Framework for differentiating WFSTs for structured loss functions.
problem Training dynamic structured loss functions in neural networks.
method Automatic differentiation with WFSTs, combining pruning and back-off.
result Demonstrated learning over WFST latent phrase decomposition.
Develops STC for sequential data with missing labels.
problem Learning from partially labeled and unsegmented sequential data.
method Introduces Star Temporal Classification (STC) using a star token and GTN framework.
result Recover most of supervised baseline performance with up to 70% missing labels.
Conditional random fields (CRFs) have been shown to be one of the most successful approaches to sequence labeling. Various linear-chain neural CRFs (NCRFs) are developed to implement the non-linear node potentials in CRFs, but still keeping the linear-chain hidden structure. In this paper, we propose NCRF transducers, …
User-specific KWS system learns new keywords on-device.
problem Out-of-vocabulary problem in traditional KWS systems.
method Query-by-example enrollment and testing, using phonetic posteriors and FST.
result Promising performance on two keywords, preserving simplicity.
Improved neural transducer model outperforms attention model on longer sequences.
problem Improving performance of neural transducer models.
method Comparison of training criteria (marginalization vs. maximum approximation), model generalization, and output label topology.
result Final transducer model outperforms attention model by over 6% relative WER on Switchboard 300h.
Modeling and learning turn-taking behaviors in multi-agent systems.
problem Modeling and predicting turn-taking behaviors in dynamic multi-agent systems.
method Individual behavior models (WFSTs) and multi-agent fusion model (logistic regression classifier).
result Accurately models and predicts turn-taking behaviors with high precision.
Improved speech recognition model with better performance.
problem Speech recognition accuracy on Librispeech.
method Integrates an external language model with an internal LM correction.
result Over 14% relative improvement in performance.
A new method calculates optimal decisions from classifier outputs, improving predictions in drug discovery.
problem Finding optimal decisions from classifier outputs in fields like medicine.
method Develops a transducer that calculates probabilities from classifier outputs, enabling expected-utility maximization.
result Improves prediction accuracy in drug discovery problems, sometimes close to theoretical maximum.
A fixed point theorem is proved for inverse transducers, leading to an automata-theoretic proof of the fixed point subgroup of an endomorphism of a finitely generated virtually free group being finitely generated. If the endomorphism is uniformly continuous for the hyperbolic metric, it is proved that the set of regula…
This paper formalizes Uniswap v3 using PTA and FST for rigorous analysis.
problem Formal modeling of Uniswap v3's concentrated liquidity for rigorous analysis.
method Formal state machine models using PTA and FST, proving rounding bounds.
result Formal justification of Uniswap v3's ε-slack and rounding safety. Requirements elicitation can be very challenging in projects that require deep domain knowledge about the system at hand. As analysts have the full control over the elicitation process, their lack of knowledge about the system under study inhibits them from asking related questions and reduces the accuracy of requireme…
A new framework improves ASR alignment accuracy via optimal transport.
problem Peaky behavior and alignment inaccuracies in E2E ASR models.
method Differentiable alignment framework based on 1D optimal transport.
result Significant improvement in ASR alignment performance compared to CTC.
Having a sequence-to-sequence model which can operate in an online fashion is important for streaming applications such as Voice Search. Neural transducer is a streaming sequence-to-sequence model, but has shown a significant degradation in performance compared to non-streaming models such as Listen, Attend and Spell (…
Streamable model improves speech recognition performance.
problem Improving speech recognition in long-form audio.
method Chunk-based attention model for streaming speech recognition.
result Streamable model maintains competitive performance and generalizes well to long-form speech.
We stabilize the activations of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) by penalizing the squared distance between successive hidden states' norms. This penalty term is an effective regularizer for RNNs including LSTMs and IRNNs, improving performance on character-level language modeling and phoneme recognition, and outperfor…
New methods improve integration of external LMs with AED models.
problem Improving performance of AED models by integrating external LMs.
method Comparing and proposing novel methods to estimate implicit LM from AED models.
result Proposed methods outperform previous approaches.
