Haiyan Wu

Zhaoning Li, Qiaoli Jiang, Zhengming Wu et al.

Autonomous cars are indispensable when humans go further down the hands-free route. Although existing literature highlights that the acceptance of the autonomous car will increase if it drives in a human-like manner, sparse research offers the naturalistic experience from a passenger's seat perspective to examine the humanness of current autonomous cars. The present study tested whether the AI driver could create a human-like ride experience for passengers based on 69 participants' feedback in a real-road scenario. We designed a ride experience-based version of the non-verbal Turing test for automated driving. Participants rode in autonomous cars (driven by either human or AI drivers) as a passenger and judged whether the driver was human or AI. The AI driver failed to pass our test because passengers detected the AI driver above chance. In contrast, when the human driver drove the car, the passengers' judgement was around chance. We further investigated how human passengers ascribe humanness in our test. Based on Lewin's field theory, we advanced a computational model combining signal detection theory with pre-trained language models to predict passengers' humanness rating behaviour. We employed affective transition between pre-study baseline emotions and corresponding post-stage emotions as the signal strength of our model. Results showed that the passengers' ascription of humanness would increase with the greater affective transition. Our study suggested an important role of affective transition in passengers' ascription of humanness, which might become a future direction for autonomous driving.

Zeyuan Chen, Haiyan Wu, Kaixin Wu et al.

Relevance modeling is a critical component for enhancing user experience in search engines, with the primary objective of identifying items that align with users' queries. Traditional models only rely on the semantic congruence between queries and items to ascertain relevance. However, this approach represents merely one aspect of the relevance judgement, and is insufficient in isolation. Even powerful Large Language Models (LLMs) still cannot accurately judge the relevance of a query and an item from a semantic perspective. To augment LLMs-driven relevance modeling, this study proposes leveraging user interactions recorded in search logs to yield insights into users' implicit search intentions. The challenge lies in the effective prompting of LLMs to capture dynamic search intentions, which poses several obstacles in real-world relevance scenarios, i.e., the absence of domain-specific knowledge, the inadequacy of an isolated prompt, and the prohibitive costs associated with deploying LLMs. In response, we propose ProRBP, a novel Progressive Retrieved Behavior-augmented Prompting framework for integrating search scenario-oriented knowledge with LLMs effectively. Specifically, we perform the user-driven behavior neighbors retrieval from the daily search logs to obtain domain-specific knowledge in time, retrieving candidates that users consider to meet their expectations. Then, we guide LLMs for relevance modeling by employing advanced prompting techniques that progressively improve the outputs of the LLMs, followed by a progressive aggregation with comprehensive consideration of diverse aspects. For online serving, we have developed an industrial application framework tailored for the deployment of LLMs in relevance modeling. Experiments on real-world industry data and online A/B testing demonstrate our proposal achieves promising performance.

Yanbo Wang, Shaohui Lin, Yanyun Qu et al.

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are highly successful for super-resolution (SR) but often require sophisticated architectures with heavy memory cost and computational overhead, significantly restricts their practical deployments on resource-limited devices. In this paper, we proposed a novel contrastive self-distillation (CSD) framework to simultaneously compress and accelerate various off-the-shelf SR models. In particular, a channel-splitting super-resolution network can first be constructed from a target teacher network as a compact student network. Then, we propose a novel contrastive loss to improve the quality of SR images and PSNR/SSIM via explicit knowledge transfer. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed CSD scheme effectively compresses and accelerates several standard SR models such as EDSR, RCAN and CARN. Code is available at https://github.com/Booooooooooo/CSD.

Haiyan Wu, Yanyun Qu, Shaohui Lin et al.

Single image dehazing is a challenging ill-posed problem due to the severe information degeneration. However, existing deep learning based dehazing methods only adopt clear images as positive samples to guide the training of dehazing network while negative information is unexploited. Moreover, most of them focus on strengthening the dehazing network with an increase of depth and width, leading to a significant requirement of computation and memory. In this paper, we propose a novel contrastive regularization (CR) built upon contrastive learning to exploit both the information of hazy images and clear images as negative and positive samples, respectively. CR ensures that the restored image is pulled to closer to the clear image and pushed to far away from the hazy image in the representation space. Furthermore, considering trade-off between performance and memory storage, we develop a compact dehazing network based on autoencoder-like (AE) framework. It involves an adaptive mixup operation and a dynamic feature enhancement module, which can benefit from preserving information flow adaptively and expanding the receptive field to improve the network's transformation capability, respectively. We term our dehazing network with autoencoder and contrastive regularization as AECR-Net. The extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate that our AECR-Net surpass the state-of-the-art approaches. The code is released in https://github.com/GlassyWu/AECR-Net.

Youzhi Qu, Chen Wei, Penghui Du et al.

