Enforcing Fundamental Relations via Adversarial Attacks on Input Parameter Correlations

Computing and Software for Big Science, vol. 9

Abstract

Abstract Correlations between input parameters play a crucial role in many scientific classification tasks, since these are often related to fundamental laws of nature. For example, in high energy physics, one common deep learning use-case is the classification of signal and background processes in particle collisions. In many such cases, the fundamental principles of the correlations between observables are often better understood than the actual distributions of the observables themselves. In this work, we present a new adversarial attack algorithm called Random Distribution Shuffle Attack (RDSA) , emphasizing the correlations between observables in the network rather than individual feature characteristics. Correct application of the proposed novel attack can result in a significant improvement in classification performance—particularly in the context of data augmentation—when using the generated adversaries within adversarial training. Given that correlations between input features are also crucial in many other disciplines, we demonstrate the RDSA effectiveness on six classification tasks, including two particle collision challenges (using CERN Open Data), hand-written digit recognition (MNIST784), human activity recognition (HAR), weather forecasting (Rain in Australia), and ICU patient mortality (MIMIC-IV), demonstrating a general use case beyond fundamental physics for this new type of adversarial attack algorithm.

Authors 7

1. Lucie Flek

   University of Bonn · Bonn Aachen International Center for Information Technology

   Affiliation as printed

   Bonn-Aachen Institute of Technology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

2. Akbar Karimi

   University of Bonn · Bonn Aachen International Center for Information Technology

   Affiliation as printed

   Bonn-Aachen Institute of Technology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

3. Timo Saala corresponding

   University of Bonn

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Physics, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

4. Alexander G. Schmidt Aachen Physics Institute III A

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Physics Institute III A, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

5. M. Schott

   University of Bonn

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Physics, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

6. Philipp Soldin Aachen Physics Institute III B

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Physics Institute III B, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

7. Christopher H. Wiebusch Aachen Physics Institute III B

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Physics Institute III B, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany