The paper critiques ε-fairness, showing it can lead to unfair outcomes and proposes a utility-based approach.
problem The limitations of probabilistic fairness metrics in real-world contexts.
method Utility-based approach to measure fairness, addressing the issue of unavailable data on false negatives.
result A utility-based approach uncovers necessary actions to achieve true fairness, contrasting with traditional probability-based evaluations.
We propose an efficient Context-Aware clustering of Bandits (CAB) algorithm, which can capture collaborative effects. CAB can be easily deployed in a real-world recommendation system, where multi-armed bandits have been shown to perform well in particular with respect to the cold-start problem. CAB utilizes a context-a…
A new method learns from synthetic data without needing real-world examples.
problem Learning robust classifiers from limited real-world data.
method A novel setting and algorithm exploiting synthetic data independence.
result Robust classifiers trained on synthetic data generalize well to real-world domains.
Bayesian optimization tackles uncertainty in context variables.
problem Sequential decision-making under context distributional uncertainty.
method Wasserstein Distributionally Robust Bayesian Optimization.
result Sublinear regret bounds matching state-of-the-art results.
Research in deep reinforcement learning (RL) has coalesced around improving performance on benchmarks like the Arcade Learning Environment. However, these benchmarks conspicuously miss important characteristics like abrupt context-dependent shifts in strategy and temporal sensitivity that are often present in real-worl…
Understanding users' context is essential for successful recommendations, especially for Online-to-Offline (O2O) recommendation, such as Yelp, Groupon, and Koubei. Different from traditional recommendation where individual preference is mostly static, O2O recommendation should be dynamic to capture variation of users' …
CausalRegNet generates accurate data for gene perturbation experiments, improving CSL methods.
problem Assessing and selecting causal structure learning methods in gene perturbation experiments.
method CausalRegNet, a multiplicative effect structural causal model, generates accurate observational and interventional data.
result CausalRegNet generates more accurate distributions and scales better than current simulation frameworks.
We introduce a stochastic contextual bandit model where at each time step the environment chooses a distribution over a context set and samples the context from this distribution. The learner observes only the context distribution while the exact context realization remains hidden. This allows for a broad range of appl…
We present a Bayesian nonparametric framework for multilevel clustering which utilizes group-level context information to simultaneously discover low-dimensional structures of the group contents and partitions groups into clusters. Using the Dirichlet process as the building block, our model constructs a product base-m…
Although reinforcement learning methods can achieve impressive results in simulation, the real world presents two major challenges: generating samples is exceedingly expensive, and unexpected perturbations or unseen situations cause proficient but specialized policies to fail at test time. Given that it is impractical …
In real-world scenarios, different features have different acquisition costs at test-time which necessitates cost-aware methods to optimize the cost and performance trade-off. This paper introduces a novel and scalable approach for cost-aware feature acquisition at test-time. The method incrementally asks for features …
Direct contextual policy search methods learn to improve policy parameters and simultaneously generalize these parameters to different context or task variables. However, learning from high-dimensional context variables, such as camera images, is still a prominent problem in many real-world tasks. A naive application o…
This work introduces a method to decompose uncertainty in in-context learning for large language models.
problem Understanding the sources of uncertainty in in-context learning for large language models.
method Variational uncertainty decomposition framework without sampling from latent parameter posterior.
result Quantitative and qualitative validation of decomposed epistemic and aleatoric uncertainties.
ContextFlow++ improves generative models by conditioning on mixed-variable contexts.
problem Lack of effective methods for context conditioning in flow-based generative models.
method Proposes ContextFlow++ with additive conditioning and mixed-variable architecture.
result ContextFlow++ achieves higher performance metrics and faster training.
Importance of visual context in scene understanding tasks is well recognized in the computer vision community. However, to what extent the computer vision models for image classification and semantic segmentation are dependent on the context to make their predictions is unclear. A model overly relying on context will f…
Fine-tuning harms in-context learning, but restricting updates to the value matrix improves zero-shot performance.
problem Fine-tuning harms in-context learning, reducing zero-shot performance on unseen tasks.
method Theoretical analysis of linear attention models, identifying conditions for degraded few-shot performance.
result Restricting updates to the value matrix improves zero-shot performance while preserving in-context learning.
