Multi-class Label Noise Learning via Loss Decomposition and Centroid Estimation

In real-world scenarios, many large-scale datasets often contain inaccurate labels, i.e., noisy labels, which may confuse model training and lead to performance degradation. To overcome this issue, Label Noise Learning (LNL) has recently attracted much attention, and various methods have been proposed to design an unbiased risk estimator to the noise-free dataset to combat such label noise. Among them, a trend of works based on Loss Decomposition and Centroid Estimation (LDCE) has shown very promising performance. However, existing LNL methods based on LDCE are only designed for binary classification, and they are not directly extendable to multi-class situations. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-class robust learning method for LDCE, which is termed "MC-LDCE". Specifically, we decompose the commonly adopted loss (e.g., mean squared loss) function into a label-dependent part and a label-independent part, in which only the former is influenced by label noise. Further, by defining a new form of data centroid, we transform the recovery problem of a label-dependent part to a centroid estimation problem. Finally, by critically examining the mathematical expectation of clean data centroid given the observed noisy set, the centroid can be estimated which helps to build an unbiased risk estimator for multi-class learning. The proposed MC-LDCE method is general and applicable to different types (i.e., linear and nonlinear) of classification models. The experimental results on five public datasets demonstrate the superiority of the proposed MC-LDCE against other representative LNL methods in tackling multi-class label noise problem.

Synergistic Network Learning and Label Correction for Noise-robust Image Classification

Large training datasets almost always contain examples with inaccurate or incorrect labels. Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) tend to overfit training label noise, resulting in poorer model performance in practice. To address this problem, we propose a robust label correction framework combining the ideas of small loss selection and noise correction, which learns network parameters and reassigns ground truth labels iteratively. Taking the expertise of DNNs to learn meaningful patterns before fitting noise, our framework first trains two networks over the current dataset with small loss selection. Based on the classification loss and agreement loss of two networks, we can measure the confidence of training data. More and more confident samples are selected for label correction during the learning process. We demonstrate our method on both synthetic and real-world datasets with different noise types and rates, including CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and Clothing1M, where our method outperforms the baseline approaches.

Consistency and Diversity induced Human Motion Segmentation

Subspace clustering is a classical technique that has been widely used for human motion segmentation and other related tasks. However, existing segmentation methods often cluster data without guidance from prior knowledge, resulting in unsatisfactory segmentation results. To this end, we propose a novel Consistency and Diversity induced human Motion Segmentation (CDMS) algorithm. Specifically, our model factorizes the source and target data into distinct multi-layer feature spaces, in which transfer subspace learning is conducted on different layers to capture multi-level information. A multi-mutual consistency learning strategy is carried out to reduce the domain gap between the source and target data. In this way, the domain-specific knowledge and domain-invariant properties can be explored simultaneously. Besides, a novel constraint based on the Hilbert Schmidt Independence Criterion (HSIC) is introduced to ensure the diversity of multi-level subspace representations, which enables the complementarity of multi-level representations to be explored to boost the transfer learning performance. Moreover, to preserve the temporal correlations, an enhanced graph regularizer is imposed on the learned representation coefficients and the multi-level representations of the source data. The proposed model can be efficiently solved using the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) algorithm. Extensive experimental results on public human motion datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our method against several state-of-the-art approaches.

Value Function Factorisation with Hypergraph Convolution for Cooperative Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning

Cooperation between agents in a multi-agent system (MAS) has become a hot topic in recent years, and many algorithms based on centralized training with decentralized execution (CTDE), such as VDN and QMIX, have been proposed. However, these methods disregard the information hidden in the individual action values. In this paper, we propose HyperGraph CoNvolution MIX (HGCN-MIX), a method that combines hypergraph convolution with value decomposition. By treating action values as signals, HGCN-MIX aims to explore the relationship between these signals via a self-learning hypergraph. Experimental results present that HGCN-MIX matches or surpasses state-of-the-art techniques in the StarCraft II multi-agent challenge (SMAC) benchmark on various situations, notably those with a number of agents.

Map-Assisted Power Allocation and Constellation Design for mmWave WDM with OAM in Short-Range LOS Environment

Consider a system that integrates positioning and single-user millimeter wave (mmWave) communication, where the communication part adopts wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and orbital angular momentum (OAM). This paper addresses the power allocation and high dimensional constellation design in short-range line-of-sight (LOS) environment, with stable communication links. We propose a map-assisted method to replace online estimation, feedback and computation with the look-up table searching. We explore the possibility of using a few patterns in the maps, and investigate the performance loss of using the optimal solution of one position for other positions. For power allocation, we first characterize the performance loss outside the OAM beam regions with only plane waves, and figure out that the loss is always small. However, in OAM beam regions, the performance loss has similar characteristics only at some specific positions. Based on numerical results, we illustrate that a few patterns can be adopted for all receiver locations in the map. We also investigate high dimensional constellation design, and prove that a fixed constellation can be adopted for the positions where the channel matrices are sufficiently close to be proportional. Similarly, we figure out that the constellation design for all receiver locations can be represented by a few constellation sets.

