Advanced Framework for Animal Sound Classification With Features Optimization

The automatic classification of animal sounds presents an enduring challenge in bioacoustics, owing to the diverse statistical properties of sound signals, variations in recording equipment, and prevalent low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) conditions. Deep learning models like Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) have excelled in human speech recognition but have not been effectively tailored to the intricate nature of animal sounds, which exhibit substantial diversity even within the same domain. We propose an automated classification framework applicable to general animal sound classification. Our approach first optimizes audio features from Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) including feature rearrangement and feature reduction. It then uses the optimized features for the deep learning model, i.e., an attention-based Bidirectional LSTM (Bi-LSTM), to extract deep semantic features for sound classification. We also contribute an animal sound benchmark dataset encompassing oceanic animals and birds1. Extensive experimentation with real-world datasets demonstrates that our approach consistently outperforms baseline methods by over 25% in precision, recall, and accuracy, promising advancements in animal sound classification.

Knowledge-Aware Parsimony Learning: A Perspective from Relational Graphs

The scaling law, a strategy that involves the brute-force scaling of the training dataset and learnable parameters, has become a prevalent approach for developing stronger learning models. In this paper, we examine its rationale in terms of learning from relational graphs. We demonstrate that directly adhering to such a scaling law does not necessarily yield stronger models due to architectural incompatibility and representation bottlenecks. To tackle this challenge, we propose a novel framework for learning from relational graphs via knowledge-aware parsimony learning. Our method draws inspiration from the duality between data and knowledge inherent in these graphs. Specifically, we first extract knowledge (like symbolic logic and physical laws) during the learning process, and then apply combinatorial generalization to the task at hand. This extracted knowledge serves as the ``building blocks'' for achieving parsimony learning. By applying this philosophy to architecture, parameters, and inference, we can effectively achieve versatile, sample-efficient, and interpretable learning. Experimental results show that our proposed framework surpasses methods that strictly follow the traditional scaling-up roadmap. This highlights the importance of incorporating knowledge in the development of next-generation learning technologies.

PDSS: A Privacy-Preserving Framework for Step-by-Step Distillation of Large Language Models

In the context of real-world applications, leveraging large language models (LLMs) for domain-specific tasks often faces two major challenges: domain-specific knowledge privacy and constrained resources. To address these issues, we propose PDSS, a privacy-preserving framework for step-by-step distillation of LLMs. PDSS works on a server-client architecture, wherein client transmits perturbed prompts to the server's LLM for rationale generation. The generated rationales are then decoded by the client and used to enrich the training of task-specific small language model(SLM) within a multi-task learning paradigm. PDSS introduces two privacy protection strategies: the Exponential Mechanism Strategy and the Encoder-Decoder Strategy, balancing prompt privacy and rationale usability. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of PDSS in various text generation tasks, enabling the training of task-specific SLM with enhanced performance while prioritizing data privacy protection.

HiFGL: A Hierarchical Framework for Cross-silo Cross-device Federated Graph Learning

Federated Graph Learning (FGL) has emerged as a promising way to learn high-quality representations from distributed graph data with privacy preservation. Despite considerable efforts have been made for FGL under either cross-device or cross-silo paradigm, how to effectively capture graph knowledge in a more complicated cross-silo cross-device environment remains an under-explored problem. However, this task is challenging because of the inherent hierarchy and heterogeneity of decentralized clients, diversified privacy constraints in different clients, and the cross-client graph integrity requirement. To this end, in this paper, we propose a Hierarchical Federated Graph Learning (HiFGL) framework for cross-silo cross-device FGL. Specifically, we devise a unified hierarchical architecture to safeguard federated GNN training on heterogeneous clients while ensuring graph integrity. Moreover, we propose a Secret Message Passing (SecMP) scheme to shield unauthorized access to subgraph-level and node-level sensitive information simultaneously. Theoretical analysis proves that HiFGL achieves multi-level privacy preservation with complexity guarantees. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets validate the superiority of the proposed framework against several baselines. Furthermore, HiFGL's versatile nature allows for its application in either solely cross-silo or cross-device settings, further broadening its utility in real-world FGL applications.

