We present a Conversational Chain-of-Action (Conv-CoA) framework for Open-domain Conversational Question Answering (OCQA). Compared with literature, Conv-CoA addresses three major challenges: (i) unfaithful hallucination that is inconsistent with real-time or domain facts, (ii) weak reasoning performance in conversational scenarios, and (iii) unsatisfying performance in conversational information retrieval. Our key contribution is a dynamic reasoning-retrieval mechanism that extracts the intent of the question and decomposes it into a reasoning chain to be solved via systematic prompting, pre-designed actions, updating the Contextual Knowledge Set (CKS), and a novel Hopfield-based retriever. Methodologically, we propose a resource-efficiency Hopfield retriever to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of conversational information retrieval within our actions. Additionally, we propose a conversational-multi-reference faith score (Conv-MRFS) to verify and resolve conflicts between retrieved knowledge and answers in conversations. Empirically, we conduct comparisons between our framework and 23 state-of-the-art methods across five different research directions and two public benchmarks. These comparisons demonstrate that our Conv-CoA outperforms other methods in both the accuracy and efficiency dimensions.
We propose a heterogeneous graph mamba network (HGMN) as the first exploration in leveraging the selective state space models (SSSMs) for heterogeneous graph learning. Compared with the literature, our HGMN overcomes two major challenges: (i) capturing long-range dependencies among heterogeneous nodes and (ii) adapting SSSMs to heterogeneous graph data. Our key contribution is a general graph architecture that can solve heterogeneous nodes in real-world scenarios, followed an efficient flow. Methodologically, we introduce a two-level efficient tokenization approach that first captures long-range dependencies within identical node types, and subsequently across all node types. Empirically, we conduct comparisons between our framework and 19 state-of-the-art methods on the heterogeneous benchmarks. The extensive comparisons demonstrate that our framework outperforms other methods in both the accuracy and efficiency dimensions.
Dynamic graphs are ubiquitous in the real world, yet there is a lack of suitable theoretical frameworks to effectively extend existing static graph models into the temporal domain. Additionally, for link prediction tasks on discrete dynamic graphs, the requirement of substantial GPU memory to store embeddings of all nodes hinders the scalability of existing models. In this paper, we introduce an Input {\bf S}napshots {\bf F}usion based {\bf Dy}namic {\bf G}raph Neural Network (SFDyG). By eliminating the partitioning of snapshots within the input window, we obtain a multi-graph (more than one edge between two nodes). Subsequently, by introducing a graph denoising problem with the assumption of temporal decayed smoothing, we integrate Hawkes process theory into Graph Neural Networks to model the generated multi-graph. Furthermore, based on the multi-graph, we propose a scalable three-step mini-batch training method and demonstrate its equivalence to full-batch training counterpart. Our experiments, conducted on eight distinct dynamic graph datasets for future link prediction tasks, revealed that SFDyG generally surpasses related methods.
Few-shot and zero-shot text classification aim to recognize samples from novel classes with limited labeled samples or no labeled samples at all. While prevailing methods have shown promising performance via transferring knowledge from seen classes to unseen classes, they are still limited by (1) Inherent dissimilarities among classes make the transformation of features learned from seen classes to unseen classes both difficult and inefficient. (2) Rare labeled novel samples usually cannot provide enough supervision signals to enable the model to adjust from the source distribution to the target distribution, especially for complicated scenarios. To alleviate the above issues, we propose a simple and effective strategy for few-shot and zero-shot text classification. We aim to liberate the model from the confines of seen classes, thereby enabling it to predict unseen categories without the necessity of training on seen classes. Specifically, for mining more related unseen category knowledge, we utilize a large pre-trained language model to generate pseudo novel samples, and select the most representative ones as category anchors. After that, we convert the multi-class classification task into a binary classification task and use the similarities of query-anchor pairs for prediction to fully leverage the limited supervision signals. Extensive experiments on six widely used public datasets show that our proposed method can outperform other strong baselines significantly in few-shot and zero-shot tasks, even without using any seen class samples.
Multimodal recommendation aims to recommend user-preferred candidates based on her/his historically interacted items and associated multimodal information. Previous studies commonly employ an embed-and-retrieve paradigm: learning user and item representations in the same embedding space, then retrieving similar candidate items for a user via embedding inner product. However, this paradigm suffers from inference cost, interaction modeling, and false-negative issues. Toward this end, we propose a new MMGRec model to introduce a generative paradigm into multimodal recommendation. Specifically, we first devise a hierarchical quantization method Graph RQ-VAE to assign Rec-ID for each item from its multimodal and CF information. Consisting of a tuple of semantically meaningful tokens, Rec-ID serves as the unique identifier of each item. Afterward, we train a Transformer-based recommender to generate the Rec-IDs of user-preferred items based on historical interaction sequences. The generative paradigm is qualified since this model systematically predicts the tuple of tokens identifying the recommended item in an autoregressive manner. Moreover, a relation-aware self-attention mechanism is devised for the Transformer to handle non-sequential interaction sequences, which explores the element pairwise relation to replace absolute positional encoding. Extensive experiments evaluate MMGRec's effectiveness compared with state-of-the-art methods.
