compare our method to a Jacobian approach found in literature.
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have succeeded in various computer science applications, yet deep GNNs underperform their shallow counterparts despite deep learning's success in other domains. Over-smoothing and over-squashing are key challenges when stacking graph convolutional layers, hindering deep representation learning and information propagation from distant nodes. Our work reveals that over-smoothing and over-squashing are intrinsically related to the spectral gap of the graph Laplacian, resulting in an inevitable trade-off between these two issues, as they cannot be alleviated simultaneously. To achieve a suitable compromise, we propose adding and removing edges as a viable approach. We introduce the Stochastic Jost and Liu Curvature Rewiring (SJLR) algorithm, which is computationally efficient and preserves fundamental properties compared to previous curvature-based methods. Unlike existing approaches, SJLR performs edge addition and removal during GNN training while maintaining the graph unchanged during testing. Comprehensive comparisons demonstrate SJLR's competitive performance in addressing over-smoothing and over-squashing.
Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) is an essential component of modern Augmented Reality (AR) applications. However, VIO only tracks the relative pose of the device, leading to drift over time. Absolute pose estimation methods infer the device's absolute pose, but their accuracy depends on the input quality. This paper introduces VIO-APR, a new framework for markerless mobile AR that combines an absolute pose regressor (APR) with a local VIO tracking system. VIO-APR uses VIO to assess the reliability of the APR and the APR to identify and compensate for VIO drift. This feedback loop results in more accurate positioning and more stable AR experiences. To evaluate VIO-APR, we created a dataset that combines camera images with ARKit's VIO system output for six indoor and outdoor scenes of various scales. Over this dataset, VIO-APR improves the median accuracy of popular APR by up to 36\% in position and 29\% in orientation, increases the percentage of frames in the high ($0.25 m, 2^{\circ}$) accuracy level by up to 112\% and reduces the percentage of frames predicted below the low ($5 m, 10^\circ$) accuracy greatly. We implement VIO-APR into a mobile AR application using Unity to demonstrate its capabilities. VIO-APR results in noticeably more accurate localization and a more stable overall experience.
Large Language Models (LLMs) have significantly advanced natural language processing (NLP) with their impressive language understanding and generation capabilities. However, their performance may be suboptimal for long-tail or domain-specific tasks due to limited exposure to domain-specific knowledge and vocabulary. Additionally, the lack of transparency of most state-of-the-art (SOTA) LLMs, which can only be accessed via APIs, impedes further fine-tuning with custom data. Moreover, data privacy is a significant concern. To address these challenges, we propose the novel Parametric Knowledge Guiding (PKG) framework, which equips LLMs with a knowledge-guiding module to access relevant knowledge at runtime without altering the LLMs' parameters. Our PKG is based on open-source "white-box" small language models, allowing offline storage of any knowledge that LLMs require. We demonstrate that our PKG framework can enhance the performance of "black-box" LLMs on a range of long-tail and domain-specific downstream tasks requiring factual, tabular, medical, and multimodal knowledge.
Existing knowledge graph (KG) embedding models have primarily focused on static KGs. However, real-world KGs do not remain static, but rather evolve and grow in tandem with the development of KG applications. Consequently, new facts and previously unseen entities and relations continually emerge, necessitating an embedding model that can quickly learn and transfer new knowledge through growth. Motivated by this, we delve into an expanding field of KG embedding in this paper, i.e., lifelong KG embedding. We consider knowledge transfer and retention of the learning on growing snapshots of a KG without having to learn embeddings from scratch. The proposed model includes a masked KG autoencoder for embedding learning and update, with an embedding transfer strategy to inject the learned knowledge into the new entity and relation embeddings, and an embedding regularization method to avoid catastrophic forgetting. To investigate the impacts of different aspects of KG growth, we construct four datasets to evaluate the performance of lifelong KG embedding. Experimental results show that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art inductive and lifelong embedding baselines.
Knowledge Graph Embedding (KGE) aims to learn representations for entities and relations. Most KGE models have gained great success, especially on extrapolation scenarios. Specifically, given an unseen triple (h, r, t), a trained model can still correctly predict t from (h, r, ?), or h from (?, r, t), such extrapolation ability is impressive. However, most existing KGE works focus on the design of delicate triple modeling function, which mainly tells us how to measure the plausibility of observed triples, but offers limited explanation of why the methods can extrapolate to unseen data, and what are the important factors to help KGE extrapolate. Therefore in this work, we attempt to study the KGE extrapolation of two problems: 1. How does KGE extrapolate to unseen data? 2. How to design the KGE model with better extrapolation ability? For the problem 1, we first discuss the impact factors for extrapolation and from relation, entity and triple level respectively, propose three Semantic Evidences (SEs), which can be observed from train set and provide important semantic information for extrapolation. Then we verify the effectiveness of SEs through extensive experiments on several typical KGE methods. For the problem 2, to make better use of the three levels of SE, we propose a novel GNN-based KGE model, called Semantic Evidence aware Graph Neural Network (SE-GNN). In SE-GNN, each level of SE is modeled explicitly by the corresponding neighbor pattern, and merged sufficiently by the multi-layer aggregation, which contributes to obtaining more extrapolative knowledge representation. Finally, through extensive experiments on FB15k-237 and WN18RR datasets, we show that SE-GNN achieves state-of-the-art performance on Knowledge Graph Completion task and performs a better extrapolation ability.
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have shown promising results on a broad spectrum of applications. Most empirical studies of GNNs directly take the observed graph as input, assuming the observed structure perfectly depicts the accurate and complete relations between nodes. However, graphs in the real world are inevitably noisy or incomplete, which could even exacerbate the quality of graph representations. In this work, we propose a novel Variational Information Bottleneck guided Graph Structure Learning framework, namely VIB-GSL, in the perspective of information theory. VIB-GSL advances the Information Bottleneck (IB) principle for graph structure learning, providing a more elegant and universal framework for mining underlying task-relevant relations. VIB-GSL learns an informative and compressive graph structure to distill the actionable information for specific downstream tasks. VIB-GSL deduces a variational approximation for irregular graph data to form a tractable IB objective function, which facilitates training stability. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the superior effectiveness and robustness of VIB-GSL.
Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have recently achieved impressive results for many real-world applications, and many GAN variants have emerged with improvements in sample quality and training stability. However, they have not been well visualized or understood. How does a GAN represent our visual world internally? What causes the artifacts in GAN results? How do architectural choices affect GAN learning? Answering such questions could enable us to develop new insights and better models. In this work, we present an analytic framework to visualize and understand GANs at the unit-, object-, and scene-level. We first identify a group of interpretable units that are closely related to object concepts using a segmentation-based network dissection method. Then, we quantify the causal effect of interpretable units by measuring the ability of interventions to control objects in the output. We examine the contextual relationship between these units and their surroundings by inserting the discovered object concepts into new images. We show several practical applications enabled by our framework, from comparing internal representations across different layers, models, and datasets, to improving GANs by locating and removing artifact-causing units, to interactively manipulating objects in a scene. We provide open source interpretation tools to help researchers and practitioners better understand their GAN models.
Visual Question Answering (VQA) models have struggled with counting objects in natural images so far. We identify a fundamental problem due to soft attention in these models as a cause. To circumvent this problem, we propose a neural network component that allows robust counting from object proposals. Experiments on a toy task show the effectiveness of this component and we obtain state-of-the-art accuracy on the number category of the VQA v2 dataset without negatively affecting other categories, even outperforming ensemble models with our single model. On a difficult balanced pair metric, the component gives a substantial improvement in counting over a strong baseline by 6.6%.