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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241106T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241106T150000
DTSTAMP:20260720T130616
CREATED:20241021T164918Z
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UID:10003617-1730901600-1730905200@cmsa.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Is Behavior Cloning All You Need? Understanding Horizon in Imitation Learning
DESCRIPTION:New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar \nSpeaker: Dylan Foster\, Microsoft Research \nTitle: Is Behavior Cloning All You Need? Understanding Horizon in Imitation Learning \nAbstract: Imitation learning (IL) aims to mimic the behavior of an expert in a sequential decision making task by learning from demonstrations\, and has been widely applied to robotics\, autonomous driving\, and autoregressive language generation. The simplest approach to IL\, behavior cloning (BC)\, is thought to incur sample complexity with unfavorable quadratic dependence on the problem horizon\, motivating a variety of different online algorithms that attain improved linear horizon dependence under stronger assumptions on the data and the learner’s access to the expert.In this talk\, we revisit the apparent gap between offline and online IL from a learning-theoretic perspective\, with a focus on general policy classes up to and including deep neural networks. Through a new analysis of behavior cloning with the logarithmic loss\, we will show that it is possible to achieve horizon-independent sample complexity in offline IL whenever (i) the range of the cumulative payoffs is controlled\, and (ii) an appropriate notion of supervised learning complexity for the policy class is controlled. When specialized to stationary policies\, this implies that the gap between offline and online IL is smaller than previously thought. We will then discuss implications of this result and investigate the extent to which it bears out empirically. \nBio: Dylan Foster is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research\, New York. Previously\, he was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT\, and received his PhD in computer science from Cornell University\, advised by Karthik Sridharan. His research focuses on problems at the intersection of machine learning\, AI\, interactive decision making. He has received several awards for his work\, including the best paper award at COLT (2019) and best student paper award at COLT (2018\, 2019). \n 
URL:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event/newtech_11624/
LOCATION:CMSA Room G10\, CMSA\, 20 Garden Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/media/CMSA-NTM-Seminar-11.6.24.png
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241113T100000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241113T230000
DTSTAMP:20260720T130616
CREATED:20241017T141250Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241115T175125Z
UID:10003613-1731492000-1731538800@cmsa.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Frontier of Formal Theorem Proving with Large Language Models: Insights from the DeepSeek-Prover Series
DESCRIPTION:New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar \nSpeaker: Huajian Xin\, DeepSeek \nTitle: Frontier of Formal Theorem Proving with Large Language Models: Insights from the DeepSeek-Prover Series \nAbstract: Recent advances in large language models have markedly influenced mathematical reasoning and automated theorem proving within artificial intelligence. Yet\, despite their success in natural language tasks\, these models face notable obstacles in formal theorem proving environments such as Lean and Isabelle\, where exacting derivations must adhere to strict formal specifications. Even state-of-the-art models encounter difficulty generating accurate and complex formal proofs\, revealing the unique blend of mathematical rigor required in this domain. In the DeepSeek-Prover series (V1 and V1.5)\, we have explored specialized methodologies aimed at addressing these challenges. This talk will delve into three foundational areas: the synthesis of training data through autoformalization\, reinforcement learning that utilizes feedback from proof assistants\, and test-time optimization using Monte Carlo tree search. I will also provide insights into current model capabilities\, persistent challenges\, and the future potential of large language models in automated theorem proving.
URL:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event/newtech_111324/
LOCATION:Virtual
CATEGORIES:New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/media/CMSA-NTM-Seminar-11.13.24.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241120T100000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241120T230000
DTSTAMP:20260720T130616
CREATED:20241017T153402Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241115T183929Z
UID:10003614-1732096800-1732143600@cmsa.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Thinking Like Transformers - A Practical Session
DESCRIPTION:New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar \nSpeaker: Gail Weiss\, EPFL \nTitle: Thinking Like Transformers – A Practical Session \nAbstract: With the help of the RASP programming language\, we can better imagine how transformers—the powerful attention based sequence processing architecture—solve certain tasks. Some tasks\, such as simply repeating or reversing an input sequence\, have reasonably straightforward solutions\, but many others are more difficult. To unlock a fuller intuition of what can and cannot be achieved with transformers\, we must understand not just the RASP operations but also how to use them effectively.\nIn this session\, I would like to discuss some useful tricks with you in more detail. How is the powerful selector_width operation yielded from the true RASP operations? How can a fixed-depth RASP program perform arbitrary length long-addition\, despite the equally large number of potential carry operations such a computation entails? How might a transformer perform in-context reasoning? And are any of these solutions reasonable\, i.e.\, realisable in practice? I will begin with a brief introduction of the base RASP operations to ground our discussion\, and then walk us through several interesting task solutions. Following this\, and armed with this deeper intuition of how transformers solve several tasks\, we will conclude with a discussion of what this implies for how knowledge and computations must spread out in transformer layers and embeddings in practice.
URL:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event/newtech_112024/
LOCATION:Virtual
CATEGORIES:New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/media/CMSA-NTM-Seminar-11.20.24.png
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