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Federated learning (FL) is an emerging distributed learning paradigm without sharing participating clients' private data. However, existing works show that FL is vulnerable to both Byzantine (security) attacks and data reconstruction (privacy) attacks. Almost all the existing FL defenses only address one of the two attacks. A few defenses address the two attacks, but they are not efficient and effective enough. We propose BPFL, an efficient Byzantine-robust and provably privacy-preserving FL method that addresses all the issues. Specifically, we draw on state-of-the-art Byzantine-robust FL methods and use similarity metrics to measure the robustness of each participating client in FL. The validity of clients are formulated as circuit constraints on similarity metrics and verified via a zero-knowledge proof. Moreover, the client models are masked by a shared random vector, which is generated based on homomorphic encryption. In doing so, the server receives the masked client models rather than the true ones, which are proven to be private. BPFL is also efficient due to the usage of non-interactive zero-knowledge proof. Experimental results on various datasets show that our BPFL is efficient, Byzantine-robust, and privacy-preserving., Comment: 13 pages

Federated Learning (FL) is a novel client-server distributed learning framework that can protect data privacy. However, recent works show that FL is vulnerable to poisoning attacks. Many defenses with robust aggregators (AGRs) are proposed to mitigate the issue, but they are all broken by advanced attacks. Very recently, some renewed robust AGRs are designed, typically with novel clipping or/and filtering strate-gies, and they show promising defense performance against the advanced poisoning attacks. In this paper, we show that these novel robust AGRs are also vulnerable to carefully designed poisoning attacks. Specifically, we observe that breaking these robust AGRs reduces to bypassing the clipping or/and filtering of malicious clients, and propose an optimization-based attack framework to leverage this observation. Under the framework, we then design the customized attack against each robust AGR. Extensive experiments on multiple datasets and threat models verify our proposed optimization-based attack can break the SOTA AGRs. We hence call for novel defenses against poisoning attacks to FL. Code is available at: https://github.com/Yuxin104/ BreakSTOAPoisoningDefenses., Comment: This is an extended version of our CIKM 2024 paper

Federated graph learning (FedGL) is an emerging federated learning (FL) framework that extends FL to learn graph data from diverse sources. FL for non-graph data has shown to be vulnerable to backdoor attacks, which inject a shared backdoor trigger into the training data such that the trained backdoored FL model can predict the testing data containing the trigger as the attacker desires. However, FedGL against backdoor attacks is largely unexplored, and no effective defense exists. In this paper, we aim to address such significant deficiency. First, we propose an effective, stealthy, and persistent backdoor attack on FedGL. Our attack uses a subgraph as the trigger and designs an adaptive trigger generator that can derive the effective trigger location and shape for each graph. Our attack shows that empirical defenses are hard to detect/remove our generated triggers. To mitigate it, we further develop a certified defense for any backdoored FedGL model against the trigger with any shape at any location. Our defense involves carefully dividing a testing graph into multiple subgraphs and designing a majority vote-based ensemble classifier on these subgraphs. We then derive the deterministic certified robustness based on the ensemble classifier and prove its tightness. We extensively evaluate our attack and defense on six graph datasets. Our attack results show our attack can obtain > 90% backdoor accuracy in almost all datasets. Our defense results show, in certain cases, the certified accuracy for clean testing graphs against an arbitrary trigger with size 20 can be close to the normal accuracy under no attack, while there is a moderate gap in other cases. Moreover, the certified backdoor accuracy is always 0 for backdoored testing graphs generated by our attack, implying our defense can fully mitigate the attack. Source code is available at: https://github.com/Yuxin104/Opt-GDBA., Comment: This paper is accepted to CCS2024

Embodied AI robots have the potential to fundamentally improve the way human beings live and manufacture. Continued progress in the burgeoning field of using large language models to control robots depends critically on an efficient computing substrate. In particular, today's computing systems for embodied AI robots are designed purely based on the interest of algorithm developers, where robot actions are divided into a discrete frame-basis. Such an execution pipeline creates high latency and energy consumption. This paper proposes Corki, an algorithm-architecture co-design framework for real-time embodied AI robot control. Our idea is to decouple LLM inference, robotic control and data communication in the embodied AI robots compute pipeline. Instead of predicting action for one single frame, Corki predicts the trajectory for the near future to reduce the frequency of LLM inference. The algorithm is coupled with a hardware that accelerates transforming trajectory into actual torque signals used to control robots and an execution pipeline that parallels data communication with computation. Corki largely reduces LLM inference frequency by up to 8.0x, resulting in up to 3.6x speed up. The success rate improvement can be up to 17.3%. Code is provided for re-implementation. https://github.com/hyy0613/Corki

Test generation has been a critical and labor-intensive process in hardware design verification. Recently, the emergence of Large Language Model (LLM) with their advanced understanding and inference capabilities, has introduced a novel approach. In this work, we investigate the integration of LLM into the Coverage Directed Test Generation (CDG) process, where the LLM functions as a Verilog Reader. It accurately grasps the code logic, thereby generating stimuli that can reach unexplored code branches. We compare our framework with random testing, using our self-designed Verilog benchmark suite. Experiments demonstrate that our framework outperforms random testing on designs within the LLM's comprehension scope. Our work also proposes prompt engineering optimizations to augment LLM's understanding scope and accuracy.

