We propose "factor matting", an alternative formulation of the video matting problem in terms of counterfactual video synthesis that is better suited for re-composition tasks. The goal of factor matting is to separate the contents of video into independent components, each visualizing a counterfactual version of the scene where contents of other components have been removed. We show that factor matting maps well to a more general Bayesian framing of the matting problem that accounts for complex conditional interactions between layers. Based on this observation, we present a method for solving the factor matting problem that produces useful decompositions even for video with complex cross-layer interactions like splashes, shadows, and reflections. Our method is trained per-video and requires neither pre-training on external large datasets, nor knowledge about the 3D structure of the scene. We conduct extensive experiments, and show that our method not only can disentangle scenes with complex interactions, but also outperforms top methods on existing tasks such as classical video matting and background subtraction. In addition, we demonstrate the benefits of our approach on a range of downstream tasks. Please refer to our project webpage for more details: https://factormatte.github.io

Diagnostic radiologists need artificial intelligence (AI) for medical imaging, but access to medical images required for training in AI has become increasingly restrictive. To release and use medical images, we need an algorithm that can simultaneously protect privacy and preserve pathologies in medical images. To develop such an algorithm, here, we propose DP-GLOW, a hybrid of a local differential privacy (LDP) algorithm and one of the flow-based deep generative models (GLOW). By applying a GLOW model, we disentangle the pixelwise correlation of images, which makes it difficult to protect privacy with straightforward LDP algorithms for images. Specifically, we map images onto the latent vector of the GLOW model, each element of which follows an independent normal distribution, and we apply the Laplace mechanism to the latent vector. Moreover, we applied DP-GLOW to chest X-ray images to generate LDP images while preserving pathologies.

Machine learning (ML) has found broad applicability in quantum information science in topics as diverse as experimental design, state classification, and even studies on quantum foundations. Here, we experimentally realize an approach for defining custom prior distributions that are automatically tuned using ML for use with Bayesian quantum state estimation methods. Previously, researchers have looked to Bayesian quantum state tomography due to its unique advantages like natural uncertainty quantification, the return of reliable estimates under any measurement condition, and minimal mean-squared error. However, practical challenges related to long computation times and conceptual issues concerning how to incorporate prior knowledge most suitably can overshadow these benefits. Using both simulated and experimental measurement results, we demonstrate that ML-defined prior distributions reduce net convergence times and provide a natural way to incorporate both implicit and explicit information directly into the prior distribution. These results constitute a promising path toward practical implementations of Bayesian quantum state tomography.

Online media data, in the forms of images and videos, are becoming mainstream communication channels. However, recent advances in deep learning, particularly deep generative models, open the doors for producing perceptually convincing images and videos at a low cost, which not only poses a serious threat to the trustworthiness of digital information but also has severe societal implications. This motivates a growing interest of research in media tampering detection, i.e., using deep learning techniques to examine whether media data have been maliciously manipulated. Depending on the content of the targeted images, media forgery could be divided into image tampering and Deepfake techniques. The former typically moves or erases the visual elements in ordinary images, while the latter manipulates the expressions and even the identity of human faces. Accordingly, the means of defense include image tampering detection and Deepfake detection, which share a wide variety of properties. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the current media tampering detection approaches, and discuss the challenges and trends in this field for future research.

Transparency of Machine Learning models used for decision support in various industries becomes essential for ensuring their ethical use. To that end, feature attribution methods such as SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) are widely used to explain the predictions of black-box machine learning models to customers and developers. However, a parallel trend has been to train machine learning models in collaboration with other data holders without accessing their data. Such models, trained over horizontally or vertically partitioned data, present a challenge for explainable AI because the explaining party may have a biased view of background data or a partial view of the feature space. As a result, explanations obtained from different participants of distributed machine learning might not be consistent with one another, undermining trust in the product. This paper presents an Explainable Data Collaboration Framework based on a model-agnostic additive feature attribution algorithm (KernelSHAP) and Data Collaboration method of privacy-preserving distributed machine learning. In particular, we present three algorithms for different scenarios of explainability in Data Collaboration and verify their consistency with experiments on open-access datasets. Our results demonstrated a significant (by at least a factor of 1.75) decrease in feature attribution discrepancies among the users of distributed machine learning.

Topological data analysis (TDA) is a branch of computational mathematics, bridging algebraic topology and data science, that provides compact, noise-robust representations of complex structures. Deep neural networks (DNNs) learn millions of parameters associated with a series of transformations defined by the model architecture, resulting in high-dimensional, difficult-to-interpret internal representations of input data. As DNNs become more ubiquitous across multiple sectors of our society, there is increasing recognition that mathematical methods are needed to aid analysts, researchers, and practitioners in understanding and interpreting how these models' internal representations relate to the final classification. In this paper, we apply cutting edge techniques from TDA with the goal of gaining insight into the interpretability of convolutional neural networks used for image classification. We use two common TDA approaches to explore several methods for modeling hidden-layer activations as high-dimensional point clouds, and provide experimental evidence that these point clouds capture valuable structural information about the model's process. First, we demonstrate that a distance metric based on persistent homology can be used to quantify meaningful differences between layers, and we discuss these distances in the broader context of existing representational similarity metrics for neural network interpretability. Second, we show that a mapper graph can provide semantic insight into how these models organize hierarchical class knowledge at each layer. These observations demonstrate that TDA is a useful tool to help deep learning practitioners unlock the hidden structures of their models.

This paper is a technical overview of DeepMind and Google's recent work on reinforcement learning for controlling commercial cooling systems. Building on expertise that began with cooling Google's data centers more efficiently, we recently conducted live experiments on two real-world facilities in partnership with Trane Technologies, a building management system provider. These live experiments had a variety of challenges in areas such as evaluation, learning from offline data, and constraint satisfaction. Our paper describes these challenges in the hope that awareness of them will benefit future applied RL work. We also describe the way we adapted our RL system to deal with these challenges, resulting in energy savings of approximately 9% and 13% respectively at the two live experiment sites.

Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to be able to perform new tasks based on a few demonstrations or natural language instructions. While these capabilities have led to widespread adoption, most LLMs are developed by resource-rich organizations and are frequently kept from the public. As a step towards democratizing this powerful technology, we present BLOOM, a 176B-parameter open-access language model designed and built thanks to a collaboration of hundreds of researchers. BLOOM is a decoder-only Transformer language model that was trained on the ROOTS corpus, a dataset comprising hundreds of sources in 46 natural and 13 programming languages (59 in total). We find that BLOOM achieves competitive performance on a wide variety of benchmarks, with stronger results after undergoing multitask prompted finetuning. To facilitate future research and applications using LLMs, we publicly release our models and code under the Responsible AI License.

Our team, Hibikino-Musashi@Home (the shortened name is HMA), was founded in 2010. It is based in the Kitakyushu Science and Research Park, Japan. We have participated in the RoboCup@Home Japan open competition open platform league every year since 2010. Moreover, we participated in the RoboCup 2017 Nagoya as open platform league and domestic standard platform league teams. Currently, the Hibikino-Musashi@Home team has 20 members from seven different laboratories based in the Kyushu Institute of Technology. In this paper, we introduce the activities of our team and the technologies.

最先进的（SOTA）深度学习乳房X线照片分类器接受了弱标记的图像训练，通常依赖于产生有限解释性预测的全球模型，这是他们成功地转化为临床实践的关键障碍。另一方面，基于原型的模型通过将预测与训练图像原型相关联，改善了可解释性，但是它们的准确性不如全球模型，其原型往往具有差的多样性。我们通过BraixProtopnet ++的建议解决了这两个问题，该问题通过将基于原型的模型结合起来，为全局模型增添了解释性。 BraixProtopnet ++在训练基于原型的模型以提高合奏的分类精度时，会提炼全局模型的知识。此外，我们提出了一种方法来通过保证所有原型都与不同的训练图像相关联，以增加原型多样性。对弱标记的私人和公共数据集进行的实验表明，BraixProtopnet ++的分类精度比基于SOTA Global和基于原型的模型具有更高的分类精度。使用病变定位来评估模型可解释性，我们显示BraixProtopnet ++比其他基于原型的模型和全球模型的事后解释更有效。最后，我们表明，BraixProtopnet ++学到的原型的多样性优于基于SOTA原型的方法。