Shengrui Wang

Benjamin Kalfon, Soumaya Cherkaoui, Jean-Frédéric Laprade et al.

Classical GAN architectures have shown interesting results for solving anomaly detection problems in general and for time series anomalies in particular, such as those arising in communication networks. In recent years, several quantum GAN architectures have been proposed in the literature. When detecting anomalies in time series using QGANs, huge challenges arise due to the limited number of qubits compared to the size of the data. To address these challenges, we propose a new high-dimensional encoding approach, named Successive Data Injection (SuDaI). In this approach, we explore a larger portion of the quantum state than that in the conventional angle encoding, the method used predominantly in the literature, through repeated data injections into the quantum state. SuDaI encoding allows us to adapt the QGAN for anomaly detection with network data of a much higher dimensionality than with the existing known QGANs implementations. In addition, SuDaI encoding applies to other types of high-dimensional time series and can be used in contexts beyond anomaly detection and QGANs, opening up therefore multiple fields of application.

Alexis Vieloszynski, Soumaya Cherkaoui, Ola Ahmad et al.

Quantum machine learning consists in taking advantage of quantum computations to generate classical data. A potential application of quantum machine learning is to harness the power of quantum computers for generating classical data, a process essential to a multitude of applications such as enriching training datasets, anomaly detection, and risk management in finance. Given the success of Generative Adversarial Networks in classical image generation, the development of its quantum versions has been actively conducted. However, existing implementations on quantum computers often face significant challenges, such as scalability and training convergence issues. To address these issues, we propose LatentQGAN, a novel quantum model that uses a hybrid quantum-classical GAN coupled with an autoencoder. Although it was initially designed for image generation, the LatentQGAN approach holds potential for broader application across various practical data generation tasks. Experimental outcomes on both classical simulators and noisy intermediate scale quantum computers have demonstrated significant performance enhancements over existing quantum methods, alongside a significant reduction in quantum resources overhead.

Abdallah Aaraba, Soumaya Cherkaoui, Ola Ahmad et al.

Forecasting in probabilistic time series is a complex endeavor that extends beyond predicting future values to also quantifying the uncertainty inherent in these predictions. Gaussian process regression stands out as a Bayesian machine learning technique adept at addressing this multifaceted challenge. This paper introduces a novel approach that blends the robustness of this Bayesian technique with the nuanced insights provided by the kernel perspective on quantum models, aimed at advancing quantum kernelized probabilistic forecasting. We incorporate a quantum feature map inspired by Ising interactions and demonstrate its effectiveness in capturing the temporal dependencies critical for precise forecasting. The optimization of our model's hyperparameters circumvents the need for computationally intensive gradient descent by employing gradient-free Bayesian optimization. Comparative benchmarks against established classical kernel models are provided, affirming that our quantum-enhanced approach achieves competitive performance.

Jean Marie Tshimula, D'Jeff K. Nkashama, Patrick Owusu et al.

This paper scrutinizes a database of over 4900 YouTube videos to characterize financial market coverage. Financial market coverage generates a large number of videos. Therefore, watching these videos to derive actionable insights could be challenging and complex. In this paper, we leverage Whisper, a speech-to-text model from OpenAI, to generate a text corpus of market coverage videos from Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance. We employ natural language processing to extract insights regarding language use from the market coverage. Moreover, we examine the prominent presence of trending topics and their evolution over time, and the impacts that some individuals and organizations have on the financial market. Our characterization highlights the dynamics of the financial market coverage and provides valuable insights reflecting broad discussions regarding recent financial events and the world economy.

Wajdi Hammami, Soumaya Cherkaoui, Jean-Frederic Laprade et al.

Anomaly detection in time-series data is a critical challenge with significant implications for network security. Recent quantum machine learning approaches, such as quantum kernel methods and variational quantum circuits, have shown promise in capturing complex data distributions for anomaly detection but remain constrained by limited qubit counts. We introduce in this work a novel Quantum Gated Recurrent Unit (QGRU)-based Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) employing Successive Data Injection (SuDaI) and a multi-metric gating strategy for robust network anomaly detection. Our model uniquely utilizes a quantum-enhanced generator that outputs parameters (mean and log-variance) of a Gaussian distribution via reparameterization, combined with a Wasserstein critic to stabilize adversarial training. Anomalies are identified through a novel gating mechanism that initially flags potential anomalies based on Gaussian uncertainty estimates and subsequently verifies them using a composite of critic scores and reconstruction errors. Evaluated on benchmark datasets, our method achieves a high time-series aware F1 score (TaF1) of 89.43% demonstrating superior capability in detecting anomalies accurately and promptly as compared to existing classical and quantum models. Furthermore, the trained QGRU-WGAN was deployed on real IBM Quantum hardware, where it retained high anomaly detection performance, confirming its robustness and practical feasibility on current noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices.

