arXiv subjects

Chicheng Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Chicheng Zhang.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Active Fairness Auditing

The fast spreading adoption of machine learning (ML) by companies across industries poses significant regulatory challenges. One such challenge is scalability: how can regulatory bodies efficiently audit these ML models, ensuring that they are fair? In this paper, we initiate the study of query-based auditing algorithms that can estimate the demographic parity of ML models in a query-efficient manner. We propose an optimal deterministic algorithm, as well as a practical randomized, oracle-efficient algorithm with comparable guarantees. Furthermore, we make inroads into understanding the optimal query complexity of randomized active fairness estimation algorithms. Our first exploration of active fairness estimation aims to put AI governance on firmer theoretical foundations.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2022

Margin-distancing for safe model explanation

The growing use of machine learning models in consequential settings has highlighted an important and seemingly irreconcilable tension between transparency and vulnerability to gaming. While this has sparked sizable debate in legal literature, there has been comparatively less technical study of this contention. In this work, we propose a clean-cut formulation of this tension and a way to make the tradeoff between transparency and gaming. We identify the source of gaming as being points close to the \emph{decision boundary} of the model. And we initiate an investigation on how to provide example-based explanations that are expansive and yet consistent with a version space that is sufficiently uncertain with respect to the boundary points' labels. Finally, we furnish our theoretical results with empirical investigations of this tradeoff on real-world datasets.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2022

Provably Efficient Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning with Model Transfer

We study multi-task reinforcement learning (RL) in tabular episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs). We formulate a heterogeneous multi-player RL problem, in which a group of players concurrently face similar but not necessarily identical MDPs, with a goal of improving their collective performance through inter-player information sharing. We design and analyze an algorithm based on the idea of model transfer, and provide gap-dependent and gap-independent upper and lower bounds that characterize the intrinsic complexity of the problem.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

SIM-ECG: A Signal Importance Mask-driven ECGClassification System

Heart disease is the number one killer, and ECGs can assist in the early diagnosis and prevention of deadly outcomes. Accurate ECG interpretation is critical in detecting heart diseases; however, they are often misinterpreted due to a lack of training or insufficient time spent to detect minute anomalies. Subsequently, researchers turned to machine learning to assist in the analysis. However, existing systems are not as accurate as skilled ECG readers, and black-box approaches to providing diagnosis result in a lack of trust by medical personnel in a given diagnosis. To address these issues, we propose a signal importance mask feedback-based machine learning system that continuously accepts feedback, improves accuracy, and ex-plains the resulting diagnosis. This allows medical personnel to quickly glance at the output and either accept the results, validate the explanation and diagnosis, or quickly correct areas of misinterpretation, giving feedback to the system for improvement. We have tested our system on a publicly available dataset consisting of healthy and disease-indicating samples. We empirically show that our algorithm is better in terms of standard performance measures such as F-score and MacroAUC compared to normal training baseline (without feedback); we also show that our model generates better interpretability maps.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

Improving the trustworthiness of image classification models by utilizing bounding-box annotations

We study utilizing auxiliary information in training data to improve the trustworthiness of machine learning models. Specifically, in the context of image classification, we propose to optimize a training objective that incorporates bounding box information, which is available in many image classification datasets. Preliminary experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves better performance in accuracy, robustness, and interpretability compared with baselines.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2021

Efficient active learning of sparse halfspaces with arbitrary bounded noise

We study active learning of homogeneous $s$-sparse halfspaces in $\mathbb{R}^d$ under the setting where the unlabeled data distribution is isotropic log-concave and each label is flipped with probability at most $η$ for a parameter $η\in \big[0, \frac12\big)$, known as the bounded noise. Even in the presence of mild label noise, i.e. $η$ is a small constant, this is a challenging problem and only recently have label complexity bounds of the form $\tilde{O}\big(s \cdot \mathrm{polylog}(d, \frac{1}ε)\big)$ been established in [Zhang, 2018] for computationally efficient algorithms. In contrast, under high levels of label noise, the label complexity bounds achieved by computationally efficient algorithms are much worse: the best known result of [Awasthi et al., 2016] provides a computationally efficient algorithm with label complexity $\tilde{O}\big((\frac{s \ln d}ε)^{2^{\mathrm{poly}(1/(1-2η))}} \big)$, which is label-efficient only when the noise rate $η$ is a fixed constant. In this work, we substantially improve on it by designing a polynomial time algorithm for active learning of $s$-sparse halfspaces, with a label complexity of $\tilde{O}\big(\frac{s}{(1-2η)^4} \mathrm{polylog} (d, \frac 1 ε) \big)$. This is the first efficient algorithm with label complexity polynomial in $\frac{1}{1-2η}$ in this setting, which is label-efficient even for $η$ arbitrarily close to $\frac12$. Our active learning algorithm and its theoretical guarantees also immediately translate to new state-of-the-art label and sample complexity results for full-dimensional active and passive halfspace learning under arbitrary bounded noise. The key insight of our algorithm and analysis is a new interpretation of online learning regret inequalities, which may be of independent interest.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

