Ramana Rao Kompella

Yuzhang Shang, Bingxin Xu, Gaowen Liu et al.

Model quantization, which aims to compress deep neural networks and accelerate inference speed, has greatly facilitated the development of cumbersome models on mobile and edge devices. There is a common assumption in quantization methods from prior works that training data is available. In practice, however, this assumption cannot always be fulfilled due to reasons of privacy and security, rendering these methods inapplicable in real-life situations. Thus, data-free network quantization has recently received significant attention in neural network compression. Causal reasoning provides an intuitive way to model causal relationships to eliminate data-driven correlations, making causality an essential component of analyzing data-free problems. However, causal formulations of data-free quantization are inadequate in the literature. To bridge this gap, we construct a causal graph to model the data generation and discrepancy reduction between the pre-trained and quantized models. Inspired by the causal understanding, we propose the Causality-guided Data-free Network Quantization method, Causal-DFQ, to eliminate the reliance on data via approaching an equilibrium of causality-driven intervened distributions. Specifically, we design a content-style-decoupled generator, synthesizing images conditioned on the relevant and irrelevant factors; then we propose a discrepancy reduction loss to align the intervened distributions of the pre-trained and quantized models. It is worth noting that our work is the first attempt towards introducing causality to data-free quantization problem. Extensive experiments demonstrate the efficacy of Causal-DFQ. The code is available at https://github.com/42Shawn/Causal-DFQ.

Sanjana Vijay Ganesh, Yanzhao Wu, Gaowen Liu et al.

Object tracking is an important functionality of edge video analytic systems and services. Multi-object tracking (MOT) detects the moving objects and tracks their locations frame by frame as real scenes are being captured into a video. However, it is well known that real time object tracking on the edge poses critical technical challenges, especially with edge devices of heterogeneous computing resources. This paper examines the performance issues and edge-specific optimization opportunities for object tracking. We will show that even the well trained and optimized MOT model may still suffer from random frame dropping problems when edge devices have insufficient computation resources. We present several edge specific performance optimization strategies, collectively coined as EMO, to speed up the real time object tracking, ranging from window-based optimization to similarity based optimization. Extensive experiments on popular MOT benchmarks demonstrate that our EMO approach is competitive with respect to the representative methods for on-device object tracking techniques in terms of run-time performance and tracking accuracy. EMO is released on Github at https://github.com/git-disl/EMO.

Fatih Ilhan, Ka-Ho Chow, Sihao Hu et al. · gatech

Well-trained deep neural networks (DNNs) treat all test samples equally during prediction. Adaptive DNN inference with early exiting leverages the observation that some test examples can be easier to predict than others. This paper presents EENet, a novel early-exiting scheduling framework for multi-exit DNN models. Instead of having every sample go through all DNN layers during prediction, EENet learns an early exit scheduler, which can intelligently terminate the inference earlier for certain predictions, which the model has high confidence of early exit. As opposed to previous early-exiting solutions with heuristics-based methods, our EENet framework optimizes an early-exiting policy to maximize model accuracy while satisfying the given per-sample average inference budget. Extensive experiments are conducted on four computer vision datasets (CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, ImageNet, Cityscapes) and two NLP datasets (SST-2, AgNews). The results demonstrate that the adaptive inference by EENet can outperform the representative existing early exit techniques. We also perform a detailed visualization analysis of the comparison results to interpret the benefits of EENet.

Hossein Khalili, Seongbin Park, Vincent Li et al. · gatech

Autonomous mobile systems increasingly rely on deep neural networks for perception and decision-making. While effective, these systems are vulnerable to adversarial machine learning attacks where minor input perturbations can significantly impact outcomes. Common countermeasures involve adversarial training and/or data or network transformation. These methods, though effective, require full access to typically proprietary classifiers and are costly for large models. Recent solutions propose purification models, which add a "purification" layer before classification, eliminating the need to modify the classifier directly. Despite their effectiveness, these methods are compute-intensive, making them unsuitable for mobile systems where resources are limited and low latency is essential. This paper introduces LightPure, a new method that enhances adversarial image purification. It improves the accuracy of existing purification methods and provides notable enhancements in speed and computational efficiency, making it suitable for mobile devices with limited resources. Our approach uses a two-step diffusion and one-shot Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) framework, prioritizing latency without compromising robustness. We propose several new techniques to achieve a reasonable balance between classification accuracy and adversarial robustness while maintaining desired latency. We design and implement a proof-of-concept on a Jetson Nano board and evaluate our method using various attack scenarios and datasets. Our results show that LightPure can outperform existing methods by up to 10x in terms of latency while achieving higher accuracy and robustness for various attack scenarios. This method offers a scalable and effective solution for real-world mobile systems.

