New method defends against unseen threat models using perceptual adversarial training.
problem Lack of precise mathematical characterization of human perception in adversarial attacks.
method Adversarial training against the set of all imperceptible adversarial examples approximated by deep neural networks.
result Perceptual Adversarial Training (PAT) achieves state-of-the-art robustness against multiple diverse adversarial attacks.
PerceptNet mimics human vision to estimate image quality.
problem Estimating perceptual distance between images and their perturbations.
method Inspired by human visual system, PerceptNet uses convolutional neural network architecture.
result PerceptNet outperforms traditional image quality metrics and deep learning methods.
Metric functions for phoneme perception capture the similarity structure among phonemes in a given language and therefore play a central role in phonology and psycho-linguistics. Various phenomena depend on phoneme similarity, such as spoken word recognition or serial recall from verbal working memory. This study prese…
Introduces PCG for better counterfactual explanations in vision models.
problem Ambiguity in latent-space optimization methods for counterfactual explanations.
method Constructs counterfactuals by tracing geodesics under a perceptually Riemannian metric.
result PCG outperforms baselines and reveals hidden failure modes.
In recent years there has been a growing interest in image generation through deep learning. While an important part of the evaluation of the generated images usually involves visual inspection, the inclusion of human perception as a factor in the training process is often overlooked. In this paper we propose an altern…
A new loss function for VAEs improves image quality and efficiency.
problem Training VAEs to generate realistic images requires a loss function that reflects human perception.
method Based on Watson's perceptual model, the loss function computes a weighted distance in frequency space, accounts for luminance and contrast masking, and is extended to color images.
result VAEs trained with the new loss function generated high-quality, less blurry images with fewer artifacts and less computational resources.
A new perceptual adjustment query for metric learning reduces complexity in high-dimensional data.
problem Metric learning in high-dimensional data with limited human feedback.
method Inverted measurement scheme and two-stage estimator for PAQs.
result Sample complexity guarantees for the two-stage estimator of metric learning from PAQs.
This paper explores using SSIM for better image generation in generative models.
problem Improving perceptual quality in generated images using ℓ2 norm. method Theoretical discussion and practical implementation of SSIM in generative models and autoencoders.
result SSIM can be used in generative models and autoencoders to generate better images.
In order to design haptic icons or build a haptic vocabulary, we require a set of easily distinguishable haptic signals to avoid perceptual ambiguity, which in turn requires a way to accurately estimate the perceptual (dis)similarity of such signals. In this work, we present a novel method to learn such a perceptual me…
Paper proposes a method to make image model explanations robust to distortions.
problem Ensuring robustness of explanations for images under distortions.
method Embedding perceptual distances in surrogate explainers to evaluate and improve robustness.
result Surrogate explanations become more coherent and robust to distortions.
Recent work has shown that additive threat models, which only permit the addition of bounded noise to the pixels of an image, are insufficient for fully capturing the space of imperceivable adversarial examples. For example, small rotations and spatial transformations can fool classifiers, remain imperceivable to human…
Recent studies show that widely used deep neural networks (DNNs) are vulnerable to carefully crafted adversarial examples. Many advanced algorithms have been proposed to generate adversarial examples by leveraging the Lp distance for penalizing perturbations. Researchers have explored different defense met…
This paper generalizes graph representation for diverse data types.
problem Representing and querying hybrid data types in a unified way.
method Introducing a directed Tensor-Typed Multi-Graph with embeddings.
result Unified representation for visual, linguistic, and auditory data.
New framework segments 3D scenes using neural algorithms and sub-Riemannian geometry.
problem Effective scene segmentation in 3D vision.
method Neurogeometric sub-Riemannian model, harmonic analysis, neural-based stereo correspondence.
result Sub-Riemannian metric is central to effective scene segmentation.
New SSIM measure improves adversarial attacks' perceptual quality.
problem Lack of perceptual quality in traditional adversarial attacks.
method Replaced Lp norms with SSIM measure for better quality. result SSIM-constrained attacks achieve better quality and similar success rate.
Perceptual Kalman filters maintain human-perceptual quality while processing data.
problem Maintaining human-perceptual quality in signal processing under temporal constraints.
method An optimal causal filtering approach under a perfect perceptual-quality constraint.
result Adding perceptual quality constraints introduces a dilemma that requires sacrificing MSE for temporal consistency.
