VisDrone-CC2020: The Vision Meets Drone Crowd Counting Challenge Results

Crowd counting on the drone platform is an interesting topic in computer vision, which brings new challenges such as small object inference, background clutter and wide viewpoint. However, there are few algorithms focusing on crowd counting on the drone-captured data due to the lack of comprehensive datasets. To this end, we collect a large-scale dataset and organize the Vision Meets Drone Crowd Counting Challenge (VisDrone-CC2020) in conjunction with the 16th European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2020) to promote the developments in the related fields. The collected dataset is formed by $3,360$ images, including $2,460$ images for training, and $900$ images for testing. Specifically, we manually annotate persons with points in each video frame. There are $14$ algorithms from $15$ institutes submitted to the VisDrone-CC2020 Challenge. We provide a detailed analysis of the evaluation results and conclude the challenge. More information can be found at the website: \url{http://www.aiskyeye.com/}.

Stylized Neural Painting

This paper proposes an image-to-painting translation method that generates vivid and realistic painting artworks with controllable styles. Different from previous image-to-image translation methods that formulate the translation as pixel-wise prediction, we deal with such an artistic creation process in a vectorized environment and produce a sequence of physically meaningful stroke parameters that can be further used for rendering. Since a typical vector render is not differentiable, we design a novel neural renderer which imitates the behavior of the vector renderer and then frame the stroke prediction as a parameter searching process that maximizes the similarity between the input and the rendering output. We explored the zero-gradient problem on parameter searching and propose to solve this problem from an optimal transportation perspective. We also show that previous neural renderers have a parameter coupling problem and we re-design the rendering network with a rasterization network and a shading network that better handles the disentanglement of shape and color. Experiments show that the paintings generated by our method have a high degree of fidelity in both global appearance and local textures. Our method can be also jointly optimized with neural style transfer that further transfers visual style from other images. Our code and animated results are available at \url{https://jiupinjia.github.io/neuralpainter/}.

Single-Timescale Stochastic Nonconvex-Concave Optimization for Smooth Nonlinear TD Learning

Temporal-Difference (TD) learning with nonlinear smooth function approximation for policy evaluation has achieved great success in modern reinforcement learning. It is shown that such a problem can be reformulated as a stochastic nonconvex-strongly-concave optimization problem, which is challenging as naive stochastic gradient descent-ascent algorithm suffers from slow convergence. Existing approaches for this problem are based on two-timescale or double-loop stochastic gradient algorithms, which may also require sampling large-batch data. However, in practice, a single-timescale single-loop stochastic algorithm is preferred due to its simplicity and also because its step-size is easier to tune. In this paper, we propose two single-timescale single-loop algorithms which require only one data point each step. Our first algorithm implements momentum updates on both primal and dual variables achieving an $O(\varepsilon^{-4})$ sample complexity, which shows the important role of momentum in obtaining a single-timescale algorithm. Our second algorithm improves upon the first one by applying variance reduction on top of momentum, which matches the best known $O(\varepsilon^{-3})$ sample complexity in existing works. Furthermore, our variance-reduction algorithm does not require a large-batch checkpoint. Moreover, our theoretical results for both algorithms are expressed in a tighter form of simultaneous primal and dual side convergence.

Beyond $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{T})$ Regret for Constrained Online Optimization: Gradual Variations and Mirror Prox

We study constrained online convex optimization, where the constraints consist of a relatively simple constraint set (e.g. a Euclidean ball) and multiple functional constraints. Projections onto such decision sets are usually computationally challenging. So instead of enforcing all constraints over each slot, we allow decisions to violate these functional constraints but aim at achieving a low regret and a low cumulative constraint violation over a horizon of $T$ time slot. The best known bound for solving this problem is $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{T})$ regret and $\mathcal{O}(1)$ constraint violation, whose algorithms and analysis are restricted to Euclidean spaces. In this paper, we propose a new online primal-dual mirror prox algorithm whose regret is measured via a total gradient variation $V_*(T)$ over a sequence of $T$ loss functions. Specifically, we show that the proposed algorithm can achieve an $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{V_*(T)})$ regret and $\mathcal{O}(1)$ constraint violation simultaneously. Such a bound holds in general non-Euclidean spaces, is never worse than the previously known $\big( \mathcal{O}(\sqrt{T}), \mathcal{O}(1) \big)$ result, and can be much better on regret when the variation is small. Furthermore, our algorithm is computationally efficient in that only two mirror descent steps are required during each slot instead of solving a general Lagrangian minimization problem. Along the way, our bounds also improve upon those of previous attempts using mirror-prox-type algorithms solving this problem, which yield a relatively worse $\mathcal{O}(T^{2/3})$ regret and $\mathcal{O}(T^{2/3})$ constraint violation.

Energy-Aware DNN Graph Optimization

Unlike existing work in deep neural network (DNN) graphs optimization for inference performance, we explore DNN graph optimization for energy awareness and savings for power- and resource-constrained machine learning devices. We present a method that allows users to optimize energy consumption or balance between energy and inference performance for DNN graphs. This method efficiently searches through the space of equivalent graphs, and identifies a graph and the corresponding algorithms that incur the least cost in execution. We implement the method and evaluate it with multiple DNN models on a GPU-based machine. Results show that our method achieves significant energy savings, i.e., 24% with negligible performance impact.