Jingbo Yang, Guanyu Yao, Yang Zhang et al.

Modern LLM agents increasingly rely on skill libraries to handle complex tasks, making skill evolution a primary driver of self-improvement. However, isolated single-user task streams lack the diversity required to build comprehensive skills. While cross-user collaboration can overcome this data bottleneck, current trajectory-sharing approaches compromise user privacy and impose a uniform global library that fails to accommodate client heterogeneity. We introduce FederatedSkill, a privacy-preserving framework for collaborative agent evolution. Moving beyond raw trajectory sharing, FederatedSkill utilizes semantic skill diffs, structured patches over local libraries, as the fundamental unit of communication. On the server side, an evolution agent aggregates these patches to dynamically model client-specific capability boundaries, facilitating strictly personalized skill evolution rather than a suboptimal global average. Evaluated across 20 distinct agent task families, FederatedSkill demonstrates substantial gains over self-evolving baselines, achieving up to a 44.4% increase in success rate and a 37.5% reduction in computational cost.

Xin Jin, Charalampos Katsis, Fan Sang et al.

Edge computing is a paradigm that shifts data processing services to the network edge, where data are generated. While such an architecture provides faster processing and response, among other benefits, it also raises critical security issues and challenges that must be addressed. This paper discusses the security threats and vulnerabilities emerging from the edge network architecture spanning from the hardware layer to the system layer. We further discuss privacy and regulatory compliance challenges in such networks. Finally, we argue the need for a holistic approach to analyze edge network security posture, which must consider knowledge from each layer.

Zhuoshi Pan, Yuguang Yao, Gaowen Liu et al.

While state-of-the-art diffusion models (DMs) excel in image generation, concerns regarding their security persist. Earlier research highlighted DMs' vulnerability to data poisoning attacks, but these studies placed stricter requirements than conventional methods like `BadNets' in image classification. This is because the art necessitates modifications to the diffusion training and sampling procedures. Unlike the prior work, we investigate whether BadNets-like data poisoning methods can directly degrade the generation by DMs. In other words, if only the training dataset is contaminated (without manipulating the diffusion process), how will this affect the performance of learned DMs? In this setting, we uncover bilateral data poisoning effects that not only serve an adversarial purpose (compromising the functionality of DMs) but also offer a defensive advantage (which can be leveraged for defense in classification tasks against poisoning attacks). We show that a BadNets-like data poisoning attack remains effective in DMs for producing incorrect images (misaligned with the intended text conditions). Meanwhile, poisoned DMs exhibit an increased ratio of triggers, a phenomenon we refer to as `trigger amplification', among the generated images. This insight can be then used to enhance the detection of poisoned training data. In addition, even under a low poisoning ratio, studying the poisoning effects of DMs is also valuable for designing robust image classifiers against such attacks. Last but not least, we establish a meaningful linkage between data poisoning and the phenomenon of data replications by exploring DMs' inherent data memorization tendencies.

Sihao Hu, Tiansheng Huang, Gaowen Liu et al. · gatech

Game environments provide rich, controllable settings that stimulate many aspects of real-world complexity. As such, game agents offer a valuable testbed for exploring capabilities relevant to Artificial General Intelligence. Recently, the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) provides new opportunities to endow these agents with generalizable reasoning, memory, and adaptability in complex game environments. This survey offers an up-to-date review of LLM-based game agents (LLMGAs) through a unified reference architecture. At the single-agent level, we synthesize existing studies around three core components: memory, reasoning, and perception-action interfaces, which jointly characterize how language enables agents to perceive, think, and act. At the multi-agent level, we outline how communication protocols and organizational models support coordination, role differentiation, and large-scale social behaviors. To contextualize these designs, we introduce a challenge-centered taxonomy linking six major game genres to their dominant agent requirements, from low-latency control in action games to open-ended goal formation in sandbox worlds. A curated list of related papers is available at https://github.com/git-disl/awesome-LLM-game-agent-papers