Study evaluates large language models' ability to understand probabilistic real-world distributions.
problem Understanding how LLMs grasp probabilistic knowledge of real-world distributions.
method Developed a benchmark to test LLMs' ability to learn and represent empirical distributions across various domains.
result LLMs perform poorly in understanding real-world statistics and do not naturally internalize these distributions.
A federated learning algorithm tackles unknown contexts in multi-arm bandits.
problem Learning optimal actions in federated multi-arm bandits with unobserved contexts.
method Elimination-based algorithm for linearly parametrized reward functions.
result Proved regret bound for linearly parametrized reward functions.
Bayesian context trees capture complex dependencies in categorical sequences.
problem Complex, long-range dependencies in categorical sequences are not well captured by simple models.
method Parsimonious Bayesian context trees with model-based agglomerative clustering for efficient inference.
result The proposed framework outperforms existing models on real-world data.
New online few-shot learning model for context-aware recognition.
problem Few-shot learning in online, continuous settings with spatiotemporal context.
method Proposed new dataset and online versions of existing few-shot learning approaches.
result Contextual prototypical memory model improves performance.
New estimator uses clustering to improve off-policy evaluation accuracy.
problem Improving off-policy evaluation accuracy when logging and evaluation policies differ.
method Proposes an estimator that shares information across similar contexts using clustering.
result Clustering contexts improves estimation accuracy, especially in deficient information settings.
Bayesian framework uses context trees for efficient time series modeling.
problem Building flexible and interpretable mixture models for real-valued time series.
method Hierarchical Bayesian modelling with context trees and autoregressive models.
result The methods outperform state-of-the-art techniques on simulated and real-world experiments.
Paper studies linear CMDPs, improving sample complexity for both models.
problem Improving sample complexity for linear CMDPs.
method Proposes novel model-based algorithms for two linear function approximation models.
result Guaranteed ε-suboptimality gap with desired polynomial sample complexity.
Optimizes control interventions in real-world networks using deep-learning and network science.
problem Optimizing control over socioeconomic networks subject to constraints.
method Integrates optimization tools from deep-learning with network science.
result Characterizes vulnerability of corporate networks to takeovers.
CAZSL learns to generalize physical interactions from context.
problem Designing models that can generalize over unknown objects during manipulation.
method Context-aware zero-shot learning using Siamese network architecture, embedding space masking, and regularization.
result CAZSL models can generalize to different parameters or features of interacting objects.
Scalable method learns context-specific models for hundreds of variables.
problem Learning context-specific models for large numbers of variables.
method Order-based Markov chain Monte-Carlo search with context-specific sparsity assumption.
result Method scales to hundreds of variables and learns accurate models.
Extends trading framework to incorporate real-world constraints.
problem Trading strategies in multi-player non-cooperative games with constraints.
method Re-framed as quadratic programming problem, constraints readily incorporated.
result Two-trader equilibria calculated dynamically.
The paper shows how ignoring temporal context in recommender systems evaluation leads to false confidence, proposing a method to embed temporal context.
problem The discrepancy between offline and online recommender system performance evaluation.
method Proposes a training procedure to embed temporal context into recommender systems and validates its advantage using multi-objective optimization.
result Including temporal context in recommender systems evaluation can improve recall@20 by up to 20%.
LLMs learn to recommend models and hyperparameters from dataset metadata.
problem Model and hyperparameter selection in machine learning is challenging and resource-intensive.
method Converted datasets into metadata and prompted LLMs to recommend models and hyperparameters.
result LLMs can recommend competitive models and hyperparameters without search.
The prevalence of social media has made information sharing possible across the globe. The downside, unfortunately, is the wide spread of misinformation. Methods applied in most previous rumor classifiers give an equal weight, or attention, to words in the microblog, and do not take the context beyond microblog content…
BerlinUCB learns from episodic rewards in nonstationary contexts.
problem Online learning with episodic rewards in nonstationary environments.
method BerlinUCB integrates clustering for self-supervision.
result BerlinUCB outperforms standard contextual bandits in various scenarios.
We describe a deep learning approach for automated brain hemorrhage detection from computed tomography (CT) scans. Our model emulates the procedure followed by radiologists to analyse a 3D CT scan in real-world. Similar to radiologists, the model sifts through 2D cross-sectional slices while paying close attention to p…
CAEL-MIPS learns embeddings to improve MIPS for better OPE in contextual bandits.
problem High variance in IPS weighting for OPE in large action spaces.
method Context-Action Embedding Learning (CAEL) for MIPS to minimize MSE.
result CAEL-MIPS outperforms baselines in MSE for OPE in contextual bandits.
