Publications

Interventional Causal Representation Learning
Kartik Ahuja
Yixin Wang
Divyat Mahajan
Yoshua Bengio
Causal representation learning seeks to extract high-level latent factors from low-level sensory data. Most existing methods rely on observa… (see more)tional data and structural assumptions (e.g., conditional independence) to identify the latent factors. However, interventional data is prevalent across applications. Can interventional data facilitate causal representation learning? We explore this question in this paper. The key observation is that interventional data often carries geometric signatures of the latent factors' support (i.e. what values each latent can possibly take). For example, when the latent factors are causally connected, interventions can break the dependency between the intervened latents' support and their ancestors'. Leveraging this fact, we prove that the latent causal factors can be identified up to permutation and scaling given data from perfect
2023-04-23
ICML.cc/2023/Conference (poster)
doi.org
proceedings.mlr.press
Target-based Surrogates for Stochastic Optimization
Jonathan Wilder Lavington
Sharan Vaswani
Reza Babanezhad Harikandeh
Mark Schmidt
Nicolas Roux
We consider minimizing functions for which it is expensive to compute the gradient. Such functions are prevalent in reinforcement learning, … (see more)imitation learning and bilevel optimization. Our target optimization framework uses the (expensive) gradient computation to construct surrogate functions in a \emph{target space} (e.g. the logits output by a linear model for classification) that can be minimized efficiently. This allows for multiple parameter updates to the model, amortizing the cost of gradient computation. In the full-batch setting, we prove that our surrogate is a global upper-bound on the loss, and can be (locally) minimized using a black-box optimization algorithm. We prove that the resulting majorization-minimization algorithm ensures convergence to a stationary point of the loss. Next, we instantiate our framework in the stochastic setting and propose the
2023-04-23
ICML.cc/2023/Conference (poster)
doi.org
proceedings.mlr.press
Environmental Scan of Existing Digital Health Solutions for Older Adults Living with Neurocognitive Disorders (Mild and Major) and Their Informal Caregivers: Summary Report.
Ambily Jose
Maxime Sasseville
Ellen Gorus
Anik Giguère
Anne Bourbonnais
Samira Abbasgholizadeh Rahimi
Ronald Buyl
Marie-Pierre Gagnon
: Digital health has added numerous promising solutions to enhance the health and wellness of people living with dementia and other cognitiv… (see more)e problems and their informal caregivers. This work aims to summarize currently available digital health solutions and their related characteristics to develop a decision support tool for older adults living with mild or major neurocognitive disorders and their informal caregivers. We conducted an environmental scan to identify digital health solutions from a systematic review and targeted searches for grey literature covering the regions of Canada and Europe. Technological tools were scanned based on a preformatted extraction grid. We assessed their relevance based on selected attributes. We identified 100 available digital health solutions. The majority (56%) were not specific to dementia. Only 28% provided scientific evidence of their effectiveness. Remote patient care, movement tracking and cognitive exercises were the most common purposes of digital health solutions. Most solutions were presented as mobility aid tools, pill dispensers, apps, web, or a combination of these platforms. This knowledge will inform the development of a decision support tool to assist older adults and their informal caregivers in their search for adequate eHealth solutions according to their needs and preferences, based on trustable information.
