Leveraging Labelled Data Knowledge: A Cooperative Rectification Learning Network for Semi-supervised 3D Medical Image Segmentation

Semi-supervised 3D medical image segmentation aims to achieve accurate segmentation using few labelled data and numerous unlabelled data. The main challenge in the design of semi-supervised learning methods consists in the effective use of the unlabelled data for training. A promising solution consists of ensuring consistent predictions across different views of the data, where the efficacy of this strategy depends on the accuracy of the pseudo-labels generated by the model for this consistency learning strategy. In this paper, we introduce a new methodology to produce high-quality pseudo-labels for a consistency learning strategy to address semi-supervised 3D medical image segmentation. The methodology has three important contributions. The first contribution is the Cooperative Rectification Learning Network (CRLN) that learns multiple prototypes per class to be used as external knowledge priors to adaptively rectify pseudo-labels at the voxel level. The second contribution consists of the Dynamic Interaction Module (DIM) to facilitate pairwise and cross-class interactions between prototypes and multi-resolution image features, enabling the production of accurate voxel-level clues for pseudo-label rectification. The third contribution is the Cooperative Positive Supervision (CPS), which optimises uncertain representations to align with unassertive representations of their class distributions, improving the model's accuracy in classifying uncertain regions. Extensive experiments on three public 3D medical segmentation datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of our semi-supervised learning method.

Separate Motion from Appearance: Customizing Motion via Customizing Text-to-Video Diffusion Models

Motion customization aims to adapt the diffusion model (DM) to generate videos with the motion specified by a set of video clips with the same motion concept. To realize this goal, the adaptation of DM should be possible to model the specified motion concept, without compromising the ability to generate diverse appearances. Thus, the key to solving this problem lies in how to separate the motion concept from the appearance in the adaptation process of DM. Typical previous works explore different ways to represent and insert a motion concept into large-scale pretrained text-to-video diffusion models, e.g., learning a motion LoRA, using latent noise residuals, etc. While those methods can encode the motion concept, they also inevitably encode the appearance in the reference videos, resulting in weakened appearance generation capability. In this paper, we follow the typical way to learn a motion LoRA to encode the motion concept, but propose two novel strategies to enhance motion-appearance separation, including temporal attention purification (TAP) and appearance highway (AH). Specifically, we assume that in the temporal attention module, the pretrained Value embeddings are sufficient to serve as basic components needed by producing a new motion. Thus, in TAP, we choose only to reshape the temporal attention with motion LoRAs so that Value embeddings can be reorganized to produce a new motion. Further, in AH, we alter the starting point of each skip connection in U-Net from the output of each temporal attention module to the output of each spatial attention module. Extensive experiments demonstrate that compared to previous works, our method can generate videos with appearance more aligned with the text descriptions and motion more consistent with the reference videos.

TAPFed: Threshold Secure Aggregation for Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning

Federated learning is a computing paradigm that enhances privacy by enabling multiple parties to collaboratively train a machine learning model without revealing personal data. However, current research indicates that traditional federated learning platforms are unable to ensure privacy due to privacy leaks caused by the interchange of gradients. To achieve privacy-preserving federated learning, integrating secure aggregation mechanisms is essential. Unfortunately, existing solutions are vulnerable to recently demonstrated inference attacks such as the disaggregation attack. This paper proposes TAPFed, an approach for achieving privacy-preserving federated learning in the context of multiple decentralized aggregators with malicious actors. TAPFed uses a proposed threshold functional encryption scheme and allows for a certain number of malicious aggregators while maintaining security and privacy. We provide formal security and privacy analyses of TAPFed and compare it to various baselines through experimental evaluation. Our results show that TAPFed offers equivalent performance in terms of model quality compared to state-of-the-art approaches while reducing transmission overhead by 29%-45% across different model training scenarios. Most importantly, TAPFed can defend against recently demonstrated inference attacks caused by curious aggregators, which the majority of existing approaches are susceptible to.

LLMs are Also Effective Embedding Models: An In-depth Overview

Large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized natural language processing by achieving state-of-the-art performance across various tasks. Recently, their effectiveness as embedding models has gained attention, marking a paradigm shift from traditional encoder-only models like ELMo and BERT to decoder-only, large-scale LLMs such as GPT, LLaMA, and Mistral. This survey provides an in-depth overview of this transition, beginning with foundational techniques before the LLM era, followed by LLM-based embedding models through two main strategies to derive embeddings from LLMs. 1) Direct prompting: We mainly discuss the prompt designs and the underlying rationale for deriving competitive embeddings. 2) Data-centric tuning: We cover extensive aspects that affect tuning an embedding model, including model architecture, training objectives, data constructions, etc. Upon the above, we also cover advanced methods, such as handling longer texts, and multilingual and cross-modal data. Furthermore, we discuss factors affecting choices of embedding models, such as performance/efficiency comparisons, dense vs sparse embeddings, pooling strategies, and scaling law. Lastly, the survey highlights the limitations and challenges in adapting LLMs for embeddings, including cross-task embedding quality, trade-offs between efficiency and accuracy, low-resource, long-context, data bias, robustness, etc. This survey serves as a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners by synthesizing current advancements, highlighting key challenges, and offering a comprehensive framework for future work aimed at enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of LLMs as embedding models.

Robust Max-Min Fair Beamforming Design for Rate Splitting Multiple Access-aided Visible Light Communications

This paper addresses the robust beamforming design for rate splitting multiple access (RSMA)-aided visible light communication (VLC) networks with imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). In particular, we first derive the theoretical lower bound for the channel capacity of RSMA-aided VLC networks.Then we investigate the beamforming design to solve the max-min fairness (MMF) problem of RSMA-aided VLC networks under the practical optical power constraint and electrical power constraint while considering the practical imperfect CSIT scenario.To address the problem, we propose a constrained-concave-convex programming (CCCP)-based beamforming design algorithm which exploits semidefinite relaxation (SDR) technique and a penalty method to deal with the rank-one constraint caused by SDR.Numerical results show that the proposed robust beamforming design algorithm for RSMA-aided VLC network achieves a superior performance over the existing ones for space-division multiple access (SDMA) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA).

