Searcharxiv⌕ Search

arXiv subjects

Rui Mao

Publications and source records attributed to Rui Mao.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

AlayaDB: The Data Foundation for Efficient and Effective Long-context LLM Inference

AlayaDB is a cutting-edge vector database system natively architected for efficient and effective long-context inference for Large Language Models (LLMs) at AlayaDB AI. Specifically, it decouples the KV cache and attention computation from the LLM inference systems, and encapsulates them into a novel vector database system. For the Model as a Service providers (MaaS), AlayaDB consumes fewer hardware resources and offers higher generation quality for various workloads with different kinds of Service Level Objectives (SLOs), when comparing with the existing alternative solutions (e.g., KV cache disaggregation, retrieval-based sparse attention). The crux of AlayaDB is that it abstracts the attention computation and cache management for LLM inference into a query processing procedure, and optimizes the performance via a native query optimizer. In this work, we demonstrate the effectiveness of AlayaDB via (i) three use cases from our industry partners, and (ii) extensive experimental results on LLM inference benchmarks.

cs.AI↗

Leveraging LLMS for Top-Down Sector Allocation In Automated Trading

This paper introduces a methodology leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) for sector-level portfolio allocation through systematic analysis of macroeconomic conditions and market sentiment. Our framework emphasizes top-down sector allocation by processing multiple data streams simultaneously, including policy documents, economic indicators, and sentiment patterns. Empirical results demonstrate superior risk-adjusted returns compared to traditional cross momentum strategies, achieving a Sharpe ratio of 2.51 and portfolio return of 8.79% versus -0.61 and -1.39% respectively. These results suggest that LLM-based systematic macro analysis presents a viable approach for enhancing automated portfolio allocation decisions at the sector level.

cs.CE↗

Privacy-Enhanced Database Synthesis for Benchmark Publishing (Technical Report)

Benchmarking is crucial for evaluating a DBMS, yet existing benchmarks often fail to reflect the varied nature of user workloads. As a result, there is increasing momentum toward creating databases that incorporate real-world user data to more accurately mirror business environments. However, privacy concerns deter users from directly sharing their data, underscoring the importance of creating synthesized databases for benchmarking that also prioritize privacy protection. Differential privacy (DP)-based data synthesis has become a key method for safeguarding privacy when sharing data, but the focus has largely been on minimizing errors in aggregate queries or downstream ML tasks, with less attention given to benchmarking factors like query runtime performance. This paper delves into differentially private database synthesis specifically for benchmark publishing scenarios, aiming to produce a synthetic database whose benchmarking factors closely resemble those of the original data. Introducing \textit{PrivBench}, an innovative synthesis framework based on sum-product networks (SPNs), we support the synthesis of high-quality benchmark databases that maintain fidelity in both data distribution and query runtime performance while preserving privacy. We validate that PrivBench can ensure database-level DP even when generating multi-relation databases with complex reference relationships. Our extensive experiments show that PrivBench efficiently synthesizes data that maintains privacy and excels in both data distribution similarity and query runtime similarity.

cs.DB↗

Grant-Free Random Access in Uplink LEO Satellite Communications with OFDM

This paper investigates joint device activity detection and channel estimation for grant-free random access in Low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications. We consider uplink communications from multiple single-antenna terrestrial users to a LEO satellite equipped with a uniform planar array of multiple antennas, where orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation is adopted. To combat the severe Doppler shift, a transmission scheme is proposed, where the discrete prolate spheroidal basis expansion model (DPS-BEM) is introduced to reduce the number of unknown channel parameters. Then the vector approximate message passing (VAMP) algorithm is employed to approximate the minimum mean square error estimation of the channel, and the Markov random field is combined to capture the channel sparsity. Meanwhile, the expectation-maximization (EM) approach is integrated to learn the hyperparameters in priors. Finally, active devices are detected by calculating energy of the estimated channel. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms conventional algorithms in terms of activity error rate and channel estimation precision.