2023-04-21
Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health (published)
doi.org
An exploratory cross-sectional study of the effects of ongoing relationships with accompanying patients on cancer care experience, self-efficacy, and psychological distress
Marie-Pascale Pomey
Monica Iliescu Nelea
Louise Normandin
Cécile Vialaron
Karine Bouchard
Marie-Andrée Côté
Maria Alejandra Rodriguez Duarte
Djahanchah Philip Ghadiri
Israël Fortin
Danielle Charpentier
Mélanie Lavoie-Tremblay
Nicolas Fernandez
Antoine Boivin
Michel Dorval
Mado Desforges
Catherine Régis
Isabelle Ganache
Lynda Bélanger
Zeev Rosberger
Michel Alain Danino … (see 3 more)
Jean-François Pelletier
Thi Trinh Thuc Vu
Michèle de Guise
Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal in Canada introduced accompanying patients (APs) into the breast cancer care trajectory. … (see more)APs are patients who have been treated for breast cancer and have been integrated into the clinical team to expand the services offered to people affected by cancer. This study describes the profiles of the people who received the support and explores whether one-offs vs ongoing encounters with APs influence their experience of care, on self-efficacy in coping with cancer, and on their level of psychological distress. An exploratory cross-sectional study was carried out among patients to compare patients who had one encounter with an AP (G1) with those who had had several encounters (G2). Five questionnaires were administered on socio-demographic characteristics, care pathway, evaluation of the support experience, self-efficacy in coping with cancer, and level of psychological distress. Logbooks, completed by the APs, determined the number of encounters. Linear regression models were used to evaluate the associations between the number of encounters, patient characteristics, care pathway, number of topics discussed, self-efficacy measures in coping with cancer, and level of psychological distress. Between April 2020 and December 2021, 60% of 535 patients who were offered support from an AP accepted. Of these, one hundred and twenty-four patients participated in the study. The study aimed to recruit a minimum of 70 patients with the expectation of obtaining at least 50 participants, assuming a response rate of 70%. There were no differences between G1 and G2 in terms of sociodemographic data and care pathways. Statistical differences were found between G1 and G2 for impacts on and the return to daily life (p = 0.000), the return to the work and impacts on professional life (p = 0.044), announcement of a diagnosis to family and friends (p = 0.033), and strategies for living with treatment under the best conditions (p = 0.000). Significant differences were found on the topics of cancer (p = 0.000), genetic testing (p = 0.023), therapeutic options (p = 0.000), fatigue following treatment (p = 0.005), pain and discomfort after treatment or surgery (p = 0.000), potential emotions and their management (p = 0.000) and the decision-making processes (p = 0.011). A significant relationship was found between the two groups for patients’ ability to cope with cancer (p = 0.038), and their level of psychological distress at different stages of the care pathway (p = 0.024). This study shows differences between one-time and ongoing support for cancer patients. It highlights the potential for APs to help patients develop self-efficacy and cope with the challenges of cancer treatment.
2023-04-21
BMC Cancer (published)
doi.org
SSS3D: Fast Neural Architecture Search For Efficient Three-Dimensional Semantic Segmentation
Olivier Therrien
Marihan Amein
Zhuoran Xiong
Warren J. Gross
Brett Meyer
We present SSS3D, a fast multi-objective NAS framework designed to find computationally efficient 3D semantic scene segmentation networks. I… (see more)t uses RandLA-Net, an off-the-shelf point-based network, as a super-network to enable weight sharing and reduce search time by 99.67% for single-stage searches. SSS3D has a complex search space composed of sampling and architectural parameters that can form 2.88 * 10^17 possible networks. To further reduce search time, SSS3D splits the complete search space and introduces a two-stage search that finds optimal subnetworks in 54% of the time required by single-stage searches.
2023-04-20
ArXiv (preprint)
doi.org
arxiv.org
The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy by Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry (review)
David M. Krueger
2023-04-20
(published)
www.semanticscholar.org
Assessing the inclusion of children’s surgical care in National Surgical, Obstetric and Anaesthesia Plans: a policy content analysis
Sabrina Wimmer
Paul Truche
Elena Guadagno
Emmanuel Ameh
Lubna Samad
Emmanuel Mwenda Malabo Makasa
Sarah Greenberg
John G Meara
Tonnis H van Dijk
Dan Poenaru
Objective While National Surgical, Obstetric and Anaesthesia Plans (NSOAPs) have emerged as a strategy to strengthen and scale up surgical h… (see more)ealthcare systems in low/middle-income countries (LMICs), the degree to which children’s surgery is addressed is not well-known. This study aims to assess the inclusion of children’s surgical care among existing NSOAPs, identify practice examples and provide recommendations to guide inclusion of children’s surgical care in future policies. Design We performed two qualitative content analyses to assess the inclusion of children’s surgical care among NSOAPs. We applied a conventional (inductive) content analysis approach to identify themes and patterns, and developed a framework based on the Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery’s Optimal Resources for Children’s Surgery document. We then used this framework to conduct a directed (deductive) content analysis of the NSOAPs of Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Zambia. Results Our framework for the inclusion of children’s surgical care in NSOAPs included seven domains. We evaluated six NSOAPs with all addressing at least two of the domains. All six NSOAPs addressed ‘human resources and training’ and ‘infrastructure’, four addressed ‘service delivery’, three addressed ‘governance and financing’, two included ‘research, evaluation and quality improvement’, and one NSOAP addressed ‘equipment and supplies’ and ‘advocacy and awareness’. Conclusions Additional focus must be placed on the development of surgical healthcare systems for children in LMICs. This requires a focus on children’s surgical care separate from adult surgical care in the scaling up of surgical healthcare systems, including children-focused needs assessments and the inclusion of children’s surgery providers in the process. This study proposes a framework for evaluating NSOAPs, highlights practice examples and suggests recommendations for the development of future policies.
