Satellite data has the potential to inspire a seismic shift for machine learning -- one in which we rethink existing practices designed for traditional data modalities. As machine learning for satellite data (SatML) gains traction for its real-world impact, our field is at a crossroads. We can either continue applying ill-suited approaches, or we can initiate a new research agenda that centers around the unique characteristics and challenges of satellite data. This position paper argues that satellite data constitutes a distinct modality for machine learning research and that we must recognize it as such to advance the quality and impact of SatML research across theory, methods, and deployment. We outline critical discussion questions and actionable suggestions to transform SatML from merely an intriguing application area to a dedicated research discipline that helps move the needle on big challenges for machine learning and society.
The logic of information flows (LIF) has recently been proposed as a general framework in the field of knowledge representation. In this framework, tasks of procedural nature can still be modeled in a declarative, logic-based fashion. In this paper, we focus on the task of query processing under limited access patterns, a well-studied problem in the database literature. We show that LIF is well-suited for modeling this task. Toward this goal, we introduce a variant of LIF called "forward" LIF (FLIF), in a first-order setting. FLIF takes a novel graph-navigational approach; it is an XPath-like language that nevertheless turns out to be equivalent to the "executable" fragment of first-order logic defined by Nash and Lud\"ascher. One can also classify the variables in FLIF expressions as inputs and outputs. Expressions where inputs and outputs are disjoint, referred to as io-disjoint FLIF expressions, allow a particularly transparent translation into algebraic query plans that respect the access limitations. Finally, we show that general FLIF expressions can always be put into io-disjoint form.
Classification algorithms using Transformer architectures can be affected by the sequence length learning problem whenever observations from different classes have a different length distribution. This problem causes models to use sequence length as a predictive feature instead of relying on important textual information. Although most public datasets are not affected by this problem, privately owned corpora for fields such as medicine and insurance may carry this data bias. The exploitation of this sequence length feature poses challenges throughout the value chain as these machine learning models can be used in critical applications. In this paper, we empirically expose this problem and present approaches to minimize its impacts.
Class-incremental learning (CIL) is a challenging task that involves sequentially learning to categorize classes from new tasks without forgetting previously learned information. The advent of large pre-trained models (PTMs) has fast-tracked the progress in CIL due to the highly transferable PTM representations, where tuning a small set of parameters leads to state-of-the-art performance when compared with the traditional CIL methods that are trained from scratch. However, repeated fine-tuning on each task destroys the rich representations of the PTMs and further leads to forgetting previous tasks. To strike a balance between the stability and plasticity of PTMs for CIL, we propose a novel perspective of eliminating training on every new task and instead train PTM only on the first task, and then refine its representation at inference time using test-time adaptation (TTA). Concretely, we propose Test-Time Adaptation for Class-Incremental Learning (TTACIL) that first fine-tunes PTMs using Adapters on the first task, then adjusts Layer Norm parameters of the PTM on each test instance for learning task-specific features, and finally resets them back to the adapted model to preserve stability. As a consequence, our TTACIL does not undergo any forgetting, while benefiting each task with the rich PTM features. Additionally, by design, our TTACIL is robust to common data corruptions. Our method outperforms several state-of-the-art CIL methods when evaluated on multiple CIL benchmarks under both clean and corrupted data. Code is available at: //github.com/IemProg/TTACIL.
Existing approaches to few-shot learning in NLP rely on large language models and fine-tuning of these to generalise on out-of-distribution data. In this work, we propose a simple yet powerful approach to "extreme" few-shot learning, wherein models are exposed to as little as 4 examples per class, based on soft-label prototypes that collectively capture the distribution of different classes across the input domain space. Inspired by previous work (Sucholutsky et al., 2021) on univariate or simple multivariate (synthetic) data, we propose a novel approach that is effective on large, high-dimensional and real-world datasets. We learn soft-label prototypes within a neural framework (DeepSLP) and we experimentally demonstrate that it achieves superior performance on 31/48 tested tasks and few-shot settings while closely matching the performance of strong baselines on the rest. We focus on learning previously unseen NLP tasks from very few examples (4, 8, 16) per label and present an in-depth analysis of the effectiveness of our approach.
For object re-identification (re-ID), learning from synthetic data has become a promising strategy to cheaply acquire large-scale annotated datasets and effective models, with few privacy concerns. Many interesting research problems arise from this strategy, e.g., how to reduce the domain gap between synthetic source and real-world target. To facilitate developing more new approaches in learning from synthetic data, we introduce the Alice benchmarks, large-scale datasets providing benchmarks as well as evaluation protocols to the research community. Within the Alice benchmarks, two object re-ID tasks are offered: person and vehicle re-ID. We collected and annotated two challenging real-world target datasets: AlicePerson and AliceVehicle, captured under various illuminations, image resolutions, etc. As an important feature of our real target, the clusterability of its training set is not manually guaranteed to make it closer to a real domain adaptation test scenario. Correspondingly, we reuse existing PersonX and VehicleX as synthetic source domains. The primary goal is to train models from synthetic data that can work effectively in the real world. In this paper, we detail the settings of Alice benchmarks, provide an analysis of existing commonly-used domain adaptation methods, and discuss some interesting future directions. An online server has been set up for the community to evaluate methods conveniently and fairly. Datasets and the online server details are available at //sites.google.com/view/alice-benchmarks.