Pierre-Daniel Arsenault, Shengrui Wang, Jean-Marc Patenande

Artificial Intelligence (AI) models have reached a very significant level of accuracy. While their superior performance offers considerable benefits, their inherent complexity often decreases human trust, which slows their application in high-risk decision-making domains, such as finance. The field of eXplainable AI (XAI) seeks to bridge this gap, aiming to make AI models more understandable. This survey, focusing on published work from the past five years, categorizes XAI approaches that predict financial time series. In this paper, explainability and interpretability are distinguished, emphasizing the need to treat these concepts separately as they are not applied the same way in practice. Through clear definitions, a rigorous taxonomy of XAI approaches, a complementary characterization, and examples of XAI's application in the finance industry, this paper provides a comprehensive view of XAI's current role in finance. It can also serve as a guide for selecting the most appropriate XAI approach for future applications.

Kunpeng Xu, Lifei Chen, Shengrui Wang

Identifying and understanding dynamic concepts in co-evolving sequences is crucial for analyzing complex systems such as IoT applications, financial markets, and online activity logs. These concepts provide valuable insights into the underlying structures and behaviors of sequential data, enabling better decision-making and forecasting. This paper introduces Wormhole, a novel deep representation learning framework that is concept-aware and designed for co-evolving time sequences. Our model presents a self-representation layer and a temporal smoothness constraint to ensure robust identification of dynamic concepts and their transitions. Additionally, concept transitions are detected by identifying abrupt changes in the latent space, signifying a shift to new behavior - akin to passing through a wormhole. This novel mechanism accurately discerns concepts within co-evolving sequences and pinpoints the exact locations of these wormholes, enhancing the interpretability of the learned representations. Experiments demonstrate that this method can effectively segment time series data into meaningful concepts, providing a valuable tool for analyzing complex temporal patterns and advancing the detection of concept drifts.

Kunpeng Xu, Lifei Chen, Shengrui Wang

Machine learning techniques have outperformed numerous rule-based methods for decision-making in autonomous vehicles. Despite recent efforts, lane changing remains a major challenge, due to the complex driving scenarios and changeable social behaviors of surrounding vehicles. To help improve the state of the art, we propose to leveraging the emerging \underline{D}eep \underline{R}einforcement learning (DRL) approach for la\underline{NE} changing at the \underline{T}actical level. To this end, we present "DRNet", a novel and highly efficient DRL-based framework that enables a DRL agent to learn to drive by executing reasonable lane changing on simulated highways with an arbitrary number of lanes, and considering driving style of surrounding vehicles to make better decisions. Furthermore, to achieve a safe policy for decision-making, DRNet incorporates ideas from safety verification, the most important component of autonomous driving, to ensure that only safe actions are chosen at any time. The setting of our state representation and reward function enables the trained agent to take appropriate actions in a real-world-like simulator. Our DRL agent has the ability to learn the desired task without causing collisions and outperforms DDQN and other baseline models.

Islam Eldifrawi, Shengrui Wang, Amine Trabelsi

Automated Fact-Checking (AFC) is the automated verification of claim accuracy. AFC is crucial in discerning truth from misinformation, especially given the huge amounts of content are generated online daily. Current research focuses on predicting claim veracity through metadata analysis and language scrutiny, with an emphasis on justifying verdicts. This paper surveys recent methodologies, proposing a comprehensive taxonomy and presenting the evolution of research in that landscape. A comparative analysis of methodologies and future directions for improving fact-checking explainability are also discussed.

Etienne Tajeuna, Patrick Asante Owusu, Armelle Brun et al.

