Giving Thanks for the Pioneering Advances in Machine Learning

As we gather around the table this Thanksgiving, it’s the perfect time to reflect on and express gratitude for the remarkable strides made in machine learning (ML) over recent years. These technical innovations have advanced the field and paved the way for countless applications that enhance our daily lives. Let’s check out some of the most influential ML architectures and algorithms for which we are thankful as a community.


1. The Transformer Architecture

Vaswani et al., 2017

We are grateful for the Transformer architecture, which revolutionized sequence modeling by introducing a novel attention mechanism, eliminating the reliance on recurrent neural networks (RNNs) for handling sequential data.

Key Components:

  • Self-Attention Mechanism: Computes representations of the input sequence by relating different positions via attention weights.
    \text{Attention}(Q, K, V) = \text{softmax}\left( \frac{Q K^\top}{\sqrt{d_k}} \right) V
  • Multi-Head Attention: Allows the model to focus on different positions by projecting queries, keys, and values multiple times with different linear projections. \text{MultiHead}(Q, K, V) = \text{Concat}(\text{head}_1, ..., \text{head}_h) W^O where each head is computed as: \text{head}_i = \text{Attention}(Q W_i^Q, K W_i^K, V W_i^V)
  • Positional Encoding: Adds information about the position of tokens in the sequence since the model lacks recurrence. \text{PE}_{(pos, 2i)} = \sin\left( \frac{pos}{10000^{2i/d_{\text{model}}}} \right) \text{PE}_{(pos, 2i+1)} = \cos\left( \frac{pos}{10000^{2i/d_{\text{model}}}} \right)

Significance: Enabled parallelization in sequence processing, leading to significant speed-ups and improved performance in tasks like machine translation and language modeling.


2. Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)

Devlin et al., 2018

We are thankful for BERT, which introduced a method for pre-training deep bidirectional representations by jointly conditioning on both left and right contexts in all layers.

Key Concepts:

  • Masked Language Modeling (MLM): Randomly masks tokens in the input and predicts them using the surrounding context. Loss Function: \mathcal{L}_{\text{MLM}} = -\sum_{t \in \mathcal{M}} \log P_{\theta}(x_t | x_{\backslash \mathcal{M}}) where \mathcal{M} is the set of masked positions.
  • Next Sentence Prediction (NSP): Predicts whether a given pair of sentences follows sequentially in the original text.

Significance: Achieved state-of-the-art results on a wide range of NLP tasks via fine-tuning, demonstrating the power of large-scale pre-training.


3. Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT) Series

Radford et al., 2018-2020

We express gratitude for the GPT series, which leverages unsupervised pre-training on large corpora to generate human-like text.

Key Features:

  • Unidirectional Language Modeling: Predicts the next token x_t given previous tokens x_{<t}. Objective Function: \mathcal{L}_{\text{LM}} = -\sum_{t=1}^N \log P_{\theta}(x_t | x_{<t})
  • Decoder-Only Transformer Architecture: Utilizes masked self-attention to prevent the model from attending to future tokens.

Significance: Demonstrated the capability of large language models to perform few-shot learning, adapting to new tasks with minimal task-specific data.


4. Variational Autoencoders (VAEs)

Kingma and Welling, 2013

We appreciate VAEs for introducing a probabilistic approach to autoencoders, enabling generative modeling of complex data distributions.

Key Components:

  • Encoder Network: Learns an approximate posterior q_{\phi}(z|x).
  • Decoder Network: Reconstructs the input from latent variables z, modeling p_{\theta}(x|z).

Objective Function (Evidence Lower Bound – ELBO): \mathcal{L}(\theta, \phi; x) = -\text{KL}(q_{\phi}(z|x) \| p_{\theta}(z)) + \mathbb{E}_{q_{\phi}(z|x)}[\log p_{\theta}(x|z)] where p_{\theta}(z) is typically a standard normal prior \mathcal{N}(0, I).

Significance: Provided a framework for unsupervised learning of latent representations and generative modeling.


5. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)

Goodfellow et al., 2014

We are thankful for GANs, which consist of two neural networks—a generator G and a critic D—competing in a minimax game.

Objective Function: \min_G \max_D V(D, G) = \mathbb{E}_{x \sim p_{\text{data}}}[\log D(x)] + \mathbb{E}_{z \sim p_z}[\log(1 - D(G(z)))] where p_{\text{data}} is the data distribution and p_z is the prior over the latent space.

Significance: Enabled the generation of highly realistic synthetic data, impacting image synthesis, data augmentation, and more.


6. Deep Reinforcement Learning

Mnih et al., 2015; Silver et al., 2016

We give thanks for the combination of deep learning with reinforcement learning, leading to agents capable of performing complex tasks.

Key Algorithms:

  • Deep Q-Networks (DQN): Approximate the action-value function Q(s, a; \theta) using neural networks. Bellman Equation: Q(s, a) = r + \gamma \max_{a'} Q(s', a'; \theta^{-}) where \theta^{-} are the parameters of a target network.
  • Policy Gradient Methods: Optimize the policy \pi_{\theta}(a|s) directly. REINFORCE Algorithm Objective: \nabla_{\theta} J(\theta) = \mathbb{E}_{\pi_{\theta}} \left[ \nabla_{\theta} \log \pi_{\theta}(a|s) R \right] where R is the cumulative reward.

Significance: Achieved human-level performance in games like Atari and Go, advancing AI in decision-making tasks.


7. Normalization Techniques

We are grateful for normalization techniques that have improved training stability and performance of deep networks.

  • Batch Normalization (Ioffe and Szegedy, 2015) Formula: \hat{x}_i = \frac{x_i - \mu_{\mathcal{B}}}{\sqrt{\sigma_{\mathcal{B}}^2 + \epsilon}} where \mu_{\mathcal{B}} and \sigma_{\mathcal{B}}^2 are the batch mean and variance.
  • Layer Normalization (Ba et al., 2016) Formula: \hat{x}_i = \frac{x_i - \mu}{\sqrt{\sigma^2 + \epsilon}} where \mu and \sigma^2 are computed over the features of a single sample.

Significance: Mitigated internal covariate shift, enabling faster and more reliable training.


8. Attention Mechanisms in Neural Networks

Bahdanau et al., 2014; Luong et al., 2015

We appreciate attention mechanisms for allowing models to focus on specific parts of the input when generating each output element.

