AI Innovation Institute

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https://stonybrook.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMvd-irqTotGtQONZqerPf_TnhXcx8t2sA1

NeurIPS 2020 - Thirty-fourth Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems - https://nips.cc/

IACS Research Theme: Human Centered Computing Seminar

Abstract: The AI art platform Artbreeder hosts daily remix parties where users build on each other's work, creating transparent evolutionary chains of images from a single seed. This study analyzes 130,882 images from 368 remix parties to identify the drivers of novelty, complexity, and competitive success. The results reveal an interesting tension: while more novel parent images produce more novel and complex children and attract more likes, users paradoxically prefer to remix images that are less novel and complex. At the group level, larger remix parties produce more novelty at the cost of lower complexity. Additionally, images tend to converge towards common thematic attractors (e.g., steampunk scenes, alien architecture, furries) over the course of remix parties. These results provide quantitative insights into collective creativity--the production of novelty by groups of people--a typically opaque aspect of human cultural evolution.

Speaker: Dr. Mason Youngblood

Location: Institute for Advanced Computational Science, Seminar Room

Abstract: Many foundation models for digital pathology have been released recently. Benchmarking available methods then becomes paramount to get a clearer view of the research landscape. For this reason, we introduce THUNDER, a tile-level benchmark for digital pathology foundation models, allowing for efficient comparison of many models on diverse datasets with a series of downstream tasks, studying their feature spaces and assessing the robustness and uncertainty of predictions informed by their embeddings. Such foundation models are often used as feature extractors and combined with Multiple Instance Learning (MIL) aggregators at downstream time. Such aggregation must be efficient and reliable. We will focus on two specific examples of this: (I) HistAug, a fast and efficient generative model for controllable augmentations in the latent space of foundation models to perform data augmentation for MIL, and (ii) CAR-MIL, a method based on counterfactual attention regularisation to improve the reliability of attention maps of MIL methods.

Short-bio: Pierre Marza is a Postdoctoral Researcher at CentraleSupelec in the Biomathematics team of the MICS lab, studying Computer Vision and Deep Learning for Medical Imaging, with a focus on Digital Pathology. Prior to this, he was a PhD student at INSA Lyon, in the LIRIS and CITI labs, advised by Christian Wolf, and co-advised by Laetita Matignon and Olivier Simonin. He studied Visual Navigation, Embodied AI, Spatial Reasoning, more specifically how to learn to represent 3D space, generalize to new environments and master diverse tasks from light supervision.

Location: NCS 220

Zoom: https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/94798224254?pwd=CFraer25qnpORbJ14aAVHRwaSJOjJM.1

Abstract: Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems empower large language models (LLMs) to access external knowledge during inference. Recent advances have enabled LLMs to act as search agents via reinforcement learning (RL), improving information acquisition through multi-turn interactions with retrieval engines. However, existing approaches either optimize retrieval using search-only metrics (e.g., NDCG) that ignore downstream utility or fine-tune the entire LLM to jointly reason and retrieve--entangling retrieval with generation and limiting the real search utility and compatibility with frozen or proprietary models. In this work, we propose s3, a lightweight, model-agnostic framework that decouples the searcher from the generator and trains the searcher using a Gain Beyond RAG reward: the improvement in generation accuracy over naïve RAG. s3 requires only 2.4k training samples to outperform baselines trained on over 70 × more data, consistently delivering stronger downstream performance across six general QA and five medical QA benchmarks.

Speaker: Peter Zeng

Location: CS2311

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming scientific discovery, enabling breakthroughs in areas ranging from drug discovery to modeling complex physical systems. In the life sciences, AI has traditionally been applied to prediction tasks such as classifying molecules as toxic or non-toxic, estimating drug properties, or solving partial differential equations. These discriminative models have proven powerful, but they are inherently limited to mapping existing inputs to deterministic outputs. A new wave of methods is shifting the paradigm from discrimination to generation: creating new possibilities, such as generating novel molecules or designing new drugs. By reframing AI as both a predictive and generative engine, this shift offers new pathways for accelerating discovery and innovation in life sciences at an unprecedented scale. This talk will cover several aspects of AI for Science (AI4Sci), beginning with advances in discriminative models for molecular systems and solving PDEs, and then turning to generative approaches, including diffusion models for 3D molecular generation and large language models for drug editing. Together, these developments illustrate how moving from prediction to creation is redefining what AI can contribute to science.

Bio: Wenhan Gao is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Applied Mathematics under the supervision of Professor Yi Liu. He was also a Staff Research Scientist Intern at VISA Research, where he worked on large language models (LLMs) and multi-agent systems for commerce. Wenhan's research focuses on AI for Science (AI4Sci), with a particular emphasis on generative AI. His work looks deep into the fundamental mechanisms of AI models when applied to scientific tasks, and he strives to incorporate established scientific priors, such as symmetry, into model design. He has published papers as a first or corresponding author in leading AI and computational venues, including ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, TMLR, ACL, and the Journal of Computational Physics. In addition to his research, Wenhan has served as a reviewer and oral session chair for top AI conferences and as a lecturer for both undergraduate and graduate courses at Stony Brook University.

Location: IACS Seminar Room or Zoom

This seminar will take place in person and online*

Join Zoom Meeting: https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/91670093552?pwd=2EcniXqPZLTpa4ZBKRs1zAjYqs1LS0.1

Meeting ID: 916 7009 3552
Passcode: 434045

Abstract: The recent expansion of online sport wagering and igaming has led to higher rates of problem gambling, particularly among emerging adults and other population subgroups. The Center for Gambling Studies (CGS) at the Rutgers University, School of Social Work, is using big data analysis, machine learning and GIS mapping to identify geographic locations with populations most at risk to guide the development of targeted interventions. This presentation will review the GIS StoryMap for the State of New Jersey, including a blueprint for the highest risk target service areas in the state. It will also present findings from a machine learning model that identifies the key risk factors for high-intensity online casino bettors. Implications for prevention, treatment and policy initiatives will be discussed.

Bio: Lia Nower, J.D., Ph.D., is a Distinguished Professor, Associate Dean for Research, and Director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University. A clinician and attorney, her research focuses on big data analysis and machine learning models for online gambling and sports wagering; gambling and video gaming among emerging adults; policy initiatives around harm reduction and responsible gambling, and etiology and treatment of problem gambling. Dr. Nower serves as a senior editor for Addiction. She has received both the Research (2019) and the Lifetime Research Award (2022) from the National Council on Problem Gambling and the Board of Trustees Award for Research (2022) from Rutgers University.

Join Zoom Meeting: https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/95617197636?pwd=KytzZ2pVRG9SZGpKZUtpNXJISjNjZz09
Meeting ID: 956 1719 7636 Passcode: 924293

DeepMath Conference on the Mathematical Theory of Deep Neural Networks Recent advances in deep neural networks (DNNs), combined with open, easily-accessible implementations, have made DNNs a powerful, versatile method used widely in both machine learning and neuroscience. These advances in practical results, however, have far outpaced a formal understanding of these networks and their training. The dearth of rigorous analysis for these techniques limits their usefulness in addressing scientific questions and, more broadly, hinders systematic design of the next generation of networks. Recently, long-past-due theoretical results have begun to emerge from researchers in a number of fields. The purpose of this conference is to give visibility to these results, and those that will follow in their wake, to shed light on the properties of large, adaptive, distributed learning architectures, and to revolutionize our understanding of these systems.​​​