Data Scarcity in Recommendation Systems: A Survey

The prevalence of online content has led to the widespread adoption of recommendation systems (RSs), which serve diverse purposes such as news, advertisements, and e-commerce recommendations. Despite their significance, data scarcity issues have significantly impaired the effectiveness of existing RS models and hindered their progress. To address this challenge, the concept of knowledge transfer, particularly from external sources like pre-trained language models, emerges as a potential solution to alleviate data scarcity and enhance RS development. However, the practice of knowledge transfer in RSs is intricate. Transferring knowledge between domains introduces data disparities, and the application of knowledge transfer in complex RS scenarios can yield negative consequences if not carefully designed. Therefore, this article contributes to this discourse by addressing the implications of data scarcity on RSs and introducing various strategies, such as data augmentation, self-supervised learning, transfer learning, broad learning, and knowledge graph utilization, to mitigate this challenge. Furthermore, it delves into the challenges and future direction within the RS domain, offering insights that are poised to facilitate the development and implementation of robust RSs, particularly when confronted with data scarcity. We aim to provide valuable guidance and inspiration for researchers and practitioners, ultimately driving advancements in the field of RS.

Large Language Models in Law: A Survey

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly impacted the traditional judicial industry. Moreover, recently, with the development of AI-generated content (AIGC), AI and law have found applications in various domains, including image recognition, automatic text generation, and interactive chat. With the rapid emergence and growing popularity of large models, it is evident that AI will drive transformation in the traditional judicial industry. However, the application of legal large language models (LLMs) is still in its nascent stage. Several challenges need to be addressed. In this paper, we aim to provide a comprehensive survey of legal LLMs. We not only conduct an extensive survey of LLMs, but also expose their applications in the judicial system. We first provide an overview of AI technologies in the legal field and showcase the recent research in LLMs. Then, we discuss the practical implementation presented by legal LLMs, such as providing legal advice to users and assisting judges during trials. In addition, we explore the limitations of legal LLMs, including data, algorithms, and judicial practice. Finally, we summarize practical recommendations and propose future development directions to address these challenges.

Multimodal Large Language Models: A Survey

The exploration of multimodal language models integrates multiple data types, such as images, text, language, audio, and other heterogeneity. While the latest large language models excel in text-based tasks, they often struggle to understand and process other data types. Multimodal models address this limitation by combining various modalities, enabling a more comprehensive understanding of diverse data. This paper begins by defining the concept of multimodal and examining the historical development of multimodal algorithms. Furthermore, we introduce a range of multimodal products, focusing on the efforts of major technology companies. A practical guide is provided, offering insights into the technical aspects of multimodal models. Moreover, we present a compilation of the latest algorithms and commonly used datasets, providing researchers with valuable resources for experimentation and evaluation. Lastly, we explore the applications of multimodal models and discuss the challenges associated with their development. By addressing these aspects, this paper aims to facilitate a deeper understanding of multimodal models and their potential in various domains.

Large Language Models in Education: Vision and Opportunities

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, large language models (LLMs) have become a hot research topic. Education plays an important role in human social development and progress. Traditional education faces challenges such as individual student differences, insufficient allocation of teaching resources, and assessment of teaching effectiveness. Therefore, the applications of LLMs in the field of digital/smart education have broad prospects. The research on educational large models (EduLLMs) is constantly evolving, providing new methods and approaches to achieve personalized learning, intelligent tutoring, and educational assessment goals, thereby improving the quality of education and the learning experience. This article aims to investigate and summarize the application of LLMs in smart education. It first introduces the research background and motivation of LLMs and explains the essence of LLMs. It then discusses the relationship between digital education and EduLLMs and summarizes the current research status of educational large models. The main contributions are the systematic summary and vision of the research background, motivation, and application of large models for education (LLM4Edu). By reviewing existing research, this article provides guidance and insights for educators, researchers, and policy-makers to gain a deep understanding of the potential and challenges of LLM4Edu. It further provides guidance for further advancing the development and application of LLM4Edu, while still facing technical, ethical, and practical challenges requiring further research and exploration.

Large Language Models for Robotics: A Survey

The human ability to learn, generalize, and control complex manipulation tasks through multi-modality feedback suggests a unique capability, which we refer to as dexterity intelligence. Understanding and assessing this intelligence is a complex task. Amidst the swift progress and extensive proliferation of large language models (LLMs), their applications in the field of robotics have garnered increasing attention. LLMs possess the ability to process and generate natural language, facilitating efficient interaction and collaboration with robots. Researchers and engineers in the field of robotics have recognized the immense potential of LLMs in enhancing robot intelligence, human-robot interaction, and autonomy. Therefore, this comprehensive review aims to summarize the applications of LLMs in robotics, delving into their impact and contributions to key areas such as robot control, perception, decision-making, and path planning. We first provide an overview of the background and development of LLMs for robotics, followed by a description of the benefits of LLMs for robotics and recent advancements in robotics models based on LLMs. We then delve into the various techniques used in the model, including those employed in perception, decision-making, control, and interaction. Finally, we explore the applications of LLMs in robotics and some potential challenges they may face in the near future. Embodied intelligence is the future of intelligent science, and LLMs-based robotics is one of the promising but challenging paths to achieve this.

