Silicon vs. Carbon

In recent years, the field of image generation has been revolutionized by the application of autoregressive transformers and DDPMs. These approaches model the process of image generation as a step-wise probabilistic processes and leverage large amounts of compute and data to learn the image distribution. This methodology of improving performance need not be confined to images. This paper describes a way to apply advances in the image generative domain to speech synthesis. The result is TorToise -- an expressive, multi-voice text-to-speech system. All model code and trained weights have been open-sourced at https://github.com/neonbjb/tortoise-tts.

A multi-voice TTS system trained with an emphasis on quality - GitHub - neonbjb/tortoise-tts: A multi-voice TTS system trained with an emphasis on quality

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We present SoundStorm, a model for efficient, non-autoregressive audio generation. SoundStorm receives as input the semantic tokens of AudioLM, and relies on bidirectional attention and confidence-based parallel decoding to generate the tokens of a neural audio codec. Compared to the autoregressive generation approach of AudioLM, our model produces audio of the same quality and with higher consistency in voice and acoustic conditions, while being two orders of magnitude faster. SoundStorm generates 30 seconds of audio in 0.5 seconds on a TPU-v4. We demonstrate the ability of our model to scale audio generation to longer sequences by synthesizing high-quality, natural dialogue segments, given a transcript annotated with speaker turns and a short prompt with the speakers' voices.

Transformer architecture has shown impressive performance in multiple research domains and has become the backbone of many neural network models. However, there is limited understanding on how it works. In particular, with a simple predictive loss, how the representation emerges from the gradient \emph{training dynamics} remains a mystery. In this paper, for 1-layer transformer with one self-attention layer plus one decoder layer, we analyze its SGD training dynamics for the task of next token prediction in a mathematically rigorous manner. We open the black box of the dynamic process of how the self-attention layer combines input tokens, and reveal the nature of underlying inductive bias. More specifically, with the assumption (a) no positional encoding, (b) long input sequence, and (c) the decoder layer learns faster than the self-attention layer, we prove that self-attention acts as a \emph{discriminative scanning algorithm}: starting from uniform attention, it gradually attends more to distinct key tokens for a specific next token to be predicted, and pays less attention to common key tokens that occur across different next tokens. Among distinct tokens, it progressively drops attention weights, following the order of low to high co-occurrence between the key and the query token in the training set. Interestingly, this procedure does not lead to winner-takes-all, but decelerates due to a \emph{phase transition} that is controllable by the learning rates of the two layers, leaving (almost) fixed token combination. We verify this \textbf{\emph{scan and snap}} dynamics on synthetic and real-world data (WikiText).

As dialogue agents become increasingly human-like in their performance, it is imperative that we develop effective ways to describe their behaviour in high-level terms without falling into the trap of anthropomorphism. In this paper, we foreground the concept of role-play. Casting dialogue agent behaviour in terms of role-play allows us to draw on familiar folk psychological terms, without ascribing human characteristics to language models they in fact lack. Two important cases of dialogue agent behaviour are addressed this way, namely (apparent) deception and (apparent) self-awareness.

Event detection refers to identifying event occurrences in a text and comprises of two subtasks; event identification and classification. We present EDM3, a novel approach for Event Detection that formulates three generative tasks: identification, classification, and combined detection. We show that EDM3 helps to learn transferable knowledge that can be leveraged to perform Event Detection and its subtasks concurrently, mitigating the error propagation inherent in pipelined approaches. Unlike previous dataset- or domain-specific approaches, EDM3 utilizes the existing knowledge of language models, allowing it to be trained over any classification schema. We evaluate EDM3 on multiple event detection datasets: RAMS, WikiEvents, MAVEN, and MLEE, showing that EDM3 outperforms 1) single-task performance by 8.4% on average and 2) multi-task performance without instructional prompts by 2.4% on average. We obtain SOTA results on RAMS (71.3% vs. 65.1% F-1) and competitive performance on other datasets. We analyze our approach to demonstrate its efficacy in low-resource and multi-sentence settings. We also show the effectiveness of this approach on non-standard event configurations such as multi-word and multi-class event triggers. Overall, our results show that EDM3 is a promising approach for Event Detection that has the potential for real-world applications.