In this paper we investigate forecasting coevolving time series that feature intricate dependencies and nonstationary dynamics by using an LLM Large Language Models approach We propose a novel modeling approach named ContextAware ARLLM CAARL that provides an interpretable framework to decode the contextual dynamics influencing changes in coevolving series CAARL decomposes time series into autoregressive segments constructs a temporal dependency graph and serializes this graph into a narrative to allow processing by LLM This design yields a chainofthoughtlike reasoning path where intermediate steps capture contextual dynamics and guide forecasts in a transparent manner By linking prediction to explicit reasoning traces CAARL enhances interpretability while maintaining accuracy Experiments on realworld datasets validate its effectiveness positioning CAARL as a competitive and interpretable alternative to stateoftheart forecasting methods

Islam Eldifrawi, Shengrui Wang, Amine Trabelsi

With the vast amount of content uploaded every hour, along with the AI generated content that can include hallucinations, Automated Fact-Checking (AFC) has become increasingly vital, as it is infeasible for human fact-checkers to manually verify the sheer volume of information generated online. Professional fact-checkers have identified several gaps in existing AFC systems, noting a misalignment between how these systems operate and how fact-checking is performed in practice. In this paper, we introduce CAAFC (Chronological Actionable Automated Fact-Checker), a frame-work designed to bridge these gaps. It surpasses SOTA AFC and hallucination detection systems across multiple benchmark datasets. CAAFC operates on claims, conversations, and dialogues, enabling it not only to detect factual errors and hallucinations, but also to correct them by providing actionable justifications supported by primary information sources. Furthermore, CAAFC can update evidence and knowledge bases by incorporating recent and contextual information when necessary, thereby enhancing the reliability of fact verification.

Kunpeng Xu, Lifei Chen, Shengrui Wang

Kernel-based subspace clustering, which addresses the nonlinear structures in data, is an evolving area of research. Despite noteworthy progressions, prevailing methodologies predominantly grapple with limitations relating to (i) the influence of predefined kernels on model performance; (ii) the difficulty of preserving the original manifold structures in the nonlinear space; (iii) the dependency of spectral-type strategies on the ideal block diagonal structure of the affinity matrix. This paper presents DKLM, a novel paradigm for kernel-induced nonlinear subspace clustering. DKLM provides a data-driven approach that directly learns the kernel from the data's self-representation, ensuring adaptive weighting and satisfying the multiplicative triangle inequality constraint, which enhances the robustness of the learned kernel. By leveraging this learned kernel, DKLM preserves the local manifold structure of data in a nonlinear space while promoting the formation of an optimal block-diagonal affinity matrix. A thorough theoretical examination of DKLM reveals its relationship with existing clustering paradigms. Comprehensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Kunpeng Xu, Lifei Chen, Shengrui Wang

In the realm of time series analysis, tackling the phenomenon of concept drift poses a significant challenge. Concept drift -- characterized by the evolving statistical properties of time series data, affects the reliability and accuracy of conventional analysis models. This is particularly evident in co-evolving scenarios where interactions among variables are crucial. This paper presents CORAL, a simple yet effective method that models time series as an evolving ecosystem to learn representations of concept drift. CORAL employs a kernel-induced self-representation learning to generate a representation matrix, encapsulating the inherent dynamics of co-evolving time series. This matrix serves as a key tool for identification and adaptation to concept drift by observing its temporal variations. Furthermore, CORAL effectively identifies prevailing patterns and offers insights into emerging trends through pattern evolution analysis. Our empirical evaluation of CORAL across various datasets demonstrates its effectiveness in handling the complexities of concept drift. This approach introduces a novel perspective in the theoretical domain of co-evolving time series analysis, enhancing adaptability and accuracy in the face of dynamic data environments, and can be easily integrated into most deep learning backbones.

Jean Marie Tshimula, Xavier Ndona, D'Jeff K. Nkashama et al.

Jailbreak prompts pose a significant threat in AI and cybersecurity, as they are crafted to bypass ethical safeguards in large language models, potentially enabling misuse by cybercriminals. This paper analyzes jailbreak prompts from a cyber defense perspective, exploring techniques like prompt injection and context manipulation that allow harmful content generation, content filter evasion, and sensitive information extraction. We assess the impact of successful jailbreaks, from misinformation and automated social engineering to hazardous content creation, including bioweapons and explosives. To address these threats, we propose strategies involving advanced prompt analysis, dynamic safety protocols, and continuous model fine-tuning to strengthen AI resilience. Additionally, we highlight the need for collaboration among AI researchers, cybersecurity experts, and policymakers to set standards for protecting AI systems. Through case studies, we illustrate these cyber defense approaches, promoting responsible AI practices to maintain system integrity and public trust. \textbf{\color{red}Warning: This paper contains content which the reader may find offensive.}