Key Concepts:

  • Alignment Scores: Compute the relevance between encoder hidden states h_{\text{enc}} and decoder state s_{\text{dec}}. Common Score Functions:
    • Dot-product: \text{score}(h, s) = h^\top s
    • Additive (Bahdanau attention): \text{score}(h, s) = v_a^\top \tanh(W_a [h; s])
  • Context Vector: c_t = \sum_{i=1}^T \alpha_{t,i} h_i where the attention weights \alpha_{t,i} are computed as: \alpha_{t,i} = \frac{\exp(\text{score}(h_i, s_{t-1}))}{\sum_{k=1}^T \exp(\text{score}(h_k, s_{t-1}))}

Significance: Enhanced performance in sequence-to-sequence tasks by allowing models to utilize information from all input positions.


9. Graph Neural Networks (GNNs)

Scarselli et al., 2009; Kipf and Welling, 2016

We are thankful for GNNs, which extend neural networks to graph-structured data, enabling the modeling of relational information.

Message Passing Framework:

  • Node Representation Update: h_v^{(k)} = \sigma \left( \sum_{u \in \mathcal{N}(v)} W h_u^{(k-1)} + W_0 h_v^{(k-1)} \right) where:
    • h_v^{(k)} is the representation of node v at layer k.
    • \mathcal{N}(v) is the set of neighbors of node v.
    • W and W_0 are learnable weight matrices.
    • \sigma is a nonlinear activation function.
  • Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs): H^{(k+1)} = \sigma \left( \tilde{D}^{-1/2} \tilde{A} \tilde{D}^{-1/2} H^{(k)} W^{(k)} \right) where:
    • \tilde{A} = A + I is the adjacency matrix with added self-loops.
    • \tilde{D} is the degree matrix of \tilde{A}.

Significance: Enabled advancements in social network analysis, molecular chemistry, and recommendation systems.


10. Self-Supervised Learning and Contrastive Learning

He et al., 2020; Chen et al., 2020

We are grateful for self-supervised learning techniques that leverage unlabeled data by creating surrogate tasks.

Contrastive Learning Objective:

  • InfoNCE Loss: \mathcal{L}_{i,j} = -\log \frac{\exp(\text{sim}(z_i, z_j)/\tau)}{\sum_{k=1}^{2N} \textbf{1}_{[k \neq i]} \exp(\text{sim}(z_i, z_k)/\tau)} where:
    • z_i and z_j are representations of two augmented views of the same sample.
    • \text{sim}(u, v) = \frac{u^\top v}{\|u\| \|v\|} is the cosine similarity.
    • \tau is a temperature parameter.
    • \textbf{1}_{[k \neq i]} is an indicator function equal to 1 when k \neq i.

Significance: Improved representation learning, leading to state-of-the-art results in computer vision tasks without requiring labeled data.


11. Differential Privacy in Machine Learning

Abadi et al., 2016

We give thanks for techniques that allow training models while preserving the privacy of individual data points.

Differential Privacy Guarantee:

  • Definition: A randomized algorithm \mathcal{A} provides (\epsilon, \delta)-differential privacy if for all datasets D and D' differing on one element, and all measurable subsets S: P[\mathcal{A}(D) \in S] \leq e^\epsilon P[\mathcal{A}(D') \in S] + \delta
  • Noise Addition: Applies calibrated noise to gradients during training to ensure privacy.

Significance: Enabled the deployment of machine learning models in privacy-sensitive applications.


12. Federated Learning

McMahan et al., 2017

We are thankful for federated learning, which allows training models across multiple decentralized devices while keeping data localized.

Federated Averaging Algorithm:

  1. Local Update: Each client k updates model parameters \theta using local data D_k: \theta_k^{t+1} = \theta^t - \eta \nabla_{\theta} \mathcal{L}(\theta^t; D_k)
  2. Global Aggregation: The server aggregates updates: \theta^{t+1} = \sum_{k=1}^K \frac{n_k}{n} \theta_k^{t+1} where:
    • n_k is the number of samples at client k.
    • n = \sum_{k=1}^K n_k is the total number of samples across all clients.

Significance: Addressed privacy concerns and bandwidth limitations in distributed systems.


13. Neural Architecture Search (NAS)

Zoph and Le, 2016

We appreciate NAS for automating the design of neural network architectures using optimization algorithms.

Approaches:

  • Reinforcement Learning-Based NAS: Uses an RNN controller to generate architectures, trained to maximize expected validation accuracy.
  • Differentiable NAS (DARTS): Models the architecture search space as continuous, enabling gradient-based optimization. Objective Function: \min_{\alpha} \mathcal{L}_{\text{val}}(w^*(\alpha), \alpha) where w^*(\alpha) is obtained by: w^*(\alpha) = \arg\min_w \mathcal{L}_{\text{train}}(w, \alpha)

Significance: Reduced human effort in designing architectures, leading to efficient and high-performing models.


14. Optimizer Advancements (Adam, AdaBound, RAdam)

We are thankful for advancements in optimization algorithms that improved training efficiency.

  • Adam Optimizer(Kingma and Ba, 2014)
    Update Rules: m_t = \beta_1 m_{t-1} + (1 - \beta_1) g_t, v_t = \beta_2 v_{t-1} + (1 - \beta_2) g_t^2, \hat{m}_t = \frac{m_t}{1 - \beta_1^t}, \hat{v}_t = \frac{v_t}{1 - \beta_2^t}, \theta_{t+1} = \theta_t - \eta \frac{\hat{m}_t}{\sqrt{\hat{v}_t} + \epsilon}
    where:
    • g_t is the gradient at time step t.
    • \beta_1 and \beta_2 are hyperparameters controlling the exponential decay rates.
    • \eta is the learning rate.
    • \epsilon is a small constant to prevent division by zero.

Significance: Improved optimization efficiency and convergence in training deep neural networks.


15. Diffusion Models for Generative Modeling

Ho et al., 2020; Song et al., 2020

We give thanks for diffusion models, which are generative models that learn data distributions by reversing a diffusion (noising) process.

Key Concepts:

  • Forward Diffusion Process: Gradually adds Gaussian noise to data over T timesteps.
    Noising Schedule: q(x_t | x_{t-1}) = \mathcal{N}(x_t; \sqrt{1 - \beta_t} x_{t-1}, \beta_t I)
  • Reverse Process: Learns to denoise from x_T back to x_0.
    Objective Function: \mathcal{L}_{\text{simple}} = \mathbb{E}_{t, x_0, \epsilon} \left[ \| \epsilon - \epsilon_\theta(x_t, t) \|^2 \right] where:
    • \epsilon is the noise added to the data.
    • \epsilon_\theta(x_t, t) is the model’s prediction of the noise at timestep t.