Tushin Mallick, Ashish Kundu, Ramana Kompella

The advent of quantum computing poses significant threats to classical public-key cryptographic primitives such as RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography. As many critical network and security protocols depend on these primitives for key exchange and authentication, there is an urgent need to understand their quantum vulnerability and assess the progress made towards integrating post-quantum cryptography (PQC). This survey provides a detailed examination of nine widely deployed protocols - TLS, IPsec, BGP, DNSSEC, SSH, QUIC, OpenID Connect, OpenVPN, and Signal Protocol - analysing their cryptographic foundations, quantum risks, and the current state of PQC migration. We find that TLS and Signal lead the transition with hybrid post-quantum key exchange already deployed at scale, while IPsec and SSH have standardised mechanisms but lack widespread production adoption. DNSSEC and BGP face the most significant structural barriers, as post-quantum signature sizes conflict with fundamental protocol constraints. Across all protocols, key exchange proves consistently easier to migrate than authentication, and protocol-level limitations such as message size and fragmentation often dominate over raw algorithm performance. We also discuss experimental deployments and emerging standards that are shaping the path towards a quantum-resistant communication infrastructure.

Gustav A. Baumgart, Jaemin Shin, Ali Payani et al.

Federated Learning (FL) emerged as a practical approach to training a model from decentralized data. The proliferation of FL led to the development of numerous FL algorithms and mechanisms. Many prior efforts have given their primary focus on accuracy of those approaches, but there exists little understanding of other aspects such as computational overheads, performance and training stability, etc. To bridge this gap, we conduct extensive performance evaluation on several canonical FL algorithms (FedAvg, FedProx, FedYogi, FedAdam, SCAFFOLD, and FedDyn) by leveraging an open-source federated learning framework called Flame. Our comprehensive measurement study reveals that no single algorithm works best across different performance metrics. A few key observations are: (1) While some state-of-the-art algorithms achieve higher accuracy than others, they incur either higher computation overheads (FedDyn) or communication overheads (SCAFFOLD). (2) Recent algorithms present smaller standard deviation in accuracy across clients than FedAvg, indicating that the advanced algorithms' performances are stable. (3) However, algorithms such as FedDyn and SCAFFOLD are more prone to catastrophic failures without the support of additional techniques such as gradient clipping. We hope that our empirical study can help the community to build best practices in evaluating FL algorithms.

Yuzhang Shang, Dan Xu, Gaowen Liu et al.

Multi-task learning for dense prediction has emerged as a pivotal area in computer vision, enabling simultaneous processing of diverse yet interrelated pixel-wise prediction tasks. However, the substantial computational demands of state-of-the-art (SoTA) models often limit their widespread deployment. This paper addresses this challenge by introducing network binarization to compress resource-intensive multi-task dense predictors. Specifically, our goal is to significantly accelerate multi-task dense prediction models via Binary Neural Networks (BNNs) while maintaining and even improving model performance at the same time. To reach this goal, we propose a Binary Multi-task Dense Predictor, Bi-MTDP, and several variants of Bi-MTDP, in which a multi-task dense predictor is constructed via specified binarized modules. Our systematical analysis of this predictor reveals that performance drop from binarization is primarily caused by severe information degradation. To address this issue, we introduce a deep information bottleneck layer that enforces representations for downstream tasks satisfying Gaussian distribution in forward propagation. Moreover, we introduce a knowledge distillation mechanism to correct the direction of information flow in backward propagation. Intriguingly, one variant of Bi-MTDP outperforms full-precision (FP) multi-task dense prediction SoTAs, ARTC (CNN-based) and InvPT (ViT-Based). This result indicates that Bi-MTDP is not merely a naive trade-off between performance and efficiency, but is rather a benefit of the redundant information flow thanks to the multi-task architecture. Code is available at https://github.com/42Shawn/BiMTDP.

Siheng Xiong, Ali Payani, Ramana Kompella et al.

While large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable reasoning capabilities, they are not without their flaws and inaccuracies. Recent studies have introduced various methods to mitigate these limitations. Temporal reasoning (TR), in particular, presents a significant challenge for LLMs due to its reliance on diverse temporal concepts and intricate temporal logic. In this paper, we propose TG-LLM, a novel framework towards language-based TR. Instead of reasoning over the original context, we adopt a latent representation, temporal graph (TG) that enhances the learning of TR. A synthetic dataset (TGQA), which is fully controllable and requires minimal supervision, is constructed for fine-tuning LLMs on this text-to-TG translation task. We confirmed in experiments that the capability of TG translation learned on our dataset can be transferred to other TR tasks and benchmarks. On top of that, we teach LLM to perform deliberate reasoning over the TGs via Chain-of-Thought (CoT) bootstrapping and graph data augmentation. We observed that those strategies, which maintain a balance between usefulness and diversity, bring more reliable CoTs and final results than the vanilla CoT distillation.