FedMKT: Federated Mutual Knowledge Transfer for Large and Small Language Models

Recent research in federated large language models (LLMs) has primarily focused on enabling clients to fine-tune their locally deployed homogeneous LLMs collaboratively or on transferring knowledge from server-based LLMs to small language models (SLMs) at downstream clients. However, a significant gap remains in the simultaneous mutual enhancement of both the server's LLM and clients' SLMs. To bridge this gap, we propose FedMKT, a parameter-efficient federated mutual knowledge transfer framework for large and small language models. This framework is designed to adaptively transfer knowledge from the server's LLM to clients' SLMs while concurrently enriching the LLM with clients' unique domain insights. We facilitate token alignment using minimum edit distance (MinED) and then selective mutual knowledge transfer between client-side SLMs and a server-side LLM, aiming to collectively enhance their performance. Through extensive experiments across three distinct scenarios, heterogeneous, homogeneous, and one-to-one, we evaluate the effectiveness of FedMKT using various public LLMs and SLMs on a range of NLP text generation tasks. Empirical results demonstrate significant performance improvements in clients' SLMs with the aid of the LLM. Furthermore, the LLM optimized by FedMKT achieves a performance comparable to that achieved through direct fine-tuning based on clients' data, highlighting the effectiveness and adaptability of FedMKT.

FedAdOb: Privacy-Preserving Federated Deep Learning with Adaptive Obfuscation

Federated learning (FL) has emerged as a collaborative approach that allows multiple clients to jointly learn a machine learning model without sharing their private data. The concern about privacy leakage, albeit demonstrated under specific conditions, has triggered numerous follow-up research in designing powerful attacking methods and effective defending mechanisms aiming to thwart these attacking methods. Nevertheless, privacy-preserving mechanisms employed in these defending methods invariably lead to compromised model performances due to a fixed obfuscation applied to private data or gradients. In this article, we, therefore, propose a novel adaptive obfuscation mechanism, coined FedAdOb, to protect private data without yielding original model performances. Technically, FedAdOb utilizes passport-based adaptive obfuscation to ensure data privacy in both horizontal and vertical federated learning settings. The privacy-preserving capabilities of FedAdOb, specifically with regard to private features and labels, are theoretically proven through Theorems 1 and 2. Furthermore, extensive experimental evaluations conducted on various datasets and network architectures demonstrate the effectiveness of FedAdOb by manifesting its superior trade-off between privacy preservation and model performance, surpassing existing methods.

No Free Lunch Theorem for Privacy-Preserving LLM Inference

Individuals and businesses have been significantly benefited by Large Language Models (LLMs) including PaLM, Gemini and ChatGPT in various ways. For example, LLMs enhance productivity, reduce costs, and enable us to focus on more valuable tasks. Furthermore, LLMs possess the capacity to sift through extensive datasets, uncover underlying patterns, and furnish critical insights that propel the frontiers of technology and science. However, LLMs also pose privacy concerns. Users' interactions with LLMs may expose their sensitive personal or company information. A lack of robust privacy safeguards and legal frameworks could permit the unwarranted intrusion or improper handling of individual data, thereby risking infringements of privacy and the theft of personal identities. To ensure privacy, it is essential to minimize the dependency between shared prompts and private information. Various randomization approaches have been proposed to protect prompts' privacy, but they may incur utility loss compared to unprotected LLMs prompting. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate the balance between the risk of privacy leakage and loss of utility when conducting effective protection mechanisms. The current study develops a framework for inferring privacy-protected Large Language Models (LLMs) and lays down a solid theoretical basis for examining the interplay between privacy preservation and utility. The core insight is encapsulated within a theorem that is called as the NFL (abbreviation of the word No-Free-Lunch) Theorem.