New finding: Perceptually-aligned gradients occur in adversarially-robust classifiers.
problem Understanding adversarial robustness in neural networks.
method Investigated perceptual alignment in adversarially-trained and smoothed classifiers.
result Perceptually-aligned gradients are a general property of robust classifiers.
New slicing methods speed up Gaussian mixture Wasserstein distance computations.
problem High computational cost of the mixture Wasserstein distance.
method Slicing-based approximations to reduce computational complexity.
result Significant reduction in computational complexity while preserving key properties.
A new metric FRD improves comparing medical images.
problem Comparing medical images for distribution or domain differences.
method Developed a new metric FRD using standardized radiomic features.
result FRD outperforms other metrics in various medical imaging applications.
Study shows perceptual boost of visual attention varies with task difficulty and size.
problem Understanding how task-dependent the perceptual boost of visual attention is in natural settings.
method Designed and trained neural networks on various visual tasks, comparing results to baseline.
result Perceptual boost of attention is stronger with more difficult tasks and weaker with larger task sets.
Perceptual ad-blocking is a novel approach that detects online advertisements based on their visual content. Compared to traditional filter lists, the use of perceptual signals is believed to be less prone to an arms race with web publishers and ad networks. We demonstrate that this may not be the case. We describe att…
Study the tradeoff between signal distortion and human perception over finite channels.
problem Characterize the distortion-perception tradeoff for finite channels with arbitrary metrics.
method Solve linear programming problems to compute the distortion-perception function and optimal reconstructions.
result DP function is piecewise linear in the perception index.
Improved reliability of machine learning predictions using variational auto-encoders.
problem Individual unreliability of machine learning models.
method Modified variational auto-encoders to identify a low-dimensional space for reliable classification.
result Improved reliability of predictions and robust identification of adversarial samples.
We present a scalable, black box, perception-in-the-loop technique to find adversarial examples for deep neural network classifiers. Black box means that our procedure only has input-output access to the classifier, and not to the internal structure, parameters, or intermediate confidence values. Perception-in-the-loop…
Naive Bayes Nearest Neighbour (NBNN) is a simple and effective framework which addresses many of the pitfalls of K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN) classification. It has yielded competitive results on several computer vision benchmarks. Its central tenet is that during NN search, a query is not compared to every example in a d…
GANs can be used to extract Fisher vectors for unsupervised feature learning.
problem Unsupervised feature extraction for classification and similarity tasks.
method Derive Fisher Information and Fisher Vectors from GANs' density model.
result GAN-induced Fisher Vectors perform competitively in unsupervised feature extraction.
Stochastic encoders outperform deterministic ones in 'perfect perceptual quality'.
problem Understanding when stochastic encoders outperform deterministic ones.
method Provided a toy example to illustrate performance.
result Stochastic encoders can significantly outperform deterministic ones in 'perfect perceptual quality'.
This paper tackles disentanglement in image editing and reconstruction.
problem Learning disentangled image representations and balancing disentanglement strength and reconstruction quality.
method Distance covariance based decorrelation regularization for disentanglement, soft target representation for reconstruction, and collapsing AE decoder and GAN generator.
result The proposed model improves the disentanglement strength and perceptual quality of generated images.
Conventional SVM-based image coding methods are founded on independently restricting the distortion in every image coefficient at some particular image representation. Geometrically, this implies allowing arbitrary signal distortions in an n-dimensional rectangle defined by the ε-insensitivity zone in eac…
A new distance metric derived from information theory and estimation theory.
problem Developing a robust distance metric for complex signal distributions.
method Information-Estimation Metric (IEM) derived from continuous probability density and denoising errors.
result The IEM is a valid global distance metric that adapts to the geometry of complex distributions.
Deep neural networks (DNNs) have recently achieved state-of-the-art performance and provide significant progress in many machine learning tasks, such as image classification, speech processing, natural language processing, etc. However, recent studies have shown that DNNs are vulnerable to adversarial attacks. For inst…
Neural network VQ-VAE with WaveNet decodes speech at 1.6 kbps with high quality.
problem Efficiently transmitting and storing speech signals at low bit-rates.
method VQ-VAE and WaveNet architecture for speech coding.
result Speech coding at 1.6 kbps with perceptual quality between MELP and AMR-WB.