Ziheng Chen, Yue Song, Gaowen Liu et al.

Deep neural networks for learning Symmetric Positive Definite (SPD) matrices are gaining increasing attention in machine learning. Despite the significant progress, most existing SPD networks use traditional Euclidean classifiers on an approximated space rather than intrinsic classifiers that accurately capture the geometry of SPD manifolds. Inspired by Hyperbolic Neural Networks (HNNs), we propose Riemannian Multinomial Logistics Regression (RMLR) for the classification layers in SPD networks. We introduce a unified framework for building Riemannian classifiers under the metrics pulled back from the Euclidean space, and showcase our framework under the parameterized Log-Euclidean Metric (LEM) and Log-Cholesky Metric (LCM). Besides, our framework offers a novel intrinsic explanation for the most popular LogEig classifier in existing SPD networks. The effectiveness of our method is demonstrated in three applications: radar recognition, human action recognition, and electroencephalography (EEG) classification. The code is available at https://github.com/GitZH-Chen/SPDMLR.git.

Harshit Daga, Jaemin Shin, Dhruv Garg et al.

Distributed machine learning approaches, including a broad class of federated learning (FL) techniques, present a number of benefits when deploying machine learning applications over widely distributed infrastructures. The benefits are highly dependent on the details of the underlying machine learning topology, which specifies the functionality executed by the participating nodes, their dependencies and interconnections. Current systems lack the flexibility and extensibility necessary to customize the topology of a machine learning deployment. We present Flame, a new system that provides flexibility of the topology configuration of distributed FL applications around the specifics of a particular deployment context, and is easily extensible to support new FL architectures. Flame achieves this via a new high-level abstraction Topology Abstraction Graphs (TAGs). TAGs decouple the ML application logic from the underlying deployment details, making it possible to specialize the application deployment with reduced development effort. Flame is released as an open source project, and its flexibility and extensibility support a variety of topologies and mechanisms, and can facilitate the development of new FL methodologies.

Wenfang Sun, Yingjun Du, Gaowen Liu et al.

Recent advancements in open vocabulary models, like CLIP, have notably advanced zero-shot classification and segmentation by utilizing natural language for class-specific embeddings. However, most research has focused on improving model accuracy through prompt engineering, prompt learning, or fine-tuning with limited labeled data, thereby overlooking the importance of refining the class descriptors. This paper introduces a new approach to text-supervised semantic segmentation using supervision by a large language model (LLM) that does not require extra training. Our method starts from an LLM, like GPT-3, to generate a detailed set of subclasses for more accurate class representation. We then employ an advanced text-supervised semantic segmentation model to apply the generated subclasses as target labels, resulting in diverse segmentation results tailored to each subclass's unique characteristics. Additionally, we propose an assembly that merges the segmentation maps from the various subclass descriptors to ensure a more comprehensive representation of the different aspects in the test images. Through comprehensive experiments on three standard benchmarks, our method outperforms traditional text-supervised semantic segmentation methods by a marked margin.

Junge Zhang, Qihang Zhang, Li Zhang et al.

Generating unbounded 3D scenes is crucial for large-scale scene understanding and simulation. Urban scenes, unlike natural landscapes, consist of various complex man-made objects and structures such as roads, traffic signs, vehicles, and buildings. To create a realistic and detailed urban scene, it is crucial to accurately represent the geometry and semantics of the underlying objects, going beyond their visual appearance. In this work, we propose UrbanDiffusion, a 3D diffusion model that is conditioned on a Bird's-Eye View (BEV) map and generates an urban scene with geometry and semantics in the form of semantic occupancy map. Our model introduces a novel paradigm that learns the data distribution of scene-level structures within a latent space and further enables the expansion of the synthesized scene into an arbitrary scale. After training on real-world driving datasets, our model can generate a wide range of diverse urban scenes given the BEV maps from the held-out set and also generalize to the synthesized maps from a driving simulator. We further demonstrate its application to scene image synthesis with a pretrained image generator as a prior.

