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Shengjie Zhao

Publications and source records attributed to Shengjie Zhao.

34 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

On the Robustness of Human-Object Interaction Detection against Distribution Shift

Human-Object Interaction (HOI) detection has seen substantial advances in recent years. However, existing works focus on the standard setting with ideal images and natural distribution, far from practical scenarios with inevitable distribution shifts. This hampers the practical applicability of HOI detection. In this work, we investigate this issue by benchmarking, analyzing, and enhancing the robustness of HOI detection models under various distribution shifts. We start by proposing a novel automated approach to create the first robustness evaluation benchmark for HOI detection. Subsequently, we evaluate more than 40 existing HOI detection models on this benchmark, showing their insufficiency, analyzing the features of different frameworks, and discussing how the robustness in HOI is different from other tasks. With the insights from such analyses, we propose to improve the robustness of HOI detection methods through: (1) a cross-domain data augmentation integrated with mixup, and (2) a feature fusion strategy with frozen vision foundation models. Both are simple, plug-and-play, and applicable to various methods. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly increases the robustness of various methods, with benefits on standard benchmarks, too. The dataset and code will be released.

cs.CV↗

Exploring Consciousness in LLMs: A Systematic Survey of Theories, Implementations, and Frontier Risks

Consciousness stands as one of the most profound and distinguishing features of the human mind, fundamentally shaping our understanding of existence and agency. As large language models (LLMs) develop at an unprecedented pace, questions concerning intelligence and consciousness have become increasingly significant. However, discourse on LLM consciousness remains largely unexplored territory. In this paper, we first clarify frequently conflated terminologies (e.g., LLM consciousness and LLM awareness). Then, we systematically organize and synthesize existing research on LLM consciousness from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. Furthermore, we highlight potential frontier risks that conscious LLMs might introduce. Finally, we discuss current challenges and outline future directions in this emerging field. The references discussed in this paper are organized at https://github.com/OpenCausaLab/Awesome-LLM-Consciousness.

cs.CL↗

NTIRE 2025 Challenge on Day and Night Raindrop Removal for Dual-Focused Images: Methods and Results

This paper reviews the NTIRE 2025 Challenge on Day and Night Raindrop Removal for Dual-Focused Images. This challenge received a wide range of impressive solutions, which are developed and evaluated using our collected real-world Raindrop Clarity dataset. Unlike existing deraining datasets, our Raindrop Clarity dataset is more diverse and challenging in degradation types and contents, which includes day raindrop-focused, day background-focused, night raindrop-focused, and night background-focused degradations. This dataset is divided into three subsets for competition: 14,139 images for training, 240 images for validation, and 731 images for testing. The primary objective of this challenge is to establish a new and powerful benchmark for the task of removing raindrops under varying lighting and focus conditions. There are a total of 361 participants in the competition, and 32 teams submitting valid solutions and fact sheets for the final testing phase. These submissions achieved state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance on the Raindrop Clarity dataset. The project can be found at https://lixinustc.github.io/CVPR-NTIRE2025-RainDrop-Competition.github.io/.

cs.CV↗

H2-MARL: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Pareto Optimality in Hospital Capacity Strain and Human Mobility during Epidemic

The necessity of achieving an effective balance between minimizing the losses associated with restricting human mobility and ensuring hospital capacity has gained significant attention in the aftermath of COVID-19. Reinforcement learning (RL)-based strategies for human mobility management have recently advanced in addressing the dynamic evolution of cities and epidemics; however, they still face challenges in achieving coordinated control at the township level and adapting to cities of varying scales. To address the above issues, we propose a multi-agent RL approach that achieves Pareto optimality in managing hospital capacity and human mobility (H2-MARL), applicable across cities of different scales. We first develop a township-level infection model with online-updatable parameters to simulate disease transmission and construct a city-wide dynamic spatiotemporal epidemic simulator. On this basis, H2-MARL is designed to treat each division as an agent, with a trade-off dual-objective reward function formulated and an experience replay buffer enriched with expert knowledge built. To evaluate the effectiveness of the model, we construct a township-level human mobility dataset containing over one billion records from four representative cities of varying scales. Extensive experiments demonstrate that H2-MARL has the optimal dual-objective trade-off capability, which can minimize hospital capacity strain while minimizing human mobility restriction loss. Meanwhile, the applicability of the proposed model to epidemic control in cities of varying scales is verified, which showcases its feasibility and versatility in practical applications.