In this paper, we present PRISM, a Promptable and Robust Interactive Segmentation Model, aiming for precise segmentation of 3D medical images. PRISM accepts various visual inputs, including points, boxes, and scribbles as sparse prompts, as well as masks as dense prompts. Specifically, PRISM is designed with four principles to achieve robustness: (1) Iterative learning. The model produces segmentations by using visual prompts from previous iterations to achieve progressive improvement. (2) Confidence learning. PRISM employs multiple segmentation heads per input image, each generating a continuous map and a confidence score to optimize predictions. (3) Corrective learning. Following each segmentation iteration, PRISM employs a shallow corrective refinement network to reassign mislabeled voxels. (4) Hybrid design. PRISM integrates hybrid encoders to better capture both the local and global information. Comprehensive validation of PRISM is conducted using four public datasets for tumor segmentation in the colon, pancreas, liver, and kidney, highlighting challenges caused by anatomical variations and ambiguous boundaries in accurate tumor identification. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, both with and without prompt engineering, PRISM significantly improves performance, achieving results that are close to human levels. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/MedICL-VU/PRISM.
In e-commerce, accurately extracting product attribute values from multimodal data is crucial for improving user experience and operational efficiency of retailers. However, previous approaches to multimodal attribute value extraction often struggle with implicit attribute values embedded in images or text, rely heavily on extensive labeled data, and can easily confuse similar attribute values. To address these issues, we introduce EIVEN, a data- and parameter-efficient generative framework that pioneers the use of multimodal LLM for implicit attribute value extraction. EIVEN leverages the rich inherent knowledge of a pre-trained LLM and vision encoder to reduce reliance on labeled data. We also introduce a novel Learning-by-Comparison technique to reduce model confusion by enforcing attribute value comparison and difference identification. Additionally, we construct initial open-source datasets for multimodal implicit attribute value extraction. Our extensive experiments reveal that EIVEN significantly outperforms existing methods in extracting implicit attribute values while requiring less labeled data.
We present a nonparametric construction for deep learning compatible modern Hopfield models and utilize this framework to debut an efficient variant. Our key contribution stems from interpreting the memory storage and retrieval processes in modern Hopfield models as a nonparametric regression problem subject to a set of query-memory pairs. Crucially, our framework not only recovers the known results from the original dense modern Hopfield model but also fills the void in the literature regarding efficient modern Hopfield models, by introducing \textit{sparse-structured} modern Hopfield models with sub-quadratic complexity. We establish that this sparse model inherits the appealing theoretical properties of its dense analogue -- connection with transformer attention, fixed point convergence and exponential memory capacity -- even without knowing details of the Hopfield energy function. Additionally, we showcase the versatility of our framework by constructing a family of modern Hopfield models as extensions, including linear, random masked, top-$K$ and positive random feature modern Hopfield models. Empirically, we validate the efficacy of our framework in both synthetic and realistic settings.
We propose a two-stage memory retrieval dynamics for modern Hopfield models, termed $\mathtt{U\text{-}Hop}$, with enhanced memory capacity. Our key contribution is a learnable feature map $\Phi$ which transforms the Hopfield energy function into a kernel space. This transformation ensures convergence between the local minima of energy and the fixed points of retrieval dynamics within the kernel space. Consequently, the kernel norm induced by $\Phi$ serves as a novel similarity measure. It utilizes the stored memory patterns as learning data to enhance memory capacity across all modern Hopfield models. Specifically, we accomplish this by constructing a separation loss $\mathcal{L}_\Phi$ that separates the local minima of kernelized energy by separating stored memory patterns in kernel space. Methodologically, $\mathtt{U\text{-}Hop}$ memory retrieval process consists of: \textbf{(Stage~I.)} minimizing separation loss for a more uniformed memory (local minimum) distribution, followed by \textbf{(Stage~II.)} standard Hopfield energy minimization for memory retrieval. This results in a significant reduction of possible meta-stable states in the Hopfield energy function, thus enhancing memory capacity by preventing memory confusion. Empirically, with real-world datasets, we demonstrate that $\mathtt{U\text{-}Hop}$ outperforms all existing modern Hopfield models and SOTA similarity measures, achieving substantial improvements in both associative memory retrieval and deep learning tasks.
We introduce an Outlier-Efficient Modern Hopfield Model (termed $\mathtt{OutEffHop}$) and use it to address the outlier-induced challenge of quantizing gigantic transformer-based models. Our main contribution is a novel associative memory model facilitating \textit{outlier-efficient} associative memory retrievals. Interestingly, this memory model manifests a model-based interpretation of an outlier-efficient attention mechanism ($\text{Softmax}_1$): it is an approximation of the memory retrieval process of $\mathtt{OutEffHop}$. Methodologically, this allows us to debut novel outlier-efficient Hopfield layers a powerful attention alternative with superior post-quantization performance. Theoretically, the Outlier-Efficient Modern Hopfield Model retains and improves the desirable properties of the standard modern Hopfield models, including fixed point convergence and exponential storage capacity. Empirically, we demonstrate the proposed model's efficacy across large-scale transformer-based and Hopfield-based models (including BERT, OPT, ViT and STanHop-Net), benchmarking against state-of-the-art methods including $\mathtt{Clipped\_Softmax}$ and $\mathtt{Gated\_Attention}$. Notably, $\mathtt{OutEffHop}$ achieves on average $\sim$22+\% reductions in both average kurtosis and maximum infinity norm of model outputs accross 4 models.