In pace with developments in the research field of artificial intelligence, knowledge graphs (KGs) have attracted a surge of interest from both academia and industry. As a representation of semantic relations between entities, KGs have proven to be particularly relevant for natural language processing (NLP), experiencing a rapid spread and wide adoption within recent years. Given the increasing amount of research work in this area, several KG-related approaches have been surveyed in the NLP research community. However, a comprehensive study that categorizes established topics and reviews the maturity of individual research streams remains absent to this day. Contributing to closing this gap, we systematically analyzed 507 papers from the literature on KGs in NLP. Our survey encompasses a multifaceted review of tasks, research types, and contributions. As a result, we present a structured overview of the research landscape, provide a taxonomy of tasks, summarize our findings, and highlight directions for future work.
The existence of representative datasets is a prerequisite of many successful artificial intelligence and machine learning models. However, the subsequent application of these models often involves scenarios that are inadequately represented in the data used for training. The reasons for this are manifold and range from time and cost constraints to ethical considerations. As a consequence, the reliable use of these models, especially in safety-critical applications, is a huge challenge. Leveraging additional, already existing sources of knowledge is key to overcome the limitations of purely data-driven approaches, and eventually to increase the generalization capability of these models. Furthermore, predictions that conform with knowledge are crucial for making trustworthy and safe decisions even in underrepresented scenarios. This work provides an overview of existing techniques and methods in the literature that combine data-based models with existing knowledge. The identified approaches are structured according to the categories integration, extraction and conformity. Special attention is given to applications in the field of autonomous driving.
In contrast to batch learning where all training data is available at once, continual learning represents a family of methods that accumulate knowledge and learn continuously with data available in sequential order. Similar to the human learning process with the ability of learning, fusing, and accumulating new knowledge coming at different time steps, continual learning is considered to have high practical significance. Hence, continual learning has been studied in various artificial intelligence tasks. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of the recent progress of continual learning in computer vision. In particular, the works are grouped by their representative techniques, including regularization, knowledge distillation, memory, generative replay, parameter isolation, and a combination of the above techniques. For each category of these techniques, both its characteristics and applications in computer vision are presented. At the end of this overview, several subareas, where continuous knowledge accumulation is potentially helpful while continual learning has not been well studied, are discussed.
Despite its great success, machine learning can have its limits when dealing with insufficient training data. A potential solution is the additional integration of prior knowledge into the training process which leads to the notion of informed machine learning. In this paper, we present a structured overview of various approaches in this field. We provide a definition and propose a concept for informed machine learning which illustrates its building blocks and distinguishes it from conventional machine learning. We introduce a taxonomy that serves as a classification framework for informed machine learning approaches. It considers the source of knowledge, its representation, and its integration into the machine learning pipeline. Based on this taxonomy, we survey related research and describe how different knowledge representations such as algebraic equations, logic rules, or simulation results can be used in learning systems. This evaluation of numerous papers on the basis of our taxonomy uncovers key methods in the field of informed machine learning.
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have received considerable attention on graph-structured data learning for a wide variety of tasks. The well-designed propagation mechanism which has been demonstrated effective is the most fundamental part of GNNs. Although most of GNNs basically follow a message passing manner, litter effort has been made to discover and analyze their essential relations. In this paper, we establish a surprising connection between different propagation mechanisms with a unified optimization problem, showing that despite the proliferation of various GNNs, in fact, their proposed propagation mechanisms are the optimal solution optimizing a feature fitting function over a wide class of graph kernels with a graph regularization term. Our proposed unified optimization framework, summarizing the commonalities between several of the most representative GNNs, not only provides a macroscopic view on surveying the relations between different GNNs, but also further opens up new opportunities for flexibly designing new GNNs. With the proposed framework, we discover that existing works usually utilize naive graph convolutional kernels for feature fitting function, and we further develop two novel objective functions considering adjustable graph kernels showing low-pass or high-pass filtering capabilities respectively. Moreover, we provide the convergence proofs and expressive power comparisons for the proposed models. Extensive experiments on benchmark datasets clearly show that the proposed GNNs not only outperform the state-of-the-art methods but also have good ability to alleviate over-smoothing, and further verify the feasibility for designing GNNs with our unified optimization framework.