cs.IT↗

Prompt-Driven Continual Graph Learning

Continual Graph Learning (CGL), which aims to accommodate new tasks over evolving graph data without forgetting prior knowledge, is garnering significant research interest. Mainstream solutions adopt the memory replay-based idea, ie, caching representative data from earlier tasks for retraining the graph model. However, this strategy struggles with scalability issues for constantly evolving graphs and raises concerns regarding data privacy. Inspired by recent advancements in the prompt-based learning paradigm, this paper introduces a novel prompt-driven continual graph learning (PROMPTCGL) framework, which learns a separate prompt for each incoming task and maintains the underlying graph neural network model fixed. In this way, PROMPTCGL naturally avoids catastrophic forgetting of knowledge from previous tasks. More specifically, we propose hierarchical prompting to instruct the model from both feature- and topology-level to fully address the variability of task graphs in dynamic continual learning. Additionally, we develop a personalized prompt generator to generate tailored prompts for each graph node while minimizing the number of prompts needed, leading to constant memory consumption regardless of the graph scale. Extensive experiments on four benchmarks show that PROMPTCGL achieves superior performance against existing CGL approaches while significantly reducing memory consumption. Our code is available at https://github.com/QiWang98/PromptCGL.

cs.LG↗

A Survey of Large Language Models for Healthcare: from Data, Technology, and Applications to Accountability and Ethics

The utilization of large language models (LLMs) in the Healthcare domain has generated both excitement and concern due to their ability to effectively respond to freetext queries with certain professional knowledge. This survey outlines the capabilities of the currently developed LLMs for Healthcare and explicates their development process, with the aim of providing an overview of the development roadmap from traditional Pretrained Language Models (PLMs) to LLMs. Specifically, we first explore the potential of LLMs to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of various Healthcare applications highlighting both the strengths and limitations. Secondly, we conduct a comparison between the previous PLMs and the latest LLMs, as well as comparing various LLMs with each other. Then we summarize related Healthcare training data, training methods, optimization strategies, and usage. Finally, the unique concerns associated with deploying LLMs in Healthcare settings are investigated, particularly regarding fairness, accountability, transparency and ethics. Our survey provide a comprehensive investigation from perspectives of both computer science and Healthcare specialty. Besides the discussion about Healthcare concerns, we supports the computer science community by compiling a collection of open source resources, such as accessible datasets, the latest methodologies, code implementations, and evaluation benchmarks in the Github. Summarily, we contend that a significant paradigm shift is underway, transitioning from PLMs to LLMs. This shift encompasses a move from discriminative AI approaches to generative AI approaches, as well as a shift from model-centered methodologies to data-centered methodologies. Also, we determine that the biggest obstacle of using LLMs in Healthcare are fairness, accountability, transparency and ethics.

cs.CL↗

GPTEval: A Survey on Assessments of ChatGPT and GPT-4

The emergence of ChatGPT has generated much speculation in the press about its potential to disrupt social and economic systems. Its astonishing language ability has aroused strong curiosity among scholars about its performance in different domains. There have been many studies evaluating the ability of ChatGPT and GPT-4 in different tasks and disciplines. However, a comprehensive review summarizing the collective assessment findings is lacking. The objective of this survey is to thoroughly analyze prior assessments of ChatGPT and GPT-4, focusing on its language and reasoning abilities, scientific knowledge, and ethical considerations. Furthermore, an examination of the existing evaluation methods is conducted, offering several recommendations for future research in evaluating large language models.

cs.AI↗

Discriminative Pedestrian Features and Gated Channel Attention for Clothes-Changing Person Re-Identification

In public safety and social life, the task of Clothes-Changing Person Re-Identification (CC-ReID) has become increasingly significant. However, this task faces considerable challenges due to appearance changes caused by clothing alterations. Addressing this issue, this paper proposes an innovative method for disentangled feature extraction, effectively extracting discriminative features from pedestrian images that are invariant to clothing. This method leverages pedestrian parsing techniques to identify and retain features closely associated with individual identity while disregarding the variable nature of clothing attributes. Furthermore, this study introduces a gated channel attention mechanism, which, by adjusting the network's focus, aids the model in more effectively learning and emphasizing features critical for pedestrian identity recognition. Extensive experiments conducted on two standard CC-ReID datasets validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, with performance surpassing current leading solutions. The Top-1 accuracy under clothing change scenarios on the PRCC and VC-Clothes datasets reached 64.8% and 83.7%, respectively.