cs.MA↗

PVBF: A Framework for Mitigating Parameter Variation Imbalance in Online Continual Learning

Online continual learning (OCL), which enables AI systems to adaptively learn from non-stationary data streams, is commonly achieved using experience replay (ER)-based methods that retain knowledge by replaying stored past during training. However, these methods face challenges of prediction bias, stemming from deviations in parameter update directions during task transitions. This paper identifies parameter variation imbalance as a critical factor contributing to prediction bias in ER-based OCL. Specifically, using the proposed parameter variation evaluation method, we highlight two types of imbalance: correlation-induced imbalance, where certain parameters are disproportionately updated across tasks, and layer-wise imbalance, where output layer parameters update faster than those in preceding layers. To mitigate the above imbalances, we propose the Parameter Variation Balancing Framework (PVBF), which incorporates: 1) a novel method to compute parameter correlations with previous tasks based on parameter variations, 2) an encourage-and-consolidate (E&C) method utilizing parameter correlations to perform gradient adjustments across all parameters during training, 3) a dual-layer copy weights with reinit (D-CWR) strategy to slowly update output layer parameters for frequently occuring sample categories. Experiments on short and long task sequences demonstrate that PVBF significantly reduces prediction bias and improves OCL performance, achieving up to 47\% higher accuracy compared to existing ER-based methods.

cs.LG↗

Urban Emergency Rescue Based on Multi-Agent Collaborative Learning: Coordination Between Fire Engines and Traffic Lights

Nowadays, traffic management in urban areas is one of the major economic problems. In particular, when faced with emergency situations like firefighting, timely and efficient traffic dispatching is crucial. Intelligent coordination between multiple departments is essential to realize efficient emergency rescue. In this demo, we present a framework that integrates techniques for collaborative learning methods into the well-known Unity Engine simulator, and thus these techniques can be evaluated in realistic settings. In particular, the framework allows flexible settings such as the number and type of collaborative agents, learning strategies, reward functions, and constraint conditions in practice. The framework is evaluated for an emergency rescue scenario, which could be used as a simulation tool for urban emergency departments.

cs.MA↗

From Imitation to Introspection: Probing Self-Consciousness in Language Models

Self-consciousness, the introspection of one's existence and thoughts, represents a high-level cognitive process. As language models advance at an unprecedented pace, a critical question arises: Are these models becoming self-conscious? Drawing upon insights from psychological and neural science, this work presents a practical definition of self-consciousness for language models and refines ten core concepts. Our work pioneers an investigation into self-consciousness in language models by, for the first time, leveraging causal structural games to establish the functional definitions of the ten core concepts. Based on our definitions, we conduct a comprehensive four-stage experiment: quantification (evaluation of ten leading models), representation (visualization of self-consciousness within the models), manipulation (modification of the models' representation), and acquisition (fine-tuning the models on core concepts). Our findings indicate that although models are in the early stages of developing self-consciousness, there is a discernible representation of certain concepts within their internal mechanisms. However, these representations of self-consciousness are hard to manipulate positively at the current stage, yet they can be acquired through targeted fine-tuning. Our datasets and code are at https://github.com/OpenCausaLab/SelfConsciousness.

cs.CL↗

CLEAR: Can Language Models Really Understand Causal Graphs?

Causal reasoning is a cornerstone of how humans interpret the world. To model and reason about causality, causal graphs offer a concise yet effective solution. Given the impressive advancements in language models, a crucial question arises: can they really understand causal graphs? To this end, we pioneer an investigation into language models' understanding of causal graphs. Specifically, we develop a framework to define causal graph understanding, by assessing language models' behaviors through four practical criteria derived from diverse disciplines (e.g., philosophy and psychology). We then develop CLEAR, a novel benchmark that defines three complexity levels and encompasses 20 causal graph-based tasks across these levels. Finally, based on our framework and benchmark, we conduct extensive experiments on six leading language models and summarize five empirical findings. Our results indicate that while language models demonstrate a preliminary understanding of causal graphs, significant potential for improvement remains. Our project website is at https://github.com/OpenCausaLab/CLEAR.

cs.CL↗

Causal Evaluation of Language Models

Causal reasoning is viewed as crucial for achieving human-level machine intelligence. Recent advances in language models have expanded the horizons of artificial intelligence across various domains, sparking inquiries into their potential for causal reasoning. In this work, we introduce Causal evaluation of Language Models (CaLM), which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first comprehensive benchmark for evaluating the causal reasoning capabilities of language models. First, we propose the CaLM framework, which establishes a foundational taxonomy consisting of four modules: causal target (i.e., what to evaluate), adaptation (i.e., how to obtain the results), metric (i.e., how to measure the results), and error (i.e., how to analyze the bad results). This taxonomy defines a broad evaluation design space while systematically selecting criteria and priorities. Second, we compose the CaLM dataset, comprising 126,334 data samples, to provide curated sets of causal targets, adaptations, metrics, and errors, offering extensive coverage for diverse research pursuits. Third, we conduct an extensive evaluation of 28 leading language models on a core set of 92 causal targets, 9 adaptations, 7 metrics, and 12 error types. Fourth, we perform detailed analyses of the evaluation results across various dimensions (e.g., adaptation, scale). Fifth, we present 50 high-level empirical findings across 9 dimensions (e.g., model), providing valuable guidance for future language model development. Finally, we develop a multifaceted platform, including a website, leaderboards, datasets, and toolkits, to support scalable and adaptable assessments. We envision CaLM as an ever-evolving benchmark for the community, systematically updated with new causal targets, adaptations, models, metrics, and error types to reflect ongoing research advancements. Project website is at https://opencausalab.github.io/CaLM.

cs.CL↗

KEWS: A KPIs-Based Evaluation Framework of Workload Simulation On Microservice System

Simulating the workload is an essential procedure in microservice systems as it helps augment realistic workloads whilst safeguarding user privacy. The efficacy of such simulation depends on its dynamic assessment. The straightforward and most efficient approach to this is comparing the original workload with the simulated one using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which capture the state of the system. Nonetheless, due to the extensive volume and complexity of KPIs, fully evaluating them is not feasible, and measuring their similarity poses a significant challenge. This paper introduces a similarity metric algorithm for KPIs, the Extended Shape-Based Distance (ESBD), which gauges similarity in both shape and intensity. Additionally, we propose a KPI-based Evaluation Framework for Workload Simulations (KEWS), comprising three modules: preprocessing, compression, and evaluation. These methodologies effectively counteract the adverse effects of KPIs' characteristics and offer a holistic evaluation. Experimental results substantiate the effectiveness of both ESBD and KEWS.

cs.SE↗

LWS: A Framework for Log-based Workload Simulation in Session-based SUT

Artificial intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) plays a critical role in operating and managing cloud-native systems and microservice-based applications but is limited by the lack of high-quality datasets with diverse scenarios. Realistic workloads are the premise and basis of generating such AIOps datasets, with the session-based workload being one of the most typical examples. Due to privacy concerns, complexity, variety, and requirements for reasonable intervention, it is difficult to copy or generate such workloads directly, showing the importance of effective and intervenable workload simulation. In this paper, we formulate the task of workload simulation and propose a framework for Log-based Workload Simulation (LWS) in session-based systems. LWS extracts the workload specification including the user behavior abstraction based on agglomerative clustering as well as relational models and the intervenable workload intensity from session logs. Then LWS combines the user behavior abstraction with the workload intensity to generate simulated workloads. The experimental evaluation is performed on an open-source cloud-native application with both well-designed and public real-world workloads, showing that the simulated workload generated by LWS is effective and intervenable, which provides the foundation of generating high-quality AIOps datasets.

cs.SE↗

Robust Two-Stream Multi-Feature Network for Driver Drowsiness Detection

Drowsiness driving is a major cause of traffic accidents and thus numerous previous researches have focused on driver drowsiness detection. Many drive relevant factors have been taken into consideration for fatigue detection and can lead to high precision, but there are still several serious constraints, such as most existing models are environmentally susceptible. In this paper, fatigue detection is considered as temporal action detection problem instead of image classification. The proposed detection system can be divided into four parts: (1) Localize the key patches of the detected driver picture which are critical for fatigue detection and calculate the corresponding optical flow. (2) Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) is used in our system to reduce the impact of different light conditions. (3) Three individual two-stream networks combined with attention mechanism are designed for each feature to extract temporal information. (4) The outputs of the three sub-networks will be concatenated and sent to the fully-connected network, which judges the status of the driver. The drowsiness detection system is trained and evaluated on the famous Nation Tsing Hua University Driver Drowsiness Detection (NTHU-DDD) dataset and we obtain an accuracy of 94.46%, which outperforms most existing fatigue detection models.

cs.CV↗

Towards Adaptive Semantic Segmentation by Progressive Feature Refinement

As one of the fundamental tasks in computer vision, semantic segmentation plays an important role in real world applications. Although numerous deep learning models have made notable progress on several mainstream datasets with the rapid development of convolutional networks, they still encounter various challenges in practical scenarios. Unsupervised adaptive semantic segmentation aims to obtain a robust classifier trained with source domain data, which is able to maintain stable performance when deployed to a target domain with different data distribution. In this paper, we propose an innovative progressive feature refinement framework, along with domain adversarial learning to boost the transferability of segmentation networks. Specifically, we firstly align the multi-stage intermediate feature maps of source and target domain images, and then a domain classifier is adopted to discriminate the segmentation output. As a result, the segmentation models trained with source domain images can be transferred to a target domain without significant performance degradation. Experimental results verify the efficiency of our proposed method compared with state-of-the-art methods.

cs.CV↗

Learning-Based Massive Beamforming

Developing resource allocation algorithms with strong real-time and high efficiency has been an imperative topic in wireless networks. Conventional optimization-based iterative resource allocation algorithms often suffer from slow convergence, especially for massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) beamforming problems. This paper studies learning-based efficient massive beamforming methods for multi-user MIMO networks. The considered massive beamforming problem is challenging in two aspects. First, the beamforming matrix to be learned is quite high-dimensional in case with a massive number of antennas. Second, the objective is often time-varying and the solution space is not fixed due to some communication requirements. All these challenges make learning representation for massive beamforming an extremely difficult task. In this paper, by exploiting the structure of the most popular WMMSE beamforming solution, we propose convolutional massive beamforming neural networks (CMBNN) using both supervised and unsupervised learning schemes with particular design of network structure and input/output. Numerical results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed CMBNN in terms of running time and system throughput.

eess.SP↗

Spatial Sparse subspace clustering for Compressive Spectral imaging

This paper aims at developing a clustering approach with spectral images directly from CASSI compressive measurements. The proposed clustering method first assumes that compressed measurements lie in the union of multiple low-dimensional subspaces. Therefore, sparse subspace clustering (SSC) is an unsupervised method that assigns compressed measurements to their respective subspaces. In addition, a 3D spatial regularizer is added into the SSC problem, thus taking full advantages of the spatial information contained in spectral images. The performance of the proposed spectral image clustering approach is improved by taking optimal CASSI measurements obtained when optimal coded apertures are used in CASSI system. Simulation with one real dataset illustrates the accuracy of the proposed spectral image clustering approach.

eess.IV↗

Greedy Signal Space Recovery Algorithm with Overcomplete Dictionaries in Compressive Sensing

Compressive Sensing (CS) is a new paradigm for the efficient acquisition of signals that have sparse representation in a certain domain. Traditionally, CS has provided numerous methods for signal recovery over an orthonormal basis. However, modern applications have sparked the emergence of related methods for signals not sparse in an orthonormal basis but in some arbitrary, perhaps highly overcomplete, dictionary, particularly due to their potential to generate different kinds of sparse representation of signals. To this end, we apply a signal space greedy method, which relies on the ability to optimally project a signal onto a small number of dictionary atoms, to address signal recovery in this setting. We describe a generalized variant of the iterative recovery algorithm called Signal space Subspace Pursuit (SSSP) for this more challenging setting. Here, using the Dictionary-Restricted Isometry Property (D-RIP) rather than classical RIP, we derive a low bound on the number of measurements required and then provide the proof of convergence for the algorithm. The algorithm in noisy and noise-free measurements has low computational complexity and provides high recovery accuracy. Simulation results show that the algorithm outperforms best compared with the existing recovery algorithms.

cs.IT↗