The problem of learning threshold functions is a fundamental one in machine learning. Classical learning theory implies sample complexity of $O(\xi^{-1} \log(1/\beta))$ (for generalization error $\xi$ with confidence $1-\beta$). The private version of the problem, however, is more challenging and in particular, the sample complexity must depend on the size $|X|$ of the domain. Progress on quantifying this dependence, via lower and upper bounds, was made in a line of works over the past decade. In this paper, we finally close the gap for approximate-DP and provide a nearly tight upper bound of $\tilde{O}(\log^* |X|)$, which matches a lower bound by Alon et al (that applies even with improper learning) and improves over a prior upper bound of $\tilde{O}((\log^* |X|)^{1.5})$ by Kaplan et al. We also provide matching upper and lower bounds of $\tilde{\Theta}(2^{\log^*|X|})$ for the additive error of private quasi-concave optimization (a related and more general problem). Our improvement is achieved via the novel Reorder-Slice-Compute paradigm for private data analysis which we believe will have further applications.

Countsketch和功能哈希（“ Hashhing Track”）是流行的随机降低降低方法，支持$ \ ell_2 $ -heavy hters的恢复（键$ i $ where $ v_i^2> \ epsilon \ epsilon \ | \ boldsymbol {v} \ | _2^2 $）和近似内部产品。当输入为{\ em不自适应}（不依赖于先前的输出）时，应用于尺寸$ o（\ ell/\ epsilon）$的经典估计器对于许多在$ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ hig的尺寸的草图（\ ell/\ epsilon）$都是准确的。 Ell $。但是，当输入是自适应的时，可以在$ o（\ ell）$ QUERIES具有经典估算器和最知名的稳健估计器后构建对抗输入，并且仅支持$ \ tilde {o}（\ ell^2）$ queries。在这项工作中，我们表明，这种二次依赖性在某种意义上是固有的：我们设计了$ O（\ ell^2）$ QUERIES之后的攻击，该攻击会产生一个对抗性输入向量，其草图是高度偏见的。我们的攻击使用“天然”非自适应输入（仅选择最终的对抗输入），并普遍适用任何正确的估计器，包括攻击者未知的估计器。在此，我们暴露了这种基本方法的固有脆弱性。

As language models (LMs) scale, they develop many novel behaviors, good and bad, exacerbating the need to evaluate how they behave. Prior work creates evaluations with crowdwork (which is time-consuming and expensive) or existing data sources (which are not always available). Here, we automatically generate evaluations with LMs. We explore approaches with varying amounts of human effort, from instructing LMs to write yes/no questions to making complex Winogender schemas with multiple stages of LM-based generation and filtering. Crowdworkers rate the examples as highly relevant and agree with 90-100% of labels, sometimes more so than corresponding human-written datasets. We generate 154 datasets and discover new cases of inverse scaling where LMs get worse with size. Larger LMs repeat back a dialog user's preferred answer ("sycophancy") and express greater desire to pursue concerning goals like resource acquisition and goal preservation. We also find some of the first examples of inverse scaling in RL from Human Feedback (RLHF), where more RLHF makes LMs worse. For example, RLHF makes LMs express stronger political views (on gun rights and immigration) and a greater desire to avoid shut down. Overall, LM-written evaluations are high-quality and let us quickly discover many novel LM behaviors.

As AI systems become more capable, we would like to enlist their help to supervise other AIs. We experiment with methods for training a harmless AI assistant through self-improvement, without any human labels identifying harmful outputs. The only human oversight is provided through a list of rules or principles, and so we refer to the method as 'Constitutional AI'. The process involves both a supervised learning and a reinforcement learning phase. In the supervised phase we sample from an initial model, then generate self-critiques and revisions, and then finetune the original model on revised responses. In the RL phase, we sample from the finetuned model, use a model to evaluate which of the two samples is better, and then train a preference model from this dataset of AI preferences. We then train with RL using the preference model as the reward signal, i.e. we use 'RL from AI Feedback' (RLAIF). As a result we are able to train a harmless but non-evasive AI assistant that engages with harmful queries by explaining its objections to them. Both the SL and RL methods can leverage chain-of-thought style reasoning to improve the human-judged performance and transparency of AI decision making. These methods make it possible to control AI behavior more precisely and with far fewer human labels.

In this work, we demonstrate the offline FPGA realization of both recurrent and feedforward neural network (NN)-based equalizers for nonlinearity compensation in coherent optical transmission systems. First, we present a realization pipeline showing the conversion of the models from Python libraries to the FPGA chip synthesis and implementation. Then, we review the main alternatives for the hardware implementation of nonlinear activation functions. The main results are divided into three parts: a performance comparison, an analysis of how activation functions are implemented, and a report on the complexity of the hardware. The performance in Q-factor is presented for the cases of bidirectional long-short-term memory coupled with convolutional NN (biLSTM + CNN) equalizer, CNN equalizer, and standard 1-StpS digital back-propagation (DBP) for the simulation and experiment propagation of a single channel dual-polarization (SC-DP) 16QAM at 34 GBd along 17x70km of LEAF. The biLSTM+CNN equalizer provides a similar result to DBP and a 1.7 dB Q-factor gain compared with the chromatic dispersion compensation baseline in the experimental dataset. After that, we assess the Q-factor and the impact of hardware utilization when approximating the activation functions of NN using Taylor series, piecewise linear, and look-up table (LUT) approximations. We also show how to mitigate the approximation errors with extra training and provide some insights into possible gradient problems in the LUT approximation. Finally, to evaluate the complexity of hardware implementation to achieve 400G throughput, fixed-point NN-based equalizers with approximated activation functions are developed and implemented in an FPGA.

To circumvent the non-parallelizability of recurrent neural network-based equalizers, we propose knowledge distillation to recast the RNN into a parallelizable feedforward structure. The latter shows 38\% latency decrease, while impacting the Q-factor by only 0.5dB.

Developing safe and useful general-purpose AI systems will require us to make progress on scalable oversight: the problem of supervising systems that potentially outperform us on most skills relevant to the task at hand. Empirical work on this problem is not straightforward, since we do not yet have systems that broadly exceed our abilities. This paper discusses one of the major ways we think about this problem, with a focus on how to turn it into one that can be productively studied empirically. We first present an experimental design centered on choosing tasks for which human specialists succeed but unaided humans and current general AI systems fail. We then present a proof-of-concept experiment following meant to demonstrate a key feature of this experimental design and show its viability with two question-answering tasks: MMLU and time-limited QuALITY. On these tasks, we find that human participants who interact with an unreliable large-language-model dialog assistant through chat -- a trivial baseline strategy for scalable oversight -- substantially outperform both the model alone and their own unaided performance. These results are an encouraging sign that scalable oversight will be tractable to study with present models and bolster recent findings that large language models can productively assist humans with difficult tasks.

在我们不断变化的气候中，使用模型来评估天气和气候对社会和企业的后续后果的风险及其后续后果至关重要。这种模型的操作在历史上是定制的，并限制在特定的计算基础架构，驱动数据集和预定义的配置上。这些约束通过缩放模型运行并将模型掌握在感兴趣的用户手中。在这里，我们提出了一个基于云的模块化框架，用于部署和操作地理空间模型，最初应用于气候影响。气候冲击建模框架（CIMF）可以以动态和灵活的方式部署模块化工作流程。用户可以以简化的方式指定工作流程组件，然后可以轻松地将这些组件组织成不同的配置，以以不同的方式和不同的尺度评估风险。这还可以使不同的模型（物理模拟或机器学习模型）和工作流程连接以产生合并的风险评估。洪水建模被用作端到端的示例，以证明CIMF的操作。

“感应头”是注意力头，它实现了一种简单的算法来完成令牌序列，例如[a] [b] ... [a] - > [b]。在这项工作中，我们提供了一个假设的初步和间接证据，即诱导头可能构成大型大型变压器模型中所有“文本学习”中大多数的机制（即减少在增加代币指数时损失的损失）。我们发现，诱导头在与秘密学习能力突然急剧上的急剧上升的位置完全相同，这是训练损失的颠簸。我们提出了六种互补的证据，认为诱导头可能是任何大小的变压器模型中一般性内部学习的机理来源。对于仅关注的小型模型，我们提供了有力的因果证据。对于具有MLP的较大模型，我们提供相关证据。

神经网络经常将许多无关的概念包装到一个神经元中 - 一种令人困惑的现象被称为“多疾病”，这使解释性更具挑战性。本文提供了一个玩具模型，可以完全理解多义，这是由于模型在“叠加”中存储其他稀疏特征的结果。我们证明了相变的存在，与均匀多型的几何形状的令人惊讶的联系以及与对抗性例子联系的证据。我们还讨论了对机械解释性的潜在影响。