Research Topics in ML, AI and Deep Learning
A broad survey of machine learning research topics, spanning geometric deep learning, error decomposition and double descent, graph foundation models, transformer limitations and efficiency, diffusion and flow matching, LLM training and alignment, graph ML pipelines, and AI in medicine.
Geometric Deep Learning
Euclidean Geometry
Group Invariance Theorem
Universal Approximation
Player Perceptron, Rosenblatt perceptron
Curse of Dimensionality > neocognitron
LeNet-5
Software 1.0 and 2.0
Graph Neural Network, Chemical Precursors, Weisfeiler-Lehman (WL) test
DeepSets
CNN > Symmetry translation, GNN > Symmetry Permutation
CNNs are translation-equivariant; GNN layers are permutation-equivariant, with permutation-invariant graph readouts. https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.13478
5G of GDL - https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.13478
Grids
Groups
Graphs
Geodesics
Gauges
Supervised ML sources of errors > approximation, estimation, optimization
minimization of empirical risk
Error Decomposition
error decomposition
Total excess error = approximation error + estimation error + optimization error
error vs model complexity
Double Descent
double descent
Nearest Neighbor Classifier
Approximation rates
Soboler Class dimensionality cursed
curse in optimization
benign landscapes
Lipschitz estimation error > too large
Sobolev - approx erro > too small
Graph Foundation Models
knowledge graphs TransE
Message Passing Neural Network
Link Prediction with GNN on Knowledge Graphs
Transferability on Knowledge Graphs
Transformers Research Gaps > Feasible with Less Compute
Quadratic Complexity > LoRA, KV Cache Optimization
Quadratic attention cost > sparse/local/linear attention or FlashAttention; LoRA is for parameter-efficient fine-tuning, while KV-cache optimization targets inference memory. https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.04881
Fixed Context window > Flash Attention, Sliding Window, RAG
Context limits > long-context training, positional scaling and sliding-window attention; RAG supplies external context, while FlashAttention mainly improves efficiency. https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.14135
Lack of Inductive bias > Annotations
Lack of inductive bias > architectural priors such as locality, equivariance, recurrence or structured positional encoding; annotations add supervision. https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.13478
Struggles with Maths
Stochastic Diffusion Models, Deterministic Flow Matching
Diffusion often uses stochastic dynamics, while flow matching usually learns a deterministic ODE vector field; the frameworks can overlap. https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.02747
Applied
Stochastic
Differential
Equations
Recipes for ML success
Large and diverse dataset
clear performance criterion
degenerate solution space
Suitable hypothesis class and tractable optimization
Dataset void training areas:
simple arithmetic
sort listing
thermostat regulation
moral reasoning
Elmo RNN of Language Modeling
ELMo: contextual embeddings derived from a deep bidirectional LSTM language model. https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.05365
Limitations of RNN
RNN trained with back propagation through time
unroll computation graph to standard back prop for each
Slow and difficult to parallelize over long sequences.
Transformers
Self-attention uses queries, keys and values: Q, K and V.
Residual Connection, LayerNorm
Positional embeddings in addition to word embeddings
Casual LM forward probability:
p(xt | x score
triplet of prompt, winning, losing (prompt, Ow, Oc) train R such that R (prompt, Ow) > R (prompt, Oc)
Reinforcement learning from Human Feedback
good to maximize reward with staying close to original model
KL-regularized, PPO and DPO loss
PPO updates - Proximal Policy Optimization, DPO - Direct preference optimization
RL via PPO, RL with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR)
Efficiency Techniques, memory and compute
KV Cache Optimization > Inference
Memory: quantization, 4-bit quantization > 4x memory reduction
4-bit weights are theoretically 4x smaller than FP16 weights, but total runtime savings are lower because of metadata, activations and caches. https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.14314
Parameter-efficient fine-tuning: LoRA. https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.09685
vLLM, multimodal: vision + language, LLaVA
spiking NN, state space models,
Model distillation, long context techniques RoPE ALiBi
Long-context positional methods: RoPE and ALiBi; extending the trained window may still require interpolation, scaling or additional training. https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.13017
Embedding enable generalization
LLM Foundations
ABC scaling, abc-parameterization in μP
Emergent Ability
MMLU tasks few shot prompting:
MMLU is a 57-subject evaluation benchmark, commonly tested in zero-shot or few-shot settings. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.03300
chain of thought prompting Elicit Reasoning in LLM
Reasoning, Question answer
Inference time scaling
Agentic AI Recall, LLM augmented system with MRT: Memory Retrieval Tools
RAG, Data ingestion:
relational deep learning
Graph MC models
RDL architectures
User churn model
Graph ML Problem Solving Pipeline
Relational DB > Relational Graph > Graph Problem > Graph ML
RelBench Tasks
Heterogeneous GNN, Temporal GNN, architectures of RDL models
GNN vs Feature Engineering
Relational IGT improvement
KumoRFM and Griffin
KumoRFM and Griffin are separate relational foundation models; Griffin is explicitly graph-centric. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12596
AI Ready Farm
Graph Transformers: ViT/ MLP-Mixer
Graphormer and Graph ViT/MLP-Mixer; plain ViT and MLP-Mixer originate as vision architectures. https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.05234
Graph positional encoding, Spectral GNN
GCN: most popular technique of GNN
LLM with GNN
LLM Reasoning, LLM sequence to vector, G-retriever, Graph tokens
Graph RAG:
helps LLM hallucinations
proposed approach to LLM
context windows limited
LLM + GNN + Graph RAG = Superior Performance
LLM + GNN + Graph RAG can improve graph-centric tasks, subject to dataset-specific evaluation against strong baselines. https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.07630
Represent graphs as text
model decay
Medical AI
model centric to system centric AI
data privacy, low end devices, edge computing edge AI
success metric, improve health system performance not algorithmic novelty
Applied use cases in Global Health AI
Leltek, BMGF Apps
AI assisted obstetric ultrasound, Uganda
Hallucinations in LVLMs, Data model uncertainty