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Federated Learning is expected to provide strong privacy guarantees, as only gradients or model parameters but no plain text training data i… (see more)s ever exchanged either between the clients or between the clients and the central server. In this paper, we challenge this claim by introducing a simple but still very effective membership inference attack algorithm, which relies only on a single training step. In contrast to the popular honest-but-curious model, we investigate a framework with a dishonest central server. Our strategy is applicable to models with ReLU activations and uses the properties of this activation function to achieve perfect accuracy. Empirical evaluation on visual classification tasks with MNIST, CIFAR10, CIFAR100 and CelebA datasets show that our method provides perfect accuracy in identifying one sample in a training set with thousands of samples. Occasional failures of our method lead us to discover duplicate images in the CIFAR100 and CelebA datasets.
2024-06-30
IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (published)
Traditional reinforcement learning (RL) generates discrete control policies, assigning one action per cycle. These policies are usually impl… (see more)emented as in a fixed-frequency control loop. This rigidity presents challenges as optimal control frequency is task-dependent; suboptimal frequencies increase computational demands and reduce exploration efficiency. Variable Time Step Reinforcement Learning (VTS-RL) addresses these issues with adaptive control frequencies, executing actions only when necessary, thus reducing computational load and extending the action space to include action durations. In this paper we introduce the Multi-Objective Soft Elastic Actor-Critic (MOSEAC) method to perform VTS-RL, validating it through theoretical analysis and experimentation in simulation and on real robots. Results show faster convergence, better training results, and reduced energy consumption with respect to other variable- or fixed-frequency approaches.
Adversarial Training (AT) is a well-known framework designed to mitigate adversarial vulnerabilities in neural networks. Recent research ind… (see more)icates that incorporating adversarial examples (AEs) in training can enhance models' generalization capabilities. To understand the impact of AEs on learning dynamics, we study AT through the lens of sample difficulty methodologies. Our findings show that AT leads to more stable learning dynamics compared to Natural Training (NT), resulting in gradual performance improvements and less overconfident predictions. This suggests that AT steers training away from learning easy, perturbable spurious features toward more resilient and generalizable ones. However, a trade-off exists between adversarial robustness and generalization gains, due to robust overfitting, limiting practical deployment. To address this, we propose using synthesized data to bridge this gap. Our results demonstrate that AT benefits significantly from synthesized data, whereas NT does not, enhancing generalization without compromising robustness and offering new avenues for developing robust and generalizable models.
Economic evaluation of the effect of needle and syringe programs on skin, soft tissue, and vascular infections in people who inject drugs: a microsimulation modelling approach
Jihoon Lim
W. Alton Russell
Mariam El-Sheikh
David L. Buckeridge
Dimitra Panagiotoglou
Needle and syringe programs (NSP) are effective harm-reduction strategies against HIV and hepatitis C. Although skin, soft tissue, and vascu… (see more)lar infections (SSTVI) are the most common morbidities in people who inject drugs (PWID), the extent to which NSP are clinically and cost-effective in relation to SSTVI in PWID remains unclear. The objective of this study was to model the clinical- and cost-effectiveness of NSP with respect to treatment of SSTVI in PWID.
We performed a model-based, economic evaluation comparing a scenario with NSP to a scenario without NSP. We developed a microsimulation model to generate two cohorts of 100,000 individuals corresponding to each NSP scenario and estimated quality-adjusted life-years (QALY) and cost (in 2022 Canadian dollars) over a 5-year time horizon (1.5% per annum for costs and outcomes). To assess the clinical effectiveness of NSP, we conducted survival analysis that accounted for the recurrent use of health care services for treating SSTVI and SSTVI mortality in the presence of competing risks.
The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio associated with NSP was
Predicting the Population Risk of Suicide Using Routinely Collected Health Administrative Data in Quebec, Canada: Model-Based Synthetic Estimation Study