Deep neural networks (DNNs) play a crucial role in the field of machine learning, demonstrating state-of-the-art performance across various application domains. However, despite their success, DNN-based models may occasionally exhibit challenges with generalization, i.e., may fail to handle inputs that were not encountered during training. This limitation is a significant challenge when it comes to deploying deep learning for safety-critical tasks, as well as in real-world settings characterized by substantial variability. We introduce a novel approach for harnessing DNN verification technology to identify DNN-driven decision rules that exhibit robust generalization to previously unencountered input domains. Our method assesses generalization within an input domain by measuring the level of agreement between independently trained deep neural networks for inputs in this domain. We also efficiently realize our approach by using off-the-shelf DNN verification engines, and extensively evaluate it on both supervised and unsupervised DNN benchmarks, including a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) system for Internet congestion control -- demonstrating the applicability of our approach for real-world settings. Moreover, our research introduces a fresh objective for formal verification, offering the prospect of mitigating the challenges linked to deploying DNN-driven systems in real-world scenarios.
Active learning (AL) techniques optimally utilize a labeling budget by iteratively selecting instances that are most valuable for learning. However, they lack ``prerequisite checks'', i.e., there are no prescribed criteria to pick an AL algorithm best suited for a dataset. A practitioner must pick a technique they \emph{trust} would beat random sampling, based on prior reported results, and hope that it is resilient to the many variables in their environment: dataset, labeling budget and prediction pipelines. The important questions then are: how often on average, do we expect any AL technique to reliably beat the computationally cheap and easy-to-implement strategy of random sampling? Does it at least make sense to use AL in an ``Always ON'' mode in a prediction pipeline, so that while it might not always help, it never under-performs random sampling? How much of a role does the prediction pipeline play in AL's success? We examine these questions in detail for the task of text classification using pre-trained representations, which are ubiquitous today. Our primary contribution here is a rigorous evaluation of AL techniques, old and new, across setups that vary wrt datasets, text representations and classifiers. This unlocks multiple insights around warm-up times, i.e., number of labels before gains from AL are seen, viability of an ``Always ON'' mode and the relative significance of different factors. Additionally, we release a framework for rigorous benchmarking of AL techniques for text classification.
The ongoing research scenario for automatic speech recognition (ASR) envisions a clear division between end-to-end approaches and classic modular systems. Even though a high-level comparison between the two approaches in terms of their requirements and (dis)advantages is commonly addressed, a closer comparison under similar conditions is not readily available in the literature. In this work, we present a comparison focused on the label topology and training criterion. We compare two discriminative alignment models with hidden Markov model (HMM) and connectionist temporal classification topology, and two first-order label context ASR models utilizing factored HMM and strictly monotonic recurrent neural network transducer, respectively. We use different measurements for the evaluation of the alignment quality, and compare word error rate and real time factor of our best systems. Experiments are conducted on the LibriSpeech 960h and Switchboard 300h tasks.
Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have facilitated the development of chatbots with sophisticated conversational capabilities. However, LLMs exhibit frequent inaccurate responses to queries, hindering applications in educational settings. In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of integrating a knowledge base (KB) with LLM intelligent tutors to increase response reliability. To achieve this, we design a scaleable KB that affords educational supervisors seamless integration of lesson curricula, which is automatically processed by the intelligent tutoring system. We then detail an evaluation, where student participants were presented with questions about the artificial intelligence curriculum to respond to. GPT-4 intelligent tutors with varying hierarchies of KB access and human domain experts then assessed these responses. Lastly, students cross-examined the intelligent tutors' responses to the domain experts' and ranked their various pedagogical abilities. Results suggest that, although these intelligent tutors still demonstrate a lower accuracy compared to domain experts, the accuracy of the intelligent tutors increases when access to a KB is granted. We also observe that the intelligent tutors with KB access exhibit better pedagogical abilities to speak like a teacher and understand students than those of domain experts, while their ability to help students remains lagging behind domain experts.
In the realm of self-supervised learning (SSL), masked image modeling (MIM) has gained popularity alongside contrastive learning methods. MIM involves reconstructing masked regions of input images using their unmasked portions. A notable subset of MIM methodologies employs discrete tokens as the reconstruction target, but the theoretical underpinnings of this choice remain underexplored. In this paper, we explore the role of these discrete tokens, aiming to unravel their benefits and limitations. Building upon the connection between MIM and contrastive learning, we provide a comprehensive theoretical understanding on how discrete tokenization affects the model's generalization capabilities. Furthermore, we propose a novel metric named TCAS, which is specifically designed to assess the effectiveness of discrete tokens within the MIM framework. Inspired by this metric, we contribute an innovative tokenizer design and propose a corresponding MIM method named ClusterMIM. It demonstrates superior performance on a variety of benchmark datasets and ViT backbones. Code is available at //github.com/PKU-ML/ClusterMIM.
The fusion of causal models with deep learning introducing increasingly intricate data sets, such as the causal associations within images or between textual components, has surfaced as a focal research area. Nonetheless, the broadening of original causal concepts and theories to such complex, non-statistical data has been met with serious challenges. In response, our study proposes redefinitions of causal data into three distinct categories from the standpoint of causal structure and representation: definite data, semi-definite data, and indefinite data. Definite data chiefly pertains to statistical data used in conventional causal scenarios, while semi-definite data refers to a spectrum of data formats germane to deep learning, including time-series, images, text, and others. Indefinite data is an emergent research sphere inferred from the progression of data forms by us. To comprehensively present these three data paradigms, we elaborate on their formal definitions, differences manifested in datasets, resolution pathways, and development of research. We summarize key tasks and achievements pertaining to definite and semi-definite data from myriad research undertakings, present a roadmap for indefinite data, beginning with its current research conundrums. Lastly, we classify and scrutinize the key datasets presently utilized within these three paradigms.
