近年来，在应用预训练的语言模型（例如Bert）上，取得了巨大进展，以获取信息检索（IR）任务。在网页中通常使用的超链接已被利用用于设计预训练目标。例如，超链接的锚文本已用于模拟查询，从而构建了巨大的查询文档对以进行预训练。但是，作为跨越两个网页的桥梁，尚未完全探索超链接的潜力。在这项工作中，我们专注于建模通过超链接连接的两个文档之间的关系，并为临时检索设计一个新的预训练目标。具体而言，我们将文档之间的关系分为四组：无链接，单向链接，对称链接和最相关的对称链接。通过比较从相邻组采样的两个文档，该模型可以逐渐提高其捕获匹配信号的能力。我们提出了一个渐进的超链接预测（{php}）框架，以探索预训练中超链接的利用。对两个大规模临时检索数据集和六个提问数据集的实验结果证明了其优于现有的预训练方法。

广义文本表示是许多自然语言理解任务的基础。要充分利用不同的语料库，不可避免地需要了解它们之间的相关性。但是，许多方法忽略了相关性，并直接用于所有任务的单通道模型（粗糙的范式），这缺乏足够的理性和解释。此外，一些现有的作品通过针迹技能块（一个精细的范式）学习下游任务，这可能会导致其冗余和噪音，从而导致非理性。在这项工作中，我们首先通过三种不同的观点分析任务相关性，即数据属性，手动设计和基于模型的相关性，基于相似的任务被分组在一起。然后，我们提出了一个用粗到细范式的层次结构框架，其最底层共享了所有任务，中层级别分为不同的组，以及分配给每个任务的顶级级别。这使我们的模型可以从所有任务中学习基本的语言属性，提高相关任务的性能，并减少不相关任务的负面影响。我们在五个自然语言理解任务的13个基准数据集上进行的实验证明了我们方法的优势。

With the fast development of big data, it has been easier than before to learn the optimal decision rule by updating the decision rule recursively and making online decisions. We study the online statistical inference of model parameters in a contextual bandit framework of sequential decision-making. We propose a general framework for online and adaptive data collection environment that can update decision rules via weighted stochastic gradient descent. We allow different weighting schemes of the stochastic gradient and establish the asymptotic normality of the parameter estimator. Our proposed estimator significantly improves the asymptotic efficiency over the previous averaged SGD approach via inverse probability weights. We also conduct an optimality analysis on the weights in a linear regression setting. We provide a Bahadur representation of the proposed estimator and show that the remainder term in the Bahadur representation entails a slower convergence rate compared to classical SGD due to the adaptive data collection.

Model counting is a fundamental problem which has been influential in many applications, from artificial intelligence to formal verification. Due to the intrinsic hardness of model counting, approximate techniques have been developed to solve real-world instances of model counting. This paper designs a new anytime approach called PartialKC for approximate model counting. The idea is a form of partial knowledge compilation to provide an unbiased estimate of the model count which can converge to the exact count. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that PartialKC achieves significant scalability and accuracy over prior state-of-the-art approximate counters, including satss and STS. Interestingly, the empirical results show that PartialKC reaches convergence for many instances and therefore provides exact model counting performance comparable to state-of-the-art exact counters.

Robots are traditionally bounded by a fixed embodiment during their operational lifetime, which limits their ability to adapt to their surroundings. Co-optimizing control and morphology of a robot, however, is often inefficient due to the complex interplay between the controller and morphology. In this paper, we propose a learning-based control method that can inherently take morphology into consideration such that once the control policy is trained in the simulator, it can be easily deployed to robots with different embodiments in the real world. In particular, we present the Embodiment-aware Transformer (EAT), an architecture that casts this control problem as conditional sequence modeling. EAT outputs the optimal actions by leveraging a causally masked Transformer. By conditioning an autoregressive model on the desired robot embodiment, past states, and actions, our EAT model can generate future actions that best fit the current robot embodiment. Experimental results show that EAT can outperform all other alternatives in embodiment-varying tasks, and succeed in an example of real-world evolution tasks: stepping down a stair through updating the morphology alone. We hope that EAT will inspire a new push toward real-world evolution across many domains, where algorithms like EAT can blaze a trail by bridging the field of evolutionary robotics and big data sequence modeling.

Persuasion modeling is a key building block for conversational agents. Existing works in this direction are limited to analyzing textual dialogue corpus. We argue that visual signals also play an important role in understanding human persuasive behaviors. In this paper, we introduce the first multimodal dataset for modeling persuasion behaviors. Our dataset includes 199 dialogue transcriptions and videos captured in a multi-player social deduction game setting, 26,647 utterance level annotations of persuasion strategy, and game level annotations of deduction game outcomes. We provide extensive experiments to show how dialogue context and visual signals benefit persuasion strategy prediction. We also explore the generalization ability of language models for persuasion modeling and the role of persuasion strategies in predicting social deduction game outcomes. Our dataset, code, and models can be found at https://persuasion-deductiongame.socialai-data.org.

Deep reinforcement learning has recently emerged as an appealing alternative for legged locomotion over multiple terrains by training a policy in physical simulation and then transferring it to the real world (i.e., sim-to-real transfer). Despite considerable progress, the capacity and scalability of traditional neural networks are still limited, which may hinder their applications in more complex environments. In contrast, the Transformer architecture has shown its superiority in a wide range of large-scale sequence modeling tasks, including natural language processing and decision-making problems. In this paper, we propose Terrain Transformer (TERT), a high-capacity Transformer model for quadrupedal locomotion control on various terrains. Furthermore, to better leverage Transformer in sim-to-real scenarios, we present a novel two-stage training framework consisting of an offline pretraining stage and an online correction stage, which can naturally integrate Transformer with privileged training. Extensive experiments in simulation demonstrate that TERT outperforms state-of-the-art baselines on different terrains in terms of return, energy consumption and control smoothness. In further real-world validation, TERT successfully traverses nine challenging terrains, including sand pit and stair down, which can not be accomplished by strong baselines.

Graphene quantum dots provide a platform for manipulating electron behaviors in two-dimensional (2D) Dirac materials. Most previous works were of the "forward" type in that the objective was to solve various confinement, transport and scattering problems with given structures that can be generated by, e.g., applying an external electrical field. There are applications such as cloaking or superscattering where the challenging problem of inverse design needs to be solved: finding a quantum-dot structure according to certain desired functional characteristics. A brute-force search of the system configuration based directly on the solutions of the Dirac equation is computational infeasible. We articulate a machine-learning approach to addressing the inverse-design problem where artificial neural networks subject to physical constraints are exploited to replace the rigorous Dirac equation solver. In particular, we focus on the problem of designing a quantum dot structure to generate both cloaking and superscattering in terms of the scattering efficiency as a function of the energy. We construct a physical loss function that enables accurate prediction of the scattering characteristics. We demonstrate that, in the regime of Klein tunneling, the scattering efficiency can be designed to vary over two orders of magnitudes, allowing any scattering curve to be generated from a proper combination of the gate potentials. Our physics-based machine-learning approach can be a powerful design tool for 2D Dirac material-based electronics.

The unsupervised anomaly localization task faces the challenge of missing anomaly sample training, detecting multiple types of anomalies, and dealing with the proportion of the area of multiple anomalies. A separate teacher-student feature imitation network structure and a multi-scale processing strategy combining an image and feature pyramid are proposed to solve these problems. A network module importance search method based on gradient descent optimization is proposed to simplify the network structure. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than the feature modeling anomaly localization method on the real industrial product detection dataset in the same period. The multi-scale strategy can effectively improve the effect compared with the benchmark method.

Remaining Useful Life (RUL) estimation plays a critical role in Prognostics and Health Management (PHM). Traditional machine health maintenance systems are often costly, requiring sufficient prior expertise, and are difficult to fit into highly complex and changing industrial scenarios. With the widespread deployment of sensors on industrial equipment, building the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to interconnect these devices has become an inexorable trend in the development of the digital factory. Using the device's real-time operational data collected by IIoT to get the estimated RUL through the RUL prediction algorithm, the PHM system can develop proactive maintenance measures for the device, thus, reducing maintenance costs and decreasing failure times during operation. This paper carries out research into the remaining useful life prediction model for multi-sensor devices in the IIoT scenario. We investigated the mainstream RUL prediction models and summarized the basic steps of RUL prediction modeling in this scenario. On this basis, a data-driven approach for RUL estimation is proposed in this paper. It employs a Multi-Head Attention Mechanism to fuse the multi-dimensional time-series data output from multiple sensors, in which the attention on features is used to capture the interactions between features and attention on sequences is used to learn the weights of time steps. Then, the Long Short-Term Memory Network is applied to learn the features of time series. We evaluate the proposed model on two benchmark datasets (C-MAPSS and PHM08), and the results demonstrate that it outperforms the state-of-art models. Moreover, through the interpretability of the multi-head attention mechanism, the proposed model can provide a preliminary explanation of engine degradation. Therefore, this approach is promising for predictive maintenance in IIoT scenarios.