Object-centric learning improves generalization and robustness in multi-object scenes.
problem Improving generalization and robustness in neural networks for scenes with multiple objects.
method Training state-of-the-art unsupervised models on multi-object datasets and evaluating segmentation metrics and downstream tasks.
result Object-centric representations are useful for downstream tasks and generally robust to most distribution shifts affecting objects, but less so for less structured shifts.
Action-BED: Task-Driven Bayesian Experimental Design
problem Bayesian experimental design with doubly intractable objectives
method Formulating BED in terms of expected future loss (EFL) and optimising it with stochastic gradients
result Simplified and task-driven framework for BED
Paper designs a lossy compression method for lossless prediction.
problem Ensuring high performance on predictive tasks with minimal data.
method Characterizes bit-rate requirements for invariant transformations, designs unsupervised objectives for neural compressors.
result Achieves substantial rate savings on ImageNet compared to JPEG without compromising classification performance.
LORL learns object-centric representations from vision and language.
problem Learning disentangled, object-centric scene representations from vision and language.
method LORL integrates unsupervised object discovery and segmentation with language input to learn object-centric concepts.
result LORL improves unsupervised object discovery methods and aids downstream tasks.
GoBOED optimizes experiments for specific decision-making objectives, improving downstream outcomes.
problem Reducing parameter uncertainty does not always improve decision-making in critical settings.
method Combines variational posterior surrogate and differentiable convex decision layer for gradient-based design optimization.
result GoBOED identifies designs that better align with specific decision objectives and reveals wider optimal design windows.
DHOG improves unsupervised clustering accuracy on image benchmarks.
problem Local optima in mutual information maximisation lead to suboptimal representations.
method Deep hierarchical object grouping (DHOG) computes multiple discrete representations in a hierarchical order.
result DHOG achieves new state-of-the-art results on three main benchmarks.
Paper extends CCA for multiview learning, improving performance.
problem Learning representations across multiple data views.
method Extends CCA to a multiview mixture model with heuristics.
result Improves performance on downstream tasks compared to standard CCA.
Improves contrastive learning invariance with novel training objectives and feature averaging.
problem Contrastive learning's implicit invariance is insufficient for robust performance.
method Introduces a novel training objective and feature averaging approach to enforce invariance.
result Improved performance and robustness to transformations on downstream tasks.
Objects are represented in sensory systems by continuous manifolds due to sensitivity of neuronal responses to changes in physical features such as location, orientation, and intensity. What makes certain sensory representations better suited for invariant decoding of objects by downstream networks? We present a theory…
A framework evaluates synthetic tabular data quality objectively.
problem Lack of an objective interpretation of tabular data metrics.
method Proposes a single mathematical objective for synthetic tabular data distribution, structurally decomposes it, and unifies existing metrics.
result Synthesizers that represent tabular structure outperform other methods, especially on smaller datasets.
UBM transfers bias mitigation from upstream to downstream tasks efficiently.
problem Bias in fine-tuned language models across various tasks.
method Apply bias mitigation to an upstream model, then fine-tune a downstream model on this mitigated model.
result UBM effects transfer to new downstream tasks, creating less biased models.
New optimization method improves generalization across various tasks.
problem Improving zeroth-order optimization for better generalization.
method Exponential tilting objective to connect zeroth-order optimization with sharpness-aware minimization.
result Achieves better generalization compared to vanilla zeroth-order baselines.
This paper analyzes self-supervised learning from a multi-view perspective.
problem Understanding and optimizing self-supervised learning from multi-view data.
method Information-theoretical framework to understand and design self-supervised learning objectives.
result Self-supervised representations can extract task-relevant information and discard task-irrelevant information.
Method captures shared information across many views robustly.
problem Modeling hundreds of views per event and learning robust embeddings without view knowledge.
method View bootstrapping using multi-view correlation and matrix concentration theory.
result View bootstrapping captures shared information across many views robustly.
A new framework designs experiments for better decision-making.
problem Suboptimal experimental designs for downstream decision-making.
method Amortized decision-aware Bayesian Experimental Design (BED) with Transformer Neural Decision Process (TNDP).
result TNDP effectively designs experiments and facilitates accurate decision-making.
