Sphere Neural-Networks for Rational Reasoning

The success of Large Language Models (LLMs), e.g., ChatGPT, is witnessed by their planetary popularity, their capability of human-like question-answering, and also by their steadily improved reasoning performance. However, it remains unclear whether LLMs reason. It is an open problem how traditional neural networks can be qualitatively extended to go beyond the statistic paradigm and achieve high-level cognition. Here, we present a minimalist qualitative extension by generalising computational building blocks from vectors to spheres. We propose Sphere Neural Networks (SphNNs) for human-like reasoning through model construction and inspection, and develop SphNN for syllogistic reasoning, a microcosm of human rationality. Instead of training data, SphNN uses a neuro-symbolic transition map of neighbourhood spatial relations to guide transformations from the current sphere configuration towards the target. SphNN is the first neural model that can determine the validity of long-chained syllogistic reasoning in one epoch by constructing sphere configurations as Euler diagrams, with the worst computational complexity of O(N^2). SphNN can evolve into various types of reasoning, such as spatio-temporal reasoning, logical reasoning with negation and disjunction, event reasoning, neuro-symbolic reasoning, and humour understanding (the highest level of cognition). All these suggest a new kind of Herbert A. Simon's scissors with two neural blades. SphNNs will tremendously enhance interdisciplinary collaborations to develop the two neural blades and realise deterministic neural reasoning and human-bounded rationality and elevate LLMs to reliable psychological AI. This work suggests that the non-zero radii of spheres are the missing components that prevent traditional deep-learning systems from reaching the realm of rational reasoning and cause LLMs to be trapped in the swamp of hallucination.

Wet TinyML: Chemical Neural Network Using Gene Regulation and Cell Plasticity

In our earlier work, we introduced the concept of Gene Regulatory Neural Network (GRNN), which utilizes natural neural network-like structures inherent in biological cells to perform computing tasks using chemical inputs. We define this form of chemical-based neural network as Wet TinyML. The GRNN structures are based on the gene regulatory network and have weights associated with each link based on the estimated interactions between the genes. The GRNNs can be used for conventional computing by employing an application-based search process similar to the Network Architecture Search. This study advances this concept by incorporating cell plasticity, to further exploit natural cell's adaptability, in order to diversify the GRNN search that can match larger spectrum as well as dynamic computing tasks. As an example application, we show that through the directed cell plasticity, we can extract the mathematical regression evolution enabling it to match to dynamic system applications. We also conduct energy analysis by comparing the chemical energy of the GRNN to its silicon counterpart, where this analysis includes both artificial neural network algorithms executed on von Neumann architecture as well as neuromorphic processors. The concept of Wet TinyML can pave the way for the new emergence of chemical-based, energy-efficient and miniature Biological AI.

Optimizing Polynomial Graph Filters: A Novel Adaptive Krylov Subspace Approach

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), known as spectral graph filters, find a wide range of applications in web networks. To bypass eigendecomposition, polynomial graph filters are proposed to approximate graph filters by leveraging various polynomial bases for filter training. However, no existing studies have explored the diverse polynomial graph filters from a unified perspective for optimization. In this paper, we first unify polynomial graph filters, as well as the optimal filters of identical degrees into the Krylov subspace of the same order, thus providing equivalent expressive power theoretically. Next, we investigate the asymptotic convergence property of polynomials from the unified Krylov subspace perspective, revealing their limited adaptability in graphs with varying heterophily degrees. Inspired by those facts, we design a novel adaptive Krylov subspace approach to optimize polynomial bases with provable controllability over the graph spectrum so as to adapt various heterophily graphs. Subsequently, we propose AdaptKry, an optimized polynomial graph filter utilizing bases from the adaptive Krylov subspaces. Meanwhile, in light of the diverse spectral properties of complex graphs, we extend AdaptKry by leveraging multiple adaptive Krylov bases without incurring extra training costs. As a consequence, extended AdaptKry is able to capture the intricate characteristics of graphs and provide insights into their inherent complexity. We conduct extensive experiments across a series of real-world datasets. The experimental results demonstrate the superior filtering capability of AdaptKry, as well as the optimized efficacy of the adaptive Krylov basis.

Understanding Biology in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Modern life sciences research is increasingly relying on artificial intelligence approaches to model biological systems, primarily centered around the use of machine learning (ML) models. Although ML is undeniably useful for identifying patterns in large, complex data sets, its widespread application in biological sciences represents a significant deviation from traditional methods of scientific inquiry. As such, the interplay between these models and scientific understanding in biology is a topic with important implications for the future of scientific research, yet it is a subject that has received little attention. Here, we draw from an epistemological toolkit to contextualize recent applications of ML in biological sciences under modern philosophical theories of understanding, identifying general principles that can guide the design and application of ML systems to model biological phenomena and advance scientific knowledge. We propose that conceptions of scientific understanding as information compression, qualitative intelligibility, and dependency relation modelling provide a useful framework for interpreting ML-mediated understanding of biological systems. Through a detailed analysis of two key application areas of ML in modern biological research - protein structure prediction and single cell RNA-sequencing - we explore how these features have thus far enabled ML systems to advance scientific understanding of their target phenomena, how they may guide the development of future ML models, and the key obstacles that remain in preventing ML from achieving its potential as a tool for biological discovery. Consideration of the epistemological features of ML applications in biology will improve the prospects of these methods to solve important problems and advance scientific understanding of living systems.