As sufficient data are not always publically accessible for model training, researchers exploit limited data with advanced learning algorithms or expand the dataset via data augmentation (DA). Conducting DA in private domain requires private protection approaches (i.e. anonymization and perturbation), but those methods cannot provide protection guarantees. Differential privacy (DP) learning methods theoretically bound the protection but are not skilled at generating pseudo text samples with large models. In this paper, we transfer DP-based pseudo sample generation task to DP-based generated samples discrimination task, where we propose a DP-based DA method with a LLM and a DP-based discriminator for text classification on private domains. We construct a knowledge distillation model as the DP-based discriminator: teacher models, accessing private data, teaches students how to select private samples with calibrated noise to achieve DP. To constrain the distribution of DA's generation, we propose a DP-based tutor that models the noised private distribution and controls samples' generation with a low privacy cost. We theoretically analyze our model's privacy protection and empirically verify our model.

Human trajectory forecasting is a critical challenge in fields such as robotics and autonomous driving. Due to the inherent uncertainty of human actions and intentions in real-world scenarios, various unexpected occurrences may arise. To uncover latent motion patterns in human behavior, we introduce a novel memory-based method, named Motion Pattern Priors Memory Network. Our method involves constructing a memory bank derived from clustered prior knowledge of motion patterns observed in the training set trajectories. We introduce an addressing mechanism to retrieve the matched pattern and the potential target distributions for each prediction from the memory bank, which enables the identification and retrieval of natural motion patterns exhibited by agents, subsequently using the target priors memory token to guide the diffusion model to generate predictions. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of our approach, achieving state-of-the-art trajectory prediction accuracy. The code will be made publicly available.

Current object re-identification (ReID) system follows the centralized processing paradigm, i.e., all computations are conducted in the cloud server and edge devices are only used to capture and send images. As the number of videos experiences a rapid escalation, this paradigm has become impractical due to the finite computational resources. In such a scenario, the ReID system should be converted to fit in the cloud-edge collaborative processing paradigm, which is crucial to boost the scalability and practicality of ReID systems. However, current relevant work lacks research on this issue, making it challenging for ReID methods to be adapted effectively. Therefore, we pioneer a cloud-edge collaborative inference framework for ReID systems and particularly propose a distribution-aware correlation modeling network (DaCM) to make the desired image return to the cloud server as soon as possible via learning to model the spatial-temporal correlations among instances. DaCM embeds the spatial-temporal correlations implicitly included in the timestamps into a graph structure, and it can be applied in the cloud to regulate the size of the upload window and on the edge device to adjust the sequence of images, respectively. Traditional ReID methods can be combined with DaCM seamlessly, enabling their application within our proposed edge-cloud collaborative framework. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method obviously reduces transmission overhead and significantly improves performance. We will release our code and model.

Conditional story generation is significant in human-machine interaction, particularly in producing stories with complex plots. While Large language models (LLMs) perform well on multiple NLP tasks, including story generation, it is challenging to generate stories with both complex and creative plots. Existing methods often rely on detailed prompts to guide LLMs to meet target conditions, which inadvertently restrict the creative potential of the generated stories. We argue that leveraging information from exemplary human-written stories facilitates generating more diverse plotlines. Delving deeper into story details helps build complex and credible plots. In this paper, we propose a retrieval-au\textbf{G}mented sto\textbf{R}y generation framework with a f\textbf{O}rest of e\textbf{V}id\textbf{E}nce (GROVE) to enhance stories' complexity. We build a retrieval repository for target conditions to produce few-shot examples to prompt LLMs. Additionally, we design an ``asking-why'' prompting scheme that extracts a forest of evidence, providing compensation for the ambiguities that may occur in the generated story. This iterative process uncovers underlying story backgrounds. Finally, we select the most fitting chains of evidence from the evidence forest and integrate them into the generated story, thereby enhancing the narrative's complexity and credibility. Experimental results and numerous examples verify the effectiveness of our method., Comment: Findings of EMNLP 2023

Singing voice synthesis and singing voice conversion have significantly advanced, revolutionizing musical experiences. However, the rise of "Deepfake Songs" generated by these technologies raises concerns about authenticity. Unlike Audio DeepFake Detection (ADD), the field of song deepfake detection lacks specialized datasets or methods for song authenticity verification. In this paper, we initially construct a Chinese Fake Song Detection (FSD) dataset to investigate the field of song deepfake detection. The fake songs in the FSD dataset are generated by five state-of-the-art singing voice synthesis and singing voice conversion methods. Our initial experiments on FSD revealed the ineffectiveness of existing speech-trained ADD models for the task of song deepFake detection. Thus, we employ the FSD dataset for the training of ADD models. We subsequently evaluate these models under two scenarios: one with the original songs and another with separated vocal tracks. Experiment results show that song-trained ADD models exhibit a 38.58% reduction in average equal error rate compared to speech-trained ADD models on the FSD test set., Comment: Submitted to ICASSP 2024