Improved Algorithms for Efficient Active Learning Halfspaces with Massart and Tsybakov noise

We give a computationally-efficient PAC active learning algorithm for $d$-dimensional homogeneous halfspaces that can tolerate Massart noise (Massart and Nédélec, 2006) and Tsybakov noise (Tsybakov, 2004). Specialized to the $η$-Massart noise setting, our algorithm achieves an information-theoretically near-optimal label complexity of $\tilde{O}\left( \frac{d}{(1-2η)^2} \mathrm{polylog}(\frac1ε) \right)$ under a wide range of unlabeled data distributions (specifically, the family of "structured distributions" defined in Diakonikolas et al. (2020)). Under the more challenging Tsybakov noise condition, we identify two subfamilies of noise conditions, under which our efficient algorithm provides label complexity guarantees strictly lower than passive learning algorithms.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

Multitask Bandit Learning Through Heterogeneous Feedback Aggregation

In many real-world applications, multiple agents seek to learn how to perform highly related yet slightly different tasks in an online bandit learning protocol. We formulate this problem as the $ε$-multi-player multi-armed bandit problem, in which a set of players concurrently interact with a set of arms, and for each arm, the reward distributions for all players are similar but not necessarily identical. We develop an upper confidence bound-based algorithm, RobustAgg$(ε)$, that adaptively aggregates rewards collected by different players. In the setting where an upper bound on the pairwise similarities of reward distributions between players is known, we achieve instance-dependent regret guarantees that depend on the amenability of information sharing across players. We complement these upper bounds with nearly matching lower bounds. In the setting where pairwise similarities are unknown, we provide a lower bound, as well as an algorithm that trades off minimax regret guarantees for adaptivity to unknown similarity structure.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

Attribute-Efficient Learning of Halfspaces with Malicious Noise: Near-Optimal Label Complexity and Noise Tolerance

This paper is concerned with computationally efficient learning of homogeneous sparse halfspaces in $\mathbb{R}^d$ under noise. Though recent works have established attribute-efficient learning algorithms under various types of label noise (e.g. bounded noise), it remains an open question when and how $s$-sparse halfspaces can be efficiently learned under the challenging malicious noise model, where an adversary may corrupt both the unlabeled examples and the labels. We answer this question in the affirmative by designing a computationally efficient active learning algorithm with near-optimal label complexity of $\tilde{O}\big({s \log^4 \frac d ε} \big)$ and noise tolerance $η= Ω(ε)$, where $ε\in (0, 1)$ is the target error rate, under the assumption that the distribution over (uncorrupted) unlabeled examples is isotropic log-concave. Our algorithm can be straightforwardly tailored to the passive learning setting, and we show that the sample complexity is $\tilde{O}\big({\frac 1 εs^2 \log^5 d} \big)$ which also enjoys the attribute efficiency. Our main techniques include attribute-efficient paradigms for instance reweighting and for empirical risk minimization, and a new analysis of uniform concentration for unbounded data -- all of them crucially take the structure of the underlying halfspace into account.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2021

Active Online Learning with Hidden Shifting Domains

Online machine learning systems need to adapt to domain shifts. Meanwhile, acquiring label at every timestep is expensive. We propose a surprisingly simple algorithm that adaptively balances its regret and its number of label queries in settings where the data streams are from a mixture of hidden domains. For online linear regression with oblivious adversaries, we provide a tight tradeoff that depends on the durations and dimensionalities of the hidden domains. Our algorithm can adaptively deal with interleaving spans of inputs from different domains. We also generalize our results to non-linear regression for hypothesis classes with bounded eluder dimension and adaptive adversaries. Experiments on synthetic and realistic datasets demonstrate that our algorithm achieves lower regret than uniform queries and greedy queries with equal labeling budget.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

Efficient Contextual Bandits with Continuous Actions

We create a computationally tractable algorithm for contextual bandits with continuous actions having unknown structure. Our reduction-style algorithm composes with most supervised learning representations. We prove that it works in a general sense and verify the new functionality with large-scale experiments.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

Crush Optimism with Pessimism: Structured Bandits Beyond Asymptotic Optimality

We study stochastic structured bandits for minimizing regret. The fact that the popular optimistic algorithms do not achieve the asymptotic instance-dependent regret optimality (asymptotic optimality for short) has recently alluded researchers. On the other hand, it is known that one can achieve bounded regret (i.e., does not grow indefinitely with $n$) in certain instances. Unfortunately, existing asymptotically optimal algorithms rely on forced sampling that introduces an $ω(1)$ term w.r.t. the time horizon $n$ in their regret, failing to adapt to the "easiness" of the instance. In this paper, we focus on the finite hypothesis case and ask if one can achieve the asymptotic optimality while enjoying bounded regret whenever possible. We provide a positive answer by introducing a new algorithm called CRush Optimism with Pessimism (CROP) that eliminates optimistic hypotheses by pulling the informative arms indicated by a pessimistic hypothesis. Our finite-time analysis shows that CROP $(i)$ achieves a constant-factor asymptotic optimality and, thanks to the forced-exploration-free design, $(ii)$ adapts to bounded regret, and $(iii)$ its regret bound scales not with $K$ but with an effective number of arms $K_ψ$ that we introduce. We also discuss a problem class where CROP can be exponentially better than existing algorithms in \textit{nonasymptotic} regimes. This problem class also reveals a surprising fact that even a clairvoyant oracle who plays according to the asymptotically optimal arm pull scheme may suffer a linear worst-case regret.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

Contextual Bandits with Continuous Actions: Smoothing, Zooming, and Adapting

We study contextual bandit learning with an abstract policy class and continuous action space. We obtain two qualitatively different regret bounds: one competes with a smoothed version of the policy class under no continuity assumptions, while the other requires standard Lipschitz assumptions. Both bounds exhibit data-dependent "zooming" behavior and, with no tuning, yield improved guarantees for benign problems. We also study adapting to unknown smoothness parameters, establishing a price-of-adaptivity and deriving optimal adaptive algorithms that require no additional information.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2020

Deep Batch Active Learning by Diverse, Uncertain Gradient Lower Bounds

We design a new algorithm for batch active learning with deep neural network models. Our algorithm, Batch Active learning by Diverse Gradient Embeddings (BADGE), samples groups of points that are disparate and high-magnitude when represented in a hallucinated gradient space, a strategy designed to incorporate both predictive uncertainty and sample diversity into every selected batch. Crucially, BADGE trades off between diversity and uncertainty without requiring any hand-tuned hyperparameters. We show that while other approaches sometimes succeed for particular batch sizes or architectures, BADGE consistently performs as well or better, making it a versatile option for practical active learning problems.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2019

Warm-starting Contextual Bandits: Robustly Combining Supervised and Bandit Feedback

We investigate the feasibility of learning from a mix of both fully-labeled supervised data and contextual bandit data. We specifically consider settings in which the underlying learning signal may be different between these two data sources. Theoretically, we state and prove no-regret algorithms for learning that is robust to misaligned cost distributions between the two sources. Empirically, we evaluate some of these algorithms on a large selection of datasets, showing that our approach is both feasible and helpful in practice.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2019

Bandit Multiclass Linear Classification: Efficient Algorithms for the Separable Case

We study the problem of efficient online multiclass linear classification with bandit feedback, where all examples belong to one of $K$ classes and lie in the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space. Previous works have left open the challenge of designing efficient algorithms with finite mistake bounds when the data is linearly separable by a margin $γ$. In this work, we take a first step towards this problem. We consider two notions of linear separability: strong and weak. 1. Under the strong linear separability condition, we design an efficient algorithm that achieves a near-optimal mistake bound of $O\left( K/γ^2 \right)$. 2. Under the more challenging weak linear separability condition, we design an efficient algorithm with a mistake bound of $\min (2^{\widetilde{O}(K \log^2 (1/γ))}, 2^{\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{1/γ} \log K)})$. Our algorithm is based on kernel Perceptron, which is inspired by the work of (Klivans and Servedio, 2008) on improperly learning intersection of halfspaces.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2018

Efficient active learning of sparse halfspaces

We study the problem of efficient PAC active learning of homogeneous linear classifiers (halfspaces) in $\mathbb{R}^d$, where the goal is to learn a halfspace with low error using as few label queries as possible. Under the extra assumption that there is a $t$-sparse halfspace that performs well on the data ($t \ll d$), we would like our active learning algorithm to be {\em attribute efficient}, i.e. to have label requirements sublinear in $d$. In this paper, we provide a computationally efficient algorithm that achieves this goal. Under certain distributional assumptions on the data, our algorithm achieves a label complexity of $O(t \cdot \mathrm{polylog}(d, \frac 1 ε))$. In contrast, existing algorithms in this setting are either computationally inefficient, or subject to label requirements polynomial in $d$ or $\frac 1 ε$.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2018

Spectral Learning of Binomial HMMs for DNA Methylation Data

We consider learning parameters of Binomial Hidden Markov Models, which may be used to model DNA methylation data. The standard algorithm for the problem is EM, which is computationally expensive for sequences of the scale of the mammalian genome. Recently developed spectral algorithms can learn parameters of latent variable models via tensor decomposition, and are highly efficient for large data. However, these methods have only been applied to categorial HMMs, and the main challenge is how to extend them to Binomial HMMs while still retaining computational efficiency. We address this challenge by introducing a new feature-map based approach that exploits specific properties of Binomial HMMs. We provide theoretical performance guarantees for our algorithm and evaluate it on real DNA methylation data.

cs.LG↗