pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Still Haven't Found What You're Looking For -- Detecting the Intent of Web Search Missions from User Interaction Features
Authors: Ran Yu, Limock, Stefan Dietze
Date: 2022-07-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Information Retrieval, Retrieval

Web search is among the most frequent online activities. Whereas traditional information retrieval techniques focus on the information need behind a user query, previous work has shown that user behaviour and interaction can provide important signals for understanding the underlying intent of a search mission. An established taxonomy distinguishes between transactional, navigational and informational search missions, where in particular the latter involve a learning goal, i.e. the intent to acquire knowledge about a particular topic. We introduce a supervised approach for classifying online search missions into either of these categories by utilising a range of features obtained from the user interactions during an online search mission. Applying our model to a dataset of real-world query logs, we show that search missions can be categorised with an average F1 score of 63% and accuracy of 69%, while performance on informational and navigational missions is particularly promising (F1>75%). This suggests the potential to utilise such supervised classification during online search to better facilitate retrieval and ranking as well as to improve affiliated services, such as targeted online ads.
On the Effect of Ranking Axioms on IR Evaluation Metrics
Authors: Fernando Giner
Date: 2022-07-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Retrieval

The study of IR evaluation metrics through axiomatic analysis enables a better understanding of their numerical properties. Some works have modelled the effectiveness of retrieval metrics with axioms that capture desirable properties on the set of rankings of documents. This paper formally explores the effect of these ranking axioms on the numerical values of some IR evaluation metrics. It focuses on the set of ranked lists of documents with multigrade relevance. The possible orderings in this set are derived from three commonly accepted ranking axioms on retrieval metrics; then, they are classified by their latticial properties. When relevant documents are prioritised, a subset of document rankings are identified: the join-irreducible elements, which have some resemblance to the concept of basis in vector space. It is possible to compute the precision, recall, RBP or DCG values of any ranking from their values in the join-irreducible elements. However this is not the case when the swapping of documents is considered.
Is this bug severe? A text-cum-graph based model for bug severity prediction
Authors: Rima Hazra, Arpit Dwivedi, Animesh Mukherjee
Date: 2022-07-01 00:00:00
Tasks: severity prediction

Repositories of large software systems have become commonplace. This massive expansion has resulted in the emergence of various problems in these software platforms including identification of (i) bug-prone packages, (ii) critical bugs, and (iii) severity of bugs. One of the important goals would be to mine these bugs and recommend them to the developers to resolve them. The first step to this is that one has to accurately detect the extent of severity of the bugs. In this paper, we take up this task of predicting the severity of bugs in the near future. Contextualized neural models built on the text description of a bug and the user comments about the bug help to achieve reasonably good performance. Further information on how the bugs are related to each other in terms of the ways they affect packages can be summarised in the form of a graph and used along with the text to get additional benefits.
Understanding EFL Student Idea Generation Strategies for Creative Writing with NLG Tools
Authors: David James Woo, Yanzhi Wang, Hengky Susanto, Kai Guo
Date: 2022-06-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Text Generation

Natural language generation (NLG) is a process within artificial intelligence where computer systems produce human-comprehensible language texts from information. English as a foreign language (EFL) students' use of NLG tools might facilitate their idea generation, which is fundamental to creative writing. However, little is known about how EFL students interact with NLG tools to generate ideas. This study explores strategies adopted by EFL students when searching for ideas using NLG tools, evaluating ideas generated by NLG tools and selecting NLG tools for ideas generation. Four Hong Kong secondary school students attended workshops where they learned to write stories comprising their own words and words generated by NLG tools. After the workshops, they answered questions to reflect on their writing experience with NLG tools. In a thematic analysis of the written reflections, we found students may have existing ideas when searching for ideas and evaluating ideas with NLG tools. Students showed some aversion to ideas generated by NLG tools and selected NLG tools that generated a greater quantity of ideas. The findings inform our understanding of EFL students' concerns when using NLG tools for idea generation and can inform educators' instruction to implement NLG tools for classroom creative writing.
LDC: Lightweight Dense CNN for Edge Detection
Authors: Xavier Soria Poma, Gonzalo Pomboza-Junez, Angel Domingo Sappa
Date: 2022-06-27 00:00:00
Proceeding: IEEE Access 2022 6
Tasks: Edge Detection

This paper presents a Lightweight Dense Convolutional (LDC) neural network for edge detection. The proposed model is an adaptation of two state-of-the-art approaches, but it requires less than 4% of parameters in comparison with these approaches. The proposed architecture generates thin edge maps and reaches the highest score (i.e., ODS) when compared with lightweight models (models with less than 1 million parameters), and reaches a similar performance when compare with heavy architectures (models with about 35 million parameters). Both quantitative and qualitative results and comparisons with state-of-the-art models, using different edge detection datasets, are provided. The proposed LDC does not use pre-trained weights and requires straightforward hyper-parameter settings. The source code is released at https://github.com/xavysp/LDC.
Doubly-Iterative Sparsified MMSE Turbo Equalization for OTFS Modulation
Authors: Haotian Li, QiYue Yu
Date: 2022-07-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Decoder