Rigid body dynamics is a key technology in the robotics field. In trajectory optimization and model predictive control algorithms, there are usually a large number of rigid body dynamics computing tasks. Using CPUs to process these tasks consumes a lot of time, which will affect the real-time performance of robots. To this end, we propose a multifunctional robot rigid body dynamics accelerator, named RBDCore, to address the performance bottleneck. By analyzing different functions commonly used in robot dynamics calculations, we summarize their reuse relationship and optimize them according to the hardware. Based on this, RBDCore can fully reuse common hardware modules when processing different computing tasks. By dynamically switching the dataflow path, RBDCore can accelerate various dynamics functions without reconfiguring the hardware. We design Structure-Adaptive Pipelines for RBDCore, which can greatly improve the throughput of the accelerator. Robots with different structures and parameters can be optimized specifically. Compared with the state-of-the-art CPU, GPU dynamics libraries and FPGA accelerator, RBDCore can significantly improve the performance.

Background: The corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, is still localized outbreak and has resulted in a high rate of infection and severe disease in older patients with comorbidities. The vitamin D status of the population has been found to be an important factor that could influence outcome of COVID-19. However, whether vitamin D can lessen the symptoms or severity of COVID-19 still remains controversial. Methods: A total of 719 patients with confirmed COVID-19 were enrolled retrospectively in this study from April 13 to June 6, 2022 at Shanghai Forth People's Hospital. The circulating levels of 25(OH)D3, inflammatory factors, and clinical parameters were assayed. Time to viral RNA clearance (TVRC), classification and prognosis of COVID-19 were used to evaluate the severity of COVID-19 infection. Results: The median age was 76 years (interquartile range, IQR, 64.5-84.6), 44.1% of patients were male, and the TVRC was 11 days (IQR, 7-16) in this population. The median level of 25(OH)D3 was 27.15 (IQR, 19.31-38.89) nmol/L. Patients with lower serum 25(OH)D3 had prolonged time to viral clearance, more obvious inflammatory response, more severe respiratory symptoms and higher risks of impaired hepatic and renal function. Multiple regression analyses revealed that serum 25(OH)D3 level was negatively associated with TVRC independently. ROC curve showed the serum vitamin D level could predict the severity classification and prognosis of COVID-19 significantly.Conclusions: Serum 25(OH)D3 level is independently associated with the severity of COVID-19 in elderly, and it could be used as a predictor of the severity of COVID-19. In addition, supplementation with vitamin D might provide beneficial effects in old patients with COVID-19.

Quantitative magnetic resonance (MR) T1\r{ho} mapping is a promising approach for characterizing intrinsic tissue-dependent information. However, long scan time significantly hinders its widespread applications. Recently, low-rank tensor has been employed and demonstrated good performance in accelerating MR T1\r{ho} mapping. In this study, we propose a novel method that uses spatial patch-based and parametric group-based low rank tensors simultaneously (SMART) to reconstruct images from highly undersampled k-space data. The spatial patch-based low-rank tensor exploits the high local and nonlocal redundancies and similarities between the contrast images in T1\r{ho} mapping. The parametric group based low-rank tensor, which integrates similar exponential behavior of the image signals, is jointly used to enforce the multidimensional low-rankness in the reconstruction process. In vivo brain datasets were used to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method. Experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed method achieves 11.7-fold and 13.21-fold accelerations in two-dimensional and three-dimensional acquisitions, respectively, with more accurate reconstructed images and maps than several state-of-the-art methods. Prospective reconstruction results further demonstrate the capability of the SMART method in accelerating MR T1\r{ho} imaging., Comment: 22 pages, 19 figures

Nodal-line superconductor NaAlSi with a transition temperature ($T_c$) of 7 K has attracted considerable attention in recent years, whereas its Ge counterpart, NaAlGe, does not superconduct down to the lowest temperature regardless of their similar atomic and electrical structures. To tackle this enigma, we resort to the growth of NaAlGe single crystal and characterize its semimetallic ground state. Interestingly, when hole doped by oxidation, single-crystalline NaAlGe transforms from a semimetal to a superconductor ($T_c = 2.3 \sim$ 3.5 K) with zero resistivity and a diamagnetic shielding fraction over 100$\%$, but without a thermodynamic response in heat capacity. Continuous x-ray diffraction reveals a transient new structure with a larger $c$ axis, which is suggested to have arisen from the minor loss of Na and to be responsible for the emergence of the delicate superconductivity. Our findings resolve the controversies in NaAlSi and NaAlGe, while their similarities and differences provide an ideal opportunity to investigate a variety of exciting topological quantum states., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures