In the context of modern machine learning, models deployed in real-world scenarios often encounter diverse data shifts like covariate and semantic shifts, leading to challenges in both out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization and detection. Despite considerable attention to these issues separately, a unified framework for theoretical understanding and practical usage is lacking. To bridge the gap, we introduce a graph-theoretic framework to jointly tackle both OOD generalization and detection problems. By leveraging the graph formulation, data representations are obtained through the factorization of the graph's adjacency matrix, enabling us to derive provable error quantifying OOD generalization and detection performance. Empirical results showcase competitive performance in comparison to existing methods, thereby validating our theoretical underpinnings. Code is publicly available at //github.com/deeplearning-wisc/graph-spectral-ood.
We propose a general framework for end-to-end learning of data structures. Our framework adapts to the underlying data distribution and provides fine-grained control over query and space complexity. Crucially, the data structure is learned from scratch, and does not require careful initialization or seeding with candidate data structures/algorithms. We first apply this framework to the problem of nearest neighbor search. In several settings, we are able to reverse-engineer the learned data structures and query algorithms. For 1D nearest neighbor search, the model discovers optimal distribution (in)dependent algorithms such as binary search and variants of interpolation search. In higher dimensions, the model learns solutions that resemble k-d trees in some regimes, while in others, they have elements of locality-sensitive hashing. The model can also learn useful representations of high-dimensional data and exploit them to design effective data structures. We also adapt our framework to the problem of estimating frequencies over a data stream, and believe it could also be a powerful discovery tool for new problems.
Supervised machine learning often encounters concept drift, where the data distribution changes over time, degrading model performance. Existing drift detection methods focus on identifying these shifts but often overlook the challenge of acquiring labeled data for model retraining after a shift occurs. We present the Strategy for Drift Sampling (SUDS), a novel method that selects homogeneous samples for retraining using existing drift detection algorithms, thereby enhancing model adaptability to evolving data. SUDS seamlessly integrates with current drift detection techniques. We also introduce the Harmonized Annotated Data Accuracy Metric (HADAM), a metric that evaluates classifier performance in relation to the quantity of annotated data required to achieve the stated performance, thereby taking into account the difficulty of acquiring labeled data. Our contributions are twofold: SUDS combines drift detection with strategic sampling to improve the retraining process, and HADAM provides a metric that balances classifier performance with the amount of labeled data, ensuring efficient resource utilization. Empirical results demonstrate the efficacy of SUDS in optimizing labeled data use in dynamic environments, significantly improving the performance of machine learning applications in real-world scenarios. Our code is open source and available at //github.com/cfellicious/SUDS/
Federated continual learning (FCL) aims to learn from sequential data stream in the decentralized federated learning setting, while simultaneously mitigating the catastrophic forgetting issue in classical continual learning. Existing FCL methods usually employ typical rehearsal mechanisms, which could result in privacy violations or additional onerous storage and computational burdens. In this work, an efficient and non-IID robust federated continual learning framework, called Federated Prototype-Augmented Prompt Learning (FPPL), is proposed. The FPPL can collaboratively learn lightweight prompts augmented by prototypes without rehearsal. On the client side, a fusion function is employed to fully leverage the knowledge contained in task-specific prompts for alleviating catastrophic forgetting. Additionally, global prototypes aggregated from the server are used to obtain unified representation through contrastive learning, mitigating the impact of non-IID-derived data heterogeneity. On the server side, locally uploaded prototypes are utilized to perform debiasing on the classifier, further alleviating the performance degradation caused by both non-IID and catastrophic forgetting. Empirical evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of FPPL, achieving notable performance with an efficient design while remaining robust to diverse non-IID degrees. Code is available at: //github.com/ycheoo/FPPL.
Efficient data streaming is essential for real-time data analytics, visualization, and machine learning model training, particularly when dealing with high-volume datasets. Various streaming technologies and serialization protocols have been developed to cater to different streaming requirements, each performing differently depending on specific tasks and datasets involved. This variety poses challenges in selecting the most appropriate combination, as encountered during the implementation of streaming system for the MAST fusion device data or SKA's radio astronomy data. To address this challenge, we conducted an empirical study on widely used data streaming technologies and serialization protocols. We also developed an extensible, open-source software framework to benchmark their efficiency across various performance metrics. Our study uncovers significant performance differences and trade-offs between these technologies, providing valuable insights that can guide the selection of optimal streaming and serialization solutions for modern data-intensive applications. Our goal is to equip the scientific community and industry professionals with the knowledge needed to enhance data streaming efficiency for improved data utilization and real-time analysis.
Inferring causal relationships in the decision-making processes of machine learning algorithms is a crucial step toward achieving explainable Artificial Intelligence (AI). In this research, we introduce a novel causality measure and a distance metric derived from Lempel-Ziv (LZ) complexity. We explore how the proposed causality measure can be used in decision trees by enabling splits based on features that most strongly \textit{cause} the outcome. We further evaluate the effectiveness of the causality-based decision tree and the distance-based decision tree in comparison to a traditional decision tree using Gini impurity. While the proposed methods demonstrate comparable classification performance overall, the causality-based decision tree significantly outperforms both the distance-based decision tree and the Gini-based decision tree on datasets generated from causal models. This result indicates that the proposed approach can capture insights beyond those of classical decision trees, especially in causally structured data. Based on the features used in the LZ causal measure based decision tree, we introduce a causal strength for each features in the dataset so as to infer the predominant causal variables for the occurrence of the outcome.