Kunpeng Xu, Lifei Chen, Shengrui Wang

Dynamic concepts in time series are crucial for understanding complex systems such as financial markets, healthcare, and online activity logs. These concepts help reveal structures and behaviors in sequential data for better decision-making and forecasting. However, existing models often struggle to detect and track concept drift due to limitations in interpretability and adaptability. To address this challenge, inspired by the flexibility of the recent Kolmogorov-Arnold Network (KAN), we propose WormKAN, a concept-aware KAN-based model to address concept drift in co-evolving time series. WormKAN consists of three key components: Patch Normalization, Temporal Representation Module, and Concept Dynamics. Patch normalization processes co-evolving time series into patches, treating them as fundamental modeling units to capture local dependencies while ensuring consistent scaling. The temporal representation module learns robust latent representations by leveraging a KAN-based autoencoder, complemented by a smoothness constraint, to uncover inter-patch correlations. Concept dynamics identifies and tracks dynamic transitions, revealing structural shifts in the time series through concept identification and drift detection. These transitions, akin to passing through a \textit{wormhole}, are identified by abrupt changes in the latent space. Experiments show that KAN and KAN-based models (WormKAN) effectively segment time series into meaningful concepts, enhancing the identification and tracking of concept drift.

Wissal Hamhoum, Soumaya Cherkaoui, Jean-Frederic Laprade et al.

Quantum reservoir computing (QRC) offers a hardware-friendly approach to temporal learning, yet most studies target univariate signals and overlook near-term hardware constraints. This work introduces a gate-based QRC for multivariate time series (MTS-QRC) that pairs injection and memory qubits and uses a Trotterized nearest-neighbor transverse-field Ising evolution optimized for current device connectivity and depth. On Lorenz-63 and ENSO, the method achieves a mean square error (MSE) of 0.0087 and 0.0036, respectively, performing on par with classical reservoir computing on Lorenz and above learned RNNs on both, while NVAR and clustered ESN remain stronger on some settings. On IBM Heron R2, MTS-QRC sustains accuracy with realistic depths and, interestingly, outperforms a noiseless simulator on ENSO; singular value analysis indicates that device noise can concentrate variance in feature directions, acting as an implicit regularizer for linear readout in this regime. These findings support the practicality of gate-based QRC for MTS forecasting on NISQ hardware and motivate systematic studies on when and how hardware noise benefits QRC readouts.

Islam Eldifrawi, Shengrui Wang, Amine Trabelsi

The field of explainable Automatic Fact-Checking (AFC) aims to enhance the transparency and trustworthiness of automated fact-verification systems by providing clear and comprehensible explanations. However, the effectiveness of these explanations depends on their actionability --their ability to empower users to make informed decisions and mitigate misinformation. Despite actionability being a critical property of high-quality explanations, no prior research has proposed a dedicated method to evaluate it. This paper introduces FinGrAct, a fine-grained evaluation framework that can access the web, and it is designed to assess actionability in AFC explanations through well-defined criteria and an evaluation dataset. FinGrAct surpasses state-of-the-art (SOTA) evaluators, achieving the highest Pearson and Kendall correlation with human judgments while demonstrating the lowest ego-centric bias, making it a more robust evaluation approach for actionability evaluation in AFC.

Jean Marie Tshimula, D'Jeff K. Nkashama, Jean Tshibangu Muabila et al.

The increasing sophistication of cyber threats necessitates innovative approaches to cybersecurity. In this paper, we explore the potential of psychological profiling techniques, particularly focusing on the utilization of Large Language Models (LLMs) and psycholinguistic features. We investigate the intersection of psychology and cybersecurity, discussing how LLMs can be employed to analyze textual data for identifying psychological traits of threat actors. We explore the incorporation of psycholinguistic features, such as linguistic patterns and emotional cues, into cybersecurity frameworks. Our research underscores the importance of integrating psychological perspectives into cybersecurity practices to bolster defense mechanisms against evolving threats.