Debiased contrastive learning improves representation learning by correcting for same-label sampling.
problem Sampling negative examples from truly different labels improves performance in self-supervised representation learning.
method Developed a debiased contrastive objective that corrects for the sampling of same-label datapoints without true labels.
result The proposed debiased contrastive objective consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods across vision, language, and reinforcement learning benchmarks.
Optimal Word2Vec hyper-parameters improve NLP tasks.
problem Finding the best Word2Vec hyper-parameters for NLP tasks.
method Empirical evaluation of various hyper-parameter combinations on NLP tasks.
result The best hyper-parameters vary by task, and high analogy scores don't always correlate with performance.
cube2net efficiently constructs query-specific networks using data cube technology.
problem Efficiency bottlenecks in network mining for specific queries.
method Data cube organization and reinforcement learning for query-specific network construction.
result cube2net outperforms existing methods in efficiency and effectiveness.
MixMin finds optimal data mixtures for better model performance.
problem Finding the best data mixtures for improved model performance is challenging.
method Developed a gradient-based approach for optimizing a convex bi-level objective.
result MixMin mixtures uniformly improved model performance across various tasks.
AI bias arises from human-defined goals, not algorithmic flaws.
problem AI bias due to human-defined goals in LLMs.
method Purpose-conditioned cognition and revealing downstream use of LLM outputs.
result AI bias can be reduced by purpose-aware prompting but not fully by regularization.
Prototype model improves model auditing and understanding.
problem Auditing and understanding modern language models is expensive and approximate.
method Introduced a sparse, non-negative mixture of learned prototypes trained with clustering objectives.
result Prototype models either surpass or remain within 2.5 percentage points of dense baselines on downstream tasks.
Self-supervised method improves representation learning for better accuracy.
problem Improving representation learning without manual annotation.
method Proposes a novel self-supervised formulation of relational reasoning.
result Self-supervised relational reasoning outperforms state-of-the-art models by 14% in accuracy.
Language models help text classification tasks by predicting next words.
problem Lack of theoretical understanding of why language models perform well on downstream tasks.
method Mathematical study of the connection between next word prediction and text classification, formalizing it and quantifying the benefit.
result Language models that are ε-optimal in cross-entropy learn features that can solve classification tasks with linear approximation.
New method optimizes treatment policies to avoid winner's curse.
problem Winner's curse in treatment policy optimization.
method Inference-aware policy optimization.
result Optimizes for both estimated performance and downstream evaluation.
Identifies optimal base features for zero-shot adaptation in reinforcement learning.
problem Unclear what constitutes a good set of base features for a wide range of downstream tasks.
method Identifies optimal base features based on downstream performance, without assuming downstream tasks are linear.
result Optimal base features are the same across three task families, differing from Laplacian eigenfunctions.
Pretraining method enhances dialogue representation learning across various tasks.
problem Scarce labeled data for specific dialogue tasks.
method Multi-task unsupervised pretraining with natural training objectives.
result Significant improvement in downstream tasks without encoder discrimination.
PRAGMA models financial event sequences for various banking tasks.
problem Handling diverse financial data for multiple applications.
method Pre-training a Transformer model on a large banking event corpus with a self-supervised objective.
result PRAGMA achieves superior performance across multiple financial domains from raw event sequences.
NCL improves interpretability of deep features by enforcing non-negativity.
problem Lack of interpretability in deep representations.
method Non-negative Contrastive Learning (NCL) using non-negativity constraints.
result NCL outperforms standard contrastive learning in feature disentanglement and selection.
A comprehensive benchmark of 15 scRNA-seq imputation methods across various datasets and analyses.
problem Imputation of single-cell RNA sequencing data to recover latent transcriptional signals.
method Evaluation of 15 imputation methods across 30 datasets and 6 downstream analyses.
result Traditional methods generally outperform DL-based methods in scRNA-seq data analysis.
Study questions the reliability of uncertainty quantification in evidential deep learning.
problem Reliability of uncertainty quantification in evidential deep learning.
method Analysis of evidential deep learning methods, revealing their limitations and interpreting them as out-of-distribution detection algorithms.
result EDL methods are unreliable in quantifying uncertainty, even when effective on downstream tasks.