Significance: Achieved state-of-the-art results in image generation, rivaling GANs without their training instability.


Give Thanks…

This Thanksgiving, let’s celebrate and express our gratitude for these groundbreaking contributions to machine learning. These technical advancements have not only pushed the boundaries of what’s possible but have also laid the foundation for future innovations that will continue to shape our world.

May we continue to build upon these foundations and contribute to the growing field of machine learning.

References

  • Vaswani, A., Shazeer, N., Parmar, N., Uszkoreit, J., Jones, L., Gomez, A. N., Kaiser, Ł., & Polosukhin, I. (2017). Attention is All You Need. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. arXiv:1706.03762
  • Devlin, J., Chang, M. W., Lee, K., & Toutanova, K. (2018). BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding. arXiv:1810.04805
  • Radford, A., Narasimhan, K., Salimans, T., & Sutskever, I. (2018). Improving Language Understanding by Generative Pre-training. OpenAI Blog.
  • Kingma, D. P., & Welling, M. (2013). Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes. arXiv:1312.6114
  • Goodfellow, I., Pouget-Abadie, J., Mirza, M., Xu, B., Warde-Farley, D., Ozair, S., Courville, A., & Bengio, Y. (2014). Generative Adversarial Nets. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems.
  • Mnih, V., Kavukcuoglu, K., Silver, D., Rusu, A. A., Veness, J., Bellemare, M. G., Graves, A., Riedmiller, M., Fidjeland, A. K., Ostrovski, G., Petersen, S., Beattie, C., Sadik, A., Antonoglou, I., King, H., Kumaran, D., Wierstra, D., Legg, S., & Hassabis, D. (2015). Human-level Control through Deep Reinforcement Learning. Nature.
  • Ioffe, S., & Szegedy, C. (2015). Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift. International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML).
  • Ba, J. L., Kiros, J. R., & Hinton, G. E. (2016). Layer Normalization. arXiv:1607.06450
  • Bahdanau, D., Cho, K., & Bengio, Y. (2014). Neural Machine Translation by Jointly Learning to Align and Translate. arXiv:1409.0473
  • Kipf, T. N., & Welling, M. (2016). Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks. arXiv:1609.02907
  • He, K., Fan, H., Wu, Y., Xie, S., & Girshick, R. (2020). Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning. arXiv:1911.05722
  • Abadi, M., Chu, A., Goodfellow, I., McMahan, H. B., Mironov, I., Talwar, K., & Zhang, L. (2016). Deep Learning with Differential Privacy. ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security.
  • McMahan, B., Moore, E., Ramage, D., Hampson, S., & y Arcas, B. A. (2017). Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data. arXiv:1602.05629
  • Zoph, B., & Le, Q. V. (2016). Neural Architecture Search with Reinforcement Learning. arXiv:1611.01578
  • Kingma, D. P., & Ba, J. (2014). Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization. arXiv:1412.6980
  • Ho, J., Jain, A., & Abbeel, P. (2020). Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models. arXiv:2006.11239

Learning Robust Observable to Address Noise in Quantum Machine Learning

In the rapidly evolving field of Quantum Machine Learning (QML), one of the most pressing challenges is handling noise—the errors that naturally arise in quantum systems, particularly in the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era. But what if we could teach quantum systems to “learn” and address noise head-on? Our paper “Learning Robust Observable to Address Noise in Quantum Machine Learning” explores an approach to mitigating this issue by focusing on learning robust observables. These observables can withstand the effects of noise, improving the performance of QML models in noisy environments.

Understanding the Problem of Noise in QML

In quantum systems, noise comes from imperfections in quantum gates, interactions with the environment, and decoherence—making quantum computations highly error-prone. When applying QML, this noise leads to inaccuracies in predictions and model training. This research aims to identify observables that remain invariant or change minimally even in the presence of noise, thus offering more reliable outputs from quantum systems.

The Framework: Learning Robust Observables

We propose a machine learning-based framework to find observables that are inherently resistant to various types of noise. To tackle this, we propose training a machine learning model to identify observables that remain invariant or less susceptible to noise. The model learns from the behavior of quantum states passing through noisy channels and adjusts to find robust observables that maintain their integrity despite noise. We illustrate the problem using a Bell state (a well-known quantum state), subjecting it to a depolarization channel to simulate noise.

The process can be formalized as an optimization problem where the goal is to minimize the change in the expectation value of the observable when the quantum state is subject to noise. Mathematically, this can be expressed as minimizing:

    \[\min⁡_{\mathcal{O}}\mathbb{E}[ \left | \langle{\psi}| \mathcal{O} |{\psi} \rangle - \langle{\psi} | \mathcal{O}_n |{\psi} \rangle ]\]

Here, \mathcal{O} is a Pauli-Z observable, and \mathcal{O}_n is an observable we are trying to learn. The expectation value is computed before and after noise is introduced. The goal is to find an observable that minimizes this difference, effectively learning a robust observable.

A Toy Example

In our framework, we train QML models by simulating quantum systems across different noise channels, including depolarization, amplitude damping, phase damping, bit flip, and phase flip channels. The objective is to learn observables for various quantum circuits—such as Bell state circuits, Quantum Fourier Transform circuits, and highly entangled random circuits—that can remain robust across different noise levels. The framework demonstrated that it could identify an observable that better retains the state’s properties under noisy conditions, proving that robust observables can be learned effectively.

 Consider the following example:

(1)   \begin{equation*} O_{optimized} = \begin{pmatrix} 0.804 & 0.086 + 0.138i & 0.739 + 0.050i & 0.070 + 0.132i\\ 0.086 - 0.138i & 0.302 & 0.087 - 0.122i & 0.277 + 0.019i \\0.739 - 0.050i & 0.087 + 0.122i & 1.253 & 0.133 + 0.215i \\ 0.070 - 0.132i & 0.277 - 0.019i & 0.133 - 0.215i & 0.470\end{pmatrix}\end{equation*}

We computed its expectation value for Bell’s states under varying degrees of depolarization, p \in [0,1). The expectation values of the observable O_{optimized} on the depolarized Bell state as a function of the depolarization rate p are plotted in the following figure.

