Fast Track to Winning Tickets: Repowering One-Shot Pruning for Graph Neural Networks

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) demonstrate superior performance in various graph learning tasks, yet their wider real-world application is hindered by the computational overhead when applied to large-scale graphs. To address the issue, the Graph Lottery Hypothesis (GLT) has been proposed, advocating the identification of subgraphs and subnetworks, \textit{i.e.}, winning tickets, without compromising performance. The effectiveness of current GLT methods largely stems from the use of iterative magnitude pruning (IMP), which offers higher stability and better performance than one-shot pruning. However, identifying GLTs is highly computationally expensive, due to the iterative pruning and retraining required by IMP. In this paper, we reevaluate the correlation between one-shot pruning and IMP: while one-shot tickets are suboptimal compared to IMP, they offer a \textit{fast track} to tickets with a stronger performance. We introduce a one-shot pruning and denoising framework to validate the efficacy of the \textit{fast track}. Compared to current IMP-based GLT methods, our framework achieves a double-win situation of graph lottery tickets with \textbf{higher sparsity} and \textbf{faster speeds}. Through extensive experiments across 4 backbones and 6 datasets, our method demonstrates $1.32\% - 45.62\%$ improvement in weight sparsity and a $7.49\% - 22.71\%$ increase in graph sparsity, along with a $1.7-44 \times$ speedup over IMP-based methods and $95.3\%-98.6\%$ MAC savings.

AHSG: Adversarial Attacks on High-level Semantics in Graph Neural Networks

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have garnered significant interest among researchers due to their impressive performance in graph learning tasks. However, like other deep neural networks, GNNs are also vulnerable to adversarial attacks. In existing adversarial attack methods for GNNs, the metric between the attacked graph and the original graph is usually the attack budget or a measure of global graph properties. However, we have found that it is possible to generate attack graphs that disrupt the primary semantics even within these constraints. To address this problem, we propose a Adversarial Attacks on High-level Semantics in Graph Neural Networks (AHSG), which is a graph structure attack model that ensures the retention of primary semantics. The latent representations of each node can extract rich semantic information by applying convolutional operations on graph data. These representations contain both task-relevant primary semantic information and task-irrelevant secondary semantic information. The latent representations of same-class nodes with the same primary semantics can fulfill the objective of modifying secondary semantics while preserving the primary semantics. Finally, the latent representations with attack effects is mapped to an attack graph using Projected Gradient Descent (PGD) algorithm. By attacking graph deep learning models with some advanced defense strategies, we validate that AHSG has superior attack effectiveness compared to other attack methods. Additionally, we employ Contextual Stochastic Block Models (CSBMs) as a proxy for the primary semantics to detect the attacked graph, confirming that AHSG almost does not disrupt the original primary semantics of the graph.

Error estimates between SGD with momentum and underdamped Langevin diffusion

Stochastic gradient descent with momentum is a popular variant of stochastic gradient descent, which has recently been reported to have a close relationship with the underdamped Langevin diffusion. In this paper, we establish a quantitative error estimate between them in the 1-Wasserstein and total variation distances.

LATEX-GCL: Large Language Models (LLMs)-Based Data Augmentation for Text-Attributed Graph Contrastive Learning

Graph Contrastive Learning (GCL) is a potent paradigm for self-supervised graph learning that has attracted attention across various application scenarios. However, GCL for learning on Text-Attributed Graphs (TAGs) has yet to be explored. Because conventional augmentation techniques like feature embedding masking cannot directly process textual attributes on TAGs. A naive strategy for applying GCL to TAGs is to encode the textual attributes into feature embeddings via a language model and then feed the embeddings into the following GCL module for processing. Such a strategy faces three key challenges: I) failure to avoid information loss, II) semantic loss during the text encoding phase, and III) implicit augmentation constraints that lead to uncontrollable and incomprehensible results. In this paper, we propose a novel GCL framework named LATEX-GCL to utilize Large Language Models (LLMs) to produce textual augmentations and LLMs' powerful natural language processing (NLP) abilities to address the three limitations aforementioned to pave the way for applying GCL to TAG tasks. Extensive experiments on four high-quality TAG datasets illustrate the superiority of the proposed LATEX-GCL method. The source codes and datasets are released to ease the reproducibility, which can be accessed via this link: https://anonymous.4open.science/r/LATEX-GCL-0712.

Stephanie: Step-by-Step Dialogues for Mimicking Human Interactions in Social Conversations

In the rapidly evolving field of natural language processing, dialogue systems primarily employ a single-step dialogue paradigm. Although this paradigm is efficient, it lacks the depth and fluidity of human interactions and does not appear natural. We introduce a novel \textbf{Step}-by-Step Dialogue Paradigm (Stephanie), designed to mimic the ongoing dynamic nature of human conversations. By employing a dual learning strategy and a further-split post-editing method, we generated and utilized a high-quality step-by-step dialogue dataset to fine-tune existing large language models, enabling them to perform step-by-step dialogues. We thoroughly present Stephanie. Tailored automatic and human evaluations are conducted to assess its effectiveness compared to the traditional single-step dialogue paradigm. We will release code, Stephanie datasets, and Stephanie LLMs to facilitate the future of chatbot eras.