Object-based factorizations provide a useful level of abstraction for interacting with the world. Building explicit object representations, however, often requires supervisory signals that are difficult to obtain in practice. We present a paradigm for learning object-centric representations for physical scene understan…
A central goal of unsupervised learning is to acquire representations from unlabeled data or experience that can be used for more effective learning of downstream tasks from modest amounts of labeled data. Many prior unsupervised learning works aim to do so by developing proxy objectives based on reconstruction, disent…
Object detection in point clouds is an important aspect of many robotics applications such as autonomous driving. In this paper we consider the problem of encoding a point cloud into a format appropriate for a downstream detection pipeline. Recent literature suggests two types of encoders; fixed encoders tend to be fas…
CARV reduces compute cost for downstream pipelines using diffusion models.
problem High variance in Monte Carlo estimators from diffusion models limits compute efficiency.
method CARV uses hierarchical MC estimation with amortized upstream computation and stratified-inverse-CDF.
result CARV delivers 2-3x effective compute multipliers without changing the objective.
A new robust scaling approach improves downstream metabolomics analysis.
problem Challenges in choosing scaling techniques for metabolomics data.
method Introduces a weighted scaling approach robust to outliers.
result The proposed method outperforms traditional scaling techniques in both outlier-free and outlier-present datasets.
TaskMet learns a metric to improve model performance on unseen tasks.
problem Deep models trained on one task may struggle on another task due to conflicting objectives.
method TaskMet learns a metric in the prediction space to balance task and prediction losses.
result TaskMet achieves better performance on downstream tasks without altering the prediction model.
This research shows unsupervised GANs can perform object segmentation without labels.
problem Performing object segmentation without pixel or image-level labels.
method Used large-scale unsupervised GAN models to differentiate foreground from background.
result Demonstrated high-quality saliency masks and new state-of-the-art performance.
New RL method learns from passive data by modeling intentions.
problem Learning from passive data like videos without rewards or actions.
method Model intentions using temporal difference learning, learning representations from raw data.
result Successfully learns features from passive data that accelerate downstream RL tasks.
Unified approach for optimizing predictions in linear programming and inverse problems.
problem Optimizing predictions in linear programming and inverse problems.
method Maximum optimality margin approach.
result Unified approach that balances computational efficiency and theoretical properties.
A benchmark evaluates ioUS-to-MR synthesis methods for brain tumor surgery.
problem Difficult interpretation of ioUS images for brain tumor surgery.
method Six generators trained under four inference regimes and two targets on public data.
result SynDiff-2.5D best preserved downstream segmentation (U_Dice=0.55).
Generative Adversarial Regression (GAR) learns risk scenarios robustly across policies.
problem Learning risk scenarios for conditional risk objectives.
method Generative adversarial framework for risk matching.
result GAR produces more stable and risk-preserving scenarios than baselines.
Paper improves molecular property prediction using denoising autoencoders.
problem Limited data for molecular property prediction from 3D structures.
method Pre-training via denoising for learning molecular force fields.
result Achieves new state-of-the-art performance on QM9 dataset.
Improved RL training for DMs reduces mode collapse and preserves diversity.
problem Mode collapse and training instability in RL fine-tuned diffusion models.
method Dynamic hierarchical RL training with sliding-window parameter regularisation.
result Models trained with HRF achieve better preservation of diversity in downstream tasks.
In this paper, we advocate for representation learning as the key to mitigating unfair prediction outcomes downstream. Motivated by a scenario where learned representations are used by third parties with unknown objectives, we propose and explore adversarial representation learning as a natural method of ensuring those…
KINet learns object interactions without supervision for robotic pushing.
problem Lack of supervised data for object-centric forward prediction.
method End-to-end unsupervised framework using keypoint representation and contrastive estimation.
result Automatically generalizes to unseen scenarios and accurately predicts future states.
Recently, pre-trained language representation flourishes as the mainstay of the natural language understanding community, e.g., BERT. These pre-trained language representations can create state-of-the-art results on a wide range of downstream tasks. Along with continuous significant performance improvement, the size an…
We present an approach for building an active agent that learns to segment its visual observations into individual objects by interacting with its environment in a completely self-supervised manner. The agent uses its current segmentation model to infer pixels that constitute objects and refines the segmentation model …
This paper tackles noise in raw datasets to improve representation learning efficiency.
problem Noise in real-world datasets degrades representation learning quality.
method Proposes denoising Cosine-Similarity (dCS) loss to learn robust representations.
result Empirical results show the dCS loss outperforms baseline objective functions.