Upper Confidence Primal-Dual Optimization: Stochastically Constrained Markov Decision Processes with Adversarial Losses and Unknown Transitions

We consider online learning for episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) with stochastic long-term budget constraints, which plays a central role in ensuring the safety of reinforcement learning. Here the loss function can vary arbitrarily across the episodes, whereas both the loss received and the budget consumption are revealed at the end of each episode. Previous works solve this problem under the restrictive assumption that the transition model of the MDP is known a priori and establish regret bounds that depend polynomially on the cardinalities of the state space $\mathcal{S}$ and the action space $\mathcal{A}$. In this work, we propose a new \emph{upper confidence primal-dual} algorithm, which only requires the trajectories sampled from the transition model. In particular, we prove that the proposed algorithm achieves $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(L|\mathcal{S}|\sqrt{|\mathcal{A}|T})$ upper bounds of both the regret and the constraint violation, where $L$ is the length of each episode. Our analysis incorporates a new high-probability drift analysis of Lagrange multiplier processes into the celebrated regret analysis of upper confidence reinforcement learning, which demonstrates the power of "optimism in the face of uncertainty" in constrained online learning.

Central Server Free Federated Learning over Single-sided Trust Social Networks

Federated learning has become increasingly important for modern machine learning, especially for data privacy-sensitive scenarios. Existing federated learning mostly adopts the central server-based architecture or centralized architecture. However, in many social network scenarios, centralized federated learning is not applicable (e.g., a central agent or server connecting all users may not exist, or the communication cost to the central server is not affordable). In this paper, we consider a generic setting: 1) the central server may not exist, and 2) the social network is unidirectional or of single-sided trust (i.e., user A trusts user B but user B may not trust user A). We propose a central server free federated learning algorithm, named Online Push-Sum (OPS) method, to handle this challenging but generic scenario. A rigorous regret analysis is also provided, which shows very interesting results on how users can benefit from communication with trusted users in the federated learning scenario. This work builds upon the fundamental algorithm framework and theoretical guarantees for federated learning in the generic social network scenario.

PINE: Universal Deep Embedding for Graph Nodes via Partial Permutation Invariant Set Functions

Graph node embedding aims at learning a vector representation for all nodes given a graph. It is a central problem in many machine learning tasks (e.g., node classification, recommendation, community detection). The key problem in graph node embedding lies in how to define the dependence to neighbors. Existing approaches specify (either explicitly or implicitly) certain dependencies on neighbors, which may lead to loss of subtle but important structural information within the graph and other dependencies among neighbors. This intrigues us to ask the question: can we design a model to give the maximal flexibility of dependencies to each node's neighborhood. In this paper, we propose a novel graph node embedding (named PINE) via a novel notion of partial permutation invariant set function, to capture any possible dependence. Our method 1) can learn an arbitrary form of the representation function from the neighborhood, withour losing any potential dependence structures, and 2) is applicable to both homogeneous and heterogeneous graph embedding, the latter of which is challenged by the diversity of node types. Furthermore, we provide theoretical guarantee for the representation capability of our method for general homogeneous and heterogeneous graphs. Empirical evaluation results on benchmark data sets show that our proposed PINE method outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches on producing node vectors for various learning tasks of both homogeneous and heterogeneous graphs.

Robust One-Bit Recovery via ReLU Generative Networks: Improved Statistical Rates and Global Landscape Analysis

We study the robust one-bit compressed sensing problem whose goal is to design an algorithm that faithfully recovers any sparse target vector $\theta_0\in\mathbb{R}^d$ uniformly $m$ quantized noisy measurements. Under the assumption that the measurements are sub-Gaussian random vectors, to recover any $k$-sparse $\theta_0$ ($k\ll d$) uniformly up to an error $\varepsilon$ with high probability, the best known computationally tractable algorithm requires $m\geq\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(k\log d/\varepsilon^4)$ measurements. In this paper, we consider a new framework for the one-bit sensing problem where the sparsity is implicitly enforced via mapping a low dimensional representation $x_0 \in \mathbb{R}^k$ through a known $n$-layer ReLU generative network $G:\mathbb{R}^k\rightarrow\mathbb{R}^d$. Such a framework poses low-dimensional priors on $\theta_0$ without a known basis. We propose to recover the target $G(x_0)$ via an unconstrained empirical risk minimization (ERM) problem under a much weaker sub-exponential measurement assumption. For such a problem, we establish a joint statistical and computational analysis. In particular, we prove that the ERM estimator in this new framework achieves an improved statistical rate of $m=\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(kn \log d /\varepsilon^2)$ recovering any $G(x_0)$ uniformly up to an error $\varepsilon$. Moreover, from the lens of computation, despite non-convexity, we prove that the objective of our ERM problem has no spurious stationary point, that is, any stationary point are equally good for recovering the true target up to scaling with a certain accuracy. Furthermore, our analysis also shed lights on the possibility of inverting a deep generative model under partial and quantized measurements, complementing the recent success of using deep generative models for inverse problems.

$\texttt{DeepSqueeze}$: Decentralization Meets Error-Compensated Compression

Communication is a key bottleneck in distributed training. Recently, an \emph{error-compensated} compression technology was particularly designed for the \emph{centralized} learning and receives huge successes, by showing significant advantages over state-of-the-art compression based methods in saving the communication cost. Since the \emph{decentralized} training has been witnessed to be superior to the traditional \emph{centralized} training in the communication restricted scenario, therefore a natural question to ask is "how to apply the error-compensated technology to the decentralized learning to further reduce the communication cost." However, a trivial extension of compression based centralized training algorithms does not exist for the decentralized scenario. key difference between centralized and decentralized training makes this extension extremely non-trivial. In this paper, we propose an elegant algorithmic design to employ error-compensated stochastic gradient descent for the decentralized scenario, named $\texttt{DeepSqueeze}$. Both the theoretical analysis and the empirical study are provided to show the proposed $\texttt{DeepSqueeze}$ algorithm outperforms the existing compression based decentralized learning algorithms. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to apply the error-compensated compression to the decentralized learning.