In this figure, Z is the Pauli-Z matrix, X is the Pauli-X matrix, H is the Hadamard gate, A is an arbitrary observable, and O_{optimized} is a learned single qubit Hermitian measurement operator. This toy example shows that the expectation value of the custom observable O_{optimized} on the depolarized Bell state remains constant as the depolarization rate p increases.

Key Findings

  • Custom observables designed through this method demonstrated remarkable stability against noise, especially when compared to traditional observables like Pauli matrices.
  • In noisy channels like depolarization, the learned observables maintained a more consistent expectation value, while traditional observables exhibited greater variance.
  • The approach can be applied to various types of quantum circuits, making it versatile and broadly applicable in enhancing the reliability of QML models.

Implications for Quantum Machine Learning

This study offers a promising avenue for improving the accuracy and stability of QML in real-world applications. By learning robust observables, QML systems can perform more reliably, even as we contend with the inherent noise in current quantum computers. By using learned observables, the performance of quantum machine learning models can be made more stable, even when operating in the inherently noisy NISQ regime. This has implications for advancing practical applications of quantum computing, especially as we seek to scale up quantum algorithms in the near-term.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Noise-Resistant QML

The results from this paper open up exciting possibilities for future work. Imagine a future where every quantum machine learning algorithm can autonomously adjust to different noisy environments by learning which observables to trust. This would make QML models more resilient and, ultimately, more practical for real-world applications.

One immediate future direction is testing the framework on larger systems and more complex noise models. Additionally, combining this method with error correction techniques could further enhance the stability of QML algorithms.

For a detailed exploration of the methodology and findings, read the full paper at:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.07632

References

  • Khanal, Bikram, and Pablo Rivas. “Learning Robust Observable to Address Noise in Quantum Machine Learning.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.07632 (2024).

About the Author

Bikram Khanal is a Ph.D. student at Baylor University, specializing in Quantum Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing.

Uncovering Patterns in Car Parts – A Step Towards Combating a Cybercrime

The black market for stolen car parts is a significant problem, exacerbated by the rise of online marketplaces like Craigslist or OfferUp, where stolen goods are often sold under the radar. In response to this growing issue, our research team at Baylor University has been leveraging cutting-edge AI techniques to detect patterns in car part sales that could signal illicit activity. This work is part of the NSF-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, which provides undergraduate students with hands-on research experience in critical areas like artificial intelligence. Our project, supported by NSF Grant #2210091, investigates the potential of deep learning models to analyze vast amounts of data from online listings, offering a new tool in the fight against stolen car parts.

Why This Research Matters

The theft and resale of car parts not only affect vehicle owners but also contribute to organized crime. Detecting patterns in how stolen parts are sold online can help law enforcement track and dismantle these criminal networks. This project also presents a unique challenge to the AI research community: the complexity of analyzing unstructured, noisy data from real-world platforms. By utilizing the Vision Transformer (ViT) for image analysis, our research offers a different approach compared to previous works that employed multimodal models like ImageBind and OpenFlamingo.

Dataset and Embedding Extraction

Our dataset comprises thousands of car parts advertisements scraped from Craigslist and OfferUp, each including images and textual descriptions. To process the image data, we used the Vision Transformer (ViT), a model pre-trained on ImageNet-21k. ViT processes images by splitting them into 16×16-pixel patches, allowing for the extraction of key features from each image. These features were converted into embeddings—high-dimensional vectors that represent each image’s content in a form that the model can analyze.

We extracted embeddings for nearly 85,000 images, which were then compiled into a CSV file for further analysis, including clustering and visualization. Unlike prior works by Hamara & Rivas (2024) and Rashid & Rivas (2024), which utilized multimodal models like ImageBind and OpenFlamingo to fuse image and text data, we focused solely on image embeddings in this phase to assess the effectiveness of ViT in capturing visual patterns related to illicit activities.

Clustering and Evaluation

With the embeddings extracted, we used UMAP (Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection) to project the high-dimensional data into a more interpretable 2D space for visualization. We then applied K-Means clustering, a widely used algorithm for grouping data, and experimented with different embedding dimensions—16, 32, 64, and 128—to identify the optimal number of clusters.

Among these, 64 dimensions proved to be the best suited for our dataset, as determined by three key clustering performance metrics:

  • Silhouette Score: Measures how similar an object is to its own cluster compared to other clusters. A value of 0.015 indicated that some clusters were poorly defined.
  • Calinski-Harabasz Index: Evaluates the variance ratio between clusters versus within clusters.
  • Davies-Bouldin Index: Measures the average similarity between each cluster and its most similar cluster.

Although 128 dimensions performed well in some tests, 64 dimensions provided the clearest balance between cluster purity and computational efficiency. The low silhouette score, while indicating some overlap between clusters, helped confirm that most clusters were well-defined, despite several outliers—posts that displayed mixed or unclear features, such as images showing both powertrains and vehicle exteriors.

Findings and Analysis

Using the K-Means algorithm, we identified 20 distinct clusters, each representing different categories of car parts. Here are some key findings:

  • Cluster 0: Primarily contained exterior shots of full vehicles.
  • Cluster 1: Featured exterior components like mirrors and bumpers.
  • Cluster 2: Focused on powertrain parts such as engines and transmissions.
  • Cluster 3: Showcased body panels including doors, trunks, and hoods.
  • Cluster 4: Grouped images of towing accessories like trailer hitches.

After clustering, we applied K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) to identify the top 10 posts nearest to each cluster centroid, which allowed us to analyze representative posts and confirm the coherence of each cluster. Despite the general success of this approach, outliers emerged in the UMAP visualization, indicating the need for further refinement to handle posts with mixed features. This challenge is common in image analysis, particularly when models rely solely on visual data without the contextual information that multimodal models can provide.

UMAP Visualization for 64 dimensions

Comparative Analysis with Prior Work

Our approach contrasts with that of Hamara & Rivas (2024) and Rashid & Rivas (2024), who utilized multimodal models like ImageBind and OpenFlamingo to integrate image and text data for enhanced analysis. While their methods leveraged the fusion of multiple data types to capture richer context, we aimed to assess the capabilities of ViT in isolating visual patterns indicative of illicit activity. This comparison highlights the trade-offs between focusing on single-modality models versus multimodal approaches in detecting complex patterns within unstructured data.