Data, the seminal opportunity and challenge in modern machine learning, currently constrains the scalability of representation learning and impedes the pace of model evolution. In this work, we investigate the efficiency properties of data from both optimization and generalization perspectives. Our theoretical and empirical analysis reveals an unexpected finding: for a given task, utilizing a publicly available, task- and architecture-agnostic model (referred to as the `prior model' in this paper) can effectively produce efficient data. Building on this insight, we propose the Representation Learning Accelerator (\algopt), which promotes the formation and utilization of efficient data, thereby accelerating representation learning. Utilizing a ResNet-18 pre-trained on CIFAR-10 as a prior model to inform ResNet-50 training on ImageNet-1K reduces computational costs by 50% while maintaining the same accuracy as the model trained with the original BYOL, which requires 100% cost. Our code is available at: \url{//github.com/LINs-lab/ReLA}.
With the breakthrough of AlphaGo, deep reinforcement learning becomes a recognized technique for solving sequential decision-making problems. Despite its reputation, data inefficiency caused by its trial and error learning mechanism makes deep reinforcement learning hard to be practical in a wide range of areas. Plenty of methods have been developed for sample efficient deep reinforcement learning, such as environment modeling, experience transfer, and distributed modifications, amongst which, distributed deep reinforcement learning has shown its potential in various applications, such as human-computer gaming, and intelligent transportation. In this paper, we conclude the state of this exciting field, by comparing the classical distributed deep reinforcement learning methods, and studying important components to achieve efficient distributed learning, covering single player single agent distributed deep reinforcement learning to the most complex multiple players multiple agents distributed deep reinforcement learning. Furthermore, we review recently released toolboxes that help to realize distributed deep reinforcement learning without many modifications of their non-distributed versions. By analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, a multi-player multi-agent distributed deep reinforcement learning toolbox is developed and released, which is further validated on Wargame, a complex environment, showing usability of the proposed toolbox for multiple players and multiple agents distributed deep reinforcement learning under complex games. Finally, we try to point out challenges and future trends, hoping this brief review can provide a guide or a spark for researchers who are interested in distributed deep reinforcement learning.
Recent advances of data-driven machine learning have revolutionized fields like computer vision, reinforcement learning, and many scientific and engineering domains. In many real-world and scientific problems, systems that generate data are governed by physical laws. Recent work shows that it provides potential benefits for machine learning models by incorporating the physical prior and collected data, which makes the intersection of machine learning and physics become a prevailing paradigm. In this survey, we present this learning paradigm called Physics-Informed Machine Learning (PIML) which is to build a model that leverages empirical data and available physical prior knowledge to improve performance on a set of tasks that involve a physical mechanism. We systematically review the recent development of physics-informed machine learning from three perspectives of machine learning tasks, representation of physical prior, and methods for incorporating physical prior. We also propose several important open research problems based on the current trends in the field. We argue that encoding different forms of physical prior into model architectures, optimizers, inference algorithms, and significant domain-specific applications like inverse engineering design and robotic control is far from fully being explored in the field of physics-informed machine learning. We believe that this study will encourage researchers in the machine learning community to actively participate in the interdisciplinary research of physics-informed machine learning.
Federated Learning aims to learn machine learning models from multiple decentralized edge devices (e.g. mobiles) or servers without sacrificing local data privacy. Recent Natural Language Processing techniques rely on deep learning and large pre-trained language models. However, both big deep neural and language models are trained with huge amounts of data which often lies on the server side. Since text data is widely originated from end users, in this work, we look into recent NLP models and techniques which use federated learning as the learning framework. Our survey discusses major challenges in federated natural language processing, including the algorithm challenges, system challenges as well as the privacy issues. We also provide a critical review of the existing Federated NLP evaluation methods and tools. Finally, we highlight the current research gaps and future directions.
The difficulty of deploying various deep learning (DL) models on diverse DL hardwares has boosted the research and development of DL compilers in the community. Several DL compilers have been proposed from both industry and academia such as Tensorflow XLA and TVM. Similarly, the DL compilers take the DL models described in different DL frameworks as input, and then generate optimized codes for diverse DL hardwares as output. However, none of the existing survey has analyzed the unique design of the DL compilers comprehensively. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive survey of existing DL compilers by dissecting the commonly adopted design in details, with emphasis on the DL oriented multi-level IRs, and frontend/backend optimizations. Specifically, we provide a comprehensive comparison among existing DL compilers from various aspects. In addition, we present detailed analysis of the multi-level IR design and compiler optimization techniques. Finally, several insights are highlighted as the potential research directions of DL compiler. This is the first survey paper focusing on the unique design of DL compiler, which we hope can pave the road for future research towards the DL compiler.