Kunpeng Xu, Lifei Chen, Shengrui Wang

Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KAN) is a groundbreaking model recently proposed by the MIT team, representing a revolutionary approach with the potential to be a game-changer in the field. This innovative concept has rapidly garnered worldwide interest within the AI community. Inspired by the Kolmogorov-Arnold representation theorem, KAN utilizes spline-parametrized univariate functions in place of traditional linear weights, enabling them to dynamically learn activation patterns and significantly enhancing interpretability. In this paper, we explore the application of KAN to time series forecasting and propose two variants: T-KAN and MT-KAN. T-KAN is designed to detect concept drift within time series and can explain the nonlinear relationships between predictions and previous time steps through symbolic regression, making it highly interpretable in dynamically changing environments. MT-KAN, on the other hand, improves predictive performance by effectively uncovering and leveraging the complex relationships among variables in multivariate time series. Experiments validate the effectiveness of these approaches, demonstrating that T-KAN and MT-KAN significantly outperform traditional methods in time series forecasting tasks, not only enhancing predictive accuracy but also improving model interpretability. This research opens new avenues for adaptive forecasting models, highlighting the potential of KAN as a powerful and interpretable tool in predictive analytics.

Philippe Chatigny, Shengrui Wang, Jean-Marc Patenaude et al.

We study the problem of efficiently scaling ensemble-based deep neural networks for multi-step time series (TS) forecasting on a large set of time series. Current state-of-the-art deep ensemble models have high memory and computational requirements, hampering their use to forecast millions of TS in practical scenarios. We propose N-BEATS(P), a global parallel variant of the N-BEATS model designed to allow simultaneous training of multiple univariate TS forecasting models. Our model addresses the practical limitations of related models, reducing the training time by half and memory requirement by a factor of 5, while keeping the same level of accuracy in all TS forecasting settings. We have performed multiple experiments detailing the various ways to train our model and have obtained results that demonstrate its capacity to generalize in various forecasting conditions and setups.

Etienne Gael Tajeuna, Mohamed Bouguessa, Shengrui Wang

We investigate the problem of discovering and modeling regime shifts in an ecosystem comprising multiple time series known as co-evolving time series. Regime shifts refer to the changing behaviors exhibited by series at different time intervals. Learning these changing behaviors is a key step toward time series forecasting. While advances have been made, existing methods suffer from one or more of the following shortcomings: (1) failure to take relationships between time series into consideration for discovering regimes in multiple time series; (2) lack of an effective approach that models time-dependent behaviors exhibited by series; (3) difficulties in handling data discontinuities which may be informative. Most of the existing methods are unable to handle all of these three issues in a unified framework. This, therefore, motivates our effort to devise a principled approach for modeling interactions and time-dependency in co-evolving time series. Specifically, we model an ecosystem of multiple time series by summarizing the heavy ensemble of time series into a lighter and more meaningful structure called a \textit{mapping grid}. By using the mapping grid, our model first learns time series behavioral dependencies through a dynamic network representation, then learns the regime transition mechanism via a full time-dependent Cox regression model. The originality of our approach lies in modeling interactions between time series in regime identification and in modeling time-dependent regime transition probabilities, usually assumed to be static in existing work.

Philippe Chatigny, Jean-Marc Patenaude, Shengrui Wang

Optimal decision-making in social settings is often based on forecasts from time series (TS) data. Recently, several approaches using deep neural networks (DNNs) such as recurrent neural networks (RNNs) have been introduced for TS forecasting and have shown promising results. However, the applicability of these approaches is being questioned for TS settings where there is a lack of quality training data and where the TS to forecast exhibit complex behaviors. Examples of such settings include financial TS forecasting, where producing accurate and consistent long-term forecasts is notoriously difficult. In this work, we investigate whether DNN-based models can be used to forecast these TS conjointly by learning a joint representation of the series instead of computing the forecast from the raw time-series representations. To this end, we make use of the dynamic factor graph (DFG) to build a multivariate autoregressive model. We investigate a common limitation of RNNs that rely on the DFG framework and propose a novel variable-length attention-based mechanism (ACTM) to address it. With ACTM, it is possible to vary the autoregressive order of a TS model over time and model a larger set of probability distributions than with previous approaches. Using this mechanism, we propose a self-supervised DNN architecture for multivariate TS forecasting that learns and takes advantage of the relationships between them. We test our model on two datasets covering 19 years of investment fund activities. Our experimental results show that the proposed approach significantly outperforms typical DNN-based and statistical models at forecasting the 21-day price trajectory. We point out how improving forecasting accuracy and knowing which forecaster to use can improve the excess return of autonomous trading strategies.