While deep reinforcement learning (RL) has fueled multiple high-profile successes in machine learning, it is held back from more widespread adoption by its often poor data efficiency and the limited generality of the policies it produces. A promising approach for alleviating these limitations is to cast the development of better RL algorithms as a machine learning problem itself in a process called meta-RL. Meta-RL is most commonly studied in a problem setting where, given a distribution of tasks, the goal is to learn a policy that is capable of adapting to any new task from the task distribution with as little data as possible. In this survey, we describe the meta-RL problem setting in detail as well as its major variations. We discuss how, at a high level, meta-RL research can be clustered based on the presence of a task distribution and the learning budget available for each individual task. Using these clusters, we then survey meta-RL algorithms and applications. We conclude by presenting the open problems on the path to making meta-RL part of the standard toolbox for a deep RL practitioner.
The rapid recent progress in machine learning (ML) has raised a number of scientific questions that challenge the longstanding dogma of the field. One of the most important riddles is the good empirical generalization of overparameterized models. Overparameterized models are excessively complex with respect to the size of the training dataset, which results in them perfectly fitting (i.e., interpolating) the training data, which is usually noisy. Such interpolation of noisy data is traditionally associated with detrimental overfitting, and yet a wide range of interpolating models -- from simple linear models to deep neural networks -- have recently been observed to generalize extremely well on fresh test data. Indeed, the recently discovered double descent phenomenon has revealed that highly overparameterized models often improve over the best underparameterized model in test performance. Understanding learning in this overparameterized regime requires new theory and foundational empirical studies, even for the simplest case of the linear model. The underpinnings of this understanding have been laid in very recent analyses of overparameterized linear regression and related statistical learning tasks, which resulted in precise analytic characterizations of double descent. This paper provides a succinct overview of this emerging theory of overparameterized ML (henceforth abbreviated as TOPML) that explains these recent findings through a statistical signal processing perspective. We emphasize the unique aspects that define the TOPML research area as a subfield of modern ML theory and outline interesting open questions that remain.
Federated learning (FL) is an emerging, privacy-preserving machine learning paradigm, drawing tremendous attention in both academia and industry. A unique characteristic of FL is heterogeneity, which resides in the various hardware specifications and dynamic states across the participating devices. Theoretically, heterogeneity can exert a huge influence on the FL training process, e.g., causing a device unavailable for training or unable to upload its model updates. Unfortunately, these impacts have never been systematically studied and quantified in existing FL literature. In this paper, we carry out the first empirical study to characterize the impacts of heterogeneity in FL. We collect large-scale data from 136k smartphones that can faithfully reflect heterogeneity in real-world settings. We also build a heterogeneity-aware FL platform that complies with the standard FL protocol but with heterogeneity in consideration. Based on the data and the platform, we conduct extensive experiments to compare the performance of state-of-the-art FL algorithms under heterogeneity-aware and heterogeneity-unaware settings. Results show that heterogeneity causes non-trivial performance degradation in FL, including up to 9.2% accuracy drop, 2.32x lengthened training time, and undermined fairness. Furthermore, we analyze potential impact factors and find that device failure and participant bias are two potential factors for performance degradation. Our study provides insightful implications for FL practitioners. On the one hand, our findings suggest that FL algorithm designers consider necessary heterogeneity during the evaluation. On the other hand, our findings urge system providers to design specific mechanisms to mitigate the impacts of heterogeneity.
Deep neural networks have revolutionized many machine learning tasks in power systems, ranging from pattern recognition to signal processing. The data in these tasks is typically represented in Euclidean domains. Nevertheless, there is an increasing number of applications in power systems, where data are collected from non-Euclidean domains and represented as the graph-structured data with high dimensional features and interdependency among nodes. The complexity of graph-structured data has brought significant challenges to the existing deep neural networks defined in Euclidean domains. Recently, many studies on extending deep neural networks for graph-structured data in power systems have emerged. In this paper, a comprehensive overview of graph neural networks (GNNs) in power systems is proposed. Specifically, several classical paradigms of GNNs structures (e.g., graph convolutional networks, graph recurrent neural networks, graph attention networks, graph generative networks, spatial-temporal graph convolutional networks, and hybrid forms of GNNs) are summarized, and key applications in power systems such as fault diagnosis, power prediction, power flow calculation, and data generation are reviewed in detail. Furthermore, main issues and some research trends about the applications of GNNs in power systems are discussed.
Deep neural networks (DNNs) are successful in many computer vision tasks. However, the most accurate DNNs require millions of parameters and operations, making them energy, computation and memory intensive. This impedes the deployment of large DNNs in low-power devices with limited compute resources. Recent research improves DNN models by reducing the memory requirement, energy consumption, and number of operations without significantly decreasing the accuracy. This paper surveys the progress of low-power deep learning and computer vision, specifically in regards to inference, and discusses the methods for compacting and accelerating DNN models. The techniques can be divided into four major categories: (1) parameter quantization and pruning, (2) compressed convolutional filters and matrix factorization, (3) network architecture search, and (4) knowledge distillation. We analyze the accuracy, advantages, disadvantages, and potential solutions to the problems with the techniques in each category. We also discuss new evaluation metrics as a guideline for future research.