Text-to-TrajVis: Enabling Trajectory Data Visualizations from Natural Language Questions

This paper introduces the Text-to-TrajVis task, which aims to transform natural language questions into trajectory data visualizations, facilitating the development of natural language interfaces for trajectory visualization systems. As this is a novel task, there is currently no relevant dataset available in the community. To address this gap, we first devised a new visualization language called Trajectory Visualization Language (TVL) to facilitate querying trajectory data and generating visualizations. Building on this foundation, we further proposed a dataset construction method that integrates Large Language Models (LLMs) with human efforts to create high-quality data. Specifically, we first generate TVLs using a comprehensive and systematic process, and then label each TVL with corresponding natural language questions using LLMs. This process results in the creation of the first large-scale Text-to-TrajVis dataset, named TrajVL, which contains 18,140 (question, TVL) pairs. Based on this dataset, we systematically evaluated the performance of multiple LLMs (GPT, Qwen, Llama, etc.) on this task. The experimental results demonstrate that this task is both feasible and highly challenging and merits further exploration within the research community.

Radar Code Design for the Joint Optimization of Detection Performance and Measurement Accuracy in Track Maintenance

This paper deals with the design of slow-time coded waveforms which jointly optimize the detection probability and the measurements accuracy for track maintenance in the presence of colored Gaussian interference. The output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and Cram\'er Rao bounds (CRBs) on time delay and Doppler shift are used as figures of merit to accomplish reliable detection as well as accurate measurements. The transmitted code is subject to radar power budget requirements and a similarity constraint. To tackle the resulting non-convex multi-objective optimization problem, a polynomial-time algorithm that integrates scalarization and tensor-based relaxation methods is developed. The corresponding relaxed multi-linear problems are solved by means of the maximum block improvement (MBI) framework, where the optimal solution at each iteration is obtained in closed form. Numeral results demonstrate the trade-off between the detection and the estimation performance, along with the acceptable Doppler robustness achieved by the proposed algorithm.

PPC-GPT: Federated Task-Specific Compression of Large Language Models via Pruning and Chain-of-Thought Distillation

Compressing Large Language Models (LLMs) into task-specific Small Language Models (SLMs) encounters two significant challenges: safeguarding domain-specific knowledge privacy and managing limited resources. To tackle these challenges, we propose PPC-GPT, a innovative privacy-preserving federated framework specifically designed for compressing LLMs into task-specific SLMs via pruning and Chain-of-Thought (COT) distillation. PPC-GPT works on a server-client federated architecture, where the client sends differentially private (DP) perturbed task-specific data to the server's LLM. The LLM then generates synthetic data along with their corresponding rationales. This synthetic data is subsequently used for both LLM pruning and retraining processes. Additionally, we harness COT knowledge distillation, leveraging the synthetic data to further improve the retraining of structurally-pruned SLMs. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of PPC-GPT across various text generation tasks. By compressing LLMs into task-specific SLMs, PPC-GPT not only achieves competitive performance but also prioritizes data privacy protection.

FedCoLLM: A Parameter-Efficient Federated Co-tuning Framework for Large and Small Language Models

By adapting Large Language Models (LLMs) to domain-specific tasks or enriching them with domain-specific knowledge, we can fully harness the capabilities of LLMs. Nonetheless, a gap persists in achieving simultaneous mutual enhancement between the server's LLM and the downstream clients' Small Language Models (SLMs). To address this, we propose FedCoLLM, a novel and parameter-efficient federated framework designed for co-tuning LLMs and SLMs. This approach is aimed at adaptively transferring server-side LLMs knowledge to clients' SLMs while simultaneously enriching the LLMs with domain insights from the clients. To accomplish this, FedCoLLM utilizes lightweight adapters in conjunction with SLMs, facilitating knowledge exchange between server and clients in a manner that respects data privacy while also minimizing computational and communication overhead. Our evaluation of FedCoLLM, utilizing various public LLMs and SLMs across a range of NLP text generation tasks, reveals that the performance of clients' SLMs experiences notable improvements with the assistance of the LLMs. Simultaneously, the LLMs enhanced via FedCoLLM achieves comparable performance to that obtained through direct fine-tuning on clients' data.