We present PandaGPT, an approach to emPower large lANguage moDels with visual and Auditory instruction-following capabilities. Our pilot experiments show that PandaGPT can perform complex tasks such as detailed image description generation, writing stories inspired by videos, and answering questions about audios. More interestingly, PandaGPT can take multimodal inputs simultaneously and compose their semantics naturally. For example, PandaGPT can connect how objects look in an image/video and how they sound in an audio. To do so, PandaGPT combines the multimodal encoders from ImageBind and the large language models from Vicuna. Notably, only aligned image-text pairs are required for the training of PandaGPT. Thanks to the strong capability of ImageBind in embedding data from different modalities into the same space, PandaGPT displays emergent, i.e. zero-shot, cross-modal behaviors for data other than image and text (e.g., video, audio, depth, thermal, and IMU). We hope that PandaGPT serves as an initial step toward building AGI that can perceive and understand inputs in different modalities holistically, as we humans do. Our project page is at https://panda-gpt.github.io/.

Audio Deepfake Detection (ADD) aims to detect the fake audio generated by text-to-speech (TTS), voice conversion (VC) and replay, etc., which is an emerging topic. Traditionally we take the mono signal as input and focus on robust feature extraction and effective classifier design. However, the dual-channel stereo information in the audio signal also includes important cues for deepfake, which has not been studied in the prior work. In this paper, we propose a novel ADD model, termed as M2S-ADD, that attempts to discover audio authenticity cues during the mono-to-stereo conversion process. We first projects the mono to a stereo signal using a pretrained stereo synthesizer, then employs a dual-branch neural architecture to process the left and right channel signals, respectively. In this way, we effectively reveal the artifacts in the fake audio, thus improve the ADD performance. The experiments on the ASVspoof2019 database show that M2S-ADD outperforms all baselines that input mono. We release the source code at \url{https://github.com/AI-S2-Lab/M2S-ADD}.

Recent research shows the potential of enhancing the problem-solving ability of large language models (LLMs) through the use of external tools. However, prior work along this line depends on the availability of existing tools. In this work, we take an initial step towards removing this dependency by proposing a closed-loop framework, referred to as LLMs As Tool Makers (LATM), where LLMs create their own reusable tools for problem-solving. Our approach consists of two key phases: 1) tool making: an LLM acts as the tool maker that crafts tools for given tasks, where a tool is implemented as a Python utility function. 2) tool using: an LLM acts as the tool user, which applies the tool built by the tool maker for problem-solving. The tool user can be either the same or a different LLM from the tool maker. Tool-making enables an LLM to continually generate tools that can be applied to different requests so that future requests can call the corresponding APIs when beneficial for solving the tasks. Furthermore, the division of labor among LLMs for tool-making and tool-using phases introduces the opportunity to achieve cost effectiveness without degrading the quality of generated tools and problem solutions. For example, recognizing that tool-making demands more sophisticated capabilities than tool-using, we can apply a powerful yet resource-intensive model as the tool maker, and a lightweight while cost-effective model as the tool user. We validate the effectiveness of our approach across a variety of complex reasoning tasks, including Big-Bench tasks. With GPT-4 as the tool maker and GPT-3.5 as the tool user, LATM can achieve performance that is on par with using GPT-4 for both tool making and tool using, while the inference cost is significantly reduced.

Deep neural networks (DNNs) trained to minimize a loss term plus the sum of squared weights via gradient descent corresponds to the common approach of training with weight decay. This paper provides new insights into this common learning framework. We characterize the kinds of functions learned by training with weight decay for multi-output (vector-valued) ReLU neural networks. This extends previous characterizations that were limited to single-output (scalar-valued) networks. This characterization requires the definition of a new class of neural function spaces that we call vector-valued variation (VV) spaces. We prove that neural networks (NNs) are optimal solutions to learning problems posed over VV spaces via a novel representer theorem. This new representer theorem shows that solutions to these learning problems exist as vector-valued neural networks with widths bounded in terms of the number of training data. Next, via a novel connection to the multi-task lasso problem, we derive new and tighter bounds on the widths of homogeneous layers in DNNs. The bounds are determined by the effective dimensions of the training data embeddings in/out of the layers. This result sheds new light on the architectural requirements for DNNs. Finally, the connection to the multi-task lasso problem suggests a new approach to compressing pre-trained networks.

