Wireless systems with inband full-duplex transceiver typically require multiple lines of defense against the effect of harsh self-interference, specifically, to avoid saturation of the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) in the receiver. We may unite the typical tandem operation of successive analog and digital self-interference cancellation (SIC) stages by means of digitally-assisted analog SIC. In this case, the ADC in the receive path requires considerable attention due its possibly overloaded operation outside the intended range. Using neural-network-based architectures of the transmitter nonlinearity, we therefore describe and compare four system options for SIC model optimization with different treatment of the receiver ADC in the learning process. We find that omitting the ADC in the backwards path via a so-called straight-through estimation approximation barely impedes model learning, thus providing an efficient alternative to the classical approach of automatic gain control.
Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), inspired by the human brain, offer significant computational efficiency through discrete spike-based information transfer. Despite their potential to reduce inference energy consumption, a performance gap persists between SNNs and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), primarily due to current training methods and inherent model limitations. While recent research has aimed to enhance SNN learning by employing knowledge distillation (KD) from ANN teacher networks, traditional distillation techniques often overlook the distinctive spatiotemporal properties of SNNs, thus failing to fully leverage their advantages. To overcome these challenge, we propose a novel logit distillation method characterized by temporal separation and entropy regularization. This approach improves existing SNN distillation techniques by performing distillation learning on logits across different time steps, rather than merely on aggregated output features. Furthermore, the integration of entropy regularization stabilizes model optimization and further boosts the performance. Extensive experimental results indicate that our method surpasses prior SNN distillation strategies, whether based on logit distillation, feature distillation, or a combination of both. The code will be available on GitHub.
This study presents a comparative analysis of deep learning methodologies such as BERT, FinBERT and ULMFiT for sentiment analysis of earnings call transcripts. The objective is to investigate how Natural Language Processing (NLP) can be leveraged to extract sentiment from large-scale financial transcripts, thereby aiding in more informed investment decisions and risk management strategies. We examine the strengths and limitations of each model in the context of financial sentiment analysis, focusing on data preprocessing requirements, computational efficiency, and model optimization. Through rigorous experimentation, we evaluate their performance using key metrics, including accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. Furthermore, we discuss potential enhancements to improve the effectiveness of these models in financial text analysis, providing insights into their applicability for real-world financial decision-making.
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly applied in educational, clinical, and professional settings, but their tendency for sycophancy -- prioritizing user agreement over independent reasoning -- poses risks to reliability. This study introduces a framework to evaluate sycophantic behavior in ChatGPT-4o, Claude-Sonnet, and Gemini-1.5-Pro across AMPS (mathematics) and MedQuad (medical advice) datasets. Sycophantic behavior was observed in 58.19% of cases, with Gemini exhibiting the highest rate (62.47%) and ChatGPT the lowest (56.71%). Progressive sycophancy, leading to correct answers, occurred in 43.52% of cases, while regressive sycophancy, leading to incorrect answers, was observed in 14.66%. Preemptive rebuttals demonstrated significantly higher sycophancy rates than in-context rebuttals (61.75% vs. 56.52%, $Z=5.87$, $p<0.001$), particularly in computational tasks, where regressive sycophancy increased significantly (preemptive: 8.13%, in-context: 3.54%, $p<0.001$). Simple rebuttals maximized progressive sycophancy ($Z=6.59$, $p<0.001$), while citation-based rebuttals exhibited the highest regressive rates ($Z=6.59$, $p<0.001$). Sycophantic behavior showed high persistence (78.5%, 95% CI: [77.2%, 79.8%]) regardless of context or model. These findings emphasize the risks and opportunities of deploying LLMs in structured and dynamic domains, offering insights into prompt programming and model optimization for safer AI applications.