Lossy compression algorithms are typically designed and analyzed through the lens of Shannon's rate-distortion theory, where the goal is to achieve the lowest possible distortion (e.g., low MSE or high SSIM) at any given bit rate. However, in recent years, it has become increasingly accepted that "low distortion" is no…
Adversarial training improves robustness against common corruptions.
problem Improving robustness of models against common corruptions.
method Adversarial training with ℓp perturbation and learned perceptual similarity. result Our approach leads to state-of-the-art performance on common corruptions.
This paper presents a novel CNN-based approach for synthesizing high-resolution LiDAR point cloud data. Our approach generates semantically and perceptually realistic results with guidance from specialized loss-functions. First, we utilize a modified per-point loss that addresses missing LiDAR point measurements. Secon…
PeL separates sensory interface optimization from decision learning.
problem Optimizing sensory interfaces without task-specific information.
method Formal separation of perception and decision learning, using metrics for stability, informativeness, and geometry.
result Updates preserving invariants are orthogonal to decision gradients.
Improved image generation with private data using perceptual features.
problem Difficulty in training generative models with differential privacy.
method Use pre-trained perceptual features to learn private data distribution.
result Generative models can generate high-quality images with low privacy budget (ϵ≈2). New method disentangles perceptual uncertainty and behavioral costs in partially observable systems.
problem Tackles inverse optimal control for non-linear partially observable systems.
method Probabilistic approach using maximum causal entropy formulations and local linearization.
result Disentangles perceptual factors and behavioral costs in sequential decision-making.
Stabilizes training of DNN for speech enhancement using PESQ scores.
problem Stability issues in training DNNs using non-differentiable OSQA scores.
method Approximate OSQA scores with a differentiable auxiliary DNN and stabilize training with reinforcement learning techniques.
result Stable training of DNN to achieve state-of-the-art PESQ scores and better sound quality.
Humans perceive the seemingly chaotic world in a structured and compositional way with the prerequisite of being able to segregate conceptual entities from the complex visual scenes. The mechanism of grouping basic visual elements of scenes into conceptual entities is termed as perceptual grouping. In this work, we pro…
Learning to control an environment without hand-crafted rewards or expert data remains challenging and is at the frontier of reinforcement learning research. We present an unsupervised learning algorithm to train agents to achieve perceptually-specified goals using only a stream of observations and actions. Our agent s…
This research converts visual information into audio for users to perceive.
problem Brevity in conveying visual information through spoken language.
method Pretrained image embedding network, GAN for metric space mapping, human subject testing.
result Users can accurately classify audio sonifications of faces.
A new method compares image classifiers using adaptive sampling of natural images.
problem Evaluation of image classifiers on small, fixed test sets may not generalize to real-world images.
method Adaptive sampling from a large corpus of unlabeled images to maximize classifier discrepancies measured by WordNet hierarchy.
result Human labeling of model-dependent image sets reveals relative classifier performance.
Paper introduces adversarial lossy compression for video artifacts reduction.
problem Unpleasant reconstruction artifacts in standard video coding schemes at low bit-rates.
method Adversarial lossy video compression model minimizing an adversarial distortion objective.
result Reduction of perceptual artifacts and detail reconstruction under extreme compression.
Paper presents a new video generation model using diffusion probabilistic methods.
problem Generating high-quality video sequences.
method Denoising diffusion probabilistic models, autoregressive, end-to-end optimization.
result Significant improvements in perceptual quality and probabilistic frame forecasting.
Enhanced text-to-speech synthesizes expressive speech from a single example.
problem Creating a new expressive speech style from a single example of speech.
method Combines VAE and Normalizing Flows to improve disentanglement and naturalness.
result Reduces KL-divergence by 22% and improves perceptual metrics.
Machine learning systems based on deep neural networks, being able to produce state-of-the-art results on various perception tasks, have gained mainstream adoption in many applications. However, they are shown to be vulnerable to adversarial example attack, which generates malicious output by adding slight perturbation…
Quaternion Conformer GAN (QC-GAN) is a parameter-efficient speech enhancement framework that combines a Quaternion Conformer generator with MetricGAN-based training.
problem Speech Enhancement
method Quaternion Conformer GAN
result Achieved a PESQ score of 3.48 with 0.89M parameters, comparable to state-of-the-art models at less than half their size.