Weiyan Xie

Weiyan Xie, Xiao-Hui Li, Caleb Chen Cao et al.

Despite the popularity of Vision Transformers (ViTs) and eXplainable AI (XAI), only a few explanation methods have been designed specially for ViTs thus far. They mostly use attention weights of the [CLS] token on patch embeddings and often produce unsatisfactory saliency maps. This paper proposes a novel method for explaining ViTs called ViT-CX. It is based on patch embeddings, rather than attentions paid to them, and their causal impacts on the model output. Other characteristics of ViTs such as causal overdetermination are also considered in the design of ViT-CX. The empirical results show that ViT-CX produces more meaningful saliency maps and does a better job revealing all important evidence for the predictions than previous methods. The explanation generated by ViT-CX also shows significantly better faithfulness to the model. The codes and appendix are available at https://github.com/vaynexie/CausalX-ViT.

Weiyan Xie, Xiao-Hui Li, Zhi Lin et al.

The need to explain the output of a deep neural network classifier is now widely recognized. While previous methods typically explain a single class in the output, we advocate explaining the whole output, which is a probability distribution over multiple classes. A whole-output explanation can help a human user gain an overall understanding of model behaviour instead of only one aspect of it. It can also provide a natural framework where one can examine the evidence used to discriminate between competing classes, and thereby obtain contrastive explanations. In this paper, we propose a contrastive whole-output explanation (CWOX) method for image classification, and evaluate it using quantitative metrics and through human subject studies. The source code of CWOX is available at https://github.com/vaynexie/CWOX.

Nevin L. Zhang, Weiyan Xie, Zhi Lin et al.

Some examples are easier for humans to classify than others. The same should be true for deep neural networks (DNNs). We use the term example perplexity to refer to the level of difficulty of classifying an example. In this paper, we propose a method to measure the perplexity of an example and investigate what factors contribute to high example perplexity. The related codes and resources are available at https://github.com/vaynexie/Example-Perplexity.

Nevin L. Zhang, Kaican Li, Han Gao et al.

Domain generalization (DG) is about learning models that generalize well to new domains that are related to, but different from, the training domain(s). It is a fundamental problem in machine learning and has attracted much attention in recent years. A large number of approaches have been proposed. Different approaches are motivated from different perspectives, making it difficult to gain an overall understanding of the area. In this paper, we propose a causal framework for domain generalization and present an understanding of common DG approaches in the framework. Our work sheds new lights on the following questions: (1) What are the key ideas behind each DG method? (2) Why is it expected to improve generalization to new domains theoretically? (3) How are different DG methods related to each other and what are relative advantages and limitations? By providing a unified perspective on DG, we hope to help researchers better understand the underlying principles and develop more effective approaches for this critical problem in machine learning.

Kaican Li, Weiyan Xie, Yongxiang Huang et al.

Fine-tuning foundation models often compromises their robustness to distribution shifts. To remedy this, most robust fine-tuning methods aim to preserve the pre-trained features. However, not all pre-trained features are robust and those methods are largely indifferent to which ones to preserve. We propose dual risk minimization (DRM), which combines empirical risk minimization with worst-case risk minimization, to better preserve the core features of downstream tasks. In particular, we utilize core-feature descriptions generated by LLMs to induce core-based zero-shot predictions which then serve as proxies to estimate the worst-case risk. DRM balances two crucial aspects of model robustness: expected performance and worst-case performance, establishing a new state of the art on various real-world benchmarks. DRM significantly improves the out-of-distribution performance of CLIP ViT-L/14@336 on ImageNet (75.9 to 77.1), WILDS-iWildCam (47.1 to 51.8), and WILDS-FMoW (50.7 to 53.1); opening up new avenues for robust fine-tuning. Our code is available at https://github.com/vaynexie/DRM .

Han Gao, Kaican Li, Weiyan Xie et al.

Domain generalization (DG) is about training models that generalize well under domain shift. Previous research on DG has been conducted mostly in single-source or multi-source settings. In this paper, we consider a third, lesser-known setting where a training domain is endowed with a collection of pairs of examples that share the same semantic information. Such semantic sharing (SS) pairs can be created via data augmentation and then utilized for consistency regularization (CR). We present a theory showing CR is conducive to DG and propose a novel CR method called Logit Attribution Matching (LAM). We conduct experiments on five DG benchmarks and four pretrained models with SS pairs created by both generic and targeted data augmentation methods. LAM outperforms representative single/multi-source DG methods and various CR methods that leverage SS pairs. The code and data of this project are available at https://github.com/Gaohan123/LAM

Weiyan Xie, Han Gao, Didan Deng et al.

Recent advances in text-to-image (T2I) models have enabled training-free regional image editing by leveraging the generative priors of foundation models. However, existing methods struggle to balance text adherence in edited regions, context fidelity in unedited areas, and seamless integration of edits. We introduce CannyEdit, a novel training-free framework that addresses this trilemma through two key innovations. First, Selective Canny Control applies structural guidance from a Canny ControlNet only to the unedited regions, preserving the original image's details while allowing for precise, text-driven changes in the specified editable area. Second, Dual-Prompt Guidance utilizes both a local prompt for the specific edit and a global prompt for overall scene coherence. Through this synergistic approach, these components enable controllable local editing for object addition, replacement, and removal, achieving a superior trade-off among text adherence, context fidelity, and editing seamlessness compared to current region-based methods. Beyond this, CannyEdit offers exceptional flexibility: it operates effectively with rough masks or even single-point hints in addition tasks. Furthermore, the framework can seamlessly integrate with vision-language models in a training-free manner for complex instruction-based editing that requires planning and reasoning. Our extensive evaluations demonstrate CannyEdit's strong performance against leading instruction-based editors in complex object addition scenarios.