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How much does AI assistance impact developer productivity? To date, the software engineering literature has provided a range of answers, targeting a diversity of outcomes: from perceived productivity to speed on task and developer throughput. Our randomized controlled trial with 96 full-time Google software engineers contributes to this literature by sharing an estimate of the impact of three AI features on the time developers spent on a complex, enterprise-grade task. We found that AI significantly shortened the time developers spent on task. Our best estimate of the size of this effect, controlling for factors known to influence developer time on task, stands at about 21\%, although our confidence interval is large. We also found an interesting effect whereby developers who spend more hours on code-related activities per day were faster with AI. Product and future research considerations are discussed. In particular, we invite further research that explores the impact of AI at the ecosystem level and across multiple suites of AI-enhanced tools, since we cannot assume that the effect size obtained in our lab study will necessarily apply more broadly, or that the effect of AI found using internal Google tooling in the summer of 2024 will translate across tools and over time., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables

As generative AI systems, including large language models (LLMs) and diffusion models, advance rapidly, their growing adoption has led to new and complex security risks often overlooked in traditional AI risk assessment frameworks. This paper introduces a novel formal framework for categorizing and mitigating these emergent security risks by integrating adaptive, real-time monitoring, and dynamic risk mitigation strategies tailored to generative models' unique vulnerabilities. We identify previously under-explored risks, including latent space exploitation, multi-modal cross-attack vectors, and feedback-loop-induced model degradation. Our framework employs a layered approach, incorporating anomaly detection, continuous red-teaming, and real-time adversarial simulation to mitigate these risks. We focus on formal verification methods to ensure model robustness and scalability in the face of evolving threats. Though theoretical, this work sets the stage for future empirical validation by establishing a detailed methodology and metrics for evaluating the performance of risk mitigation strategies in generative AI systems. This framework addresses existing gaps in AI safety, offering a comprehensive road map for future research and implementation., Comment: This paper was accepted in NeurIPS 2024 workshop on Red Teaming GenAI: What can we learn with Adversaries?

Creativity involves not only generating new ideas from scratch but also redefining existing concepts and synthesizing previous insights. Among various techniques developed to foster creative thinking, brainstorming is widely used. With recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs), tools like ChatGPT have significantly impacted various fields by using prompts to facilitate complex tasks. While current research primarily focuses on generating accurate responses, there is a need to explore how prompt engineering can enhance creativity, particularly in brainstorming. Therefore, this study addresses this gap by proposing a framework called GPS, which employs goals, prompts, and strategies to guide designers to systematically work with an LLM tool for improving the creativity of ideas generated during brainstorming. Additionally, we adapted the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) for measuring the creativity of the ideas generated by AI. Our framework, tested through a design example and a case study, demonstrates its effectiveness in stimulating creativity and its seamless LLM tool integration into design practices. The results indicate that our framework can benefit brainstorming sessions with LLM tools, enhancing both the creativity and usefulness of generated ideas., Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures

We present a purely deep neural network-based approach for estimating long memory parameters of time series models that incorporate the phenomenon of long-range dependence. Parameters, such as the Hurst exponent, are critical in characterizing the long-range dependence, roughness, and self-similarity of stochastic processes. The accurate and fast estimation of these parameters holds significant importance across various scientific disciplines, including finance, physics, and engineering. We harnessed efficient process generators to provide high-quality synthetic training data, enabling the training of scale-invariant 1D Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models. Our neural models outperform conventional statistical methods, even those augmented with neural networks. The precision, speed, consistency, and robustness of our estimators are demonstrated through experiments involving fractional Brownian motion (fBm), the Autoregressive Fractionally Integrated Moving Average (ARFIMA) process, and the fractional Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (fOU) process. We believe that our work will inspire further research in the field of stochastic process modeling and parameter estimation using deep learning techniques., Comment: 14 pages, 16 figures, https://github.com/aielte-research/LMSParEst

Class imbalance in binary classification tasks remains a significant challenge in machine learning, often resulting in poor performance on minority classes. This study comprehensively evaluates three widely-used strategies for handling class imbalance: Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE), Class Weights tuning, and Decision Threshold Calibration. We compare these methods against a baseline scenario of no-intervention across 15 diverse machine learning models and 30 datasets from various domains, conducting a total of 9,000 experiments. Performance was primarily assessed using the F1-score, although our study also tracked results on additional 9 metrics including F2-score, precision, recall, Brier-score, PR-AUC, and AUC. Our results indicate that all three strategies generally outperform the baseline, with Decision Threshold Calibration emerging as the most consistently effective technique. However, we observed substantial variability in the best-performing method across datasets, highlighting the importance of testing multiple approaches for specific problems. This study provides valuable insights for practitioners dealing with imbalanced datasets and emphasizes the need for dataset-specific analysis in evaluating class imbalance handling techniques., Comment: 13 pages including appendix, 4 tables

In this paper, we conduct sentiment analysis on social media data to study mass opinion about offshore wind energy. We adapt three machine learning models, namely, TextBlob, VADER, and SentiWordNet because different functions are provided by each model. TextBlob provides subjectivity analysis as well as polarity classification. VADER offers cumulative sentiment scores. SentiWordNet considers sentiments with reference to context and performs classification accordingly. Techniques in NLP are harnessed to gather meaning from the textual data in social media. Data visualization tools are suitably deployed to display the overall results. This work is much in line with citizen science and smart governance via involvement of mass opinion to guide decision support. It exemplifies the role of Machine Learning and NLP here.

In this paper, we present two computational methods for performing simulations of pollution propagation described by advection-diffusion equations. The first method employs graph grammars to describe the generation process of the computational mesh used in simulations with the meshless solver of the three-dimensional finite element method. The graph transformation rules express the three-dimensional Rivara longest-edge refinement algorithm. This solver is used for an exemplary application: performing three-dimensional simulations of pollution generation by the coal-burning power plant and its propagation in the city of Longyearbyen, the capital of Spitsbergen. The second computational code is based on the Physics Informed Neural Networks method. It is used to calculate the dissipation of the pollution along the valley in which the city of Longyearbyen is located. We discuss the instantiation and execution of the PINN method using Google Colab implementation. We discuss the benefits and limitations of the PINN implementation., Comment: 34 pages, 21 figures, 1 table

Magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging is a widely available imaging modality that can non-invasively provide a metabolic profile of the tissue of interest, yet is challenging to integrate clinically. One major reason is the expensive, expert data processing and analysis that is required. Using machine learning to predict MRS-related quantities offers avenues around this problem, but deep learning models bring their own challenges, especially model trust. Current research trends focus primarily on mean error metrics, but comprehensive precision metrics are also needed, e.g. standard deviations, confidence intervals, etc.. This work highlights why more comprehensive error characterization is important and how to improve the precision of CNNs for spectral modeling, a quantitative task. The results highlight advantages and trade-offs of these techniques that should be considered when addressing such regression tasks with CNNs. Detailed insights into the underlying mechanisms of each technique, and how they interact with other techniques, are discussed in depth., Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables

Recent advances in the understanding of neural networks suggest that superposition, the ability of a single neuron to represent multiple features simultaneously, is a key mechanism underlying the computational efficiency of large-scale networks. This paper explores the theoretical foundations of computing in superposition, focusing on explicit, provably correct algorithms and their efficiency. We present the first lower bounds showing that for a broad class of problems, including permutations and pairwise logical operations, a neural network computing in superposition requires at least $\Omega(m' \log m')$ parameters and $\Omega(\sqrt{m' \log m'})$ neurons, where $m'$ is the number of output features being computed. This implies that any ``lottery ticket'' sparse sub-network must have at least $\Omega(m' \log m')$ parameters no matter what the initial dense network size. Conversely, we show a nearly tight upper bound: logical operations like pairwise AND can be computed using $O(\sqrt{m'} \log m')$ neurons and $O(m' \log^2 m')$ parameters. There is thus an exponential gap between computing in superposition, the subject of this work, and representing features in superposition, which can require as little as $O(\log m'$) neurons based on the Johnson-Lindenstrauss Lemma. Our hope is that our results open a path for using complexity theoretic techniques in neural network interpretability research., Comment: 43 pages, 8 figures

Biopharmaceutical products, particularly monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), have gained prominence in the pharmaceutical market due to their high specificity and efficacy. As these products are projected to constitute a substantial portion of global pharmaceutical sales, the application of machine learning models in mAb development and manufacturing is gaining momentum. This paper addresses the critical need for uncertainty quantification in machine learning predictions, particularly in scenarios with limited training data. Leveraging ensemble learning and Monte Carlo simulations, our proposed method generates additional input samples to enhance the robustness of the model in small training datasets. We evaluate the efficacy of our approach through two case studies: predicting antibody concentrations in advance and real-time monitoring of glucose concentrations during bioreactor runs using Raman spectra data. Our findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in estimating the uncertainty levels associated with process performance predictions and facilitating real-time decision-making in biopharmaceutical manufacturing. This contribution not only introduces a novel approach for uncertainty quantification but also provides insights into overcoming challenges posed by small training datasets in bioprocess development. The evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of our method in addressing key challenges related to uncertainty estimation within upstream cell cultivation, illustrating its potential impact on enhancing process control and product quality in the dynamic field of biopharmaceuticals.

In this provocation, we discuss the English dominance of the AI research community, arguing that the requirement for English language publishing upholds and reinforces broader regimes of extraction in AI. While large language models and machine translation have been celebrated as a way to break down barriers, we regard their use as a symptom of linguistic exclusion of scientists and potential readers. We propose alternative futures for a healthier publishing culture, organized around three themes: administering conferences in the languages of the country in which they are held, instructing peer reviewers not to adjudicate the language appropriateness of papers, and offering opportunities to publish and present in multiple languages. We welcome new translations of this piece. Please contact the authors if you would like to contribute one., Comment: Translations by Tianyu M. Fang (Mandarin Chinese), Michael Hardy (Guarani), Vandana Sarin and Vivek Sarin (Hindi), Roshna Omer Abdulrahman (Soran\^i Kurdish), Gabriel Poesia (Portuguese), and Mat\'ias Grinberg (Spanish). In the proceedings of the Global AI Cultures Workshop at the Twelfth International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2024, Vienna, Austria, May 7-11, 2024

This visual narrative is a first-person reflection of the previous pictorial at the 1st International Workshop on Explainable AI for the Arts (XAIxArts) at ACM Creativity and Cognition 2023. The initial workshop pictorial explored a relationship between researcher and artificial intelligence, navigating creative challenges throughout the 2023 teaching block. It concluded by raising crucial questions regarding attribution transparency, the ethical dimensions of the creative process, and the delicate balance between inspiration and plagiarism. Subsequent discussions at the workshop yielded valuable insights, particularly concerning interpreting the creative journey. This follow-up visual narrative reflects the enduring impact of Makayla Lewis's interaction with AI. A self-portrait that delves into the interplay of creativity and introspection., Comment: 6 Pages, 7 Figures, Explainable AI for the Arts Workshop 2024 (XAIxArts 2024)

The proliferation of misinformation and disinformation on social media networks has become increasingly concerning. With a significant portion of the population using social media on a regular basis, there are growing efforts by malicious organizations to manipulate public opinion through coordinated campaigns. Current methods for identifying coordinated user accounts typically rely on either similarities in user behaviour, latent coordination in activity traces, or classification techniques. In our study, we propose a framework based on the hypothesis that coordinated users will demonstrate abnormal growth in their behavioural patterns over time relative to the wider population. Specifically, we utilize the EPClose algorithm to extract contrasting patterns of user behaviour during a time window of malicious activity, which we then compare to a historical time window. We evaluated the effectiveness of our approach using real-world data, and our results show a minimum increase of 10% in the F1 score compared to existing approaches., Comment: Accepted and presented on International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2024)

The rise of social media has been accompanied by a dark side with the ease of creating fake accounts and disseminating misinformation through coordinated attacks. Existing methods to identify such attacks often rely on thematic similarities or network-based approaches, overlooking the intricate causal relationships that underlie coordinated actions. This work introduces a novel approach for detecting coordinated attacks using Convergent Cross Mapping (CCM), a technique that infers causality from temporal relationships between user activity. We build on the theoretical framework of CCM by incorporating topic modelling as a basis for further optimizing its performance. We apply CCM to real-world data from the infamous IRA attack on US elections, achieving F1 scores up to 75.3% in identifying coordinated accounts. Furthermore, we analyse the output of our model to identify the most influential users in a community. We apply our model to a case study involving COVID-19 anti-vax related discussions on Twitter. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of our model in uncovering causal structures of coordinated behaviour, offering a promising avenue for mitigating the threat of malicious campaigns on social media platforms., Comment: Accepted for International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2025)

The potential for untrustworthy conversational agents presents a significant threat for covert social manipulation. Taking inspiration from Frank Herbert's "Dune", where the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood uses the Voice for influence, manipulation, and control of people, we explore how generative AI provides a way to implement individualized influence at industrial scales. Already, these models can manipulate communication across text, image, speech, and most recently video. They are rapidly becoming affordable enough for any organization of even moderate means to train and deploy. If employed by malicious actors, they risk becoming powerful tools for shaping public opinion, sowing discord, and undermining organizations from companies to governments. As researchers and developers, it is crucial to recognize the potential for such weaponization and to explore strategies for prevention, detection, and defense against these emerging forms of sociotechnical manipulation., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures

Components of cyber physical systems, which affect real-world processes, are often exposed to the internet. Replacing conventional control methods with Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) in energy systems is an active area of research, as these systems become increasingly complex with the advent of renewable energy sources and the desire to improve their efficiency. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are vulnerable to specific perturbations of their inputs or features, called adversarial examples. These perturbations are difficult to detect when properly regularized, but have significant effects on the ANN's output. Because DRL uses ANN to map optimal actions to observations, they are similarly vulnerable to adversarial examples. This work proposes a novel attack technique for continuous control using Group Difference Logits loss with a bifurcation layer. By combining aspects of targeted and untargeted attacks, the attack significantly increases the impact compared to an untargeted attack, with drastically smaller distortions than an optimally targeted attack. We demonstrate the impacts of powerful gradient-based attacks in a realistic smart energy environment, show how the impacts change with different DRL agents and training procedures, and use statistical and time-series analysis to evaluate attacks' stealth. The results show that adversarial attacks can have significant impacts on DRL controllers, and constraining an attack's perturbations makes it difficult to detect. However, certain DRL architectures are far more robust, and robust training methods can further reduce the impact., Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures

Materials science has a significant impact on society and its quality of life, e.g., through the development of safer, more durable, more economical, environmentally friendly, and sustainable materials. Visual computing in materials science integrates computer science disciplines from image processing, visualization, computer graphics, pattern recognition, computer vision, virtual and augmented reality, machine learning, to human-computer interaction, to support the acquisition, analysis, and synthesis of (visual) materials science data with computer resources. Therefore, visual computing may provide fundamentally new insights into materials science problems by facilitating the understanding, discovery, design, and usage of complex material systems. This seminar is considered as a follow-up of the Dagstuhl Seminar 19151 Visual Computing in Materials Sciences, held in April 2019. Since then, the field has kept evolving and many novel challenges have emerged, with regard to more traditional topics in visual computing, such as topology analysis or image processing and analysis, to recently emerging topics, such as uncertainty and ensemble analysis, and to the integration of new research disciplines and exploratory technologies, such machine learning and immersive analytics. With the current seminar, we target to strengthen and extend the collaboration between the domains of visual computing and materials science (and across visual computing disciplines), by foreseeing challenges and identifying novel directions of interdisciplinary work. We brought visual computing and visualization experts from academia, research centers, and industry together with domain experts, to uncover the overlaps of visual computing and materials science and to discover yet-unsolved challenges, on which we can collaborate to achieve a higher societal impact.

As Large Language Models (LLMs) perform (and sometimes excel at) more and more complex cognitive tasks, a natural question is whether AI really understands. The study of understanding in LLMs is in its infancy, and the community has yet to incorporate well-trodden research in philosophy, psychology, and education. We initiate this, specifically focusing on understanding algorithms, and propose a hierarchy of levels of understanding. We use the hierarchy to design and conduct a study with human subjects (undergraduate and graduate students) as well as large language models (generations of GPT), revealing interesting similarities and differences. We expect that our rigorous criteria will be useful to keep track of AI's progress in such cognitive domains., Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures

The scarcity of high-quality Earth Observation (EO) imagery poses a significant challenge, despite its critical role in enabling precise analysis and informed decision-making across various sectors. This scarcity is primarily due to atmospheric conditions, seasonal variations, and limited geographical coverage, which complicates the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in EO. Data augmentation, a widely used technique in AI that involves generating additional data mainly through parameterized image transformations, has been employed to increase the volume and diversity of data. However, this method often falls short in generating sufficient diversity across key semantic axes, adversely affecting the accuracy of EO applications. To address this issue, we propose a novel four-stage approach aimed at improving the diversity of augmented data by integrating diffusion models. Our approach employs meta-prompts for instruction generation, harnesses general-purpose vision-language models for generating rich captions, fine-tunes an Earth Observation diffusion model, and iteratively augments data. We conducted extensive experiments using four different data augmentation techniques, and our approach consistently demonstrated improvements, outperforming the established augmentation methods, revealing its effectiveness in generating semantically rich and diverse EO images.

Infinitely repeated games can support cooperative outcomes that are not equilibria in the one-shot game. The idea is to make sure that any gains from deviating will be offset by retaliation in future rounds. However, this model of cooperation fails in anonymous settings with many strategic agents that interact in pairs. Here, a player can defect and then avoid penalization by immediately switching partners. In this paper, we focus on a specific set of equilibria that avoids this pitfall. In them, agents follow a designated sequence of actions, and restart if their opponent ever deviates. We show that the socially-optimal sequence of actions consists of an infinitely repeating goal value, preceded by a hazing period. We introduce an equivalence relation on sequences and prove that the computational problem of finding a representative from the optimal equivalence class is (weakly) NP-hard. Nevertheless, we present a pseudo-polynomial time dynamic program for this problem, as well as an integer linear program, and show they are efficient in practice. Lastly, we introduce a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme that outputs a hazing sequence with arbitrarily small approximation ratio., Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, main body to be published in Proceedings of the Thirty-Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-24), Jeju, South Korea, 2024

Air pollution poses a significant threat to public health and well-being, particularly in urban areas. This study introduces a series of machine-learning models that integrate data from the Sentinel-5P satellite, meteorological conditions, and topological characteristics to forecast future levels of five major pollutants. The investigation delineates the process of data collection, detailing the combination of diverse data sources utilized in the study. Through experiments conducted in the Milan metropolitan area, the models demonstrate their efficacy in predicting pollutant levels for the forthcoming day, achieving a percentage error of around 30%. The proposed models are advantageous as they are independent of monitoring stations, facilitating their use in areas without existing infrastructure. Additionally, we have released the collected dataset to the public, aiming to stimulate further research in this field. This research contributes to advancing our understanding of urban air quality dynamics and emphasizes the importance of amalgamating satellite, meteorological, and topographical data to develop robust pollution forecasting models., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, submitted to IEEE MetroLivEnv 2024

Selecting language models in business contexts requires a careful analysis of the final financial benefits of the investment. However, the emphasis of academia and industry analysis of LLM is solely on performance. This work introduces a framework to evaluate LLMs, focusing on the earnings and return on investment aspects that should be taken into account in business decision making. We use a decision-theoretic approach to compare the financial impact of different LLMs, considering variables such as the cost per token, the probability of success in the specific task, and the gain and losses associated with LLMs use. The study reveals how the superior accuracy of more expensive models can, under certain conditions, justify a greater investment through more significant earnings but not necessarily a larger RoI. This article provides a framework for companies looking to optimize their technology choices, ensuring that investment in cutting-edge technology aligns with strategic financial objectives. In addition, we discuss how changes in operational variables influence the economics of using LLMs, offering practical insights for enterprise settings, finding that the predicted gain and loss and the different probabilities of success and failure are the variables that most impact the sensitivity of the models., Comment: 27 pages, 13 figures

The expansion of streaming media and e-commerce has led to a boom in recommendation systems, including Sequential recommendation systems, which consider the user's previous interactions with items. In recent years, research has focused on architectural improvements such as transformer blocks and feature extraction that can augment model information. Among these features are context and attributes. Of particular importance is the temporal footprint, which is often considered part of the context and seen in previous publications as interchangeable with positional information. Other publications use positional encodings with little attention to them. In this paper, we analyse positional encodings, showing that they provide relative information between items that are not inferable from the temporal footprint. Furthermore, we evaluate different encodings and how they affect metrics and stability using Amazon datasets. We added some new encodings to help with these problems along the way. We found that we can reach new state-of-the-art results by finding the correct positional encoding, but more importantly, certain encodings stabilise the training., Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, 12 tables

Nasogastric tubes (NGTs) are feeding tubes that are inserted through the nose into the stomach to deliver nutrition or medication. If not placed correctly, they can cause serious harm, even death to patients. Recent AI developments demonstrate the feasibility of robustly detecting NGT placement from Chest X-ray images to reduce risks of sub-optimally or critically placed NGTs being missed or delayed in their detection, but gaps remain in clinical practice integration. In this study, we present a human-centered approach to the problem and describe insights derived following contextual inquiry and in-depth interviews with 15 clinical stakeholders. The interviews helped understand challenges in existing workflows, and how best to align technical capabilities with user needs and expectations. We discovered the trade-offs and complexities that need consideration when choosing suitable workflow stages, target users, and design configurations for different AI proposals. We explored how to balance AI benefits and risks for healthcare staff and patients within broader organizational and medical-legal constraints. We also identified data issues related to edge cases and data biases that affect model training and evaluation; how data documentation practices influence data preparation and labelling; and how to measure relevant AI outcomes reliably in future evaluations. We discuss how our work informs design and development of AI applications that are clinically useful, ethical, and acceptable in real-world healthcare services.

The emerging research shows that lncRNAs are associated with a series of complex human diseases. However, most of the existing methods have limitations in identifying nonlinear lncRNA-disease associations (LDAs), and it remains a huge challenge to predict new LDAs. Therefore, the accurate identification of LDAs is very important for the warning and treatment of diseases. In this work, multiple sources of biomedical data are fully utilized to construct characteristics of lncRNAs and diseases, and linear and nonlinear characteristics are effectively integrated. Furthermore, a novel deep learning model based on graph attention automatic encoder is proposed, called HGATELDA. To begin with, the linear characteristics of lncRNAs and diseases are created by the miRNA-lncRNA interaction matrix and miRNA-disease interaction matrix. Following this, the nonlinear features of diseases and lncRNAs are extracted using a graph attention auto-encoder, which largely retains the critical information and effectively aggregates the neighborhood information of nodes. In the end, LDAs can be predicted by fusing the linear and nonlinear characteristics of diseases and lncRNA. The HGATELDA model achieves an impressive AUC value of 0.9692 when evaluated using a 5-fold cross-validation indicating its superior performance in comparison to several recent prediction models. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of HGATELDA in identifying novel LDAs is further demonstrated by case studies. the HGATELDA model appears to be a viable computational model for predicting LDAs., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures

We introduce an innovative, simple, effective segmentation-free approach for outcome prediction in head \& neck cancer (HNC) patients. By harnessing deep learning-based feature extraction techniques and multi-angle maximum intensity projections (MA-MIPs) applied to Fluorodeoxyglucose Positron Emission Tomography (FDG-PET) volumes, our proposed method eliminates the need for manual segmentations of regions-of-interest (ROIs) such as primary tumors and involved lymph nodes. Instead, a state-of-the-art object detection model is trained to perform automatic cropping of the head and neck region on the PET volumes. A pre-trained deep convolutional neural network backbone is then utilized to extract deep features from MA-MIPs obtained from 72 multi-angel axial rotations of the cropped PET volumes. These deep features extracted from multiple projection views of the PET volumes are then aggregated and fused, and employed to perform recurrence-free survival analysis on a cohort of 489 HNC patients. The proposed approach outperforms the best performing method on the target dataset for the task of recurrence-free survival analysis. By circumventing the manual delineation of the malignancies on the FDG PET-CT images, our approach eliminates the dependency on subjective interpretations and highly enhances the reproducibility of the proposed survival analysis method., Comment: 15 pages, 4 tables, 4 figures. Submitted for European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging

Despite the remarkable success of Large Language Models (LLMs) in text understanding and generation, their potential for text clustering tasks remains underexplored. We observed that powerful closed-source LLMs provide good quality clusterings of entity sets but are not scalable due to the massive compute power required and the associated costs. Thus, we propose CACTUS (Context-Aware ClusTering with aUgmented triplet losS), a systematic approach that leverages open-source LLMs for efficient and effective supervised clustering of entity subsets, particularly focusing on text-based entities. Existing text clustering methods fail to effectively capture the context provided by the entity subset. Moreover, though there are several language modeling based approaches for clustering, very few are designed for the task of supervised clustering. This paper introduces a novel approach towards clustering entity subsets using LLMs by capturing context via a scalable inter-entity attention mechanism. We propose a novel augmented triplet loss function tailored for supervised clustering, which addresses the inherent challenges of directly applying the triplet loss to this problem. Furthermore, we introduce a self-supervised clustering task based on text augmentation techniques to improve the generalization of our model. For evaluation, we collect ground truth clusterings from a closed-source LLM and transfer this knowledge to an open-source LLM under the supervised clustering framework, allowing a faster and cheaper open-source model to perform the same task. Experiments on various e-commerce query and product clustering datasets demonstrate that our proposed approach significantly outperforms existing unsupervised and supervised baselines under various external clustering evaluation metrics., Comment: 16 pages

In the rapidly evolving fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), the reproducibility crisis underscores the urgent need for clear validation methodologies to maintain scientific integrity and encourage advancement. The crisis is compounded by the prevalent confusion over validation terminology. Responding to this challenge, we introduce a validation framework that clarifies the roles and definitions of key validation efforts: repeatability, dependent and independent reproducibility, and direct and conceptual replicability. This structured framework aims to provide AI/ML researchers with the necessary clarity on these essential concepts, facilitating the appropriate design, conduct, and interpretation of validation studies. By articulating the nuances and specific roles of each type of validation study, we hope to contribute to a more informed and methodical approach to addressing the challenges of reproducibility, thereby supporting the community's efforts to enhance the reliability and trustworthiness of its research findings., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; submitted to AI Magazine

Quantum machine learning (QML) is a promising early use case for quantum computing. There has been progress in the last five years from theoretical studies and numerical simulations to proof of concepts. Use cases demonstrated on contemporary quantum devices include classifying medical images and items from the Iris dataset, classifying and generating handwritten images, toxicity screening, and learning a probability distribution. Potential benefits of QML include faster training and identification of feature maps not found classically. Although, these examples lack the scale for commercial exploitation, and it may be several years before QML algorithms replace the classical solutions, QML is an exciting area. This article is written for those who already have a sound knowledge of quantum computing and now wish to gain a basic overview of the terminology and some applications of classical machine learning ready to study quantum machine learning. The reader will already understand the relevant relevant linear algebra, including Hilbert spaces, a vector space with an inner product., Comment: 32 pages, 21 figures, technical report

Brains have evolved a diverse set of neurons with varying morphologies, physiological properties and rich dynamics that impact their processing of temporal information. By contrast, most neural network models include a homogeneous set of units that only vary in terms of their spatial parameters (weights and biases). To investigate the importance of temporal parameters to neural function, we trained spiking neural networks on tasks of varying temporal complexity, with different subsets of parameters held constant. We find that in a tightly resource constrained setting, adapting conduction delays is essential to solve all test conditions, and indeed that it is possible to solve these tasks using only temporal parameters (delays and time constants) with weights held constant. In the most complex spatio-temporal task we studied, we found that an adaptable bursting parameter was essential. More generally, allowing for adaptation of both temporal and spatial parameters increases network robustness to noise, an important feature for both biological brains and neuromorphic computing systems. In summary, our findings highlight how rich and adaptable dynamics are key to solving temporally structured tasks at a low neural resource cost, which may be part of the reason why biological neurons vary so dramatically in their physiological properties., Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures

Behavioral sensing technologies are rapidly evolving across a range of well-being applications. Despite its potential, concerns about the responsible use of such technology are escalating. In response, recent research within the sensing technology has started to address these issues. While promising, they primarily focus on broad demographic categories and overlook more nuanced, context-specific identities. These approaches lack grounding within domain-specific harms that arise from deploying sensing technology in diverse social, environmental, and technological settings. Additionally, existing frameworks for evaluating harms are designed for a generic ML life cycle, and fail to adapt to the dynamic and longitudinal considerations for behavioral sensing technology. To address these gaps, we introduce a framework specifically designed for evaluating behavioral sensing technologies. This framework emphasizes a comprehensive understanding of context, particularly the situated identities of users and the deployment settings of the sensing technology. It also highlights the necessity for iterative harm mitigation and continuous maintenance to adapt to the evolving nature of technology and its use. We demonstrate the feasibility and generalizability of our framework through post-hoc evaluations on two real-world behavioral sensing studies conducted in different international contexts, involving varied population demographics and machine learning tasks. Our evaluations provide empirical evidence of both situated identity-based harm and more domain-specific harms, and discuss the trade-offs introduced by implementing bias mitigation techniques., Comment: 26 pages, 8 tables, and 1 figure (excluding appendix)

