When Search Engine Services meet Large Language Models: Visions and Challenges

Combining Large Language Models (LLMs) with search engine services marks a significant shift in the field of services computing, opening up new possibilities to enhance how we search for and retrieve information, understand content, and interact with internet services. This paper conducts an in-depth examination of how integrating LLMs with search engines can mutually benefit both technologies. We focus on two main areas: using search engines to improve LLMs (Search4LLM) and enhancing search engine functions using LLMs (LLM4Search). For Search4LLM, we investigate how search engines can provide diverse high-quality datasets for pre-training of LLMs, how they can use the most relevant documents to help LLMs learn to answer queries more accurately, how training LLMs with Learning-To-Rank (LTR) tasks can enhance their ability to respond with greater precision, and how incorporating recent search results can make LLM-generated content more accurate and current. In terms of LLM4Search, we examine how LLMs can be used to summarize content for better indexing by search engines, improve query outcomes through optimization, enhance the ranking of search results by analyzing document relevance, and help in annotating data for learning-to-rank tasks in various learning contexts. However, this promising integration comes with its challenges, which include addressing potential biases and ethical issues in training models, managing the computational and other costs of incorporating LLMs into search services, and continuously updating LLM training with the ever-changing web content. We discuss these challenges and chart out required research directions to address them. We also discuss broader implications for service computing, such as scalability, privacy concerns, and the need to adapt search engine architectures for these advanced models.

Interpreting Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithms via Sokoban Level Generation

This paper presents an interactive platform to interpret multi-objective evolutionary algorithms. Sokoban level generation is selected as a showcase for its widespread use in procedural content generation. By balancing the emptiness and spatial diversity of Sokoban levels, we illustrate the improved two-archive algorithm, Two_Arch2, a well-known multi-objective evolutionary algorithm. Our web-based platform integrates Two_Arch2 into an interface that visually and interactively demonstrates the evolutionary process in real-time. Designed to bridge theoretical optimisation strategies with practical game generation applications, the interface is also accessible to both researchers and beginners to multi-objective evolutionary algorithms or procedural content generation on a website. Through dynamic visualisations and interactive gameplay demonstrations, this web-based platform also has potential as an educational tool.

AutoCoder: Enhancing Code Large Language Model with \textsc{AIEV-Instruct}

We introduce AutoCoder, the first Large Language Model to surpass GPT-4 Turbo (April 2024) and GPT-4o in pass@1 on the Human Eval benchmark test ($\mathbf{90.9\%}$ vs. $\mathbf{90.2\%}$). In addition, AutoCoder offers a more versatile code interpreter compared to GPT-4 Turbo and GPT-4o. It's code interpreter can install external packages instead of limiting to built-in packages. AutoCoder's training data is a multi-turn dialogue dataset created by a system combining agent interaction and external code execution verification, a method we term \textbf{\textsc{AIEV-Instruct}} (Instruction Tuning with Agent-Interaction and Execution-Verified). Compared to previous large-scale code dataset generation methods, \textsc{AIEV-Instruct} reduces dependence on proprietary large models and provides execution-validated code dataset. The code and the demo video is available in \url{https://github.com/bin123apple/AutoCoder}.

Enabling Roll-up and Drill-down Operations in News Exploration with Knowledge Graphs for Due Diligence and Risk Management

Efficient news exploration is crucial in real-world applications, particularly within the financial sector, where numerous control and risk assessment tasks rely on the analysis of public news reports. The current processes in this domain predominantly rely on manual efforts, often involving keywordbased searches and the compilation of extensive keyword lists. In this paper, we introduce NCEXPLORER, a framework designed with OLAP-like operations to enhance the news exploration experience. NCEXPLORER empowers users to use roll-up operations for a broader content overview and drill-down operations for detailed insights. These operations are achieved through integration with external knowledge graphs (KGs), encompassing both fact-based and ontology-based structures. This integration significantly augments exploration capabilities, offering a more comprehensive and efficient approach to unveiling the underlying structures and nuances embedded in news content. Extensive empirical studies through master-qualified evaluators on Amazon Mechanical Turk demonstrate NCEXPLORER's superiority over existing state-of-the-art news search methodologies across an array of topic domains, using real-world news datasets.

Convergence and Complexity Guarantee for Inexact First-order Riemannian Optimization Algorithms

We analyze inexact Riemannian gradient descent (RGD) where Riemannian gradients and retractions are inexactly (and cheaply) computed. Our focus is on understanding when inexact RGD converges and what is the complexity in the general nonconvex and constrained setting. We answer these questions in a general framework of tangential Block Majorization-Minimization (tBMM). We establish that tBMM converges to an $\epsilon$-stationary point within $O(\epsilon^{-2})$ iterations. Under a mild assumption, the results still hold when the subproblem is solved inexactly in each iteration provided the total optimality gap is bounded. Our general analysis applies to a wide range of classical algorithms with Riemannian constraints including inexact RGD and proximal gradient method on Stiefel manifolds. We numerically validate that tBMM shows improved performance over existing methods when applied to various problems, including nonnegative tensor decomposition with Riemannian constraints, regularized nonnegative matrix factorization, and low-rank matrix recovery problems.