cs.CV↗

Explainable Natural Language Processing for Corporate Sustainability Analysis

Sustainability commonly refers to entities, such as individuals, companies, and institutions, having a non-detrimental (or even positive) impact on the environment, society, and the economy. With sustainability becoming a synonym of acceptable and legitimate behaviour, it is being increasingly demanded and regulated. Several frameworks and standards have been proposed to measure the sustainability impact of corporations, including United Nations' sustainable development goals and the recently introduced global sustainability reporting framework, amongst others. However, the concept of corporate sustainability is complex due to the diverse and intricate nature of firm operations (i.e. geography, size, business activities, interlinks with other stakeholders). As a result, corporate sustainability assessments are plagued by subjectivity both within data that reflect corporate sustainability efforts (i.e. corporate sustainability disclosures) and the analysts evaluating them. This subjectivity can be distilled into distinct challenges, such as incompleteness, ambiguity, unreliability and sophistication on the data dimension, as well as limited resources and potential bias on the analyst dimension. Put together, subjectivity hinders effective cost attribution to entities non-compliant with prevailing sustainability expectations, potentially rendering sustainability efforts and its associated regulations futile. To this end, we argue that Explainable Natural Language Processing (XNLP) can significantly enhance corporate sustainability analysis. Specifically, linguistic understanding algorithms (lexical, semantic, syntactic), integrated with XAI capabilities (interpretability, explainability, faithfulness), can bridge gaps in analyst resources and mitigate subjectivity problems within data.

cs.CY↗

Can a large language model be a gaslighter?

Large language models (LLMs) have gained human trust due to their capabilities and helpfulness. However, this in turn may allow LLMs to affect users' mindsets by manipulating language. It is termed as gaslighting, a psychological effect. In this work, we aim to investigate the vulnerability of LLMs under prompt-based and fine-tuning-based gaslighting attacks. Therefore, we propose a two-stage framework DeepCoG designed to: 1) elicit gaslighting plans from LLMs with the proposed DeepGaslighting prompting template, and 2) acquire gaslighting conversations from LLMs through our Chain-of-Gaslighting method. The gaslighting conversation dataset along with a corresponding safe dataset is applied to fine-tuning-based attacks on open-source LLMs and anti-gaslighting safety alignment on these LLMs. Experiments demonstrate that both prompt-based and fine-tuning-based attacks transform three open-source LLMs into gaslighters. In contrast, we advanced three safety alignment strategies to strengthen (by 12.05%) the safety guardrail of LLMs. Our safety alignment strategies have minimal impacts on the utility of LLMs. Empirical studies indicate that an LLM may be a potential gaslighter, even if it passed the harmfulness test on general dangerous queries.

cs.CR↗

Towards determining the presence of barren plateaus in some chemically inspired variational quantum algorithms

In quantum chemistry, the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) is a promising algorithm for molecular simulations on near-term quantum computers. However, VQEs using hardware-efficient circuits face scaling challenges due to the barren plateau problem. This raises the question of whether chemically inspired circuits from unitary coupled cluster (UCC) methods can avoid this issue. Here we provide theoretical evidence indicating they may not. By examining alternated dUCC ansätze and relaxed Trotterized UCC ansätze, we find that in the infinite depth limit, a separation occurs between particle-hole one- and two-body unitary operators. While one-body terms yield a polynomially concentrated energy landscape, adding two-body terms leads to exponential concentration. Numerical simulations support these findings, suggesting that popular 1-step Trotterized unitary coupled-cluster with singles and doubles (UCCSD) ansätze may not scale. Our results emphasize the link between trainability and circuit expressiveness, raising doubts about VQEs' ability to surpass classical methods.

quant-ph↗

Popularity Ratio Maximization: Surpassing Competitors through Influence Propagation