Broader Impact

This research demonstrates the potential of AI in analyzing large, unstructured datasets from online marketplaces, providing law enforcement with new tools to monitor and track stolen car parts. From a technical perspective, our project highlights the effectiveness of using ViT for image analysis in this context. As we continue refining our models and consider integrating multimodal approaches inspired by prior work, our collaboration with crosdisciplinary partners will ensure that this system becomes a valuable tool for combating the sale of stolen goods online.

As stated previously, the silhouette score for the dataset proved to be notably small, which was supported by the visualization containing numerous outliers. This may be attributed to clusters lacking clear definition, meaning that several posts contained images without many distinguishable features. This is understandable considering that while clusters emphasized a focus on specific car parts, many images still displayed various other vehicle components. For instance, although Cluster 2 primarily featured images of powertrains, the posts in this cluster also included shots of the exterior and body panels of the vehicle. This is logical as sellers often aim to showcase multiple facets of the vehicle when listing it, explaining the lack of focus on specific car parts.

About the Author

Cameron Armijo is a Computer Science undergraduate student at Baylor University, specializing in data mining.

Celebrating Love and Innovation at The Lab: Welcome, PoderOso!

This Valentine’s Day at Baylor.AI, we’re not just celebrating love in the air but also the arrival of our latest powerhouse, affectionately named PoderOso. This state-of-the-art equipment is a testament to the unwavering support and vision of Dr. Greg Hamerly, the department chair of Computer Science at Baylor, and Dr. Daniel Pack, the dean of the School of Engineering and Computer Science. Their dedication to advancing research and innovation within our department has been instrumental in acquiring PoderOso, and for that, we are profoundly grateful.

The name ‘PoderOso’ is derived from Spanish, where ‘Poder’ means ‘Power’ and ‘Oso’ means ‘Bear’. Combined, ‘Poderoso’ translates to ‘Powerful’. Therefore, ‘PoderOso’ creatively merges these concepts to symbolize something that embodies both power and the strength of a bear, aptly reflecting the capabilities of machine.

PoderOso is a technological marvel boasting dual EPYC 7662 processors, a whopping 1024GB of DDR4-3200 ECC memory, cutting-edge storage solutions, and six NVIDIA L40S GPUs. It’s a beast designed for in-house AI research, setting a new benchmark for what we can achieve.

With PoderOso’s impressive specs, our team is poised to push the boundaries of deep learning faster than ever before. From advancing language models that can understand and generate human-like text to developing computer vision systems that can perceive the world as we do; from enhancing adversarial robustness to securing AI against malicious attacks to exploring the burgeoning field of quantum machine learning and driving forward multimodal AI research that integrates multiple types of data, PoderOso will be at the heart of our endeavors. Moreover, it will enable us to delve deeper into AI ethics, ensuring our advancements are aligned with our values and societal needs.

As we unbox PoderOso and get it up and running, we’re filled with anticipation for future breakthroughs. Below are photos of the unboxing and our dedicated IT team in front of the rack.

Our journey into the next frontier of AI research has just gotten a significant boost, thanks to PoderOso and the incredible support of our leaders. Here’s to a future where our research leads to technological advancements and fosters a more ethical, understanding, and inclusive world.

Happy Valentine’s Day to our Baylor.AI family and everyone supporting us on this exciting journey!

(Left to right) Brian Sitton, Mike Hutcheson, Pablo Rivas

Creation and Analysis of an NLU Dataset for DoD Cybersecurity Policies

Comprehending and implementing robust policies is crucial in cybersecurity. In our lab, Ernesto Quevedo et al. recently released a paper, Creation and Analysis of a Natural Language Understanding Dataset for DoD Cybersecurity Policies (CSIAC-DoDIN V1.0), which introduces a groundbreaking dataset to aid in this endeavor. This dataset bridges a significant gap in Legal Natural Language Processing (NLP) by providing structured data specifically focused on cybersecurity policies.

Dataset Overview

The CSIAC-DoDIN V1.0 dataset encompasses a wide array of cybersecurity-related policies, responsibilities, and procedures from the Department of Defense (DoD). Unlike existing datasets that focus primarily on privacy policies, this dataset includes detailed guidelines, strategies, and procedures essential for cybersecurity.

Key Contributions

  1. Novel Dataset: This dataset is the first to include comprehensive cybersecurity policies, guidelines, and procedures.
  2. Baseline Models: The paper provides baseline performance metrics using transformer-based models such as BERT, RoBERTa, Legal-BERT, and PrivBERT.
  3. Open Access: The dataset and code are publicly available, encouraging further research and collaboration.

Experiments and Results

Our team of researchers evaluated several transformer-based models on this dataset:

  • BERT: Demonstrated strong performance across various tasks.
  • RoBERTa: Showed competitive results, particularly in classification tasks.
  • Legal-BERT: Excelled in domain-specific tasks, benefiting from its legal data pre-training.
  • PrivBERT: Provided insights into the transferability of models across different policy subdomains.

Download

Access the CSIAC-DoDIN V1.0 dataset here to explore it and contribute to the advancement of Legal NLP. Join the effort to enhance cybersecurity policy understanding and implementation using cutting-edge NLP models. Download the paper here to learn more about the process.

NSF REU: How Two Undergraduates Are Advancing AI for Social Good

Two undergraduate students from the Computer Science Department at Baylor University, Misty and Andrew, have demonstrated the impactful role of undergraduate research in advancing technological frontiers. Their recent work on automatic information retrieval, conducted under the Baylor.AI lab, has been a testament to their dedication and intellectual curiosity.

Misty and Andrew’s journey in the AI lab involved engaging in research discussions that transcended typical undergraduate experiences. Their focus was on developing software to automate data collection, a crucial component in achieving the NSF grant objectives related to studying the illegal trafficking of stolen car parts on C2C marketplaces. This work is a critical piece in the larger puzzle of combating online criminal activities.

Their success in this endeavor was supported by the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, highlighting the program’s role in fostering early research experiences. The REU program’s funding not only enabled these students to delve into real-world problems but also allowed them to contribute meaningfully to a project with significant societal implications.

This follow-up story is a continuation of our ongoing efforts, detailed in our previous post, to tackle online criminal activity under NSF’s REU program. The achievements of Misty and Andrew help in the grand scheme of AI research as we strive to have a safe and secure cyberspace; it’s essential to acknowledge and celebrate these steps in their academic journey. Their work exemplifies the potential of undergraduate research in contributing to complex and socially relevant projects.