Xin Jin, Charalampos Katsis, Fan Sang et al.

The rampant occurrence of cybersecurity breaches imposes substantial limitations on the progress of network infrastructures, leading to compromised data, financial losses, potential harm to individuals, and disruptions in essential services. The current security landscape demands the urgent development of a holistic security assessment solution that encompasses vulnerability analysis and investigates the potential exploitation of these vulnerabilities as attack paths. In this paper, we propose Graphene, an advanced system designed to provide a detailed analysis of the security posture of computing infrastructures. Using user-provided information, such as device details and software versions, Graphene performs a comprehensive security assessment. This assessment includes identifying associated vulnerabilities and constructing potential attack graphs that adversaries can exploit. Furthermore, Graphene evaluates the exploitability of these attack paths and quantifies the overall security posture through a scoring mechanism. The system takes a holistic approach by analyzing security layers encompassing hardware, system, network, and cryptography. Furthermore, Graphene delves into the interconnections between these layers, exploring how vulnerabilities in one layer can be leveraged to exploit vulnerabilities in others. In this paper, we present the end-to-end pipeline implemented in Graphene, showcasing the systematic approach adopted for conducting this thorough security analysis.

Quan Xiao, Hui Yuan, A F M Saif et al.

Diffusion models, which iteratively denoise data samples to synthesize high-quality outputs, have achieved empirical success across domains. However, optimizing these models for downstream tasks often involves nested bilevel structures, such as tuning hyperparameters for fine-tuning tasks or noise schedules in training dynamics, where traditional bilevel methods fail due to the infinite-dimensional probability space and prohibitive sampling costs. We formalize this challenge as a generative bilevel optimization problem and address two key scenarios: (1) fine-tuning pre-trained models via an inference-only lower-level solver paired with a sample-efficient gradient estimator for the upper level, and (2) training diffusion model from scratch with noise schedule optimization by reparameterizing the lower-level problem and designing a computationally tractable gradient estimator. Our first-order bilevel framework overcomes the incompatibility of conventional bilevel methods with diffusion processes, offering theoretical grounding and computational practicality. Experiments demonstrate that our method outperforms existing fine-tuning and hyperparameter search baselines.

Junyi Wu, Jiachen Tao, Haoxuan Wang et al.

We present Orientation-anchored Gaussian Splatting (OriGS), a novel framework for high-quality 4D reconstruction from casually captured monocular videos. While recent advances extend 3D Gaussian Splatting to dynamic scenes via various motion anchors, such as graph nodes or spline control points, they often rely on low-rank assumptions and fall short in modeling complex, region-specific deformations inherent to unconstrained dynamics. OriGS addresses this by introducing a hyperdimensional representation grounded in scene orientation. We first estimate a Global Orientation Field that propagates principal forward directions across space and time, serving as stable structural guidance for dynamic modeling. Built upon this, we propose Orientation-aware Hyper-Gaussian, a unified formulation that embeds time, space, geometry, and orientation into a coherent probabilistic state. This enables inferring region-specific deformation through principled conditioned slicing, adaptively capturing diverse local dynamics in alignment with global motion intent. Experiments demonstrate the superior reconstruction fidelity of OriGS over mainstream methods in challenging real-world dynamic scenes.

Tong Zhou, Ruyi Ding, Gaowen Liu et al.

The rapid growth of digital and AI-generated images has amplified the need for secure and verifiable methods of image attribution. While digital watermarking offers more robust protection than metadata-based approaches--which can be easily stripped--current watermarking techniques remain vulnerable to forgery, creating risks of misattribution that can damage the reputations of AI model developers and the rights of digital artists. These vulnerabilities arise from two key issues: (1) content-agnostic watermarks, which, once learned or leaked, can be transferred across images to fake attribution, and (2) reliance on detector-based verification, which is unreliable since detectors can be tricked. We present MetaSeal, a novel framework for content-dependent watermarking with cryptographic security guarantees to safeguard image attribution. Our design provides (1) forgery resistance, preventing unauthorized replication and enforcing cryptographic verification; (2) robust, self-contained protection, embedding attribution directly into images while maintaining resilience against benign transformations; and (3) evidence of tampering, making malicious alterations visually detectable. Experiments demonstrate that MetaSeal effectively mitigates forgery attempts and applies to both natural and AI-generated images, establishing a new standard for secure image attribution.

