Weizhen Qi

Bio: Weizhen Qi is an academic researcher from University of Science and Technology of China. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 58 citations.

CRADLE: Cr oss-backend v a lidation to D etect and L ocalize bugs in D e ep learning libraries

Abstract: Deep learning (DL) systems are widely used in domains including aircraft collision avoidance systems, Alzheimer's disease diagnosis, and autonomous driving cars. Despite the requirement for high reliability, DL systems are difficult to test. Existing DL testing work focuses on testing the DL models, not the implementations (e.g., DL software libraries) of the models. One key challenge of testing DL libraries is the difficulty of knowing the expected output of DL libraries given an input instance. Fortunately, there are multiple implementations of the same DL algorithms in different DL libraries. Thus, we propose CRADLE, a new approach that focuses on finding and localizing bugs in DL software libraries. CRADLE (1) performs cross-implementation inconsistency checking to detect bugs in DL libraries, and (2) leverages anomaly propagation tracking and analysis to localize faulty functions in DL libraries that cause the bugs. We evaluate CRADLE on three libraries (TensorFlow, CNTK, and Theano), 11 datasets (including ImageNet, MNIST, and KGS Go game), and 30 pre-trained models. CRADLE detects 12 bugs and 104 unique inconsistencies, and highlights functions relevant to the causes of inconsistencies for all 104 unique inconsistencies.

Machine Learning Testing: Survey, Landscapes and Horizons

Abstract: This paper provides a comprehensive survey of Machine Learning Testing (ML testing) research. It covers 144 papers on testing properties (e.g., correctness, robustness, and fairness), testing components (e.g., the data, learning program, and framework), testing workflow (e.g., test generation and test evaluation), and application scenarios (e.g., autonomous driving, machine translation). The paper also analyses trends concerning datasets, research trends, and research focus, concluding with research challenges and promising research directions in ML testing.

Deep learning library testing via effective model generation

Abstract: Deep learning (DL) techniques are rapidly developed and have been widely adopted in practice. However, similar to traditional software systems, DL systems also contain bugs, which could cause serious impacts especially in safety-critical domains. Recently, many research approaches have focused on testing DL models, while little attention has been paid for testing DL libraries, which is the basis of building DL models and directly affects the behavior of DL systems. In this work, we propose a novel approach, LEMON, to testing DL libraries. In particular, we (1) design a series of mutation rules for DL models, with the purpose of exploring different invoking sequences of library code and hard-to-trigger behaviors; and (2) propose a heuristic strategy to guide the model generation process towards the direction of amplifying the inconsistent degrees of the inconsistencies between different DL libraries caused by bugs, so as to mitigate the impact of potential noise introduced by uncertain factors in DL libraries. We conducted an empirical study to evaluate the effectiveness of LEMON with 20 release versions of 4 widely-used DL libraries, i.e., TensorFlow, Theano, CNTK, MXNet. The results demonstrate that LEMON detected 24 new bugs in the latest release versions of these libraries, where 7 bugs have been confirmed and one bug has been fixed by developers. Besides, the results confirm that the heuristic strategy for model generation indeed effectively guides LEMON in amplifying the inconsistent degrees for bugs.

Repairing deep neural networks: fix patterns and challenges

Abstract: Significant interest in applying Deep Neural Network (DNN) has fueled the need to support engineering of software that uses DNNs. Repairing software that uses DNNs is one such unmistakable SE need where automated tools could be beneficial; however, we do not fully understand challenges to repairing and patterns that are utilized when manually repairing DNNs. What challenges should automated repair tools address? What are the repair patterns whose automation could help developers? Which repair patterns should be assigned a higher priority for building automated bug repair tools? This work presents a comprehensive study of bug fix patterns to address these questions. We have studied 415 repairs from Stack Overflow and 555 repairs from GitHub for five popular deep learning libraries Caffe, Keras, Tensorflow, Theano, and Torch to understand challenges in repairs and bug repair patterns. Our key findings reveal that DNN bug fix patterns are distinctive compared to traditional bug fix patterns; the most common bug fix patterns are fixing data dimension and neural network connectivity; DNN bug fixes have the potential to introduce adversarial vulnerabilities; DNN bug fixes frequently introduce new bugs; and DNN bug localization, reuse of trained model, and coping with frequent releases are major challenges faced by developers when fixing bugs. We also contribute a benchmark of 667 DNN (bug, repair) instances.

Problems and opportunities in training deep learning software systems: an analysis of variance

Abstract: Deep learning (DL) training algorithms utilize nondeterminism to improve models' accuracy and training efficiency. Hence, multiple identical training runs (e.g., identical training data, algorithm, and network) produce different models with different accuracies and training times. In addition to these algorithmic factors, DL libraries (e.g., TensorFlow and cuDNN) introduce additional variance (referred to as implementation-level variance) due to parallelism, optimization, and floating-point computation. This work is the first to study the variance of DL systems and the awareness of this variance among researchers and practitioners. Our experiments on three datasets with six popular networks show large overall accuracy differences among identical training runs. Even after excluding weak models, the accuracy difference is 10.8%. In addition, implementation-level factors alone cause the accuracy difference across identical training runs to be up to 2.9%, the per-class accuracy difference to be up to 52.4%, and the training time difference to be up to 145.3%. All core libraries (TensorFlow, CNTK, and Theano) and low-level libraries (e.g., cuDNN) exhibit implementation-level variance across all evaluated versions. Our researcher and practitioner survey shows that 83.8% of the 901 participants are unaware of or unsure about any implementation-level variance. In addition, our literature survey shows that only 19.5±3% of papers in recent top software engineering (SE), artificial intelligence (AI), and systems conferences use multiple identical training runs to quantify the variance of their DL approaches. This paper raises awareness of DL variance and directs SE researchers to challenging tasks such as creating deterministic DL implementations to facilitate debugging and improving the reproducibility of DL software and results.

Audee: automated testing for deep learning frameworks

Abstract: Deep learning (DL) has been applied widely, and the quality of DL system becomes crucial, especially for safety-critical applications. Existing work mainly focuses on the quality analysis of DL models, but lacks attention to the underlying frameworks on which all DL models depend. In this work, we propose Audee, a novel approach for testing DL frameworks and localizing bugs. Audee adopts a search-based approach and implements three different mutation strategies to generate diverse test cases by exploring combinations of model structures, parameters, weights and inputs. Audee is able to detect three types of bugs: logical bugs, crashes and Not-a-Number (NaN) errors. In particular, for logical bugs, Audee adopts a cross-reference check to detect behavioural inconsistencies across multiple frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow and PyTorch), which may indicate potential bugs in their implementations. For NaN errors, Audee adopts a heuristic-based approach to generate DNNs that tend to output outliers (i.e., too large or small values), and these values are likely to produce NaN. Furthermore, Audee leverages a causal-testing based technique to localize layers as well as parameters that cause inconsistencies or bugs. To evaluate the effectiveness of our approach, we applied Audee on testing four DL frameworks, i.e., TensorFlow, PyTorch, CNTK, and Theano. We generate a large number of DNNs which cover 25 widely-used APIs in the four frameworks. The results demonstrate that Audee is effective in detecting inconsistencies, crashes and NaN errors. In total, 26 unique unknown bugs were discovered, and 7 of them have already been confirmed or fixed by the developers.