Phylogenetic tree reconstruction is traditionally based on multiple sequence alignments (MSAs) and heavily depends on the validity of this information bottleneck. With increasing sequence divergence, the quality of MSAs decays quickly. Alignment-free methods, on the other hand, are based on abstract string comparisons …
Requirements elicitation requires extensive knowledge and deep understanding of the problem domain where the final system will be situated. However, in many software development projects, analysts are required to elicit the requirements from an unfamiliar domain, which often causes communication barriers between analys…
Acoustic Neighbor Embeddings map speech and text to fixed dimensions for phonetic confusability.
problem Mapping speech and text to fixed dimensions for phonetic confusability.
method Adapting SNE to sequential inputs, training two encoder neural networks.
result More accurate results with low-dimensional embeddings in word recognition tasks.
Conformal Prediction Regions match Imprecise Highest Density Regions under consonance.
problem Matching conformal prediction regions with highest density regions.
method Using consonance and the Imprecise Probability theory of clouds.
result Imprecise Highest Density Regions are equivalent to Conformal Prediction Regions under consonance.
New ASR system handles multiple languages without needing language-specific encoding.
problem Joint training of data-rich and data-scarce languages in a single model.
method Transforms all languages to a single writing system through transliteration, separating modeling and rendering.
result Language-agnostic multilingual ASR system reduces WER up to 10% over language-dependent models.
Most of the parameters in large vocabulary models are used in embedding layer to map categorical features to vectors and in softmax layer for classification weights. This is a bottle-neck in memory constraint on-device training applications like federated learning and on-device inference applications like automatic spe…
This study improves knowledge distillation for RNN-T models with noisy labels.
problem Challenges in distilling knowledge from RNN-T models with variable quality teachers.
method Full-sum distillation and sequence-level knowledge distillation.
result Full-sum distillation outperforms other methods for RNN-T models, especially for bad teachers.
Study on natural actor-critic for POMDPs with finite memory.
problem Learning in partially observed Markov decision processes with noisy observations.
method Finite actor-critic method with multi-step temporal difference learning.
result First non-asymptotic global convergence for POMDPs with function approximation.
State-regularized RNNs improve interpretability and performance on long-term memory tasks.
problem RNNs struggle with long-term memory and lack of interpretability.
method Introduce a stochastic state transition mechanism to limit state transitions to a finite set.
result State-regularized RNNs perform better on tasks requiring long-term memory.
The paper simplifies multi-agent RL dynamics in finite-state Markov games using homogenization.
problem Approximating complex multi-agent reinforcement learning dynamics in finite-state Markov games.
method Rescaling learning process by reducing learning rate and increasing update frequency, proving convergence to an ODE.
result The rescaled process converges to an ODE that approximates the agent's learning dynamics.
Extends effect variable concept to finite states for web search evaluation.
problem Finding effect of variant variables in changes of observable variables.
method Theoretical analysis and simultaneous distribution decomposition.
result States of extreme effect variable are minimally affected by variant and highly different in observable variable.
Finite presentations for skein algebras linked to gauge field theory.
problem Understanding finite presentations for skein algebras and their relationship to gauge field theory.
method Provided finite presentations and deduced properties of stated skein algebras.
result Stated skein algebras are Koszul and isomorphic to quantum moduli algebras in gauge field theory.
Center identified in stated skein algebra for quantum traces.
problem Understanding the center of the stated skein algebra.
method Analyzing the algebra as a generalization of Kauffman bracket skein algebra, focusing on the case when the quantum parameter is a root of unity.
result Simple description and dimension calculation of the center over the center module.
We investigate the statistical complexity of estimating the parameters of a discrete-state Markov chain kernel from a single long sequence of state observations. In the finite case, we characterize (modulo logarithmic factors) the minimax sample complexity of estimation with respect to the operator infinity norm, while…
We obtain an index of the complexity of a random sequence by allowing the role of the measure in classical probability theory to be played by a function we call the generating mechanism. Typically, this generating mechanism will be a finite automata. We generate a set of biased sequences by applying a finite state auto…
We extend a recent synchronization analysis of exact finite-state sources to nonexact sources for which synchronization occurs only asymptotically. Although the proof methods are quite different, the primary results remain the same. We find that an observer's average uncertainty in the source state vanishes exponential…
A new layer learns abstract relations from graph structure using finite-state automata.
problem Learning abstract relations from graph structure for program analysis.
method Relaxing the problem into learning finite-state automata policies on a graph-based POMDP and training these policies using implicit differentiation.
result GFSA layer finds shortcuts in grid-world graphs and reproduces simple static analyses on Python programs.