Yichang Xu, Gaowen Liu, Ramana Rao Kompella et al. · gatech

The advancement in large language models (LLMs) and large vision models has fueled the rapid progress in multi-modal vision-language reasoning capabilities. However, existing vision-language models (VLMs) remain challenged by compositional visual reasoning. This paper presents VLAgent, a neuro-symbolic approach to developing a Vision-Language Agent system for efficient compositional visual reasoning with three novel features. First, VLAgent develops an interpretable visualization-enhanced two-stage neuro-symbolic reasoning system. The first stage is managed by a front-end engine that generates a structured visual reasoning plan (symbolic program script) for each compositional visual reasoning task by utilizing a pre-trained LLM powered with few-shot chain-of-thought in-context learning. The second stage is managed by a high-performance back-end engine. It transforms the planning script into executable code based on visual input (image or video) and the combination of neural models and symbolic functions and then performs a sequence of actions for the compositional visual reason task. Second, to ensure and enhance the quality of mapping the logic plan to a sequence of executable instructions, VLAgent introduces the SS-parser, which examines the syntax and semantic correctness of the planning script, detects and repairs the logic errors found in the LLM-generated logic plan before generating the executable program. Third, VLAgent introduces the execution verifier in critical reasoning steps to validate and refine its compositional reasoning results in a stepwise manner, for example, ensemble methods for critical visual reasoning and caption analysis for low-confidence compositional reasoning. Extensive experiments on six visual benchmarks compared to a dozen SoTA visual reasoning models show that VLAgent outperforms existing representative approaches to compositional visual reasoning.

Zeliang Zhang, Gaowen Liu, Charles Fleming et al.

Foundation models (FMs) such as CLIP have demonstrated impressive zero-shot performance across various tasks by leveraging large-scale, unsupervised pre-training. However, they often inherit harmful or unwanted knowledge from noisy internet-sourced datasets, compromising their reliability in real-world applications. Existing model unlearning methods either rely on access to pre-trained datasets or focus on coarse-grained unlearning (e.g., entire classes), leaving a critical gap for fine-grained unlearning. In this paper, we address the challenging scenario of selectively forgetting specific portions of knowledge within a class, without access to pre-trained data, while preserving the model's overall performance. We propose a novel three-stage approach that progressively unlearns targeted knowledge while mitigating over-forgetting. It consists of (1) a forgetting stage to fine-tune the CLIP on samples to be forgotten, (2) a reminding stage to restore performance on retained samples, and (3) a restoring stage to recover zero-shot capabilities using model souping. Additionally, we introduce knowledge distillation to handle the distribution disparity between forgetting, retaining samples, and unseen pre-trained data. Extensive experiments on CIFAR-10, ImageNet-1K, and style datasets demonstrate that our approach effectively unlearns specific subgroups while maintaining strong zero-shot performance on semantically similar subgroups and other categories, significantly outperforming baseline unlearning methods, which lose effectiveness under the CLIP unlearning setting.

Shijin Duan, Yejia Liu, Gaowen Liu et al.

Vector Symbolic Architecture (VSA) is emerging in machine learning due to its efficiency, but they are hindered by issues of hyperdimensionality and accuracy. As a promising mitigation, the Low-Dimensional Computing (LDC) method significantly reduces the vector dimension by ~100 times while maintaining accuracy, by employing a gradient-based optimization. Despite its potential, LDC optimization for VSA is still underexplored. Our investigation into vector updates underscores the importance of stable, adaptive dynamics in LDC training. We also reveal the overlooked yet critical roles of batch normalization (BN) and knowledge distillation (KD) in standard approaches. Besides the accuracy boost, BN does not add computational overhead during inference, and KD significantly enhances inference confidence. Through extensive experiments and ablation studies across multiple benchmarks, we provide a thorough evaluation of our approach and extend the interpretability of binary neural network optimization similar to LDC, previously unaddressed in BNN literature.

Yingjun Du, Gaowen Liu, Yuzhang Shang et al.