Model-as-a-Service (MaaS): A Survey

Due to the increased number of parameters and data in the pre-trained model exceeding a certain level, a foundation model (e.g., a large language model) can significantly improve downstream task performance and emerge with some novel special abilities (e.g., deep learning, complex reasoning, and human alignment) that were not present before. Foundation models are a form of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), and Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) has emerged as a groundbreaking paradigm that revolutionizes the deployment and utilization of GenAI models. MaaS represents a paradigm shift in how we use AI technologies and provides a scalable and accessible solution for developers and users to leverage pre-trained AI models without the need for extensive infrastructure or expertise in model training. In this paper, the introduction aims to provide a comprehensive overview of MaaS, its significance, and its implications for various industries. We provide a brief review of the development history of "X-as-a-Service" based on cloud computing and present the key technologies involved in MaaS. The development of GenAI models will become more democratized and flourish. We also review recent application studies of MaaS. Finally, we highlight several challenges and future issues in this promising area. MaaS is a new deployment and service paradigm for different AI-based models. We hope this review will inspire future research in the field of MaaS.

Discovering Utility-driven Interval Rules

For artificial intelligence, high-utility sequential rule mining (HUSRM) is a knowledge discovery method that can reveal the associations between events in the sequences. Recently, abundant methods have been proposed to discover high-utility sequence rules. However, the existing methods are all related to point-based sequences. Interval events that persist for some time are common. Traditional interval-event sequence knowledge discovery tasks mainly focus on pattern discovery, but patterns cannot reveal the correlation between interval events well. Moreover, the existing HUSRM algorithms cannot be directly applied to interval-event sequences since the relation in interval-event sequences is much more intricate than those in point-based sequences. In this work, we propose a utility-driven interval rule mining (UIRMiner) algorithm that can extract all utility-driven interval rules (UIRs) from the interval-event sequence database to solve the problem. In UIRMiner, we first introduce a numeric encoding relation representation, which can save much time on relation computation and storage on relation representation. Furthermore, to shrink the search space, we also propose a complement pruning strategy, which incorporates the utility upper bound with the relation. Finally, plentiful experiments implemented on both real-world and synthetic datasets verify that UIRMiner is an effective and efficient algorithm.

AI-Generated Content (AIGC): A Survey

To address the challenges of digital intelligence in the digital economy, artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC) has emerged. AIGC uses artificial intelligence to assist or replace manual content generation by generating content based on user-inputted keywords or requirements. The development of large model algorithms has significantly strengthened the capabilities of AIGC, which makes AIGC products a promising generative tool and adds convenience to our lives. As an upstream technology, AIGC has unlimited potential to support different downstream applications. It is important to analyze AIGC's current capabilities and shortcomings to understand how it can be best utilized in future applications. Therefore, this paper provides an extensive overview of AIGC, covering its definition, essential conditions, cutting-edge capabilities, and advanced features. Moreover, it discusses the benefits of large-scale pre-trained models and the industrial chain of AIGC. Furthermore, the article explores the distinctions between auxiliary generation and automatic generation within AIGC, providing examples of text generation. The paper also examines the potential integration of AIGC with the Metaverse. Lastly, the article highlights existing issues and suggests some future directions for application.

Federated Learning for Metaverse: A Survey

The metaverse, which is at the stage of innovation and exploration, faces the dilemma of data collection and the problem of private data leakage in the process of development. This can seriously hinder the widespread deployment of the metaverse. Fortunately, federated learning (FL) is a solution to the above problems. FL is a distributed machine learning paradigm with privacy-preserving features designed for a large number of edge devices. Federated learning for metaverse (FL4M) will be a powerful tool. Because FL allows edge devices to participate in training tasks locally using their own data, computational power, and model-building capabilities. Applying FL to the metaverse not only protects the data privacy of participants but also reduces the need for high computing power and high memory on servers. Until now, there have been many studies about FL and the metaverse, respectively. In this paper, we review some of the early advances of FL4M, which will be a research direction with unlimited development potential. We first introduce the concepts of metaverse and FL, respectively. Besides, we discuss the convergence of key metaverse technologies and FL in detail, such as big data, communication technology, the Internet of Things, edge computing, blockchain, and extended reality. Finally, we discuss some key challenges and promising directions of FL4M in detail. In summary, we hope that our up-to-date brief survey can help people better understand FL4M and build a fair, open, and secure metaverse.

HUSP-SP: Faster Utility Mining on Sequence Data

High-utility sequential pattern mining (HUSPM) has emerged as an important topic due to its wide application and considerable popularity. However, due to the combinatorial explosion of the search space when the HUSPM problem encounters a low utility threshold or large-scale data, it may be time-consuming and memory-costly to address the HUSPM problem. Several algorithms have been proposed for addressing this problem, but they still cost a lot in terms of running time and memory usage. In this paper, to further solve this problem efficiently, we design a compact structure called sequence projection (seqPro) and propose an efficient algorithm, namely discovering high-utility sequential patterns with the seqPro structure (HUSP-SP). HUSP-SP utilizes the compact seq-array to store the necessary information in a sequence database. The seqPro structure is designed to efficiently calculate candidate patterns' utilities and upper bound values. Furthermore, a new upper bound on utility, namely tighter reduced sequence utility (TRSU) and two pruning strategies in search space, are utilized to improve the mining performance of HUSP-SP. Experimental results on both synthetic and real-life datasets show that HUSP-SP can significantly outperform the state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of running time, memory usage, search space pruning efficiency, and scalability.