Recurrent neural networks trained on regular languages exhibit stable states that can recover from noise.
problem Stability of internal states in recurrent neural networks trained on regular languages.
method Empirical study with analysis of network activation and transitions between states.
result Recurrent neural networks trained on regular languages can recover from random perturbations and maintain stable states.
New method predicts state evolution for non-first-order algorithms on nonconvex problems.
problem Analyzing nonconvex optimization problems with random data.
method Developed a state evolution for a broader class of algorithms including first-order and saddle point updates.
result Established rigorous state evolution predictions and finite-sample guarantees for non-first-order methods.
We analyze how an observer synchronizes to the internal state of a finite-state information source, using the epsilon-machine causal representation. Here, we treat the case of exact synchronization, when it is possible for the observer to synchronize completely after a finite number of observations. The more difficult …
Quantum states associated with subsets of product manifolds are separable.
problem Characterizing quantum states associated with subsets of product manifolds.
method Using holomorphic sections of quantum line bundles and restriction maps.
result Quantum states associated with finite unions of products are separable.
In this paper, we first establish the reflected backward stochastic difference equations with finite state (FS-RBSDEs for short). Then we explore the Existence and Uniqueness Theorem as well as the Comparison Theorem by "one step" method. The connections between FS-RBSDEs and optimal stopping time problems are investig…
Reservoir computers and RNNs fall short of optimal prediction for stochastic PDFA.
problem Predicting stochastic processes generated by probabilistic deterministic finite-state automata.
method Generalized linear models, Reservoir computers, and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) RNNs were tested.
result Each method can fall short of maximal predictive accuracy by up to 50% after training.
Algorithm estimates human decision-making in high-dimensional states with finite-time guarantees.
problem Estimating optimal policies and measures of fit in dynamic decision models with high-dimensional state spaces.
method Single-loop estimation algorithm with stochastic gradient steps for reward maximization.
result Algorithm converges to a stationary solution with finite-time guarantees and approximates maximum likelihood sublinearly.
In 1968, Milnor conjectured that a complete noncompact manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature has a finitely generated fundamental group. The author applies the Excess Theorem of Abresch and Gromoll (1990), to prove two theorems. The first states that if such a manifold has small linear diameter growth then its fund…
Method learns latent states from rich observations to improve RL exploration.
problem Improving RL performance with rich observations and latent states.
method Estimates latent states from observations through regression and clustering, providing finite-sample guarantees.
result Exponential improvement over Q-learning with naïve exploration. In his 2011 work, Maas has shown that the law of any time-reversible continuous-time Markov chain with finite state space evolves like a gradient flow of the relative entropy with respect to its stationary distribution. In this work we show the converse to the above by showing that if the relative law of a Markov chain…
Study learns state representations from observations for control, proving guarantees.
problem Learning state representations from high-dimensional observations for control.
method Cost-driven approach, learning latent state model to predict costs.
result Proves finite-sample guarantees for near-optimal state representation and controller.
We consider 1-qubit mixed quantum state estimation by adaptively updating measurements according to previously obtained outcomes and measurement settings. Updates are determined by the average-variance-optimality (A-optimality) criterion, known in the classical theory of experimental design and applied here to quantum …
New approach to understand recurrent policies as FSMs without minimization.
problem Minimization of FSMs obscures the semantics of policy decisions.
method Start with unminimized FSM, apply interpretable reductions, use attention tool.
result Reveals insights into policy decisions not previously noticed.
Simple algorithm controls unknown systems with optimal regret.
problem Online reinforcement learning for unknown systems with arbitrary state and action spaces.
method Upper-confidence reinforcement learning algorithm using optimistic Q functions.
result Regret bound of $O(HL(KH)^{rac{d-1}{d}})$ for finite horizon control systems.
Kernel-UCBVI algorithm balances exploration and exploitation in metric state-action spaces.
problem Exploration-exploitation dilemma in finite-horizon reinforcement learning with metric state-action spaces.
method Kernel-UCBVI, leveraging smoothness and kernel estimators of rewards and transitions.
result First regret bound for kernel-based RL using smoothing kernels, O(H3K2d/(2d+1)).