In this paper, we present an algorithmic study on how to surpass competitors in popularity by strategic promotions in social networks. We first propose a novel model, in which we integrate the Preferential Attachment (PA) model for popularity growth with the Independent Cascade (IC) model for influence propagation in social networks called PA-IC model. In PA-IC, a popular item and a novice item grab shares of popularity from the natural popularity growth via the PA model, while the novice item tries to gain extra popularity via influence cascade in a social network. The popularity ratio is defined as the ratio of the popularity measure between the novice item and the popular item. We formulate Popularity Ratio Maximization (PRM) as the problem of selecting seeds in multiple rounds to maximize the popularity ratio in the end. We analyze the popularity ratio and show that it is monotone but not submodular. To provide an effective solution, we devise a surrogate objective function and show that empirically it is very close to the original objective function while theoretically, it is monotone and submodular. We design two efficient algorithms, one for the overlapping influence and non-overlapping seeds (across rounds) setting and the other for the non-overlapping influence and overlapping seed setting, and further discuss how to deal with other models and problem variants. Our empirical evaluation further demonstrates that the proposed PRM-IMM method consistently achieves the best popularity promotion compared to other methods. Our theoretical and empirical analyses shed light on the interplay between influence maximization and preferential attachment in social networks.

cs.SI↗

Exploring Loss Landscapes through the Lens of Spin Glass Theory

In the past decade, significant strides in deep learning have led to numerous groundbreaking applications. Despite these advancements, the understanding of the high generalizability of deep learning, especially in such an over-parametrized space, remains limited. For instance, in deep neural networks (DNNs), their internal representations, decision-making mechanism, absence of overfitting in an over-parametrized space, superior generalizability, etc., remain less understood. Successful applications are often considered as empirical rather than scientific achievement. This paper delves into the loss landscape of DNNs through the lens of spin glass in statistical physics, a system characterized by a complex energy landscape with numerous metastable states, as a novel perspective in understanding how DNNs work. We investigated the loss landscape of single hidden layer neural networks activated by Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) function, and introduced several protocols to examine the analogy between DNNs and spin glass. Specifically, we used (1) random walk in the parameter space of DNNs to unravel the structures in their loss landscape; (2) a permutation-interpolation protocol to study the connection between copies of identical regions in the loss landscape due to the permutation symmetry in the hidden layers; (3) hierarchical clustering to reveal the hierarchy among trained solutions of DNNs, reminiscent of the so-called Replica Symmetry Breaking (RSB) phenomenon (i.e. the Parisi solution) in spin glass; (4) finally, we examine the relationship between the ruggedness of DNN's loss landscape and its generalizability, showing an improvement of flattened minima.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

Automatic String Data Validation with Pattern Discovery

In enterprise data pipelines, data insertions occur periodically and may impact downstream services if data quality issues are not addressed. Typically, such problems can be investigated and fixed by on-call engineers, but locating the cause of such problems and fixing errors are often time-consuming. Therefore, automatic data validation is a better solution to defend the system and downstream services by enabling early detection of errors and providing detailed error messages for quick resolution. This paper proposes a self-validate data management system with automatic pattern discovery techniques to verify the correctness of semi-structural string data in enterprise data pipelines. Our solution extracts patterns from historical data and detects erroneous incoming data in a top-down fashion. High-level information of historical data is analyzed to discover the format skeleton of correct values. Fine-grained semantic patterns are then extracted to strike a balance between generalization and specification of the discovered pattern, thus covering as many correct values as possible while avoiding over-fitting. To tackle cold start and rapid data growth, we propose an incremental update strategy and example generalization strategy. Experiments on large-scale industrial and public datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our method compared to alternative solutions. Furthermore, a case study on an industrial platform (Ant Group Inc.) with thousands of applications shows that our system captures meaningful data patterns in daily operations and helps engineers quickly identify errors.

cs.DB↗

Low-Latency Video Conferencing via Optimized Packet Routing and Reordering

In the face of rising global demand for video meetings, managing traffic across geographically distributed (geo-distributed) data centers presents a significant challenge due to the dynamic and limited nature of inter-DC network performance. Facing these issues, this paper introduces two novel techniques, VCRoute and WMJitter, to optimize the performance of geo-distributed video conferencing systems. VCRoute is a routing method designed for audio data packets of video conferences. It treats the routing problem as a Multi-Armed Bandit issue, and utilizes a tailored Thompson Sampling algorithm for resolution. Unlike traditional approaches, VCRoute considers transmitting latency and its variance simultaneously by using Thompson Sampling algorithm, which leads to effective end-to-end latency optimization. In conjunction with VCRoute, we present WMJitter, a watermark-based mechanism for managing network jitter, which can further reduce the end-to-end delay and keep an improved balance between latency and loss rate. Evaluations based on real geo-distributed network performance demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of VCRoute and WMJitter, offering robust solutions for optimizing video conferencing systems in geo-distributed settings.

cs.NI↗

Towards Optimal Circuit Size for Sparse Quantum State Preparation

Compared to general quantum states, the sparse states arise more frequently in the field of quantum computation. In this work, we consider the preparation for $n$-qubit sparse quantum states with $s$ non-zero amplitudes and propose two algorithms. The first algorithm uses $O(ns/\log n + n)$ gates, improving upon previous methods by $O(\log n)$. We further establish a matching lower bound for any algorithm which is not amplitude-aware and employs at most $\operatorname{poly}(n)$ ancillary qubits. The second algorithm is tailored for binary strings that exhibit a short Hamiltonian path. An application is the preparation of $U(1)$-invariant state with $k$ down-spins in a chain of length $n$, including Bethe states, for which our algorithm constructs a circuit of size $O\left(\binom{n}{k}\log n\right)$. This surpasses previous results by $O(n/\log n)$ and is close to the lower bound $O\left(\binom{n}{k}\right)$. Both the two algorithms shrink the existing gap theoretically and provide increasing advantages numerically.

quant-ph↗

Re-Search for The Truth: Multi-round Retrieval-augmented Large Language Models are Strong Fake News Detectors

The proliferation of fake news has had far-reaching implications on politics, the economy, and society at large. While Fake news detection methods have been employed to mitigate this issue, they primarily depend on two essential elements: the quality and relevance of the evidence, and the effectiveness of the verdict prediction mechanism. Traditional methods, which often source information from static repositories like Wikipedia, are limited by outdated or incomplete data, particularly for emerging or rare claims. Large Language Models (LLMs), known for their remarkable reasoning and generative capabilities, introduce a new frontier for fake news detection. However, like traditional methods, LLM-based solutions also grapple with the limitations of stale and long-tail knowledge. Additionally, retrieval-enhanced LLMs frequently struggle with issues such as low-quality evidence retrieval and context length constraints. To address these challenges, we introduce a novel, retrieval-augmented LLMs framework--the first of its kind to automatically and strategically extract key evidence from web sources for claim verification. Employing a multi-round retrieval strategy, our framework ensures the acquisition of sufficient, relevant evidence, thereby enhancing performance. Comprehensive experiments across three real-world datasets validate the framework's superiority over existing methods. Importantly, our model not only delivers accurate verdicts but also offers human-readable explanations to improve result interpretability.

cs.CL↗

Logical Reasoning over Natural Language as Knowledge Representation: A Survey

Logical reasoning is central to human cognition and intelligence. It includes deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning. Past research of logical reasoning within AI uses formal language as knowledge representation and symbolic reasoners. However, reasoning with formal language has proved challenging (e.g., brittleness and knowledge-acquisition bottleneck). This paper provides a comprehensive overview on a new paradigm of logical reasoning, which uses natural language as knowledge representation and pretrained language models as reasoners, including philosophical definition and categorization of logical reasoning, advantages of the new paradigm, benchmarks and methods, challenges of the new paradigm, possible future directions, and relation to related NLP fields. This new paradigm is promising since it not only alleviates many challenges of formal representation but also has advantages over end-to-end neural methods. This survey focus on transformer-based LLMs explicitly working on deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning over English representation.

cs.CL↗