IENE: Identifying and Extrapolating the Node Environment for Out-of-Distribution Generalization on Graphs

Due to the performance degradation of graph neural networks (GNNs) under distribution shifts, the work on out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization on graphs has received widespread attention. A novel perspective involves distinguishing potential confounding biases from different environments through environmental identification, enabling the model to escape environmentally-sensitive correlations and maintain stable performance under distribution shifts. However, in graph data, confounding factors not only affect the generation process of node features but also influence the complex interaction between nodes. We observe that neglecting either aspect of them will lead to a decrease in performance. In this paper, we propose IENE, an OOD generalization method on graphs based on node-level environmental identification and extrapolation techniques. It strengthens the model's ability to extract invariance from two granularities simultaneously, leading to improved generalization. Specifically, to identify invariance in features, we utilize the disentangled information bottleneck framework to achieve mutual promotion between node-level environmental estimation and invariant feature learning. Furthermore, we extrapolate topological environments through graph augmentation techniques to identify structural invariance. We implement the conceptual method with specific algorithms and provide theoretical analysis and proofs for our approach. Extensive experimental evaluations on two synthetic and four real-world OOD datasets validate the superiority of IENE, which outperforms existing techniques and provides a flexible framework for enhancing the generalization of GNNs.

Unveiling the Generalization Power of Fine-Tuned Large Language Models

While Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated exceptional multitasking abilities, fine-tuning these models on downstream, domain-specific datasets is often necessary to yield superior performance on test sets compared to their counterparts without fine-tuning. However, the comprehensive effects of fine-tuning on the LLMs' generalization ability are not fully understood. This paper delves into the differences between original, unmodified LLMs and their fine-tuned variants. Our primary investigation centers on whether fine-tuning affects the generalization ability intrinsic to LLMs. To elaborate on this, we conduct extensive experiments across five distinct language tasks on various datasets. Our main findings reveal that models fine-tuned on generation and classification tasks exhibit dissimilar behaviors in generalizing to different domains and tasks. Intriguingly, we observe that integrating the in-context learning strategy during fine-tuning on generation tasks can enhance the model's generalization ability. Through this systematic investigation, we aim to contribute valuable insights into the evolving landscape of fine-tuning practices for LLMs.

A Thorough Examination of Decoding Methods in the Era of LLMs

Decoding methods play an indispensable role in converting language models from next-token predictors into practical task solvers. Prior research on decoding methods, primarily focusing on task-specific models, may not extend to the current era of general-purpose large language models (LLMs). Moreover, the recent influx of decoding strategies has further complicated this landscape. This paper provides a comprehensive and multifaceted analysis of various decoding methods within the context of LLMs, evaluating their performance, robustness to hyperparameter changes, and decoding speeds across a wide range of tasks, models, and deployment environments. Our findings reveal that decoding method performance is notably task-dependent and influenced by factors such as alignment, model size, and quantization. Intriguingly, sensitivity analysis exposes that certain methods achieve superior performance at the cost of extensive hyperparameter tuning, highlighting the trade-off between attaining optimal results and the practicality of implementation in varying contexts.

Hyperedge Interaction-aware Hypergraph Neural Network

Hypergraphs provide an effective modeling approach for modeling high-order relationships in many real-world datasets. To capture such complex relationships, several hypergraph neural networks have been proposed for learning hypergraph structure, which propagate information from nodes to hyperedges and then from hyperedges back to nodes. However, most existing methods focus on information propagation between hyperedges and nodes, neglecting the interactions among hyperedges themselves. In this paper, we propose HeIHNN, a hyperedge interaction-aware hypergraph neural network, which captures the interactions among hyperedges during the convolution process and introduce a novel mechanism to enhance information flow between hyperedges and nodes. Specifically, HeIHNN integrates the interactions between hyperedges into the hypergraph convolution by constructing a three-stage information propagation process. After propagating information from nodes to hyperedges, we introduce a hyperedge-level convolution to update the hyperedge embeddings. Finally, the embeddings that capture rich information from the interaction among hyperedges will be utilized to update the node embeddings. Additionally, we introduce a hyperedge outlier removal mechanism in the information propagation stages between nodes and hyperedges, which dynamically adjusts the hypergraph structure using the learned embeddings, effectively removing outliers. Extensive experiments conducted on real-world datasets show the competitive performance of HeIHNN compared with state-of-the-art methods.

HC-Ref: Hierarchical Constrained Refinement for Robust Adversarial Training of GNNs

Recent studies have shown that attackers can catastrophically reduce the performance of GNNs by maliciously modifying the graph structure or node features on the graph. Adversarial training, which has been shown to be one of the most effective defense mechanisms against adversarial attacks in computer vision, holds great promise for enhancing the robustness of GNNs. There is limited research on defending against attacks by performing adversarial training on graphs, and it is crucial to delve deeper into this approach to optimize its effectiveness. Therefore, based on robust adversarial training on graphs, we propose a hierarchical constraint refinement framework (HC-Ref) that enhances the anti-perturbation capabilities of GNNs and downstream classifiers separately, ultimately leading to improved robustness. We propose corresponding adversarial regularization terms that are conducive to adaptively narrowing the domain gap between the normal part and the perturbation part according to the characteristics of different layers, promoting the smoothness of the predicted distribution of both parts. Moreover, existing research on graph robust adversarial training primarily concentrates on training from the standpoint of node feature perturbations and seldom takes into account alterations in the graph structure. This limitation makes it challenging to prevent attacks based on topological changes in the graph. This paper generates adversarial examples by utilizing graph structure perturbations, offering an effective approach to defend against attack methods that are based on topological changes. Extensive experiments on two real-world graph benchmarks show that HC-Ref successfully resists various attacks and has better node classification performance compared to several baseline methods.