Foundation models such as GPT-4 are fine-tuned to avoid unsafe or otherwise problematic behavior, such as helping to commit crimes or producing racist text. One approach to fine-tuning, called reinforcement learning from human feedback, learns from humans' expressed preferences over multiple outputs. Another approach is constitutional AI, in which the input from humans is a list of high-level principles. But how do we deal with potentially diverging input from humans? How can we aggregate the input into consistent data about "collective" preferences or otherwise use it to make collective choices about model behavior? In this paper, we argue that the field of social choice is well positioned to address these questions, and we discuss ways forward for this agenda, drawing on discussions in a recent workshop on Social Choice for AI Ethics and Safety held in Berkeley, CA, USA in December 2023., Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures

In recent years, large-scale adoption of cloud storage solutions has revolutionized the way we think about digital data storage. However, the exponential increase in data volume, especially images, has raised environmental concerns regarding power and resource consumption, as well as the rising digital carbon footprint emissions. The aim of this research is to propose a methodology for cloud-based image storage by integrating image compression technology with SuperResolution Generative Adversarial Networks (SRGAN). Rather than storing images in their original format directly on the cloud, our approach involves initially reducing the image size through compression and downsizing techniques before storage. Upon request, these compressed images will be retrieved and processed by SRGAN to generate images. The efficacy of the proposed method is evaluated in terms of PSNR and SSIM metrics. Additionally, a mathematical analysis is given to calculate power consumption and carbon footprint assesment. The proposed data compression technique provides a significant solution to achieve a reasonable trade off between environmental sustainability and industrial efficiency., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

Discovering a suitable neural network architecture for modeling complex dynamical systems poses a formidable challenge, often involving extensive trial and error and navigation through a high-dimensional hyper-parameter space. In this paper, we discuss a systematic approach to constructing neural architectures for modeling a subclass of dynamical systems, namely, Linear Time-Invariant (LTI) systems. We use a variant of continuous-time neural networks in which the output of each neuron evolves continuously as a solution of a first-order or second-order Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE). Instead of deriving the network architecture and parameters from data, we propose a gradient-free algorithm to compute sparse architecture and network parameters directly from the given LTI system, leveraging its properties. We bring forth a novel neural architecture paradigm featuring horizontal hidden layers and provide insights into why employing conventional neural architectures with vertical hidden layers may not be favorable. We also provide an upper bound on the numerical errors of our neural networks. Finally, we demonstrate the high accuracy of our constructed networks on three numerical examples., Comment: 37 pages, 25 figures

The ability of zero-shot translation emerges when we train a multilingual model with certain translation directions; the model can then directly translate in unseen directions. Alternatively, zero-shot translation can be accomplished by pivoting through a third language (e.g., English). In our work, we observe that both direct and pivot translations are noisy and achieve less satisfactory performance. We propose EBBS, an ensemble method with a novel bi-level beam search algorithm, where each ensemble component explores its own prediction step by step at the lower level but they are synchronized by a "soft voting" mechanism at the upper level. Results on two popular multilingual translation datasets show that EBBS consistently outperforms direct and pivot translations as well as existing ensemble techniques. Further, we can distill the ensemble's knowledge back to the multilingual model to improve inference efficiency; profoundly, our EBBS-based distillation does not sacrifice, or even improves, the translation quality.

We characterize the computational power of neural networks that follow the graph neural network (GNN) architecture, not restricted to aggregate-combine GNNs or other particular types. We establish an exact correspondence between the expressivity of GNNs using diverse activation functions and arithmetic circuits over real numbers. In our results the activation function of the network becomes a gate type in the circuit. Our result holds for families of constant depth circuits and networks, both uniformly and non-uniformly, for all common activation functions.

The burgeoning integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into human society brings forth significant implications for societal governance and safety. While considerable strides have been made in addressing AI alignment challenges, existing methodologies primarily focus on technical facets, often neglecting the intricate sociotechnical nature of AI systems, which can lead to a misalignment between the development and deployment contexts. To this end, we posit a new problem worth exploring: Incentive Compatibility Sociotechnical Alignment Problem (ICSAP). We hope this can call for more researchers to explore how to leverage the principles of Incentive Compatibility (IC) from game theory to bridge the gap between technical and societal components to maintain AI consensus with human societies in different contexts. We further discuss three classical game problems for achieving IC: mechanism design, contract theory, and Bayesian persuasion, in addressing the perspectives, potentials, and challenges of solving ICSAP, and provide preliminary implementation conceptions., Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures

Error Feedback (EF) is a highly popular and immensely effective mechanism for fixing convergence issues which arise in distributed training methods (such as distributed GD or SGD) when these are enhanced with greedy communication compression techniques such as TopK. While EF was proposed almost a decade ago (Seide et al., 2014), and despite concentrated effort by the community to advance the theoretical understanding of this mechanism, there is still a lot to explore. In this work we study a modern form of error feedback called EF21 (Richtarik et al., 2021) which offers the currently best-known theoretical guarantees, under the weakest assumptions, and also works well in practice. In particular, while the theoretical communication complexity of EF21 depends on the quadratic mean of certain smoothness parameters, we improve this dependence to their arithmetic mean, which is always smaller, and can be substantially smaller, especially in heterogeneous data regimes. We take the reader on a journey of our discovery process. Starting with the idea of applying EF21 to an equivalent reformulation of the underlying problem which (unfortunately) requires (often impractical) machine cloning, we continue to the discovery of a new weighted version of EF21 which can (fortunately) be executed without any cloning, and finally circle back to an improved analysis of the original EF21 method. While this development applies to the simplest form of EF21, our approach naturally extends to more elaborate variants involving stochastic gradients and partial participation. Further, our technique improves the best-known theory of EF21 in the rare features regime (Richtarik et al., 2023). Finally, we validate our theoretical findings with suitable experiments., Comment: 70 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables

In the evolving field of machine learning, ensuring fairness has become a critical concern, prompting the development of algorithms designed to mitigate discriminatory outcomes in decision-making processes. However, achieving fairness in the presence of group-specific concept drift remains an unexplored frontier, and our research represents pioneering efforts in this regard. Group-specific concept drift refers to situations where one group experiences concept drift over time while another does not, leading to a decrease in fairness even if accuracy remains fairly stable. Within the framework of federated learning, where clients collaboratively train models, its distributed nature further amplifies these challenges since each client can experience group-specific concept drift independently while still sharing the same underlying concept, creating a complex and dynamic environment for maintaining fairness. One of the significant contributions of our research is the formalization and introduction of the problem of group-specific concept drift and its distributed counterpart, shedding light on its critical importance in the realm of fairness. In addition, leveraging insights from prior research, we adapt an existing distributed concept drift adaptation algorithm to tackle group-specific distributed concept drift which utilizes a multi-model approach, a local group-specific drift detection mechanism, and continuous clustering of models over time. The findings from our experiments highlight the importance of addressing group-specific concept drift and its distributed counterpart to advance fairness in machine learning.

The performance of an artificial neural network (ANN) in forecasting crash risk is shown in this paper. To begin, some traffic and weather data are acquired as raw data. This data is then analyzed, and relevant characteristics are chosen to utilize as input data based on additional tree and Pearson correlation. Furthermore, crash and non-crash time data are separated; then, feature values for crash and non-crash events are written in three four-minute intervals prior to the crash and non-crash events using the average of all available values for that period. The number of non-crash samples was lowered after calculating crash likelihood for each period based on accident labeling. The proposed CNN model is capable of learning from recorded, processed, and categorized input characteristics such as traffic characteristics and meteorological conditions. The goal of this work is to forecast the chance of a real-time crash based on three periods before events. The area under the curve (AUC) for the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC curve), as well as sensitivity as the true positive rate and specificity as the false positive rate, are shown and compared with three typical machine learning and neural network models. Finally, when it comes to the error value, AUC, sensitivity, and specificity parameters as performance variables, the executed model outperforms other models. The findings of this research suggest applying the CNN model as a multi-class prediction model for real-time crash risk prediction. Our emphasis is on multi-class prediction, while prior research used this for binary (two-class) categorization like crash and non-crash., Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures

This paper presents a novel approach at the intersection of machine learning and number theory, focusing on the classification of prime and non-prime numbers. At the core of our research is the development of a highly sparse encoding method, integrated with conventional neural network architectures. This combination has shown promising results, achieving a recall of over 99\% in identifying prime numbers and 79\% for non-prime numbers from an inherently imbalanced sequential series of integers, while exhibiting rapid model convergence before the completion of a single training epoch. We performed training using $10^6$ integers starting from a specified integer and tested on a different range of $2 \times 10^6$ integers extending from $10^6$ to $3 \times 10^6$, offset by the same starting integer. While constrained by the memory capacity of our resources, which limited our analysis to a span of $3\times10^6$, we believe that our study contribute to the application of machine learning in prime number analysis. This work aims to demonstrate the potential of such applications and hopes to inspire further exploration and possibilities in diverse fields.

Computer-based scene understanding has influenced fields ranging from urban planning to autonomous vehicle performance, yet little is known about how well these technologies work across social differences. We investigate the biases of deep convolutional neural networks (dCNNs) in scene classification, using nearly one million images from global and US sources, including user-submitted home photographs and Airbnb listings. We applied statistical models to quantify the impact of socioeconomic indicators such as family income, Human Development Index (HDI), and demographic factors from public data sources (CIA and US Census) on dCNN performance. Our analyses revealed significant socioeconomic bias, where pretrained dCNNs demonstrated lower classification accuracy, lower classification confidence, and a higher tendency to assign labels that could be offensive when applied to homes (e.g., "ruin", "slum"), especially in images from homes with lower socioeconomic status (SES). This trend is consistent across two datasets of international images and within the diverse economic and racial landscapes of the United States. This research contributes to understanding biases in computer vision, emphasizing the need for more inclusive and representative training datasets. By mitigating the bias in the computer vision pipelines, we can ensure fairer and more equitable outcomes for applied computer vision, including home valuation and smart home security systems. There is urgency in addressing these biases, which can significantly impact critical decisions in urban development and resource allocation. Our findings also motivate the development of AI systems that better understand and serve diverse communities, moving towards technology that equitably benefits all sectors of society., Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables

While the operationalisation of high-level AI ethics principles into practical AI/ML systems has made progress, there is still a theory-practice gap in managing tensions between the underlying AI ethics aspects. We cover five approaches for addressing the tensions via trade-offs, ranging from rudimentary to complex. The approaches differ in the types of considered context, scope, methods for measuring contexts, and degree of justification. None of the approaches is likely to be appropriate for all organisations, systems, or applications. To address this, we propose a framework which consists of: (i) proactive identification of tensions, (ii) prioritisation and weighting of ethics aspects, (iii) justification and documentation of trade-off decisions. The proposed framework aims to facilitate the implementation of well-rounded AI/ML systems that are appropriate for potential regulatory requirements.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has acquired notorious relevance in modern computing as it effectively solves complex tasks traditionally done by humans. AI provides methods to represent and infer knowledge, efficiently manipulate texts and learn from vast amount of data. These characteristics are applicable in many activities that human find laborious or repetitive, as is the case of the analysis of scientific literature. Manually preparing and writing a systematic literature review (SLR) takes considerable time and effort, since it requires planning a strategy, conducting the literature search and analysis, and reporting the findings. Depending on the area under study, the number of papers retrieved can be of hundreds or thousands, meaning that filtering those relevant ones and extracting the key information becomes a costly and error-prone process. However, some of the involved tasks are repetitive and, therefore, subject to automation by means of AI. In this paper, we present a survey of AI techniques proposed in the last 15 years to help researchers conduct systematic analyses of scientific literature. We describe the tasks currently supported, the types of algorithms applied, and available tools proposed in 34 primary studies. This survey also provides a historical perspective of the evolution of the field and the role that humans can play in an increasingly automated SLR process., Comment: 25 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, journal paper