Proposes a context-aware approach to deep autoencoder novelty detection.
problem Challenges of static distribution in novelty detection.
method Semi-supervised network architecture with auxiliary labels for contextual information.
result Single model achieves performance of individually trained models on various contexts.
This paper compares and evaluates methods for evaluating statistical models using benchmarking data and simulations.
problem Choosing between benchmarking data sets and simulation studies for method comparison studies.
method Borrowing ideas from mixed methods research and Clinical Scenario Evaluation, the paper investigates and develops new approaches to evaluate methods.
result Develops new approaches to evaluate methods by combining the strengths of benchmarking data sets and simulation studies.
New algorithm poLinUCB improves online learning in content recommendation platforms.
problem Improving efficiency in content recommendation platforms with post-serving context.
method Novel contextual bandit problem with post-serving contexts and a new algorithm, poLinUCB.
result Achieves tight regret under standard assumptions and significant benefit of utilizing post-serving contexts.
Choice functions accept a set of alternatives as input and produce a preferred subset of these alternatives as output. We study the problem of learning such functions under conditions of context-dependence of preferences, which means that the preference in favor of a certain choice alternative may depend on what other …
In this paper, we consider a problem of failure prediction in the context of predictive maintenance applications. We present a new approach for rare failures prediction, based on a general methodology, which takes into account peculiar properties of technical systems. We illustrate the applicability of the method on th…
This work analyzes how transformers learn common linear regression tasks.
problem Understanding how in-context learning operates in real-world applications with common task structures.
method Analyzing a linear attention model trained on low-rank regression tasks.
result Statistical fluctuations in finite pre-training data induce an implicit regularization, leading to a sharp phase transition in generalization error.
We address challenges of active learning under scarce informational resources in non-stationary environments. In real-world settings, data labeled and integrated into a predictive model may become invalid over time. However, the data can become informative again with switches in context and such changes may indicate un…
OCEAN infers online task identities from context variables.
problem Online task inference for compositional tasks with context adaptation.
method Variational inference framework OCEAN models global and local context variables in a joint latent space.
result OCEAN provides more effective task inference with sequential context adaptation.
The paper addresses adversarial robustness in in-context learning models.
problem Adversarial distribution shifts threaten the reliability of in-context learning models.
method A distributionally robust meta-learning framework is introduced to provide worst-case performance guarantees under Wasserstein-based distribution shifts.
result Model robustness scales with the square root of its capacity and is penalized by the square of the perturbation magnitude.
This paper evaluates LLMs on large graph property estimation tasks.
problem Limited context length of LLMs limits their evaluation on large graphs.
method Developed EstGraph dataset and introduced four tasks for LLMs to estimate large graph properties.
result LLMs perform better on graph property estimation tasks when provided with context-rich prompts based on random walks.
Generative profiling improves real-time task timing for varied resource contexts.
problem Inaccurate task timing analysis for complex hardware architectures.
method Nonparametric, conditional multi-marginal Schrödinger Bridge (MSB) formulation for synthesizing context-dependent timing profiles.
result Maximum likelihood accurate execution profiles for unseen resource contexts.
Chronos-2 forecasts multivariate and covariate data without task-specific training.
problem Limited applicability of existing time series forecasting models to real-world multivariate and covariate data.
method Chronos-2 uses a group attention mechanism for in-context learning across multiple time series.
result Chronos-2 achieves state-of-the-art performance across comprehensive benchmarks.
This paper provides an analysis of the tradeoff between asymptotic bias (suboptimality with unlimited data) and overfitting (additional suboptimality due to limited data) in the context of reinforcement learning with partial observability. Our theoretical analysis formally characterizes that while potentially increasin…
Proposes a new model for more accurate demand forecasting considering dynamic contextual information.
problem Traditional methods fail to capture spatio-temporal and dynamic contextual dependencies in demand forecasting.
method Integrates temporal, relational, spatial, and dynamic contextual dependencies using a Context Integrated Graph Neural Network (CIGNN).
result CIGNN outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in multi-step ahead demand forecasting.
Identifying context-specific entity networks from aggregated data is an important task, arising often in bioinformatics and neuroimaging. Computationally, this task can be formulated as jointly estimating multiple different, but related, sparse Undirected Graphical Models (UGM) from aggregated samples across several co…