Enhancing Real-World Complex Network Representations with Hyperedge Augmentation

Graph augmentation methods play a crucial role in improving the performance and enhancing generalisation capabilities in Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). Existing graph augmentation methods mainly perturb the graph structures and are usually limited to pairwise node relations. These methods cannot fully address the complexities of real-world large-scale networks that often involve higher-order node relations beyond only being pairwise. Meanwhile, real-world graph datasets are predominantly modelled as simple graphs, due to the scarcity of data that can be used to form higher-order edges. Therefore, reconfiguring the higher-order edges as an integration into graph augmentation strategies lights up a promising research path to address the aforementioned issues. In this paper, we present Hyperedge Augmentation (HyperAug), a novel graph augmentation method that constructs virtual hyperedges directly form the raw data, and produces auxiliary node features by extracting from the virtual hyperedge information, which are used for enhancing GNN performances on downstream tasks. We design three diverse virtual hyperedge construction strategies to accompany the augmentation scheme: (1) via graph statistics, (2) from multiple data perspectives, and (3) utilising multi-modality. Furthermore, to facilitate HyperAug evaluation, we provide 23 novel real-world graph datasets across various domains including social media, biology, and e-commerce. Our empirical study shows that HyperAug consistently and significantly outperforms GNN baselines and other graph augmentation methods, across a variety of application contexts, which clearly indicates that it can effectively incorporate higher-order node relations into graph augmentation methods for real-world complex networks.

Position Paper: Challenges and Opportunities in Topological Deep Learning

Topological deep learning (TDL) is a rapidly evolving field that uses topological features to understand and design deep learning models. This paper posits that TDL may complement graph representation learning and geometric deep learning by incorporating topological concepts, and can thus provide a natural choice for various machine learning settings. To this end, this paper discusses open problems in TDL, ranging from practical benefits to theoretical foundations. For each problem, it outlines potential solutions and future research opportunities. At the same time, this paper serves as an invitation to the scientific community to actively participate in TDL research to unlock the potential of this emerging field.

HyperBERT: Mixing Hypergraph-Aware Layers with Language Models for Node Classification on Text-Attributed Hypergraphs

Hypergraphs are marked by complex topology, expressing higher-order interactions among multiple entities with hyperedges. Lately, hypergraph-based deep learning methods to learn informative data representations for the problem of node classification on text-attributed hypergraphs have garnered increasing research attention. However, existing methods struggle to simultaneously capture the full extent of hypergraph structural information and the rich linguistic attributes inherent in the nodes attributes, which largely hampers their effectiveness and generalizability. To overcome these challenges, we explore ways to further augment a pretrained BERT model with specialized hypergraph-aware layers for the task of node classification. Such layers introduce higher-order structural inductive bias into the language model, thus improving the model's capacity to harness both higher-order context information from the hypergraph structure and semantic information present in text. In this paper, we propose a new architecture, HyperBERT, a mixed text-hypergraph model which simultaneously models hypergraph relational structure while maintaining the high-quality text encoding capabilities of a pre-trained BERT. Notably, HyperBERT presents results that achieve a new state-of-the-art on five challenging text-attributed hypergraph node classification benchmarks.

The Deep Equilibrium Algorithmic Reasoner

Recent work on neural algorithmic reasoning has demonstrated that graph neural networks (GNNs) could learn to execute classical algorithms. Doing so, however, has always used a recurrent architecture, where each iteration of the GNN aligns with an algorithm's iteration. Since an algorithm's solution is often an equilibrium, we conjecture and empirically validate that one can train a network to solve algorithmic problems by directly finding the equilibrium. Note that this does not require matching each GNN iteration with a step of the algorithm.

Language Model Knowledge Distillation for Efficient Question Answering in Spanish

Recent advances in the development of pre-trained Spanish language models has led to significant progress in many Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks, such as question answering. However, the lack of efficient models imposes a barrier for the adoption of such models in resource-constrained environments. Therefore, smaller distilled models for the Spanish language could be proven to be highly scalable and facilitate their further adoption on a variety of tasks and scenarios. In this work, we take one step in this direction by developing SpanishTinyRoBERTa, a compressed language model based on RoBERTa for efficient question answering in Spanish. To achieve this, we employ knowledge distillation from a large model onto a lighter model that allows for a wider implementation, even in areas with limited computational resources, whilst attaining negligible performance sacrifice. Our experiments show that the dense distilled model can still preserve the performance of its larger counterpart, while significantly increasing inference speedup. This work serves as a starting point for further research and investigation of model compression efforts for Spanish language models across various NLP tasks.

Digital Histopathology with Graph Neural Networks: Concepts and Explanations for Clinicians

To address the challenge of the ``black-box" nature of deep learning in medical settings, we combine GCExplainer - an automated concept discovery solution - along with Logic Explained Networks to provide global explanations for Graph Neural Networks. We demonstrate this using a generally applicable graph construction and classification pipeline, involving panoptic segmentation with HoVer-Net and cancer prediction with Graph Convolution Networks. By training on H&E slides of breast cancer, we show promising results in offering explainable and trustworthy AI tools for clinicians.