AuroraLong: Bringing RNNs Back to Efficient Open-Ended Video Understanding

The challenge of long video understanding lies in its high computational complexity and prohibitive memory cost, since the memory and computation required by transformer-based LLMs scale quadratically with input sequence length. We propose AuroraLong to address this challenge by replacing the LLM component in MLLMs with a linear RNN language model that handles input sequence of arbitrary length with constant-size hidden states. To further increase throughput and efficiency, we combine visual token merge with linear RNN models by reordering the visual tokens by their sizes in ascending order. Despite having only 2B parameters and being trained exclusively on public data, AuroraLong achieves performance comparable to Transformer-based models of similar size trained on private datasets across multiple video benchmarks. This demonstrates the potential of efficient, linear RNNs to democratize long video understanding by lowering its computational entry barrier. To our best knowledge, we are the first to use a linear RNN based LLM backbone in a LLaVA-like model for open-ended video understanding.

Video-MMLU: A Massive Multi-Discipline Lecture Understanding Benchmark

Recent advancements in language multimodal models (LMMs) for video have demonstrated their potential for understanding video content, yet the task of comprehending multi-discipline lectures remains largely unexplored. We introduce Video-MMLU, a massive benchmark designed to evaluate the capabilities of LMMs in understanding Multi-Discipline Lectures. We evaluate over 90 open-source and proprietary models, ranging from 0.5B to 40B parameters. Our results highlight the limitations of current models in addressing the cognitive challenges presented by these lectures, especially in tasks requiring both perception and reasoning. Additionally, we explore how the number of visual tokens and the large language models influence performance, offering insights into the interplay between multimodal perception and reasoning in lecture comprehension.

Generative AI Application for Building Industry

This paper investigates the transformative potential of generative AI technologies, particularly large language models (LLMs), within the building industry. By leveraging these advanced AI tools, the study explores their application across key areas such as energy code compliance, building design optimization, and workforce training. The research highlights how LLMs can automate labor-intensive processes, significantly improving efficiency, accuracy, and safety in building practices. The paper also addresses the challenges associated with interpreting complex visual and textual data in architectural plans and regulatory codes, proposing innovative solutions to enhance AI-driven compliance checking and design processes. Additionally, the study considers the broader implications of AI integration, including the development of AI-powered tools for comprehensive code compliance across various regulatory domains and the potential for AI to revolutionize workforce training through realistic simulations. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the current capabilities of generative AI in the building industry while outlining future directions for research and development, aiming to pave the way for smarter, more sustainable, and responsive construction practices.