Enhancing Security and Privacy in Federated Learning using Update Digests and Voting-Based Defense

Federated Learning (FL) is a promising privacy-preserving machine learning paradigm that allows data owners to collaboratively train models while keeping their data localized. Despite its potential, FL faces challenges related to the trustworthiness of both clients and servers, especially in the presence of curious or malicious adversaries. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework named \underline{\textbf{F}}ederated \underline{\textbf{L}}earning with \underline{\textbf{U}}pdate \underline{\textbf{D}}igest (FLUD), which addresses the critical issues of privacy preservation and resistance to Byzantine attacks within distributed learning environments. FLUD utilizes an innovative approach, the $\mathsf{LinfSample}$ method, allowing clients to compute the $l_{\infty}$ norm across sliding windows of updates as an update digest. This digest enables the server to calculate a shared distance matrix, significantly reducing the overhead associated with Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC) by three orders of magnitude while effectively distinguishing between benign and malicious updates. Additionally, FLUD integrates a privacy-preserving, voting-based defense mechanism that employs optimized SMPC protocols to minimize communication rounds. Our comprehensive experiments demonstrate FLUD's effectiveness in countering Byzantine adversaries while incurring low communication and runtime overhead. FLUD offers a scalable framework for secure and reliable FL in distributed environments, facilitating its application in scenarios requiring robust data management and security.

Unlearning during Learning: An Efficient Federated Machine Unlearning Method

In recent years, Federated Learning (FL) has garnered significant attention as a distributed machine learning paradigm. To facilitate the implementation of the right to be forgotten, the concept of federated machine unlearning (FMU) has also emerged. However, current FMU approaches often involve additional time-consuming steps and may not offer comprehensive unlearning capabilities, which renders them less practical in real FL scenarios. In this paper, we introduce FedAU, an innovative and efficient FMU framework aimed at overcoming these limitations. Specifically, FedAU incorporates a lightweight auxiliary unlearning module into the learning process and employs a straightforward linear operation to facilitate unlearning. This approach eliminates the requirement for extra time-consuming steps, rendering it well-suited for FL. Furthermore, FedAU exhibits remarkable versatility. It not only enables multiple clients to carry out unlearning tasks concurrently but also supports unlearning at various levels of granularity, including individual data samples, specific classes, and even at the client level. We conducted extensive experiments on MNIST, CIFAR10, and CIFAR100 datasets to evaluate the performance of FedAU. The results demonstrate that FedAU effectively achieves the desired unlearning effect while maintaining model accuracy.

Federated Domain-Specific Knowledge Transfer on Large Language Models Using Synthetic Data

As large language models (LLMs) demonstrate unparalleled performance and generalization ability, LLMs are widely used and integrated into various applications. When it comes to sensitive domains, as commonly described in federated learning scenarios, directly using external LLMs on private data is strictly prohibited by stringent data security and privacy regulations. For local clients, the utilization of LLMs to improve the domain-specific small language models (SLMs), characterized by limited computational resources and domain-specific data, has attracted considerable research attention. By observing that LLMs can empower domain-specific SLMs, existing methods predominantly concentrate on leveraging the public data or LLMs to generate more data to transfer knowledge from LLMs to SLMs. However, due to the discrepancies between LLMs' generated data and clients' domain-specific data, these methods cannot yield substantial improvements in the domain-specific tasks. In this paper, we introduce a Federated Domain-specific Knowledge Transfer (FDKT) framework, which enables domain-specific knowledge transfer from LLMs to SLMs while preserving clients' data privacy. The core insight is to leverage LLMs to augment data based on domain-specific few-shot demonstrations, which are synthesized from private domain data using differential privacy. Such synthetic samples share similar data distribution with clients' private data and allow the server LLM to generate particular knowledge to improve clients' SLMs. The extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed FDKT framework consistently and greatly improves SLMs' task performance by around 5\% with a privacy budget of less than 10, compared to local training on private data.