As we continue to support and mentor our students in the Baylor.AI lab, we look forward to more such stories of perseverance, learning, and meaningful contributions to the field of AI and machine learning.

Sic’em Bears!

On Becoming an ACM Senior Member

I was honored to recently receive the ACM Senior Member designation from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). For my students who asked and anyone else interested, I would like to share with you what this honor is and why I received it.

First, let me tell you a little bit about the ACM. The ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, with a mission to advance computing as a science and profession. The ACM Senior Member designation is a distinction awarded to members who have demonstrated significant accomplishments and impact in the computing field. To be considered for this honor, a candidate must have at least 10 years of professional experience in computing and have made significant contributions to the field through research, industry, or education. Being elevated to senior member status in ACM signifies that you are an established leader in the computing field, recognized by your peers for your expertise and contributions. It also comes with certain benefits, such as access to special resources and opportunities for professional development and networking.

Overall, being a senior member of ACM is a great honor and a recognition of your significant contributions to the computing field. 🫶

I was thrilled to learn that by recommendation of my mentor in the computer science department, Dr. Hamerly, the dean of the school of engineering and computer science, Dr. Baker, and of my peers, I am now an ACM Senior Member, and I believe that my contributions to the computing field over the past decade played a significant role in this recognition. Some of my most notable achievements include the following:

  • Technical leadership: leading industry-university collaborative projects, securing funding for students’ research, directing numerous theses and independent studies, developing graduate courses on data mining and machine learning, updating and developing courses, and participating in the education committees at Marist College and Baylor University.
  • Technical contributions: over 90 publications, research in machine learning and numerical optimization, contribution to SVM theory, recent research in efficient representation learning, adversarial learning, and ethical implications of biased and unfair models, and active involvement in developing AI ethics standards through work with IEEE Standards Association.
  • Professional contributions: participation in professional events, including serving as Sponsorship & Budget chair of ACM NYC of Women in Computing and as a Program Committee Chair for NAACL 2022 LXNLP workshop, active membership in professional organizations, and full-time industry experience designing end-to-end systems to support manufacturing and supply management.
  • Recognition: elevation to IEEE Senior Member, sought-after expertise and leadership in deep learning and ethics, involvement in developing AI ethics standards, and commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion in computing through work with ACM NYC of Women in Computing and participation in the AAAI Undergraduate Consortium.

My peers in the computing community have recognized these accomplishments and contributed to advancing the field. In addition to my technical contributions, I have been actively mentoring and teaching the next generation of computing professionals.

I am incredibly grateful to the ACM for this honor, and I hope it inspires some of my students to pursue academic excellence. I believe that we can all make a massive difference in the world through our work in computing, and I look forward to continuing to make meaningful contributions to the exciting and rapidly evolving field of machine learning and responsible AI.

Thank you for taking the time to read about my journey to becoming an ACM Senior Member. If you have any questions or would like to learn more about my work, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Dr. Hamerly, chair of the computer science department and mentor, presented the ACM Senior Member certificate.

How to Show that Your Model is Better: A Basic Guide to Statistical Hypothesis Testing

Do you need help determining which machine learning model is superior? This post presents a step-by-step guide using basic statistical techniques and a real case study! 🤖📈 #AIOrthoPraxy #MachineLearning #Statistics #DataScience

When employing Machine Learning to address problems, our choice of a model plays a crucial role. Evaluating models can be straightforward when performance disparities are substantial, for example, when comparing two large-language models (LLMS) on a masked language modeling (MLM) task with 71.01 and 28.56 perplexity, respectively. However, if differences among models are minute, making a solid analysis to discern if one model is genuinely superior to others can prove challenging.

This tutorial aims to present a step-by-step guide to determine if one model is superior to another. Our approach relies on basic statistical techniques and real datasets. Our study compares four models on six datasets using one metric, standard accuracy. Alternatively, other contexts may use different numbers of models, metrics, or datasets. We will work with the tables below that show the properties of the datasets and the performance of two baseline models and two of our proposed models, for which we hope to show that they are better, which would be our hypothesis to be tested.

Summary of performance measured with standard accuracy
Summary of the main properties of the datasets considered in this tutorial.

One of the primary purposes of statistics is hypothesis testing. Statistical inference involves taking a sample from a population and determining how well the sample represents the population. In hypothesis testing, we formulate a null hypothesis, H_0, and an alternative hypothesis, H_A, based on the problem (comparing models). Both hypotheses must be concise, mutually exclusive, and exhaustive. For example, we could say that our null hypothesis is that the models perform equally, and the alternative could mean that the models perform differently.

Why is the ANOVA test not a good alternative?

The ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) test is a parametric test that compares the means of multiple groups. In our case, we have four models to compare with six datasets. The null hypothesis for ANOVA is that all the means are equal, and the alternative hypothesis is that at least one of the means is different. If the p-value of the ANOVA test is less than the significance level (usually 0.05), we reject the null hypothesis and conclude that at least one of the means is different, i.e., at least one model performs differently than the others. However, ANOVA may not always be the best choice for comparing the performance of different models.

One reason for this is that ANOVA assumes that the data follows a normal distribution, which may not always be the case for real-world data. Additionally, ANOVA does not take into account the difficulty of classifying certain data points. For example, in a dataset with a single numerical feature and binary labels, all models may achieve 100% accuracy on the training data. However, if the test set contains some mislabeled points, the models may perform differently. In this scenario, ANOVA would not be appropriate because it does not account for the difficulty of classifying certain data points.

Another issue with ANOVA is that it assumes that the variances of the groups being compared are equal. This assumption may not hold for datasets with different levels of noise or variability. In such cases, alternative statistical tests like the Friedman test or the Nemenyi test may be more appropriate.

Friedman test

The Friedman test is a non-parametric test that compares multiple models. In our example, we want to compare the performance of k=4 different models, i.e., two baseline models, Gabor randomized, and Gabor repeated, on N=6 datasets. First, the test calculates the average rank of each model’s performance on each dataset, with the best-performing model receiving a rank of 1. The Friedman test then tests the null hypothesis, H_0, that all models are equally effective and their average ranks should be equal. The test statistic is calculated as follows:

(1)   \begin{equation*} \chi_{F}^{2}=\frac{12 N}{k(k+1)}\left[\sum_{j=1}^{k} R_{j}^{2}-\frac{k(k+1)^{2}}{4}\right] \end{equation*}

where R is the average ranking of each model.