During the evolution of large models, performance evaluation is necessarily performed to assess their capabilities and ensure safety before practical application. However, current model evaluations mainly rely on specific tasks and datasets, lacking a united framework for assessing the multidimensional intelligence of large models. In this perspective, we advocate for a comprehensive framework of cognitive science-inspired artificial general intelligence (AGI) tests, aimed at fulfilling the testing needs of large models with enhanced capabilities. The cognitive science-inspired AGI tests encompass the full spectrum of intelligence facets, including crystallized intelligence, fluid intelligence, social intelligence, and embodied intelligence. To assess the multidimensional intelligence of large models, the AGI tests consist of a battery of well-designed cognitive tests adopted from human intelligence tests, and then naturally encapsulates into an immersive virtual community. We propose increasing the complexity of AGI testing tasks commensurate with advancements in large models and emphasizing the necessity for the interpretation of test results to avoid false negatives and false positives. We believe that cognitive science-inspired AGI tests will effectively guide the targeted improvement of large models in specific dimensions of intelligence and accelerate the integration of large models into human society.

Youzhi Qu, Junfeng Xia, Xinyao Jian et al.

Data reconstruction is a widely used pre-training task to learn the generalized features for many downstream tasks. Although reconstruction tasks have been applied to neural signal completion and denoising, neural signal reconstruction is less studied. Here, we employ the masked autoencoder (MAE) model to reconstruct functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, and utilize a transfer learning framework to obtain the cognitive taskonomy, a matrix to quantify the similarity between cognitive tasks. Our experimental results demonstrate that the MAE model effectively captures the temporal dynamics patterns and interactions within the brain regions, enabling robust cross-subject fMRI signal reconstruction. The cognitive taskonomy derived from the transfer learning framework reveals the relationships among cognitive tasks, highlighting subtask correlations within motor tasks and similarities between emotion, social, and gambling tasks. Our study suggests that the fMRI reconstruction with MAE model can uncover the latent representation and the obtained taskonomy offers guidance for selecting source tasks in neural decoding tasks for improving the decoding performance on target tasks.

Xuming Ran, Jie Zhang, Ziyuan Ye et al.

Artificial neural network (ANN) is a versatile tool to study the neural representation in the ventral visual stream, and the knowledge in neuroscience in return inspires ANN models to improve performance in the task. However, it is still unclear how to merge these two directions into a unified framework. In this study, we propose an integrated framework called Deep Autoencoder with Neural Response (DAE-NR), which incorporates information from ANN and the visual cortex to achieve better image reconstruction performance and higher neural representation similarity between biological and artificial neurons. The same visual stimuli (i.e., natural images) are input to both the mice brain and DAE-NR. The encoder of DAE-NR jointly learns the dependencies from neural spike encoding and image reconstruction. For the neural spike encoding task, the features derived from a specific hidden layer of the encoder are transformed by a mapping function to predict the ground-truth neural response under the constraint of image reconstruction. Simultaneously, for the image reconstruction task, the latent representation obtained by the encoder is assigned to a decoder to restore the original image under the guidance of neural information. In DAE-NR, the learning process of encoder, mapping function and decoder are all implicitly constrained by these two tasks. Our experiments demonstrate that if and only if with the joint learning, DAE-NRs can improve the performance of visual image reconstruction and increase the representation similarity between biological neurons and artificial neurons. The DAE-NR offers a new perspective on the integration of computer vision and neuroscience.

Siqi Cao, Di Fu, Xu Yang et al.

Sensory and emotional experiences such as pain and empathy are essential for mental and physical health. Cognitive neuroscience has been working on revealing mechanisms underlying pain and empathy. Furthermore, as trending research areas, computational pain recognition and empathic artificial intelligence (AI) show progress and promise for healthcare or human-computer interaction. Although AI research has recently made it increasingly possible to create artificial systems with affective processing, most cognitive neuroscience and AI research do not jointly address the issues of empathy in AI and cognitive neuroscience. The main aim of this paper is to introduce key advances, cognitive challenges and technical barriers in computational pain recognition and the implementation of artificial empathy. Our discussion covers the following topics: How can AI recognize pain from unimodal and multimodal information? Is it crucial for AI to be empathic? What are the benefits and challenges of empathic AI? Despite some consensus on the importance of AI, including empathic recognition and responses, we also highlight future challenges for artificial empathy and possible paths from interdisciplinary perspectives. Furthermore, we discuss challenges for responsible evaluation of cognitive methods and computational techniques and show approaches to future work to contribute to affective assistants capable of empathy.

Jie Yuan, Xuming Ran, Keyin Liu et al.

Machine learning is playing an increasingly important role in medical image analysis, spawning new advances in the clinical application of neuroimaging. There have been some reviews on machine learning and epilepsy before, and they mainly focused on electrophysiological signals such as electroencephalography (EEG) and stereo electroencephalography (SEEG), while neglecting the potential of neuroimaging in epilepsy research. Neuroimaging has its important advantages in confirming the range of the epileptic region, which is essential in presurgical evaluation and assessment after surgery. However, it is difficult for EEG to locate the accurate epilepsy lesion region in the brain. In this review, we emphasize the interaction between neuroimaging and machine learning in the context of epilepsy diagnosis and prognosis. We start with an overview of epilepsy and typical neuroimaging modalities used in epilepsy clinics, MRI, DWI, fMRI, and PET. Then, we elaborate two approaches in applying machine learning methods to neuroimaging data: i) the conventional machine learning approach combining manual feature engineering and classifiers, ii) the deep learning approach, such as the convolutional neural networks and autoencoders. Subsequently, the application of machine learning on epilepsy neuroimaging, such as segmentation, localization, and lateralization tasks, as well as tasks directly related to diagnosis and prognosis are looked into in detail. Finally, we discuss the current achievements, challenges, and potential future directions in this field, hoping to pave the way for computer-aided diagnosis and prognosis of epilepsy.