Measuring Diversity of Game Scenarios

This survey comprehensively reviews the multi-dimensionality of game scenario diversity, spotlighting the innovative use of procedural content generation and other fields as cornerstones for enriching player experiences through diverse game scenarios. By traversing a wide array of disciplines, from affective modeling and multi-agent systems to psychological studies, our research underscores the importance of diverse game scenarios in gameplay and education. Through a taxonomy of diversity metrics and evaluation methods, we aim to bridge the current gaps in literature and practice, offering insights into effective strategies for measuring and integrating diversity in game scenarios. Our analysis highlights the necessity for a unified taxonomy to aid developers and researchers in crafting more engaging and varied game worlds. This survey not only charts a path for future research in diverse game scenarios but also serves as a handbook for industry practitioners seeking to leverage diversity as a key component of game design and development.

Rethinking Resource Management in Edge Learning: A Joint Pre-training and Fine-tuning Design Paradigm

In some applications, edge learning is experiencing a shift in focusing from conventional learning from scratch to new two-stage learning unifying pre-training and task-specific fine-tuning. This paper considers the problem of joint communication and computation resource management in a two-stage edge learning system. In this system, model pre-training is first conducted at an edge server via centralized learning on local pre-stored general data, and then task-specific fine-tuning is performed at edge devices based on the pre-trained model via federated edge learning. For the two-stage learning model, we first analyze the convergence behavior (in terms of the average squared gradient norm bound), which characterizes the impacts of various system parameters such as the number of learning rounds and batch sizes in the two stages on the convergence rate. Based on our analytical results, we then propose a joint communication and computation resource management design to minimize an average squared gradient norm bound, subject to constraints on the transmit power, overall system energy consumption, and training delay. The decision variables include the number of learning rounds, batch sizes, clock frequencies, and transmit power control for both pre-training and fine-tuning stages. Finally, numerical results are provided to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed design. It is shown that the proposed joint resource management over the pre-training and fine-tuning stages well balances the system performance trade-off among the training accuracy, delay, and energy consumption. The proposed design is also shown to effectively leverage the inherent trade-off between pre-training and fine-tuning, which arises from the differences in data distribution between pre-stored general data versus real-time task-specific data, thus efficiently optimizing overall system performance.

Towards Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): A Data Mining Perspective

Given the complexity and lack of transparency in deep neural networks (DNNs), extensive efforts have been made to make these systems more interpretable or explain their behaviors in accessible terms. Unlike most reviews, which focus on algorithmic and model-centric perspectives, this work takes a "data-centric" view, examining how data collection, processing, and analysis contribute to explainable AI (XAI). We categorize existing work into three categories subject to their purposes: interpretations of deep models, referring to feature attributions and reasoning processes that correlate data points with model outputs; influences of training data, examining the impact of training data nuances, such as data valuation and sample anomalies, on decision-making processes; and insights of domain knowledge, discovering latent patterns and fostering new knowledge from data and models to advance social values and scientific discovery. Specifically, we distill XAI methodologies into data mining operations on training and testing data across modalities, such as images, text, and tabular data, as well as on training logs, checkpoints, models and other DNN behavior descriptors. In this way, our study offers a comprehensive, data-centric examination of XAI from a lens of data mining methods and applications.

Convergence and complexity of block majorization-minimization for constrained block-Riemannian optimization

Block majorization-minimization (BMM) is a simple iterative algorithm for nonconvex optimization that sequentially minimizes a majorizing surrogate of the objective function in each block coordinate while the other block coordinates are held fixed. We consider a family of BMM algorithms for minimizing smooth nonconvex objectives, where each parameter block is constrained within a subset of a Riemannian manifold. We establish that this algorithm converges asymptotically to the set of stationary points, and attains an $\epsilon$-stationary point within $\widetilde{O}(\epsilon^{-2})$ iterations. In particular, the assumptions for our complexity results are completely Euclidean when the underlying manifold is a product of Euclidean or Stiefel manifolds, although our analysis makes explicit use of the Riemannian geometry. Our general analysis applies to a wide range of algorithms with Riemannian constraints: Riemannian MM, block projected gradient descent, optimistic likelihood estimation, geodesically constrained subspace tracking, robust PCA, and Riemannian CP-dictionary-learning. We experimentally validate that our algorithm converges faster than standard Euclidean algorithms applied to the Riemannian setting.

Transformers are uninterpretable with myopic methods: a case study with bounded Dyck grammars

Interpretability methods aim to understand the algorithm implemented by a trained model (e.g., a Transofmer) by examining various aspects of the model, such as the weight matrices or the attention patterns. In this work, through a combination of theoretical results and carefully controlled experiments on synthetic data, we take a critical view of methods that exclusively focus on individual parts of the model, rather than consider the network as a whole. We consider a simple synthetic setup of learning a (bounded) Dyck language. Theoretically, we show that the set of models that (exactly or approximately) solve this task satisfy a structural characterization derived from ideas in formal languages (the pumping lemma). We use this characterization to show that the set of optima is qualitatively rich; in particular, the attention pattern of a single layer can be ``nearly randomized'', while preserving the functionality of the network. We also show via extensive experiments that these constructions are not merely a theoretical artifact: even after severely constraining the architecture of the model, vastly different solutions can be reached via standard training. Thus, interpretability claims based on inspecting individual heads or weight matrices in the Transformer can be misleading.