The test result can be used to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between the performance of the models by making sure that \chi_{F}^{2} is not less than the critical value for the F distribution for a particular confidence value \alpha. However, since \chi_{F}^{2} could be too conservative, we also calculate the F_F statistic as follows:

(2)   \begin{equation*} F_{F}=\frac{(N-1) \chi_{F}^{2}}{N(k-1)-\chi_{F}^{2}}. \end{equation*}

Based on the critical value, F_{F}, and \chi_{F}^{2}, we evaluate H_0; once the null hypothesis is rejected, we apply a posthoc test. For this, we use the Nemenyi test to establish whether models differ significantly in their performance.

We will start the process of getting this test done by ranking the data. First, we can load the data and verify it with respect to the table shown earlier.

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

data = [[0.8937, 0.8839, 0.9072, 0.9102],
        [0.8023, 0.8024, 0.8229, 0.8238],
        [0.7130, 0.7132, 0.7198, 0.7206],
        [0.5084, 0.5085, 0.5232, 0.5273],
        [0.2331, 0.2326, 0.3620, 0.3952],
        [0.5174, 0.5175, 0.5307, 0.5178]]

model_names = ['Glorot N.', 'Glorot U.', 'Random G.', 'Repeated G.']

df = pd.DataFrame(data, columns=model_names)

print(df.describe())  #<- use averages to verify if matches table

Output:

       Glorot N.  Glorot U.  Random G.  Repeated G.
count   6.000000   6.000000   6.000000     6.000000
mean    0.611317   0.609683   0.644300     0.649150
std     0.240422   0.238318   0.206871     0.200173
min     0.233100   0.232600   0.362000     0.395200
25%     0.510650   0.510750   0.525075     0.520175
50%     0.615200   0.615350   0.625250     0.623950
75%     0.779975   0.780100   0.797125     0.798000
max     0.893700   0.883900   0.907200     0.910200

Next, we rank the models and get their averages like so:

data = df.rank(1, method='average', ascending=False)
print(data)
print(data.describe())

Output:

   Glorot N.  Glorot U.  Random G.  Repeated G.
0        3.0        4.0        2.0          1.0
1        4.0        3.0        2.0          1.0
2        4.0        3.0        2.0          1.0
3        4.0        3.0        2.0          1.0
4        3.0        4.0        2.0          1.0
5        4.0        3.0        1.0          2.0

       Glorot N.  Glorot U.  Random G.  Repeated G.
count   6.000000   6.000000   6.000000     6.000000
mean    3.666667   3.333333   1.833333     1.166667
std     0.516398   0.516398   0.408248     0.408248
min     3.000000   3.000000   1.000000     1.000000
25%     3.250000   3.000000   2.000000     1.000000
50%     4.000000   3.000000   2.000000     1.000000
75%     4.000000   3.750000   2.000000     1.000000
max     4.000000   4.000000   2.000000     2.000000

With this information, we can expand our initial results table to show the rankings by dataset and the average rankings across all datasets for each model.

Now that we have the rankings, we can proceed with the statistical analysis and do the following:

(3)   \begin{align*} \chi_{F}^{2}&=\frac{12 \cdot 6}{4 \cdot 5}\left[\left(3.66^2+3.33^2+1.83^2+1.16^2\right)-\frac{4 \cdot 5^2}{4}\right] \nonumber \\ &=15.364 \nonumber  \end{align*}

(4)   \begin{equation*} F_{F}=\frac{5 \cdot 15.364}{6 \cdot 3-15.364}=29.143 \nonumber \end{equation*}

The critical value at \alpha=0.01 is 5.417. Thus, because the critical value is below our statistics obtained, we reject H_0 with 99% confidence.

The critical value can be obtained from any table that has the F distribution. In the table the degrees of freedom across columns (denoted as df_1) is k-1, that is the number of models minus one; the degrees of freedom across rows (denoted as df_2) is (k-1)\times(N-1), that is, the number of models minus one, times the number of datasets minus one. In our case this is df_1=3 and df_2=15.

Nemenyi Test

The Nemenyi test is a post-hoc test that compares multiple models after a significant result from Friedman’s test. The null hypothesis for Nemenyi is that there is no difference between any two models, and the alternative hypothesis is that at least one pair of models is different.

The formula for Nemenyi is as follows:

    \[CD = q_{\alpha} \sqrt{\frac{k(k+1)}{6N}}\]

where q_{\alpha} is the critical difference of the Studentized range distribution at the chosen significance level and k is the number of groups. The q_{\alpha} value can be obtained from the following table:

Critical values for the Nemenyi test, which is conducted following the Friedman test, with two-tailed results.

Thus, for our particular case study, the critical differences are:

(5)   \begin{equation*} CD_{\alpha=0.05}=2.569 \sqrt{\frac{4 \cdot 5}{6 \cdot 6}} = 1.915 \nonumber \end{equation*}

(6)   \begin{equation*} CD_{\alpha=0.10}=2.291 \sqrt{\frac{4 \cdot 5}{6 \cdot 6}} = 1.708 \nonumber \end{equation*}

Since the difference in rank between the randomized Gabor and baseline Glorot normal is 1.83 and is less than the CD_{\alpha=0.10}=1.708, we conclude Gabor is better. Similarly, since the difference in rank between the fixed Gabor and baseline Glorot uniform is 2.17 and is less than the CD_{\alpha=0.05}=1.915, we conclude that Gabor is better. Yes, there is sufficient statistical evidence to show that our model is better with high confidence.

Things we would like to see in papers

First of all, it would be nice to have a complete table that includes the results of the statistical tests as part of the caption or as a footnote, like this:

Second of all, graphics always help! A simple and visually appealing diagram is a powerful way to represent post hoc test results when comparing multiple classifiers. The figure below, which illustrates the data analysis from the table above, displays the average ranks of methods along the top line of the diagram. To facilitate interpretation, the axis is oriented so that the best ranks appear on the right side, which enables us to perceive the methods on the right as superior.

Comparison of all models against each other with the Nemenyi test. Models not significantly different at α = 0.10 or α = 0.05 are connected.

When comparing all the algorithms against each other, the groups of algorithms that are not significantly different are connected with a bold solid line. Such an approach clearly highlights the most effective models while also providing a robust analysis of the differences between models. Additionally, the critical difference is shown above the graph, further enhancing the visualization of the analysis results. Overall, this simple yet powerful diagrammatic approach provides a clear and concise representation of the performance of multiple classifiers, enabling more informed decision-making in selecting the best-performing model.