Foundation models enable prompt-based classifiers for zero-shot and few-shot learning. Nonetheless, the conventional method of employing fixed prompts suffers from distributional shifts that negatively impact generalizability to unseen samples. This paper introduces prompt diffusion, which uses a diffusion model to gradually refine the prompts to obtain a customized prompt for each sample. Specifically, we first optimize a collection of prompts to obtain over-fitted prompts per sample. Then, we propose a prompt diffusion model within the prompt space, enabling the training of a generative transition process from a random prompt to its overfitted prompt. As we cannot access the label of a test image during inference, our model gradually generates customized prompts solely from random prompts using our trained, prompt diffusion. Our prompt diffusion is generic, flexible, and modality-agnostic, making it a simple plug-and-play module seamlessly embedded into existing prompt learning methods for textual, visual, or multi-modal prompt learning. Our diffusion model uses a fast ODE-based sampling strategy to optimize test sample prompts in just five steps, offering a good trade-off between performance improvement and computational efficiency. For all prompt learning methods tested, adding prompt diffusion yields more robust results for base-to-new generalization, cross-dataset generalization, and domain generalization in classification tasks tested over 15 diverse datasets.

Ganghua Wang, Ali Payani, Myungjin Lee et al.

The issue of group fairness in machine learning models, where certain sub-populations or groups are favored over others, has been recognized for some time. While many mitigation strategies have been proposed in centralized learning, many of these methods are not directly applicable in federated learning, where data is privately stored on multiple clients. To address this, many proposals try to mitigate bias at the level of clients before aggregation, which we call locally fair training. However, the effectiveness of these approaches is not well understood. In this work, we investigate the theoretical foundation of locally fair training by studying the relationship between global model fairness and local model fairness. Additionally, we prove that for a broad class of fairness metrics, the global model's fairness can be obtained using only summary statistics from local clients. Based on that, we propose a globally fair training algorithm that directly minimizes the penalized empirical loss. Real-data experiments demonstrate the promising performance of our proposed approach for enhancing fairness while retaining high accuracy compared to locally fair training methods.

Yanzhao Wu, Ling Liu, Ramana Kompella

Deep Neural Network (DNN) trained object detectors are widely deployed in many mission-critical systems for real time video analytics at the edge, such as autonomous driving and video surveillance. A common performance requirement in these mission-critical edge services is the near real-time latency of online object detection on edge devices. However, even with well-trained DNN object detectors, the online detection quality at edge may deteriorate for a number of reasons, such as limited capacity to run DNN object detection models on heterogeneous edge devices, and detection quality degradation due to random frame dropping when the detection processing rate is significantly slower than the incoming video frame rate. This paper addresses these problems by exploiting multi-model multi-device detection parallelism for fast object detection in edge systems with heterogeneous edge devices. First, we analyze the performance bottleneck of running a well-trained DNN model at edge for real time online object detection. We use the offline detection as a reference model, and examine the root cause by analyzing the mismatch among the incoming video streaming rate, video processing rate for object detection, and output rate for real time detection visualization of video streaming. Second, we study performance optimizations by exploiting multi-model detection parallelism. We show that the model-parallel detection approach can effectively speed up the FPS detection processing rate, minimizing the FPS disparity with the incoming video frame rate on heterogeneous edge devices. We evaluate the proposed approach using SSD300 and YOLOv3 on benchmark videos of different video stream rates. The results show that exploiting multi-model detection parallelism can speed up the online object detection processing rate and deliver near real-time object detection performance for efficient video analytics at edge.

Hugo Latapie, Ozkan Kilic, Gaowen Liu et al.

This paper introduces a new metamodel-based knowledge representation that significantly improves autonomous learning and adaptation. While interest in hybrid machine learning / symbolic AI systems leveraging, for example, reasoning and knowledge graphs, is gaining popularity, we find there remains a need for both a clear definition of knowledge and a metamodel to guide the creation and manipulation of knowledge. Some of the benefits of the metamodel we introduce in this paper include a solution to the symbol grounding problem, cumulative learning, and federated learning. We have applied the metamodel to problems ranging from time series analysis, computer vision, and natural language understanding and have found that the metamodel enables a wide variety of learning mechanisms ranging from machine learning, to graph network analysis and learning by reasoning engines to interoperate in a highly synergistic way. Our metamodel-based projects have consistently exhibited unprecedented accuracy, performance, and ability to generalize. This paper is inspired by the state-of-the-art approaches to AGI, recent AGI-aspiring work, the granular computing community, as well as Alfred Korzybski's general semantics. One surprising consequence of the metamodel is that it not only enables a new level of autonomous learning and optimal functioning for machine intelligences, but may also shed light on a path to better understanding how to improve human cognition.