The Cambridge Security Research Computer Laboratory has a really lovely blog series called ‘Three Paper Tuesday’ that I wish other organizations would adopt.
They have a guest (and usually a graduate student) provide concise summaries of three papers and then have a short 2-3 paragraph ‘Lessons Learned’ section to conclude the post. Not only do readers get annotated bibliographies for each entry but, perhaps more importantly, the lessons learned means that non-experts can appreciate the literature in a broader or more general context. The post aboutsubverting neural networks, as an example, concludes with:
On the balance of the findings from these papers, adversarial reprogramming can be characterised as a relatively simple and cost-effective method for attackers seeking to subvert machine learning models across multiple domains. The potential for adversarial programs to successfully avoid detection and be deployed in black-box settings further highlights the risk implications for stakeholders.
Elsayed et al. identify theft of computational resources and violation of the ethical principles of service providers as future challenges presented by adversarial reprogramming, using the hypothetical example of repurposing a virtual assistant as spyware or a spambot. Identified directions for future research include establishing the formal properties and limitations of adversarial reprogramming, and studying potential methods to defend against it.
If more labs and research groups did this, I’d imagine it would help to spread awareness of some research and its actual utility or importance in advancing the state of knowledge to the benefit of other academics. It would also have the benefit of showcasing to policymakers what key issues actually are and where research lines are trending, and thus empower them (and, perhaps, even journalists) to better take up the issues that they happen to be focused on. That would certainly be a win for everybody: it’d be easier to identify articles of interest for researchers, relevance of research for practitioners, and showcase the knowledge and communication skills of graduate students.
Excited Pixels 