Semantic Feature Division Multiple Access for Multi-user Digital Interference Networks

With the ever-increasing user density and quality of service (QoS) demand,5G networks with limited spectrum resources are facing massive access challenges. To address these challenges, in this paper, we propose a novel discrete semantic feature division multiple access (SFDMA) paradigm for multi-user digital interference networks. Specifically, by utilizing deep learning technology, SFDMA extracts multi-user semantic information into discrete representations in distinguishable semantic subspaces, which enables multiple users to transmit simultaneously over the same time-frequency resources. Furthermore, based on a robust information bottleneck, we design a SFDMA based multi-user digital semantic interference network for inference tasks, which can achieve approximate orthogonal transmission. Moreover, we propose a SFDMA based multi-user digital semantic interference network for image reconstruction tasks, where the discrete outputs of the semantic encoders of the users are approximately orthogonal, which significantly reduces multi-user interference. Furthermore, we propose an Alpha-Beta-Gamma (ABG) formula for semantic communications, which is the first theoretical relationship between inference accuracy and transmission power. Then, we derive adaptive power control methods with closed-form expressions for inference tasks. Extensive simulations verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed SFDMA.

Towards Human-AI Deliberation: Design and Evaluation of LLM-Empowered Deliberative AI for AI-Assisted Decision-Making

In AI-assisted decision-making, humans often passively review AI's suggestion and decide whether to accept or reject it as a whole. In such a paradigm, humans are found to rarely trigger analytical thinking and face difficulties in communicating the nuances of conflicting opinions to the AI when disagreements occur. To tackle this challenge, we propose Human-AI Deliberation, a novel framework to promote human reflection and discussion on conflicting human-AI opinions in decision-making. Based on theories in human deliberation, this framework engages humans and AI in dimension-level opinion elicitation, deliberative discussion, and decision updates. To empower AI with deliberative capabilities, we designed Deliberative AI, which leverages large language models (LLMs) as a bridge between humans and domain-specific models to enable flexible conversational interactions and faithful information provision. An exploratory evaluation on a graduate admissions task shows that Deliberative AI outperforms conventional explainable AI (XAI) assistants in improving humans' appropriate reliance and task performance. Based on a mixed-methods analysis of participant behavior, perception, user experience, and open-ended feedback, we draw implications for future AI-assisted decision tool design.

Beyond Recommender: An Exploratory Study of the Effects of Different AI Roles in AI-Assisted Decision Making

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly employed in various decision-making tasks, typically as a Recommender, providing recommendations that the AI deems correct. However, recent studies suggest this may diminish human analytical thinking and lead to humans' inappropriate reliance on AI, impairing the synergy in human-AI teams. In contrast, human advisors in group decision-making perform various roles, such as analyzing alternative options or criticizing decision-makers to encourage their critical thinking. This diversity of roles has not yet been empirically explored in AI assistance. In this paper, we examine three AI roles: Recommender, Analyzer, and Devil's Advocate, and evaluate their effects across two AI performance levels. Our results show each role's distinct strengths and limitations in task performance, reliance appropriateness, and user experience. Notably, the Recommender role is not always the most effective, especially if the AI performance level is low, the Analyzer role may be preferable. These insights offer valuable implications for designing AI assistants with adaptive functional roles according to different situations.

Charting the Future of AI in Project-Based Learning: A Co-Design Exploration with Students

The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by students in learning presents new challenges for assessing their learning outcomes in project-based learning (PBL). This paper introduces a co-design study to explore the potential of students' AI usage data as a novel material for PBL assessment. We conducted workshops with 18 college students, encouraging them to speculate an alternative world where they could freely employ AI in PBL while needing to report this process to assess their skills and contributions. Our workshops yielded various scenarios of students' use of AI in PBL and ways of analyzing these uses grounded by students' vision of education goal transformation. We also found students with different attitudes toward AI exhibited distinct preferences in how to analyze and understand the use of AI. Based on these findings, we discuss future research opportunities on student-AI interactions and understanding AI-enhanced learning.

MATA*: Combining Learnable Node Matching with A* Algorithm for Approximate Graph Edit Distance Computation

Graph Edit Distance (GED) is a general and domain-agnostic metric to measure graph similarity, widely used in graph search or retrieving tasks. However, the exact GED computation is known to be NP-complete. For instance, the widely used A* algorithms explore the entire search space to find the optimal solution which inevitably suffers scalability issues. Learning-based methods apply graph representation techniques to learn the GED by formulating a regression task, which can not recover the edit path and lead to inaccurate GED approximation (i.e., the predicted GED is smaller than the exact). To this end, in this work, we present a data-driven hybrid approach MATA* for approximate GED computation based on Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) and A* algorithms, which models from the perspective of learning to match nodes instead of directly regressing GED. Specifically, aware of the structure-dominant operations (i.e.,node and edge insertion/deletion) property in GED computation, a structure-enhanced GNN is firstly designed to jointly learn local and high-order structural information for node embeddings for node matchings. Second, top-k candidate nodes are produced via a differentiable top-k operation to enable the training for node matchings, which is adhering to another property of GED, i.e., multiple optimal node matchings. Third, benefiting from the candidate nodes, MATA* only performs on the promising search directions, reaching the solution efficiently. Finally, extensive experiments show the superiority of MATA* as it significantly outperforms the combinatorial search-based, learning-based and hybrid methods and scales well to large-size graphs.