Codruta O. Ancuti, Cosmin Ancuti, Florin-Alexandru Vasluianu et al.

This paper reviews the NTIRE 2020 Challenge on NonHomogeneous Dehazing of images (restoration of rich details in hazy image). We focus on the proposed solutions and their results evaluated on NH-Haze, a novel dataset consisting of 55 pairs of real haze free and nonhomogeneous hazy images recorded outdoor. NH-Haze is the first realistic nonhomogeneous haze dataset that provides ground truth images. The nonhomogeneous haze has been produced using a professional haze generator that imitates the real conditions of haze scenes. 168 participants registered in the challenge and 27 teams competed in the final testing phase. The proposed solutions gauge the state-of-the-art in image dehazing.

Di Fu, Cornelius Weber, Guochun Yang et al.

Selective attention plays an essential role in information acquisition and utilization from the environment. In the past 50 years, research on selective attention has been a central topic in cognitive science. Compared with unimodal studies, crossmodal studies are more complex but necessary to solve real-world challenges in both human experiments and computational modeling. Although an increasing number of findings on crossmodal selective attention have shed light on humans' behavioral patterns and neural underpinnings, a much better understanding is still necessary to yield the same benefit for computational intelligent agents. This article reviews studies of selective attention in unimodal visual and auditory and crossmodal audiovisual setups from the multidisciplinary perspectives of psychology and cognitive neuroscience, and evaluates different ways to simulate analogous mechanisms in computational models and robotics. We discuss the gaps between these fields in this interdisciplinary review and provide insights about how to use psychological findings and theories in artificial intelligence from different perspectives.

Quanying Liu, Haiyan Wu, Anqi Liu

We model human decision-making behaviors in a risk-taking task using inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) for the purposes of understanding real human decision making under risk. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work applying IRL to reveal the implicit reward function in human risk-taking decision making and to interpret risk-prone and risk-averse decision-making policies. We hypothesize that the state history (e.g. rewards and decisions in previous trials) are related to the human reward function, which leads to risk-averse and risk-prone decisions. We design features that reflect these factors in the reward function of IRL and learn the corresponding weight that is interpretable as the importance of features. The results confirm the sub-optimal risk-related decisions of human-driven by the personalized reward function. In particular, the risk-prone person tends to decide based on the current pump number, while the risk-averse person relies on burst information from the previous trial and the average end status. Our results demonstrate that IRL is an effective tool to model human decision-making behavior, as well as to help interpret the human psychological process in risk decision-making.

Di Fu, Pablo Barros, German I. Parisi et al.

The efficient integration of multisensory observations is a key property of the brain that yields the robust interaction with the environment. However, artificial multisensory perception remains an open issue especially in situations of sensory uncertainty and conflicts. In this work, we extend previous studies on audio-visual (AV) conflict resolution in complex environments. In particular, we focus on quantitatively assessing the contribution of semantic congruency during an AV spatial localization task. In addition to conflicts in the spatial domain (i.e. spatially misaligned stimuli), we consider gender-specific conflicts with male and female avatars. Our results suggest that while semantically related stimuli affect the magnitude of the visual bias (perceptually shifting the location of the sound towards a semantically congruent visual cue), humans still strongly rely on environmental statistics to solve AV conflicts. Together with previously reported results, this work contributes to a better understanding of how multisensory integration and conflict resolution can be modelled in artificial agents and robots operating in real-world environments.

German I. Parisi, Pablo Barros, Di Fu et al.

Crossmodal conflict resolution is crucial for robot sensorimotor coupling through the interaction with the environment, yielding swift and robust behaviour also in noisy conditions. In this paper, we propose a neurorobotic experiment in which an iCub robot exhibits human-like responses in a complex crossmodal environment. To better understand how humans deal with multisensory conflicts, we conducted a behavioural study exposing 33 subjects to congruent and incongruent dynamic audio-visual cues. In contrast to previous studies using simplified stimuli, we designed a scenario with four animated avatars and observed that the magnitude and extension of the visual bias are related to the semantics embedded in the scene, i.e., visual cues that are congruent with environmental statistics (moving lips and vocalization) induce the strongest bias. We implement a deep learning model that processes stereophonic sound, facial features, and body motion to trigger a discrete behavioural response. After training the model, we exposed the iCub to the same experimental conditions as the human subjects, showing that the robot can replicate similar responses in real time. Our interdisciplinary work provides important insights into how crossmodal conflict resolution can be modelled in robots and introduces future research directions for the efficient combination of sensory observations with internally generated knowledge and expectations.