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.

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.

Grounding Foundation Models through Federated Transfer Learning: A General Framework

Foundation Models (FMs) such as GPT-4 encoded with vast knowledge and powerful emergent abilities have achieved remarkable success in various natural language processing and computer vision tasks. Grounding FMs by adapting them to domain-specific tasks or augmenting them with domain-specific knowledge enables us to exploit the full potential of FMs. However, grounding FMs faces several challenges, stemming primarily from constrained computing resources, data privacy, model heterogeneity, and model ownership. Federated Transfer Learning (FTL), the combination of federated learning and transfer learning, provides promising solutions to address these challenges. In recent years, the need for grounding FMs leveraging FTL, coined FTL-FM, has arisen strongly in both academia and industry. Motivated by the strong growth in FTL-FM research and the potential impact of FTL-FM on industrial applications, we propose an FTL-FM framework that formulates problems of grounding FMs in the federated learning setting, construct a detailed taxonomy based on the FTL-FM framework to categorize state-of-the-art FTL-FM works, and comprehensively overview FTL-FM works based on the proposed taxonomy. We also establish correspondences between FTL-FM and conventional phases of adapting FM so that FM practitioners can align their research works with FTL-FM. In addition, we overview advanced efficiency-improving and privacy-preserving techniques because efficiency and privacy are critical concerns in FTL-FM. Last, we discuss opportunities and future research directions of FTL-FM.

FATE-LLM: A Industrial Grade Federated Learning Framework for Large Language Models

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, LLaMA, GLM, and PaLM, have exhibited remarkable performances across various tasks in recent years. However, LLMs face two main challenges in real-world applications. One challenge is that training LLMs consumes vast computing resources, preventing LLMs from being adopted by small and medium-sized enterprises with limited computing resources. Another is that training LLM requires a large amount of high-quality data, which are often scattered among enterprises. To address these challenges, we propose FATE-LLM, an industrial-grade federated learning framework for large language models. FATE-LLM (1) facilitates federated learning for large language models (coined FedLLM); (2) promotes efficient training of FedLLM using parameter-efficient fine-tuning methods; (3) protects the intellectual property of LLMs; (4) preserves data privacy during training and inference through privacy-preserving mechanisms. We release the code of FATE-LLM at https://github.com/FederatedAI/FATE-LLM to facilitate the research of FedLLM and enable a broad range of industrial applications.

SecureBoost+ : A High Performance Gradient Boosting Tree Framework for Large Scale Vertical Federated Learning

Gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) is a widely used ensemble algorithm in the industry. Its vertical federated learning version, SecureBoost, is one of the most popular algorithms used in cross-silo privacy-preserving modeling. As the area of privacy computation thrives in recent years, demands for large-scale and high-performance federated learning have grown dramatically in real-world applications. In this paper, to fulfill these requirements, we propose SecureBoost+ that is both novel and improved from the prior work SecureBoost. SecureBoost+ integrates several ciphertext calculation optimizations and engineering optimizations. The experimental results demonstrate that Secureboost+ has significant performance improvements on large and high dimensional data sets compared to SecureBoost. It makes effective and efficient large-scale vertical federated learning possible.

A Quasi-Newton Method Based Vertical Federated Learning Framework for Logistic Regression

Data privacy and security becomes a major concern in building machine learning models from different data providers. Federated learning shows promise by leaving data at providers locally and exchanging encrypted information. This paper studies the vertical federated learning structure for logistic regression where the data sets at two parties have the same sample IDs but own disjoint subsets of features. Existing frameworks adopt the first-order stochastic gradient descent algorithm, which requires large number of communication rounds. To address the communication challenge, we propose a quasi-Newton method based vertical federated learning framework for logistic regression under the additively homomorphic encryption scheme. Our approach can considerably reduce the number of communication rounds with a little additional communication cost per round. Numerical results demonstrate the advantages of our approach over the first-order method.