Quantifying the uncertainty of quantities of interest (QoIs) from physical systems is a primary objective in model validation. However, achieving this goal entails balancing the need for computational efficiency with the requirement for numerical accuracy. To address this trade-off, we propose a novel bi-fidelity formulation of variational auto-encoders (BF-VAE) designed to estimate the uncertainty associated with a QoI from low-fidelity (LF) and high-fidelity (HF) samples of the QoI. This model allows for the approximation of the statistics of the HF QoI by leveraging information derived from its LF counterpart. Specifically, we design a bi-fidelity auto-regressive model in the latent space that is integrated within the VAE's probabilistic encoder-decoder structure. An effective algorithm is proposed to maximize the variational lower bound of the HF log-likelihood in the presence of limited HF data, resulting in the synthesis of HF realizations with a reduced computational cost. Additionally, we introduce the concept of the bi-fidelity information bottleneck (BF-IB) to provide an information-theoretic interpretation of the proposed BF-VAE model. Our numerical results demonstrate that BF-VAE leads to considerably improved accuracy, as compared to a VAE trained using only HF data when limited HF data is available.

In this paper, we consider the problem of learning a linear regression model on a data domain of interest (target) given few samples. To aid learning, we are provided with a set of pre-trained regression models that are trained on potentially different data domains (sources). Assuming a representation structure for the data generating linear models at the sources and the target domains, we propose a representation transfer based learning method for constructing the target model. The proposed scheme is comprised of two phases: (i) utilizing the different source representations to construct a representation that is adapted to the target data, and (ii) using the obtained model as an initialization to a fine-tuning procedure that re-trains the entire (over-parameterized) regression model on the target data. For each phase of the training method, we provide excess risk bounds for the learned model compared to the true data generating target model. The derived bounds show a gain in sample complexity for our proposed method compared to the baseline method of not leveraging source representations when achieving the same excess risk, therefore, theoretically demonstrating the effectiveness of transfer learning for linear regression.

Recent progress in music generation has been remarkably advanced by the state-of-the-art MusicLM, which comprises a hierarchy of three LMs, respectively, for semantic, coarse acoustic, and fine acoustic modelings. Yet, sampling with the MusicLM requires processing through these LMs one by one to obtain the fine-grained acoustic tokens, making it computationally expensive and prohibitive for a real-time generation. Efficient music generation with a quality on par with MusicLM remains a significant challenge. In this paper, we present MeLoDy (M for music; L for LM; D for diffusion), an LM-guided diffusion model that generates music audios of state-of-the-art quality meanwhile reducing 95.7% or 99.6% forward passes in MusicLM, respectively, for sampling 10s or 30s music. MeLoDy inherits the highest-level LM from MusicLM for semantic modeling, and applies a novel dual-path diffusion (DPD) model and an audio VAE-GAN to efficiently decode the conditioning semantic tokens into waveform. DPD is proposed to simultaneously model the coarse and fine acoustics by incorporating the semantic information into segments of latents effectively via cross-attention at each denoising step. Our experimental results suggest the superiority of MeLoDy, not only in its practical advantages on sampling speed and infinitely continuable generation, but also in its state-of-the-art musicality, audio quality, and text correlation. Our samples are available at https://Efficient-MeLoDy.github.io/.

Recent language models have shown impressive multilingual performance, even when not explicitly trained for it. Despite this, concerns have been raised about the quality of their outputs across different languages. In this paper, we show how disparity in the treatment of different languages arises at the tokenization stage, well before a model is even invoked. The same text translated into different languages can have drastically different tokenization lengths, with differences up to 15 times in some cases. These disparities persist across the 17 tokenizers we evaluate, even if they are intentionally trained for multilingual support. Character-level and byte-level models also exhibit over 4 times the difference in the encoding length for some language pairs. This induces unfair treatment for some language communities in regard to the cost of accessing commercial language services, the processing time and latency, as well as the amount of content that can be provided as context to the models. Therefore, we make the case that we should train future language models using multilingually fair tokenizers.

We introduce Brain-Inspired Modular Training (BIMT), a method for making neural networks more modular and interpretable. Inspired by brains, BIMT embeds neurons in a geometric space and augments the loss function with a cost proportional to the length of each neuron connection. We demonstrate that BIMT discovers useful modular neural networks for many simple tasks, revealing compositional structures in symbolic formulas, interpretable decision boundaries and features for classification, and mathematical structure in algorithmic datasets. The ability to directly see modules with the naked eye can complement current mechanistic interpretability strategies such as probes, interventions or staring at all weights.

The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 precipitated a panic among some educators while prompting qualified enthusiasm from others. Under the umbrella term Generative AI, ChatGPT is an example of a range of technologies for the delivery of computer-generated text, image, and other digitized media. This paper examines the implications for education of one generative AI technology, chatbots responding from large language models, or C-LLM. It reports on an application of a C-LLM to AI review and assessment of complex student work. In a concluding discussion, the paper explores the intrinsic limits of generative AI, bound as it is to language corpora and their textual representation through binary notation. Within these limits, we suggest the range of emerging and potential applications of Generative AI in education.

Video games are one of the richest and most popular forms of human-computer interaction and, hence, their role is critical for our understanding of human behaviour and affect at a large scale. As artificial intelligence (AI) tools are gradually adopted by the game industry a series of ethical concerns arise. Such concerns, however, have so far not been extensively discussed in a video game context. Motivated by the lack of a comprehensive review of the ethics of AI as applied to games, we survey the current state of the art in this area and discuss ethical considerations of these systems from the holistic perspective of the affective loop. Through the components of this loop, we study the ethical challenges that AI faces in video game development. Elicitation highlights the ethical boundaries of artificially induced emotions; sensing showcases the trade-off between privacy and safe gaming spaces; and detection, as utilised during in-game adaptation, poses challenges to transparency and ownership. This paper calls for an open dialogue and action for the games of today and the virtual spaces of the future. By setting an appropriate framework we aim to protect users and to guide developers towards safer and better experiences for their customers.

Neurosymbolic AI deals with models that combine symbolic processing, like classic AI, and neural networks, as it's a very established area. These models are emerging as an effort toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) by both exploring an alternative to just increasing datasets' and models' sizes and combining Learning over the data distribution, Reasoning on prior and learned knowledge, and by symbiotically using them. This survey investigates research papers in this area during recent years and brings classification and comparison between the presented models as well as applications.

Knowledge graph reasoning (KGR) -- answering complex logical queries over large knowledge graphs -- represents an important artificial intelligence task, entailing a range of applications (e.g., cyber threat hunting). However, despite its surging popularity, the potential security risks of KGR are largely unexplored, which is concerning, given the increasing use of such capability in security-critical domains. This work represents a solid initial step towards bridging the striking gap. We systematize the security threats to KGR according to the adversary's objectives, knowledge, and attack vectors. Further, we present ROAR, a new class of attacks that instantiate a variety of such threats. Through empirical evaluation in representative use cases (e.g., medical decision support, cyber threat hunting, and commonsense reasoning), we demonstrate that ROAR is highly effective to mislead KGR to suggest pre-defined answers for target queries, yet with negligible impact on non-target ones. Finally, we explore potential countermeasures against ROAR, including filtering of potentially poisoning knowledge and training with adversarially augmented queries, which leads to several promising research directions.

AI tasks encompass a wide range of domains and fields. While numerous AI models have been designed for specific tasks and applications, they often require considerable human efforts in finding the right model architecture, optimization algorithm, and hyperparameters. Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT show remarkable capabilities in various aspects of reasoning, comprehension, and interaction. Consequently, we propose developing task-oriented prompts and automatically utilizing LLMs to automate the training pipeline. To implement this concept, we present the AutoML-GPT, which employs GPT as the bridge to diverse AI models and dynamically trains models with optimized hyperparameters. AutoML-GPT dynamically takes user requests from the model and data cards and composes the corresponding prompt paragraph. Ultimately, with this prompt paragraph, AutoML-GPT will automatically conduct the experiments from data processing to model architecture, hyperparameter tuning, and predicted training log. By leveraging {\ours}'s robust language capabilities and the available AI models, AutoML-GPT can tackle numerous intricate AI tasks across various tasks and datasets. This approach achieves remarkable results in computer vision, natural language processing, and other challenging areas. Extensive experiments and ablation studies demonstrate that our method can be general, effective, and beneficial for many AI tasks.

Yonadav Shavit (CS PhD student at Harvard) recently released a paper titled What does it take to catch a Chinchilla? Verifying Rules on Large-Scale Neural Network Training via Compute Monitoring. …