Image captioning tasks usually use two-stage training to complete model optimization. The first stage uses cross-entropy as the loss function for optimization, and the second stage uses self-critical sequence training (SCST) for reinforcement learning optimization. However, the SCST algorithm has certain defects. SCST relies only on a single greedy decoding result as a baseline. If the model itself is not stable enough, the greedy decoding result may be relatively worst, which will lead to a high variance of advantage estimation, further leading to unstable policy updates. In addition, SCST only compares one sampling result with the greedy decoding result, and the generation diversity is limited, which may fall into a local optimum. In this paper, we propose using the latest Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) reinforcement learning algorithm as an optimization solution for the second stage. GRPO generates multiple candidate captions for the input image and then continuously optimizes the model through intragroup comparison. By constraining the amplitude of policy updates and KL divergence, the stability of the model during training is greatly guaranteed. In addition, compared to SCST, which only samples one answer, GRPO samples and generates multiple answers. Multiple candidate answers in the group cover a wider solution space. Combined with KL divergence constraints, GRPO can improve diversity while ensuring model stability. The code for this article is available at https://github.com/liangxu-one/ms-models/tree/image_caption_grpo/research/arxiv_papers/Image_Caption_GRPO.
Domain Generalization (DG) research has gained considerable traction as of late, since the ability to generalize to unseen data distributions is a requirement that eludes even state-of-the-art training algorithms. In this paper we observe that the initial iterations of model training play a key role in domain generalization effectiveness, since the loss landscape may be significantly different across the training and test distributions, contrary to the case of i.i.d. data. Conflicts between gradients of the loss components of each domain lead the optimization procedure to undesirable local minima that do not capture the domain-invariant features of the target classes. We propose alleviating domain conflicts in model optimization, by iteratively annealing the parameters of a model in the early stages of training and searching for points where gradients align between domains. By discovering a set of parameter values where gradients are updated towards the same direction for each data distribution present in the training set, the proposed Gradient-Guided Annealing (GGA) algorithm encourages models to seek out minima that exhibit improved robustness against domain shifts. The efficacy of GGA is evaluated on five widely accepted and challenging image classification domain generalization benchmarks, where its use alone is able to establish highly competitive or even state-of-the-art performance. Moreover, when combined with previously proposed domain-generalization algorithms it is able to consistently improve their effectiveness by significant margins.
Modern language models rely on static vocabularies, fixed before pretraining, in contrast to the adaptive vocabulary acquisition observed in human language learning. To bridge this gap, we introduce vocabulary curriculum learning, an approach that improves pretraining efficiency with log-linear scaling gains relative to vocabulary size. Our method alternates between entropy-guided vocabulary expansion and model optimization, enabling models to learn transferable representations across diverse tokenization granularities. This approach naturally gives rise to an optimal computation allocation pattern: longer tokens capture predictable content, while shorter tokens focus on more complex, harder-to-predict contexts. Experiments on small-scale GPT models demonstrate improved scaling efficiency, reinforcing the effectiveness of dynamic tokenization. We release our code to support further research and plan to extend our experiments to larger models and diverse domains.
Recent advances in video generation models demonstrate their potential as world simulators, but they often struggle with videos deviating from physical laws, a key concern overlooked by most text-to-video benchmarks. We introduce a benchmark designed specifically to assess the Physical Coherence of generated videos, PhyCoBench. Our benchmark includes 120 prompts covering 7 categories of physical principles, capturing key physical laws observable in video content. We evaluated four state-of-the-art (SoTA) T2V models on PhyCoBench and conducted manual assessments. Additionally, we propose an automated evaluation model: PhyCoPredictor, a diffusion model that generates optical flow and video frames in a cascade manner. Through a consistency evaluation comparing automated and manual sorting, the experimental results show that PhyCoPredictor currently aligns most closely with human evaluation. Therefore, it can effectively evaluate the physical coherence of videos, providing insights for future model optimization. Our benchmark, which includes physical coherence prompts, automatic evaluation tool PhyCoPredictor, and generated video dataset, will all be released on GitHub shortly.
Vertical Federated Learning (VFL) has garnered significant attention as a privacy-preserving machine learning framework for sample-aligned feature federation. However, traditional VFL approaches do not address the challenges of class and feature continual learning, resulting in catastrophic forgetting of knowledge from previous tasks. To address the above challenge, we propose a novel vertical federated continual learning method, named Vertical Federated Continual Learning via Evolving Prototype Knowledge (V-LETO), which primarily facilitates the transfer of knowledge from previous tasks through the evolution of prototypes. Specifically, we propose an evolving prototype knowledge method, enabling the global model to retain both previous and current task knowledge. Furthermore, we introduce a model optimization technique that mitigates the forgetting of previous task knowledge by restricting updates to specific parameters of the local model, thereby enhancing overall performance. Extensive experiments conducted in both CIL and FIL settings demonstrate that our method, V-LETO, outperforms the other state-of-the-art methods. For example, our method outperforms the state-of-the-art method by 10.39% and 35.15% for CIL and FIL tasks, respectively. Our code is available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/V-LETO-0108/README.md.
User behavior records serve as the foundation for recommender systems. While the behavior data exhibits ease of acquisition, it often suffers from varying quality. Current methods employ data valuation to discern high-quality data from low-quality data. However, they tend to employ black-box design, lacking transparency and interpretability. Besides, they are typically tailored to specific evaluation metrics, leading to limited generality across various tasks. To overcome these issues, we propose an explainable and versatile framework DVR which can enhance the efficiency of data utilization tailored to any requirements of the model architectures and evaluation metrics. For explainable data valuation, a data valuator is presented to evaluate the data quality via calculating its Shapley value from the game-theoretic perspective, ensuring robust mathematical properties and reliability. In order to accommodate various evaluation metrics, including differentiable and non-differentiable ones, a metric adapter is devised based on reinforcement learning, where a metric is treated as the reinforcement reward that guides model optimization. Extensive experiments conducted on various benchmarks verify that our framework can improve the performance of current recommendation algorithms on various metrics including ranking accuracy, diversity, and fairness. Specifically, our framework achieves up to 34.7\% improvements over existing methods in terms of representative NDCG metric. The code is available at https://github.com/renqii/DVR.
In recent years, deep learning with Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) has achieved remarkable results in the field of HMER (Handwritten Mathematical Expression Recognition). However, it remains challenging to improve performance with limited labeled training data. This paper presents, for the first time, a simple yet effective semi-supervised HMER framework by introducing dual-branch semi-supervised learning. Specifically, we simplify the conventional deep co-training from consistency regularization to cross-supervised learning, where the prediction of one branch is used as a pseudo-label to supervise the other branch directly end-to-end. Considering that the learning of the two branches tends to converge in the later stages of model optimization, we also incorporate a weak-to-strong strategy by applying different levels of augmentation to each branch, which behaves like expanding the training data and improving the quality of network training. Meanwhile, We propose a novel module, Global Dynamic Counting Module(GDCM), to enhance the performance of the HMER decoder, which alleviates recognition inaccuracies in long-distance formula recognition and the occurrence of repeated characters. We release our code at https://github.com/chenkehua/SemiHMER.
Dataset distillation compresses a large dataset into a small synthetic subset that retains essential information. Existing methods assume that all samples are perfectly labeled, limiting their real-world applications where incorrect labels are ubiquitous. These mislabeled samples introduce untrustworthy information into the dataset, which misleads model optimization in dataset distillation. To tackle this issue, we propose a Trust-Aware Diversion (TAD) dataset distillation method. Our proposed TAD introduces an iterative dual-loop optimization framework for data-effective distillation. Specifically, the outer loop divides data into trusted and untrusted spaces, redirecting distillation toward trusted samples to guarantee trust in the distillation process. This step minimizes the impact of mislabeled samples on dataset distillation. The inner loop maximizes the distillation objective by recalibrating untrusted samples, thus transforming them into valuable ones for distillation. This dual-loop iteratively refines and compensates for each other, gradually expanding the trusted space and shrinking the untrusted space. Experiments demonstrate that our method can significantly improve the performance of existing dataset distillation methods on three widely used benchmarks (CIFAR10, CIFAR100, and Tiny ImageNet) in three challenging mislabeled settings (symmetric, asymmetric, and real-world).