Main Sources

The statistical tests are based on this paper:

Demšar, Janez. “Statistical comparisons of classifiers over multiple data sets.” The Journal of Machine learning research 7 (2006): 1-30.

The case study is based on the following research:

Rai, Mehang. “On the Performance of Convolutional Neural Networks Initialized with Gabor Filters.” Thesis, Baylor University, 2021.

President’s Executive Order for Advancing Racial Equity in AI Systems: What It Means for the Future of AI-Based Technology

Summary: The President of the United States, Joe Biden, has recently authorized an Executive Order intending to enhance racial equity and foster support for marginalized communities via the federal government. The Order mandates that federal agencies employing artificial intelligence (AI) systems assume novel equity responsibilities and instructs them to forestall and rectify any form of discrimination, including safeguarding the public from the perils of algorithmic discrimination.

What you should know: The recent Executive Order on Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government emphasizes the importance of advancing equity for all, including communities that have long been underserved, and addressing systemic racism in the US policies and programs. This order implies that AI systems should be designed to ensure that they do not perpetuate or exacerbate inequities and should be used to address the unfair disparities faced by underserved communities. It is also implied that the Federal Government should work with civil society, the private sector, and State and local governments to redress unfair disparities and remove barriers to Government programs and services, which could be facilitated by the development and deployment of ethical and responsible AI systems. Additionally, the order emphasizes the need for evidence-based approaches to equitable policymaking and implementation, which can be achieved through collecting and analyzing data on the impacts of AI systems on different communities. Therefore, AI practitioners should ensure that their systems are designed, developed, and deployed to promote equity, fairness, and inclusivity and are aligned with the Federal Government’s commitment to advancing racial equity and supporting underserved communities.

The Center for Standards and Ethics in Artificial Intelligence (CSEAI)

Following President’s Executive Order, we at the CSEAI recognize the critical role of artificial intelligence in promoting fairness, accountability, and transparency. As a research center committed to developing responsible AI techniques, we believe our work can help meet the challenges and opportunities of emerging regulation, standardization, and best practices in AI systems. We are inviting industry members to partner with us financially and take part in collaborative research on trustworthy AI. Our mission is to provide applicable, actionable, standard practices in trustworthy AI and train a workforce that enables fairness, accountability, and transparency. We believe our work will help mitigate AI adoption’s operational, liability, and reputation risks.

The CSEAI brings together leading universities to conduct collaborative research in responsible AI techniques. We are committed to workforce development and providing accessible standards, best practices, testing, and compliance. We are proud to be a part of the NSF IUCRC Program and are excited to be supported by the NSF, which provides a standard agreement, organizational, and legal framework.

Join us in creating a better future for all Americans by developing responsible AI practices that promote fairness, accountability, and transparency. By partnering with the CSEAI, you will have the opportunity to work with a dedicated team of researchers, participate in cutting-edge research, and help shape the future of AI. Contact us today to learn more about partnering with the CSEAI.

Contact Pablo_Rivas@Baylor.edu and find out more at www.cseai.center.

International Conference on Emergent and Quantum Technologies (ICEQT’23)

July 24-27, 2023 — Las Vegas, NV

Dear Esteemed Colleagues,

Quantum computing is a rapidly emerging interdisciplinary research area that integrates concepts from mathematics, physics, and engineering. For scientific rigor and successful progress in the field, it demands contributions from various STEM areas.

In this context, we are pleased to announce the International Conference on Emergent and Quantum Technologies (ICEQT’23), to be held on July 24-27, 2023, in Las Vegas, NV. The conference aims to provide an opportunity for researchers in the field of quantum machine learning and machine learning researchers interested in applying AI to enhance quantum computing algorithms, to present and discuss recent advancements in their areas of expertise.

Notably, there has been an increasing interest from machine learning researchers to apply AI to the quantum computing domain, and vice versa. As a result, we cordially invite submissions of original research papers that present state-of-the-art contributions in the following areas:

Foundations of Quantum Computing and Quantum Machine Learning

  • Quantum computing models and paradigms, e.g., Grover, Shor, and others
  • Quantum algorithms for Linear Systems of Equations
  • Quantum Tensor Networks and their Applications in QML

Quantum Machine Learning Algorithms

  • Quantum Neural Networks
  • Quantum Hidden Markov Models
  • Quantum PCA
  • Quantum SVM
  • Quantum Autoencoders
  • Quantum Transfer Learning
  • Quantum Boltzmann machines
  • Theory of Quantum-enhanced Machine Learning

AI for Quantum Computing

  • Machine learning for improved quantum algorithm performance
  • Machine learning for quantum control
  • Machine learning for building better quantum hardware

Quantum Algorithms and Applications

  • Quantum computing: models and paradigms
  • Quantum algorithms for hyperparameter tuning (Quantum computing for AutoML)
  • Quantum-enhanced Reinforcement Learning
  • Quantum Annealing
  • Quantum Sampling
  • Applications of Quantum Machine Learning

Fairness and Ethics in Quantum Machine Learning

We look forward to receiving your submissions and to welcoming you to ICEQT’23.

All submissions that are accepted for presentation will be included in the proceedings published by IEEE CPS. To ensure consistency in formatting, authors should follow the general typesetting instructions available on the IEEE’s website, including single-line spacing and a 2-column format. Additionally, authors of accepted papers must agree to the IEEE CPS standard statement regarding copyrights and policies on electronic dissemination.

Prospective authors are encouraged to submit their papers through the conference’s evaluation website at https://american-cse.org/drafts/. More information about the conference, including submission guidelines, can be found on our website at https://baylor.ai/iceqt/.

Important Deadlines

April 12, 2023: Submission of papers: https://american-cse.org/drafts/
– Full/Regular Research Papers (maximum of 8 pages)
– Short Research Papers (maximum of 5 pages)
– Abstract/Poster Papers (maximum of 3 pages)

May 1, 2023: Notification of acceptance (+/- two days)

May 16, 2023: Final papers + Registration

June 21, 2023: Last day for hotel room reservation at a discounted price.

July 24-27, 2023: The 2023 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing (CSCE’23: USA)
Which includes the International Conference on Emergent and Quantum Technologies (ICEQT’23)

Chairs:
Dr. Pablo Rivas, Baylor University
Dr. Javier Orduz, Earlham College