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology becomes more and more prevalent, it becomes increasingly important to explore how we as humans interact with AI. The Human-AI Interaction (HAI) sub-field has emerged from the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field and aims to examine this very notion. Many interaction patterns have been implemented without fully understanding the changes in required cognition as well as the cognitive science implications of using these alternative interfaces that aim to be more human-like in nature. Prior research suggests that theory of mind representations are crucial to successful and effortless communication, however very little is understood when it comes to how theory of mind representations are established when interacting with AI., Comment: 6 pages, 12 figures, 12 data tables, study data included in appendix

Predictive Process Monitoring (PPM) aims at leveraging historic process execution data to predict how ongoing executions will continue up to their completion. In recent years, PPM techniques for the prediction of the next activities have matured significantly, mainly thanks to the use of Neural Networks (NNs) as a predictor. While their performance is difficult to beat in the general case, there are specific situations where background process knowledge can be helpful. Such knowledge can be leveraged for improving the quality of predictions for exceptional process executions or when the process changes due to a concept drift. In this paper, we present a Symbolic[Neuro] system that leverages background knowledge expressed in terms of a procedural process model to offset the under-sampling in the training data. More specifically, we make predictions using NNs with attention mechanism, an emerging technology in the NN field. The system has been tested on several real-life logs showing an improvement in the performance of the prediction task.

This paper considers learning the hidden causal network of a linear networked dynamical system (NDS) from the time series data at some of its nodes -- partial observability. The dynamics of the NDS are driven by colored noise that generates spurious associations across pairs of nodes, rendering the problem much harder. To address the challenge of noise correlation and partial observability, we assign to each pair of nodes a feature vector computed from the time series data of observed nodes. The feature embedding is engineered to yield structural consistency: there exists an affine hyperplane that consistently partitions the set of features, separating the feature vectors corresponding to connected pairs of nodes from those corresponding to disconnected pairs. The causal inference problem is thus addressed via clustering the designed features. We demonstrate with simple baseline supervised methods the competitive performance of the proposed causal inference mechanism under broad connectivity regimes and noise correlation levels, including a real world network. Further, we devise novel technical guarantees of structural consistency for linear NDS under the considered regime., Comment: Accepted at The 38th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Main Track). Final Camera-Ready Version

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in research across all disciplines is becoming ubiquitous. However, this ubiquity is largely driven by hyperspecific AI models developed during scientific studies for accomplishing a well-defined, data-dense task. These AI models introduce apparent, human-recognizable biases because they are trained with finite, specific data sets and parameters. However, the efficacy of using large language models (LLMs) -- and LLM-powered generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT -- to assist the research process is currently indeterminate. These generative AI tools, trained on general and imperceptibly large datasets along with human feedback, present challenges in identifying and addressing biases. Furthermore, these models are susceptible to goal misgeneralization, hallucinations, and adversarial attacks such as red teaming prompts -- which can be unintentionally performed by human researchers, resulting in harmful outputs. These outputs are reinforced in research -- where an increasing number of individuals have begun to use generative AI to compose manuscripts. Efforts into AI interpretability lag behind development, and the implicit variations that occur when prompting and providing context to a chatbot introduce uncertainty and irreproducibility. We thereby find that incorporating generative AI in the process of writing research manuscripts introduces a new type of context-induced algorithmic bias and has unintended side effects that are largely detrimental to academia, knowledge production, and communicating research., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures

Hydropower plants are crucial for stable renewable energy and serve as vital water sources for sustainable agriculture. However, it is essential to assess the current water management practices associated with hydropower plant management software. A key concern is the potential conflict between electricity generation and agricultural water needs. Prioritising water for electricity generation can reduce irrigation availability in agriculture during crucial periods like droughts, impacting crop yields and regional food security. Coordination between electricity and agricultural water allocation is necessary to ensure optimal and environmentally sound practices. Neural networks have become valuable tools for hydropower plant management, but their black-box nature raises concerns about transparency in decision making. Additionally, current approaches often do not take advantage of their potential to create a system that effectively balances water allocation. This work is a call for attention and highlights the potential risks of deploying neural network-based hydropower plant management software without proper scrutiny and control. To address these concerns, we propose the adoption of the Agriculture Conscious Hydropower Plant Management framework, aiming to maximise electricity production while prioritising stable irrigation for agriculture. We also advocate reevaluating government-imposed minimum water guidelines for irrigation to ensure flexibility and effective water allocation. Additionally, we suggest a set of regulatory measures to promote model transparency and robustness, certifying software that makes conscious and intelligent water allocation decisions, ultimately safeguarding agriculture from undue strain during droughts.

This paper reviews the challenges hindering the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions in the healthcare industry, focusing on computer vision applications for medical imaging, and how interoperability and enterprise-grade scalability can be used to address these challenges. The complex nature of healthcare workflows, intricacies in managing large and secure medical imaging data, and the absence of standardized frameworks for AI development pose significant barriers and require a new paradigm to address them. The role of interoperability is examined in this paper as a crucial factor in connecting disparate applications within healthcare workflows. Standards such as DICOM, Health Level 7 (HL7), and Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) are highlighted as foundational for common imaging workflows. A specific focus is placed on the role of DICOM gateways, with Smart Routing Rules and Workflow Management leading transformational efforts in this area. To drive enterprise scalability, new tools are needed. Project MONAI, established in 2019, is introduced as an initiative aiming to redefine the development of medical AI applications. The MONAI Deploy App SDK, a component of Project MONAI, is identified as a key tool in simplifying the packaging and deployment process, enabling repeatable, scalable, and standardized deployment patterns for AI applications. The abstract underscores the potential impact of successful AI adoption in healthcare, offering physicians both life-saving and time-saving insights and driving efficiencies in radiology department workflows. The collaborative efforts between academia and industry, are emphasized as essential for advancing the adoption of healthcare AI solutions., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures