A General Framework for Producing Interpretable Semantic Text Embeddings

Semantic text embedding is essential to many tasks in Natural Language Processing (NLP). While black-box models are capable of generating high-quality embeddings, their lack of interpretability limits their use in tasks that demand transparency. Recent approaches have improved interpretability by leveraging domain-expert-crafted or LLM-generated questions, but these methods rely heavily on expert input or well-prompt design, which restricts their generalizability and ability to generate discriminative questions across a wide range of tasks. To address these challenges, we introduce \algo{CQG-MBQA} (Contrastive Question Generation - Multi-task Binary Question Answering), a general framework for producing interpretable semantic text embeddings across diverse tasks. Our framework systematically generates highly discriminative, low cognitive load yes/no questions through the \algo{CQG} method and answers them efficiently with the \algo{MBQA} model, resulting in interpretable embeddings in a cost-effective manner. We validate the effectiveness and interpretability of \algo{CQG-MBQA} through extensive experiments and ablation studies, demonstrating that it delivers embedding quality comparable to many advanced black-box models while maintaining inherently interpretability. Additionally, \algo{CQG-MBQA} outperforms other interpretable text embedding methods across various downstream tasks.

Towards Controllable Time Series Generation

Time Series Generation (TSG) has emerged as a pivotal technique in synthesizing data that accurately mirrors real-world time series, becoming indispensable in numerous applications. Despite significant advancements in TSG, its efficacy frequently hinges on having large training datasets. This dependency presents a substantial challenge in data-scarce scenarios, especially when dealing with rare or unique conditions. To confront these challenges, we explore a new problem of Controllable Time Series Generation (CTSG), aiming to produce synthetic time series that can adapt to various external conditions, thereby tackling the data scarcity issue. In this paper, we propose \textbf{C}ontrollable \textbf{T}ime \textbf{S}eries (\textsf{CTS}), an innovative VAE-agnostic framework tailored for CTSG. A key feature of \textsf{CTS} is that it decouples the mapping process from standard VAE training, enabling precise learning of a complex interplay between latent features and external conditions. Moreover, we develop a comprehensive evaluation scheme for CTSG. Extensive experiments across three real-world time series datasets showcase \textsf{CTS}'s exceptional capabilities in generating high-quality, controllable outputs. This underscores its adeptness in seamlessly integrating latent features with external conditions. Extending \textsf{CTS} to the image domain highlights its remarkable potential for explainability and further reinforces its versatility across different modalities.

Diversity-Aware $k$-Maximum Inner Product Search Revisited

The $k$-Maximum Inner Product Search ($k$MIPS) serves as a foundational component in recommender systems and various data mining tasks. However, while most existing $k$MIPS approaches prioritize the efficient retrieval of highly relevant items for users, they often neglect an equally pivotal facet of search results: \emph{diversity}. To bridge this gap, we revisit and refine the diversity-aware $k$MIPS (D$k$MIPS) problem by incorporating two well-known diversity objectives -- minimizing the average and maximum pairwise item similarities within the results -- into the original relevance objective. This enhancement, inspired by Maximal Marginal Relevance (MMR), offers users a controllable trade-off between relevance and diversity. We introduce \textsc{Greedy} and \textsc{DualGreedy}, two linear scan-based algorithms tailored for D$k$MIPS. They both achieve data-dependent approximations and, when aiming to minimize the average pairwise similarity, \textsc{DualGreedy} attains an approximation ratio of $1/4$ with an additive term for regularization. To further improve query efficiency, we integrate a lightweight Ball-Cone Tree (BC-Tree) index with the two algorithms. Finally, comprehensive experiments on ten real-world data sets demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed methods, showcasing their capability to efficiently deliver diverse and relevant search results to users.

From Zero to Hero: Detecting Leaked Data through Synthetic Data Injection and Model Querying

Safeguarding the Intellectual Property (IP) of data has become critically important as machine learning applications continue to proliferate, and their success heavily relies on the quality of training data. While various mechanisms exist to secure data during storage, transmission, and consumption, fewer studies have been developed to detect whether they are already leaked for model training without authorization. This issue is particularly challenging due to the absence of information and control over the training process conducted by potential attackers. In this paper, we concentrate on the domain of tabular data and introduce a novel methodology, Local Distribution Shifting Synthesis (\textsc{LDSS}), to detect leaked data that are used to train classification models. The core concept behind \textsc{LDSS} involves injecting a small volume of synthetic data--characterized by local shifts in class distribution--into the owner's dataset. This enables the effective identification of models trained on leaked data through model querying alone, as the synthetic data injection results in a pronounced disparity in the predictions of models trained on leaked and modified datasets. \textsc{LDSS} is \emph{model-oblivious} and hence compatible with a diverse range of classification models, such as Naive Bayes, Decision Tree, and Random Forest. We have conducted extensive experiments on seven types of classification models across five real-world datasets. The comprehensive results affirm the reliability, robustness, fidelity, security, and efficiency of \textsc{LDSS}.

TSGBench: Time Series Generation Benchmark

Synthetic Time Series Generation (TSG) is crucial in a range of applications, including data augmentation, anomaly detection, and privacy preservation. Although significant strides have been made in this field, existing methods exhibit three key limitations: (1) They often benchmark against similar model types, constraining a holistic view of performance capabilities. (2) The use of specialized synthetic and private datasets introduces biases and hampers generalizability. (3) Ambiguous evaluation measures, often tied to custom networks or downstream tasks, hinder consistent and fair comparison. To overcome these limitations, we introduce \textsf{TSGBench}, the inaugural TSG Benchmark, designed for a unified and comprehensive assessment of TSG methods. It comprises three modules: (1) a curated collection of publicly available, real-world datasets tailored for TSG, together with a standardized preprocessing pipeline; (2) a comprehensive evaluation measures suite including vanilla measures, new distance-based assessments, and visualization tools; (3) a pioneering generalization test rooted in Domain Adaptation (DA), compatible with all methods. We have conducted extensive experiments across ten real-world datasets from diverse domains, utilizing ten advanced TSG methods and twelve evaluation measures, all gauged through \textsf{TSGBench}. The results highlight its remarkable efficacy and consistency. More importantly, \textsf{TSGBench} delivers a statistical breakdown of method rankings, illuminating performance variations across different datasets and measures, and offering nuanced insights into the effectiveness of each method.

Lightweight-Yet-Efficient: Revitalizing Ball-Tree for Point-to-Hyperplane Nearest Neighbor Search

Finding the nearest neighbor to a hyperplane (or Point-to-Hyperplane Nearest Neighbor Search, simply P2HNNS) is a new and challenging problem with applications in many research domains. While existing state-of-the-art hashing schemes (e.g., NH and FH) are able to achieve sublinear time complexity without the assumption of the data being in a unit hypersphere, they require an asymmetric transformation, which increases the data dimension from $d$ to $\Omega(d^2)$. This leads to considerable overhead for indexing and incurs significant distortion errors. In this paper, we investigate a tree-based approach for solving P2HNNS using the classical Ball-Tree index. Compared to hashing-based methods, tree-based methods usually require roughly linear costs for construction, and they provide different kinds of approximations with excellent flexibility. A simple branch-and-bound algorithm with a novel lower bound is first developed on Ball-Tree for performing P2HNNS. Then, a new tree structure named BC-Tree, which maintains the Ball and Cone structures in the leaf nodes of Ball-Tree, is described together with two effective strategies, i.e., point-level pruning and collaborative inner product computing. BC-Tree inherits both the low construction cost and lightweight property of Ball-Tree while providing a similar or more efficient search. Experimental results over 16 real-world data sets show that Ball-Tree and BC-Tree are around 1.1$\sim$10$\times$ faster than NH and FH, and they can reduce the index size and indexing time by about 1$\sim$3 orders of magnitudes on average. The code is available at \url{https://github.com/HuangQiang/BC-Tree}.

SAH: Shifting-aware Asymmetric Hashing for Reverse $k$-Maximum Inner Product Search

This paper investigates a new yet challenging problem called Reverse $k$-Maximum Inner Product Search (R$k$MIPS). Given a query (item) vector, a set of item vectors, and a set of user vectors, the problem of R$k$MIPS aims to find a set of user vectors whose inner products with the query vector are one of the $k$ largest among the query and item vectors. We propose the first subquadratic-time algorithm, i.e., Shifting-aware Asymmetric Hashing (SAH), to tackle the R$k$MIPS problem. To speed up the Maximum Inner Product Search (MIPS) on item vectors, we design a shifting-invariant asymmetric transformation and develop a novel sublinear-time Shifting-Aware Asymmetric Locality Sensitive Hashing (SA-ALSH) scheme. Furthermore, we devise a new blocking strategy based on the Cone-Tree to effectively prune user vectors (in a batch). We prove that SAH achieves a theoretical guarantee for solving the RMIPS problem. Experimental results on five real-world datasets show that SAH runs 4$\sim$8$\times$ faster than the state-of-the-art methods for R$k$MIPS while achieving F1-scores of over 90\%. The code is available at \url{https://github.com/HuangQiang/SAH}.

Modeling Spatial Nonstationarity via Deformable Convolutions for Deep Traffic Flow Prediction

Deep neural networks are being increasingly used for short-term traffic flow prediction. Existing convolution-based approaches typically partition an underlying territory into grid-like spatial units, and employ standard convolutions to learn spatial dependence among the units. However, standard convolutions with fixed geometric structures cannot fully model the nonstationary characteristics of local traffic flows. To overcome the deficiency, we introduce deformable convolution that augments the spatial sampling locations with additional offsets, to enhance the modeling capability of spatial nonstationarity. On this basis, we design a deep deformable convolutional residual network, namely DeFlow-Net, that can effectively model global spatial dependence, local spatial nonstationarity, and temporal periodicity of traffic flows. Furthermore, to fit better with convolutions, we suggest to first aggregate traffic flows according to pre-conceived regions of interest, then dispose to sequentially organized raster images for network input. Extensive experiments on real-world traffic flows demonstrate that DeFlow-Net outperforms existing solutions using standard convolutions, and spatial partition by pre-conceived regions further enhances the performance. Finally, we demonstrate the advantage of DeFlow-Net in maintaining spatial autocorrelation, and reveal the impacts of partition shapes and scales on deep traffic flow prediction.

Robust Federated Recommendation System

Federated recommendation systems can provide good performance without collecting users' private data, making them attractive. However, they are susceptible to low-cost poisoning attacks that can degrade their performance. In this paper, we develop a novel federated recommendation technique that is robust against the poisoning attack where Byzantine clients prevail. We argue that the key to Byzantine detection is monitoring of gradients of the model parameters of clients. We then propose a robust learning strategy where instead of using model parameters, the central server computes and utilizes the gradients to filter out Byzantine clients. Theoretically, we justify our robust learning strategy by our proposed definition of Byzantine resilience. Empirically, we confirm the efficacy of our robust learning strategy employing four datasets in a federated recommendation system.

Do Multi-Hop Question Answering Systems Know How to Answer the Single-Hop Sub-Questions?

Multi-hop question answering (QA) requires a model to retrieve and integrate information from different parts of a long text to answer a question. Humans answer this kind of complex questions via a divide-and-conquer approach. In this paper, we investigate whether top-performing models for multi-hop questions understand the underlying sub-questions like humans. We adopt a neural decomposition model to generate sub-questions for a multi-hop complex question, followed by extracting the corresponding sub-answers. We show that multiple state-of-the-art multi-hop QA models fail to correctly answer a large portion of sub-questions, although their corresponding multi-hop questions are correctly answered. This indicates that these models manage to answer the multi-hop questions using some partial clues, instead of truly understanding the reasoning paths. We also propose a new model which significantly improves the performance on answering the sub-questions. Our work takes a step forward towards building a more explainable multi-hop QA system.