Reliable Shot Identification for Complex Event Detection via Visual-Semantic Embedding

Multimedia event detection is the task of detecting a specific event of interest in an user-generated video on websites. The most fundamental challenge facing this task lies in the enormously varying quality of the video as well as the high-level semantic abstraction of event inherently. In this paper, we decompose the video into several segments and intuitively model the task of complex event detection as a multiple instance learning problem by representing each video as a "bag" of segments in which each segment is referred to as an instance. Instead of treating the instances equally, we associate each instance with a reliability variable to indicate its importance and then select reliable instances for training. To measure the reliability of the varying instances precisely, we propose a visual-semantic guided loss by exploiting low-level feature from visual information together with instance-event similarity based high-level semantic feature. Motivated by curriculum learning, we introduce a negative elastic-net regularization term to start training the classifier with instances of high reliability and gradually taking the instances with relatively low reliability into consideration. An alternative optimization algorithm is developed to solve the proposed challenging non-convex non-smooth problem. Experimental results on standard datasets, i.e., TRECVID MEDTest 2013 and TRECVID MEDTest 2014, demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method to the baseline algorithms.

Combing Policy Evaluation and Policy Improvement in a Unified f-Divergence Framework

The framework of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) provides a powerful and widely applicable mathematical formalization for sequential decision-making. In this paper, we start from studying the f-divergence between learning policy and sampling policy and derive a novel DRL framework, termed f-Divergence Reinforcement Learning (FRL). We highlight that the policy evaluation and policy improvement phases are induced by minimizing f-divergence between learning policy and sampling policy, which is distinct from the conventional DRL algorithm objective that maximizes the expected cumulative rewards. Besides, we convert this framework to a saddle-point optimization problem with a specific f function through Fenchel conjugate, which consists of policy evaluation and policy improvement. Then we derive new policy evaluation and policy improvement methods in FRL. Our framework may give new insights for analyzing DRL algorithms. The FRL framework achieves two advantages: (1) policy evaluation and policy improvement processes are derived simultaneously by f-divergence; (2) overestimation issue of value function are alleviated. To evaluate the effectiveness of the FRL framework, we conduct experiments on Atari 2600 video games, which show that our framework matches or surpasses the DRL algorithms we tested.

LDC-VAE: A Latent Distribution Consistency Approach to Variational AutoEncoders

Variational autoencoders (VAEs), as an important aspect of generative models, have received a lot of research interests and reached many successful applications. However, it is always a challenge to achieve the consistency between the learned latent distribution and the prior latent distribution when optimizing the evidence lower bound (ELBO), and finally leads to an unsatisfactory performance in data generation. In this paper, we propose a latent distribution consistency approach to avoid such substantial inconsistency between the posterior and prior latent distributions in ELBO optimizing. We name our method as latent distribution consistency VAE (LDC-VAE). We achieve this purpose by assuming the real posterior distribution in latent space as a Gibbs form, and approximating it by using our encoder. However, there is no analytical solution for such Gibbs posterior in approximation, and traditional approximation ways are time consuming, such as using the iterative sampling-based MCMC. To address this problem, we use the Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) to approximate the Gibbs posterior. Meanwhile, we use the SVGD to train a sampler net which can obtain efficient samples from the Gibbs posterior. Comparative studies on the popular image generation datasets show that our method has achieved comparable or even better performance than several powerful improvements of VAEs.

MEPG: A Minimalist Ensemble Policy Gradient Framework for Deep Reinforcement Learning

Ensemble reinforcement learning (RL) aims to mitigate instability in Q-learning and to learn a robust policy, which introduces multiple value and policy functions. In this paper, we consider finding a novel but simple ensemble Deep RL algorithm to solve the resource consumption issue. Specifically, we consider integrating multiple models into a single model. To this end, we propose the \underline{M}inimalist \underline{E}nsemble \underline{P}olicy \underline{G}radient framework (MEPG), which introduces minimalist ensemble consistent Bellman update. And we find one value network is sufficient in our framework. Moreover, we theoretically show that the policy evaluation phase in the MEPG is mathematically equivalent to a deep Gaussian Process. To verify the effectiveness of the MEPG framework, we conduct experiments on the gym simulator, which show that the MEPG framework matches or outperforms the state-of-the-art ensemble methods and model-free methods without additional computational resource costs.