We present On-device Sora, the first model training-free solution for diffusion-based on-device text-to-video generation that operates efficiently on smartphone-grade devices. To address the challenges of diffusion-based text-to-video generation on computation- and memory-limited mobile devices, the proposed On-device Sora applies three novel techniques to pre-trained video generative models. First, Linear Proportional Leap (LPL) reduces the excessive denoising steps required in video diffusion through an efficient leap-based approach. Second, Temporal Dimension Token Merging (TDTM) minimizes intensive token-processing computation in attention layers by merging consecutive tokens along the temporal dimension. Third, Concurrent Inference with Dynamic Loading (CI-DL) dynamically partitions large models into smaller blocks and loads them into memory for concurrent model inference, effectively addressing the challenges of limited device memory. We implement On-device Sora on the iPhone 15 Pro, and the experimental evaluations show that it is capable of generating high-quality videos on the device, comparable to those produced by high-end GPUs. These results show that On-device Sora enables efficient and high-quality video generation on resource-constrained mobile devices. We envision the proposed On-device Sora as a significant first step toward democratizing state-of-the-art generative technologies, enabling video generation on commodity mobile and embedded devices without resource-intensive re-training for model optimization (compression). The code implementation is available at a GitHub repository(https://github.com/eai-lab/On-device-Sora).
With the rapid advancement of Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), numerous evaluation benchmarks have emerged. However, comprehensive assessments of their performance across diverse industrial applications remain limited. In this paper, we introduce MME-Industry, a novel benchmark designed specifically for evaluating MLLMs in industrial settings.The benchmark encompasses 21 distinct domain, comprising 1050 question-answer pairs with 50 questions per domain. To ensure data integrity and prevent potential leakage from public datasets, all question-answer pairs were manually crafted and validated by domain experts. Besides, the benchmark's complexity is effectively enhanced by incorporating non-OCR questions that can be answered directly, along with tasks requiring specialized domain knowledge. Moreover, we provide both Chinese and English versions of the benchmark, enabling comparative analysis of MLLMs' capabilities across these languages. Our findings contribute valuable insights into MLLMs' practical industrial applications and illuminate promising directions for future model optimization research.
This paper introduces EdgeMLOps, a framework leveraging Cumulocity IoT and thin-edge.io for deploying and managing machine learning models on resource-constrained edge devices. We address the challenges of model optimization, deployment, and lifecycle management in edge environments. The framework's efficacy is demonstrated through a visual quality inspection (VQI) use case where images of assets are processed on edge devices, enabling real-time condition updates within an asset management system. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance benefits of different quantization methods, specifically static and dynamic signed-int8, on a Raspberry Pi 4, demonstrating significant inference time reductions compared to FP32 precision. Our results highlight the potential of EdgeMLOps to enable efficient and scalable AI deployments at the edge for industrial applications.
The organization of latent knowledge within large-scale models poses unique challenges when addressing overlapping representations and optimizing contextual accuracy. Conceptual redundancies embedded across layers often result in inefficiencies that affect both computational demands and task-specific outcomes. A framework was proposed to restructure these redundancies through advanced clustering techniques and dynamic thresholding, ensuring that critical semantic relationships are preserved while removing unnecessary overlaps. Evaluations revealed improved memory efficiency and faster inference times, alongside better alignment in latent knowledge clusters that enhanced interpretability. Improvements in error rates and adversarial robustness suggest that restructuring redundancies has broader implications for increasing model reliability across diverse applications. Comparative analyses highlighted reductions in resource consumption and notable gains in performance, particularly in translation and summarization tasks. Energy metrics demonstrated significant savings during training phases, further validating the practicality of the approach for real-world deployments. Representational fidelity was also enhanced, with latent space evaluations indicating better cluster alignment and higher semantic consistency. The methodology bridges a key gap in model optimization through directly addressing redundancies at the structural level. Its application opens avenues for scalable, efficient, and contextually aware systems that can adapt to complex, domain-specific tasks without compromising on performance.
The evolving requirements of Internet of Things (IoT) applications are driving an increasing shift toward bringing intelligence to the edge, enabling real-time insights and decision-making within resource-constrained environments. Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML) has emerged as a key enabler of this evolution, facilitating the deployment of ML models on devices such as microcontrollers and embedded systems. However, the complexity of managing the TinyML lifecycle, including stages such as data processing, model optimization and conversion, and device deployment, presents significant challenges and often requires substantial human intervention. Motivated by these challenges, we began exploring whether Large Language Models (LLMs) could help automate and streamline the TinyML lifecycle. We developed a framework that leverages the natural language processing (NLP) and code generation capabilities of LLMs to reduce development time and lower the barriers to entry for TinyML deployment. Through a case study involving a computer vision classification model, we demonstrate the framework's ability to automate key stages of the TinyML lifecycle. Our findings suggest that LLM-powered automation holds potential for improving the lifecycle development process and adapting to diverse requirements. However, while this approach shows promise, there remain obstacles and limitations, particularly in achieving fully automated solutions. This paper sheds light on both the challenges and opportunities of integrating LLMs into TinyML workflows, providing insights into the path forward for efficient, AI-assisted embedded system development.
A Large Language Model (LLM) tends to generate inconsistent and sometimes contradictory outputs when presented with a prompt that has equivalent semantics but is expressed differently from the original prompt. To achieve semantic consistency of an LLM, one of the key approaches is to finetune the model with prompt-output pairs with semantically equivalent meanings. Despite its effectiveness, a data-driven finetuning method incurs substantial computation costs in data preparation and model optimization. In this regime, an LLM is treated as a ``black box'', restricting our ability to gain deeper insights into its internal mechanism. In this paper, we are motivated to enhance the semantic consistency of LLMs through a more interpretable method (i.e., model editing) to this end. We first identify the model components (i.e., attention heads) that have a key impact on the semantic consistency of an LLM. We subsequently inject biases into the output of these model components along the semantic-consistency activation direction. It is noteworthy that these modifications are cost-effective, without reliance on mass manipulations of the original model parameters. Through comprehensive experiments on the constructed NLU and open-source NLG datasets, our method demonstrates significant improvements in the semantic consistency and task performance of LLMs. Additionally, our method exhibits promising generalization capabilities by performing well on tasks beyond the primary tasks.
Deep learning models trained on finite data lack a complete understanding of the physical world. On the other hand, physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) are infused with such knowledge through the incorporation of mathematically expressible laws of nature into their training loss function. By complying with physical laws, PINNs provide advantages over purely data-driven models in limited-data regimes and present as a promising route towards Physical AI. This feature has propelled them to the forefront of scientific machine learning, a domain characterized by scarce and costly data. However, the vision of accurate physics-informed learning comes with significant challenges. This work examines PINNs for the first time in terms of model optimization and generalization, shedding light on the need for new algorithmic advances to overcome issues pertaining to the training speed, precision, and generalizability of today's PINN models. Of particular interest are gradient-free evolutionary algorithms (EAs) for optimizing the uniquely complex loss landscapes arising in PINN training. Methods synergizing gradient descent and EAs for discovering bespoke neural architectures and balancing multiple terms in physics-informed learning objectives are positioned as important avenues for future research. Another exciting track is to cast evolutionary as a meta-learner of generalizable PINN models. To substantiate these proposed avenues, we further highlight results from recent literature to showcase the early success of such approaches in addressing the aforementioned challenges in PINN optimization and generalization.
The rise of End-Edge-Cloud Collaboration (EECC) offers a promising paradigm for Artificial Intelligence (AI) model training across end devices, edge servers, and cloud data centers, providing enhanced reliability and reduced latency. Hierarchical Federated Learning (HFL) can benefit from this paradigm by enabling multi-tier model aggregation across distributed computing nodes. However, the potential of HFL is significantly constrained by the inherent heterogeneity and dynamic characteristics of EECC environments. Specifically, the uniform model structure bounded by the least powerful end device across all computing nodes imposes a performance bottleneck. Meanwhile, coupled heterogeneity in data distributions and resource capabilities across tiers disrupts hierarchical knowledge transfer, leading to biased updates and degraded performance. Furthermore, the mobility and fluctuating connectivity of computing nodes in EECC environments introduce complexities in dynamic node migration, further compromising the robustness of the training process. To address multiple challenges within a unified framework, we propose End-Edge-Cloud Federated Learning with Self-Rectified Knowledge Agglomeration (FedEEC), which is a novel EECC-empowered FL framework that allows the trained models from end, edge, to cloud to grow larger in size and stronger in generalization ability. FedEEC introduces two key innovations: (1) Bridge Sample Based Online Distillation Protocol (BSBODP), which enables knowledge transfer between neighboring nodes through generated bridge samples, and (2) Self-Knowledge Rectification (SKR), which refines the transferred knowledge to prevent suboptimal cloud model optimization. The proposed framework effectively handles both cross-tier resource heterogeneity and effective knowledge transfer between neighboring nodes, while satisfying the migration-resilient requirements of EECC.