When used in complex engineered systems, such as communication networks, artificial intelligence (AI) models should be not only as accurate as possible, but also well calibrated. A well-calibrated AI model is one that can reliably quantify the uncertainty of its decisions, assigning high confidence levels to decisions that are likely to be correct and low confidence levels to decisions that are likely to be erroneous. This paper investigates the application of conformal prediction as a general framework to obtain AI models that produce decisions with formal calibration guarantees. Conformal prediction transforms probabilistic predictors into set predictors that are guaranteed to contain the correct answer with a probability chosen by the designer. Such formal calibration guarantees hold irrespective of the true, unknown, distribution underlying the generation of the variables of interest, and can be defined in terms of ensemble or time-averaged probabilities. In this paper, conformal prediction is applied for the first time to the design of AI for communication systems in conjunction to both frequentist and Bayesian learning, focusing on demodulation, modulation classification, and channel prediction.

Two of the main principles underlying the life cycle of an artificial intelligence (AI) module in communication networks are adaptation and monitoring. Adaptation refers to the need to adjust the operation of an AI module depending on the current conditions; while monitoring requires measures of the reliability of an AI module's decisions. Classical frequentist learning methods for the design of AI modules fall short on both counts of adaptation and monitoring, catering to one-off training and providing overconfident decisions. This paper proposes a solution to address both challenges by integrating meta-learning with Bayesian learning. As a specific use case, the problems of demodulation and equalization over a fading channel based on the availability of few pilots are studied. Meta-learning processes pilot information from multiple frames in order to extract useful shared properties of effective demodulators across frames. The resulting trained demodulators are demonstrated, via experiments, to offer better calibrated soft decisions, at the computational cost of running an ensemble of networks at run time. The capacity to quantify uncertainty in the model parameter space is further leveraged by extending Bayesian meta-learning to an active setting. In it, the designer can select in a sequential fashion channel conditions under which to generate data for meta-learning from a channel simulator. Bayesian active meta-learning is seen in experiments to significantly reduce the number of frames required to obtain efficient adaptation procedure for new frames.

The number of international benchmarking competitions is steadily increasing in various fields of machine learning (ML) research and practice. So far, however, little is known about the common practice as well as bottlenecks faced by the community in tackling the research questions posed. To shed light on the status quo of algorithm development in the specific field of biomedical imaging analysis, we designed an international survey that was issued to all participants of challenges conducted in conjunction with the IEEE ISBI 2021 and MICCAI 2021 conferences (80 competitions in total). The survey covered participants' expertise and working environments, their chosen strategies, as well as algorithm characteristics. A median of 72% challenge participants took part in the survey. According to our results, knowledge exchange was the primary incentive (70%) for participation, while the reception of prize money played only a minor role (16%). While a median of 80 working hours was spent on method development, a large portion of participants stated that they did not have enough time for method development (32%). 25% perceived the infrastructure to be a bottleneck. Overall, 94% of all solutions were deep learning-based. Of these, 84% were based on standard architectures. 43% of the respondents reported that the data samples (e.g., images) were too large to be processed at once. This was most commonly addressed by patch-based training (69%), downsampling (37%), and solving 3D analysis tasks as a series of 2D tasks. K-fold cross-validation on the training set was performed by only 37% of the participants and only 50% of the participants performed ensembling based on multiple identical models (61%) or heterogeneous models (39%). 48% of the respondents applied postprocessing steps.

关于自适应梯度方法等自适应梯度方法等训练动力的知之甚少。在本文中，我们阐明了这些算法在全批处理和足够大的批处理设置中的行为。具体而言，我们从经验上证明，在全批训练中，预处理的Hessian的最大特征值通常在某个数值下平衡 - 梯度下降算法的稳定性阈值。对于带有步长$ \ eta $和$ \ beta_1 = 0.9 $的Adam，此稳定性阈值为$ 38/\ eta $。在Minibatch培训期间发生了类似的影响，尤其是随着批处理大小的增长。然而，即使自适应方法在``稳定性的自适应边缘''（AEOS）上训练，但它们在该制度中的行为与EOS的非自适应方法的行为有很大不同。 EOS处的非自适应算法被阻止进入损失景观的高曲率区域，而AEOS的自适应梯度方法可以继续前进到高外观区域，同时适应预先调节器以补偿。我们的发现可以成为社区对深度学习中适应性梯度方法的未来理解的基础。

因果表示学习是识别基本因果变量及其从高维观察（例如图像）中的关系的任务。最近的工作表明，可以从观测的时间序列中重建因果变量，假设它们之间没有瞬时因果关系。但是，在实际应用中，我们的测量或帧速率可能比许多因果效应要慢。这有效地产生了“瞬时”效果，并使以前的可识别性结果无效。为了解决这个问题，我们提出了ICITRI，这是一种因果表示学习方法，当具有已知干预目标的完美干预措施时，可以在时间序列中处理瞬时效应。 Icitris从时间观察中识别因果因素，同时使用可区分的因果发现方法来学习其因果图。在三个视频数据集的实验中，Icitris准确地识别了因果因素及其因果图。

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。

从视觉观察中了解动态系统的潜在因果因素被认为是对复杂环境中推理的推理的关键步骤。在本文中，我们提出了Citris，这是一种变异自动编码器框架，从图像的时间序列中学习因果表示，其中潜在的因果因素可能已被干预。与最近的文献相反，Citris利用了时间性和观察干预目标，以鉴定标量和多维因果因素，例如3D旋转角度。此外，通过引入归一化流，可以轻松扩展柑橘，以利用和删除已验证的自动编码器获得的删除表示形式。在标量因果因素上扩展了先前的结果，我们在更一般的环境中证明了可识别性，其中仅因果因素的某些成分受干预措施影响。在对3D渲染图像序列的实验中，柑橘类似于恢复基本因果变量的先前方法。此外，使用预验证的自动编码器，Citris甚至可以概括为因果因素的实例化，从而在SIM到现实的概括中开放了未来的研究领域，以进行因果关系学习。

对于将数据的每个分区设置为给定数量的部分，存在一个分区，使得每个部分尽可能多地是该部分中数据的良好模型（“算法足够的统计”）。由于这可以为数据之间的每个数字进行完成，因此结果是函数，群集结构功能。它将分区的部分数量映射到与零件是良好模型的缺陷相关的值。这种函数以至少为零的值，该值对于数据集的分区，并且对于将数据分区设置为单例部件的数据来零区段。最佳聚类是选择最小化群集结构功能的最佳聚类。该方法背后的理论以算法信息理论（Kolmogorov复杂性）表示。在实践中，所涉及的Kolmogorov复杂性近似于混凝土压缩机。我们提供了使用真实数据集的示例：Mnist手写数字和干细胞研究中使用的真实细胞的分割。

We show how to turn any classifier that classifies well under Gaussian noise into a new classifier that is certifiably robust to adversarial perturbations under the 2 norm. This "randomized smoothing" technique has been proposed recently in the literature, but existing guarantees are loose. We prove a tight robustness guarantee in 2 norm for smoothing with Gaussian noise. We use randomized smoothing to obtain an ImageNet classifier with e.g. a certified top-1 accuracy of 49% under adversarial perturbations with 2 norm less than 0.5 (=127/255). No certified defense has been shown feasible on ImageNet except for smoothing. On smaller-scale datasets where competing approaches to certified 2 robustness are viable, smoothing delivers higher certified accuracies. Our strong empirical results suggest that randomized smoothing is a promising direction for future research into adversarially robust classification. Code and models are available at http: //github.com/locuslab/smoothing.

The recent increase in public and academic interest in preserving biodiversity has led to the growth of the field of conservation technology. This field involves designing and constructing tools that utilize technology to aid in the conservation of wildlife. In this article, we will use case studies to demonstrate the importance of designing conservation tools with human-wildlife interaction in mind and provide a framework for creating successful tools. These case studies include a range of complexities, from simple cat collars to machine learning and game theory methodologies. Our goal is to introduce and inform current and future researchers in the field of conservation technology and provide references for educating the next generation of conservation technologists. Conservation technology not only has the potential to benefit biodiversity but also has broader impacts on fields such as sustainability and environmental protection. By using innovative technologies to address conservation challenges, we can find more effective and efficient solutions to protect and preserve our planet's resources.