A clustering termination procedure which is locally adaptive (with respect to the hierarchical tree of sets representative of the agglomerative merging) is proposed, for agglomerative hierarchical clustering on a set equipped with a distance function. It represents a multi-scale alternative to conventional scale dependent threshold based termination criteria.

Neural Representations have recently been shown to effectively reconstruct a wide range of signals from 3D meshes and shapes to images and videos. We show that, when adapted correctly, neural representations can be used to directly represent the weights of a pre-trained convolutional neural network, resulting in a Neural Representation for Neural Networks (NeRN). Inspired by coordinate inputs of previous neural representation methods, we assign a coordinate to each convolutional kernel in our network based on its position in the architecture, and optimize a predictor network to map coordinates to their corresponding weights. Similarly to the spatial smoothness of visual scenes, we show that incorporating a smoothness constraint over the original network's weights aids NeRN towards a better reconstruction. In addition, since slight perturbations in pre-trained model weights can result in a considerable accuracy loss, we employ techniques from the field of knowledge distillation to stabilize the learning process. We demonstrate the effectiveness of NeRN in reconstructing widely used architectures on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and ImageNet. Finally, we present two applications using NeRN, demonstrating the capabilities of the learned representations.

Recent methods demonstrate that data augmentation using counterfactual knowledge can teach models the causal structure of a task, leading to robust and generalizable models. However, such counterfactual data often has a limited scale and diversity if crowdsourced and is computationally expensive to extend to new perturbation types if generated using supervised methods. To address this, we introduce a new framework called DISCO for automatically generating high-quality counterfactual data at scale. DISCO engineers prompts to generate phrasal perturbations with a large general language model. Then, a task-specific teacher model filters the generation to distill high-quality counterfactual data. We show that learning with this counterfactual data yields a comparatively small student model that is 6% (absolute) more robust and generalizes 5% better across distributions than baselines on various challenging evaluations. This model is also 15% more sensitive in differentiating original and counterfactual examples, on three evaluation sets written by human workers and via human-AI collaboration.

Recent work has reported that AI classifiers trained on audio recordings can accurately predict severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV2) infection status. Here, we undertake a large scale study of audio-based deep learning classifiers, as part of the UK governments pandemic response. We collect and analyse a dataset of audio recordings from 67,842 individuals with linked metadata, including reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test outcomes, of whom 23,514 tested positive for SARS CoV 2. Subjects were recruited via the UK governments National Health Service Test-and-Trace programme and the REal-time Assessment of Community Transmission (REACT) randomised surveillance survey. In an unadjusted analysis of our dataset AI classifiers predict SARS-CoV-2 infection status with high accuracy (Receiver Operating Characteristic Area Under the Curve (ROCAUC) 0.846 [0.838, 0.854]) consistent with the findings of previous studies. However, after matching on measured confounders, such as age, gender, and self reported symptoms, our classifiers performance is much weaker (ROC-AUC 0.619 [0.594, 0.644]). Upon quantifying the utility of audio based classifiers in practical settings, we find them to be outperformed by simple predictive scores based on user reported symptoms.

The UK COVID-19 Vocal Audio Dataset is designed for the training and evaluation of machine learning models that classify SARS-CoV-2 infection status or associated respiratory symptoms using vocal audio. The UK Health Security Agency recruited voluntary participants through the national Test and Trace programme and the REACT-1 survey in England from March 2021 to March 2022, during dominant transmission of the Alpha and Delta SARS-CoV-2 variants and some Omicron variant sublineages. Audio recordings of volitional coughs, exhalations, and speech were collected in the 'Speak up to help beat coronavirus' digital survey alongside demographic, self-reported symptom and respiratory condition data, and linked to SARS-CoV-2 test results. The UK COVID-19 Vocal Audio Dataset represents the largest collection of SARS-CoV-2 PCR-referenced audio recordings to date. PCR results were linked to 70,794 of 72,999 participants and 24,155 of 25,776 positive cases. Respiratory symptoms were reported by 45.62% of participants. This dataset has additional potential uses for bioacoustics research, with 11.30% participants reporting asthma, and 27.20% with linked influenza PCR test results.

Because of their close relationship with humans, non-human apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons, including siamangs) are of great scientific interest. The goal of understanding their complex behavior would be greatly advanced by the ability to perform video-based pose tracking. Tracking, however, requires high-quality annotated datasets of ape photographs. Here we present OpenApePose, a new public dataset of 71,868 photographs, annotated with 16 body landmarks, of six ape species in naturalistic contexts. We show that a standard deep net (HRNet-W48) trained on ape photos can reliably track out-of-sample ape photos better than networks trained on monkeys (specifically, the OpenMonkeyPose dataset) and on humans (COCO) can. This trained network can track apes almost as well as the other networks can track their respective taxa, and models trained without one of the six ape species can track the held out species better than the monkey and human models can. Ultimately, the results of our analyses highlight the importance of large specialized databases for animal tracking systems and confirm the utility of our new ape database.

人类的生活是无价的。当需要完成危险或威胁生命的任务时，机器人平台可能是更换人类运营商的理想选择。我们在这项工作中重点关注的任务是爆炸性的手段。鉴于移动机器人在多种环境中运行时表现出强大的功能，机器人触觉有可能提供安全解决方案。但是，与人类的运作相比，在此阶段，自主权可能具有挑战性和风险。远程运行可能是完整的机器人自主权和人类存在之间的折衷方案。在本文中，我们提出了一种相对便宜的解决方案，可用于远程敏感和机器人远程操作，以使用腿部操纵器（即，腿部四足机器人的机器人和RGB-D传感）来协助爆炸的军械处置。我们提出了一种新型的系统集成，以解决四足动物全身控制的非平凡问题。我们的系统基于可穿戴的基于IMU的运动捕获系统，该系统用于远程操作和视觉触发性的VR耳机。我们在实验中验证了现实世界中的方法，用于需要全身机器人控制和视觉触发的机车操作任务。

定向的无环图（DAG）模型已在统计和机器学习中广泛研究和应用 - 实际上，它们的简单性促进了有效的学习和推理程序。不幸的是，这些模型在边缘化下并未关闭，使其能够处理具有潜在混杂的系统。无环向混合图（ADMG）模型表征了DAG模型的边缘，使它们更适合处理此类系统。但是，ADMG模型由于其复杂性和用于分析的统计工具的短缺而没有看到广泛使用。在本文中，我们介绍了M连接IMSET，该IMSET为ADMG引起的独立模型提供了替代表示。此外，我们定义了以单个方程为特征的ADMG模型的M连接分数标准，并证明了其与全球Markov属性的等效性。 M-连接IMSET和分解标准提供了两个新的统计工具，用于使用ADMG模型进行学习和推断。我们通过使用封闭形式解决方案制定和评估一致的评分标准来证明这些工具的有用性。

航天器微型振动的隔离对于成功依靠高精度指向的工具部署至关重要。 Hexapod平台代表了一个有前途的解决方案，但是与在可接受的质量和复杂性预算中获得理想的3D动态相关的困难导致了最小的实际采用。本文介绍了支柱边界条件（BCS）对系统级机械干扰抑制的影响。传统的全旋转关节构型的固有局限性被突出显示，并显示为链接质量和旋转惯性。提出并在分析上提出了针刺的BC替代方案，以减轻2D和3D的缓解。新BC的优势在任意平行操纵器中具有，并通过数值测试证明了几种六角形的几何形状。提出了具有良好性能的配置。最后，描述并验证了允许物理实现的新型平面关节。因此，这项工作可以开发不需要主动控制的微型启动平台。

语言模型既展示了定量的改进，又展示了新的定性功能，随着规模的增加。尽管它们具有潜在的变革性影响，但这些新能力的特征却很差。为了为未来的研究提供信息，为破坏性的新模型能力做准备，并改善社会有害的效果，至关重要的是，我们必须了解目前和近乎未来的能力和语言模型的局限性。为了应对这一挑战，我们介绍了超越模仿游戏基准（Big Bench）。 Big Bench目前由204个任务组成，由132家机构的442位作者贡献。任务主题是多样的，从语言学，儿童发展，数学，常识性推理，生物学，物理学，社会偏见，软件开发等等。 Big-Bench专注于被认为超出当前语言模型的功能的任务。我们评估了OpenAI的GPT型号，Google内部密集变压器体系结构和大型基础上的开关稀疏变压器的行为，跨越了数百万到数十亿个参数。此外，一个人类专家评估者团队执行了所有任务，以提供强大的基准。研究结果包括：模型性能和校准都随规模改善，但绝对的术语（以及与评估者的性能相比）；在模型类中的性能非常相似，尽管带有稀疏性。逐渐和预测的任务通常涉及大量知识或记忆成分，而在临界规模上表现出“突破性”行为的任务通常涉及多个步骤或组成部分或脆性指标；社交偏见通常会随着含糊不清的环境而随着规模而增加，但这可以通过提示来改善。