2023-04-19
BMJ Open (published)
doi.org
Aspirations and Practice of ML Model Documentation: Moving the Needle with Nudging and Traceability
Avinash Bhat
Austin Coursey
Grace Hu
Sixian Li
Nadia Nahar
Shurui Zhou
Christian Kästner
Jin L.C. Guo
The documentation practice for machine-learned (ML) models often falls short of established practices for traditional software, which impede… (see more)s model accountability and inadvertently abets inappropriate or misuse of models. Recently, model cards, a proposal for model documentation, have attracted notable attention, but their impact on the actual practice is unclear. In this work, we systematically study the model documentation in the field and investigate how to encourage more responsible and accountable documentation practice. Our analysis of publicly available model cards reveals a substantial gap between the proposal and the practice. We then design a tool named DocML aiming to (1) nudge the data scientists to comply with the model cards proposal during the model development, especially the sections related to ethics, and (2) assess and manage the documentation quality. A lab study reveals the benefit of our tool towards long-term documentation quality and accountability.
2023-04-18
Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (published)
doi.org
arxiv.org
Co-Writing Screenplays and Theatre Scripts with Language Models: Evaluation by Industry Professionals
Piotr Mirowski
Kory Mathewson
Jaylen Pittman
Richard Evans
2023-04-18
Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (published)
doi.org
arxiv.org
From Plane Crashes to Algorithmic Harm: Applicability of Safety Engineering Frameworks for Responsible ML
Shalaleh Rismani
Renee Shelby
Andrew J Smart
Edgar Jatho
Joshua A. Kroll
AJung Moon
Negar Rostamzadeh
2023-04-18
Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (published)
doi.org
openreview.net
Investigating the Nature of 3D Generalization in Deep Neural Networks
Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui
David M. Krueger
Thomas M. Breuel
2023-04-18
ArXiv (preprint)
doi.org
arxiv.org
Playing the System: Can Puzzle Players Teach us How to Solve Hard Problems?
Renata Mutalova
Roman Sarrazin-Gendron
Eddie Cai
Gabriel Richard
Parham Ghasemloo Gheidari
Sébastien Caisse
Rob Knight
Mathieu Blanchette
Attila Szantner
Jérôme Waldispühl
With nearly three billion players, video games are more popular than ever. Casual puzzle games are among the most played categories. These g… (see more)ames capitalize on the players’ analytical and problem-solving skills. Can we leverage these abilities to teach ourselves how to solve complex combinatorial problems? In this study, we harness the collective wisdom of millions of players to tackle the classical NP-hard problem of multiple sequence alignment, relevant to many areas of biology and medicine. We show that Borderlands Science players propose solutions to multiple sequence alignment tasks that perform as well or better than standard approaches, while exploring a much larger area of the Pareto-optimal solution space. We also show the strategies of the players, although highly heterogeneous, follow a collective logic that can be mimicked with Behavioral Cloning with minimal performance loss, allowing the players’ collective wisdom to be leveraged for alignment of any sequences.
2023-04-18
International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (published)
doi.org