NOTSOFAR-1 Challenge: New Datasets, Baseline, and Tasks for Distant Meeting Transcription

We introduce the first Natural Office Talkers in Settings of Far-field Audio Recordings (``NOTSOFAR-1'') Challenge alongside datasets and baseline system. The challenge focuses on distant speaker diarization and automatic speech recognition (DASR) in far-field meeting scenarios, with single-channel and known-geometry multi-channel tracks, and serves as a launch platform for two new datasets: First, a benchmarking dataset of 315 meetings, averaging 6 minutes each, capturing a broad spectrum of real-world acoustic conditions and conversational dynamics. It is recorded across 30 conference rooms, featuring 4-8 attendees and a total of 35 unique speakers. Second, a 1000-hour simulated training dataset, synthesized with enhanced authenticity for real-world generalization, incorporating 15,000 real acoustic transfer functions. The tasks focus on single-device DASR, where multi-channel devices always share the same known geometry. This is aligned with common setups in actual conference rooms, and avoids technical complexities associated with multi-device tasks. It also allows for the development of geometry-specific solutions. The NOTSOFAR-1 Challenge aims to advance research in the field of distant conversational speech recognition, providing key resources to unlock the potential of data-driven methods, which we believe are currently constrained by the absence of comprehensive high-quality training and benchmarking datasets.

Model-Free Sequential Testing for Conditional Independence via Testing by Betting

This paper develops a model-free sequential test for conditional independence. The proposed test allows researchers to analyze an incoming i.i.d. data stream with any arbitrary dependency structure, and safely conclude whether a feature is conditionally associated with the response under study. We allow the processing of data points online as soon as they arrive and stop data acquisition once significant results are detected while rigorously controlling the type-I error rate. Our test can work with any sophisticated machine learning algorithm to enhance data efficiency to the extent possible. The developed method is inspired by two statistical frameworks. The first is the model-X conditional randomization test, a test for conditional independence that is valid in offline settings where the sample size is fixed in advance. The second is testing by betting, a "game-theoretic" approach for sequential hypothesis testing. We conduct synthetic experiments to demonstrate the advantage of our test over out-of-the-box sequential tests that account for the multiplicity of tests in the time horizon, and demonstrate the practicality of our proposal by applying it to real-world tasks.

Learning to Increase the Power of Conditional Randomization Tests

The model-X conditional randomization test is a generic framework for conditional independence testing, unlocking new possibilities to discover features that are conditionally associated with a response of interest while controlling type-I error rates. An appealing advantage of this test is that it can work with any machine learning model to design powerful test statistics. In turn, the common practice in the model-X literature is to form a test statistic using machine learning models, trained to maximize predictive accuracy with the hope to attain a test with good power. However, the ideal goal here is to drive the model (during training) to maximize the power of the test, not merely the predictive accuracy. In this paper, we bridge this gap by introducing, for the first time, novel model-fitting schemes that are designed to explicitly improve the power of model-X tests. This is done by introducing a new cost function that aims at maximizing the test statistic used to measure violations of conditional independence. Using synthetic and real data sets, we demonstrate that the combination of our proposed loss function with various base predictive models (lasso, elastic net, and deep neural networks) consistently increases the number of correct discoveries obtained, while maintaining type-I error rates under control.