Currently, orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation has drawn much attention to reliable communications in high-mobility scenarios. This paper proposes a doubly-iterative sparsified minimum mean square error (DI-S-MMSE) turbo equalizer, which iteratively exchanges the extrinsic information between a soft-input-soft-input (SISO) MMSE estimator and a SISO decoder. Our proposed equalizer does not suffer from short loops and approaches the performance of the near-optimal symbol-wise maximum a posteriori (MAP) algorithm. To exploit the inherent sparsity of OTFS system, we resort to graph theory to investigate the sparsity pattern of the channel matrix, and propose two sparsification guidelines to reduce the complexity of calculating the matrix inverse at the MMSE estimator. Then, we apply two iterative algorithms to MMSE estimation, i.e., the Generalized Minimal Residual (GMRES) and Factorized Sparse Approximate Inverse (FSPAI) algorithms. The former is used at the initial turbo iteration, whose global convergence is proven in our equalizer, while the latter is used at the subsequent turbo iterations with the help of our proposed guidelines. Simulation results demonstrate that our equalizer has a linear order of complexity while the performance loss incurred by the sparsification is only 0.2 dB at $10^{-4}$ bit error rate. Simulation codes are available to reproduce the results presented in this paper: https://github.com/Alga53/DISMMSE-Turbo-Equalizer-for-OTFS.
Multifamily Malware Models
Authors: Samanvitha Basole, Fabio Di Troia, Mark Stamp
Date: 2022-06-27 00:00:00
Tasks: BIG-bench Machine Learning, Diversity, Malware Detection

When training a machine learning model, there is likely to be a tradeoff between accuracy and the diversity of the dataset. Previous research has shown that if we train a model to detect one specific malware family, we generally obtain stronger results as compared to a case where we train a single model on multiple diverse families. However, during the detection phase, it would be more efficient to have a single model that can reliably detect multiple families, rather than having to score each sample against multiple models. In this research, we conduct experiments based on byte $n$-gram features to quantify the relationship between the generality of the training dataset and the accuracy of the corresponding machine learning models, all within the context of the malware detection problem. We find that neighborhood-based algorithms generalize surprisingly well, far outperforming the other machine learning techniques considered.
CoVaxNet: An Online-Offline Data Repository for COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Research
Authors: Bohan Jiang, Paras Sheth, Baoxin Li, Huan Liu
Date: 2022-06-30 00:00:00
Tasks: Descriptive

Despite the astonishing success of COVID-19 vaccines against the virus, a substantial proportion of the population is still hesitant to be vaccinated, undermining governmental efforts to control the virus. To address this problem, we need to understand the different factors giving rise to such a behavior, including social media discourses, news media propaganda, government responses, demographic and socioeconomic statuses, and COVID-19 statistics, etc. However, existing datasets fail to cover all these aspects, making it difficult to form a complete picture in inferencing about the problem of vaccine hesitancy. In this paper, we construct a multi-source, multi-modal, and multi-feature online-offline data repository CoVaxNet. We provide descriptive analyses and insights to illustrate critical patterns in CoVaxNet. Moreover, we propose a novel approach for connecting online and offline data so as to facilitate the inference tasks that exploit complementary information sources.
State of the Art of Audio- and Video-Based Solutions for AAL
Authors: Slavisa Aleksic, Michael Atanasov, Jean Calleja Agius, Kenneth Camilleri, Anto Cartolovni, Pau Climent-Peerez, Sara Colantonio, Stefania Cristina, Vladimir Despotovic, Hazim Kemal Ekenel, Ekrem Erakin, Francisco Florez-Revuelta, Danila Germanese, Nicole Grech, Steinunn Gróa Sigurðardóttir, Murat Emirzeoglu, Ivo Iliev, Mladjan Jovanovic, Martin Kampel, William Kearns, Andrzej Klimczuk, Lambros Lambrinos, Jennifer Lumetzberger, Wiktor Mucha, Sophie Noiret, Zada Pajalic, Rodrigo Rodriguez Peerez, Galidiya Petrova, Sintija Petrovica, Peter Pocta, Angelica Poli, Mara Pudane, Susanna Spinsante, Albert Ali Salah, Maria Jose Santofimia, Anna Sigridur Islind, Lacramioara Stoicu-Tivadar, Hilda Tellioglu, Andrej Zgank
Date: 2022-06-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Gesture Recognition

The report illustrates the state of the art of the most successful AAL applications and functions based on audio and video data, namely (i) lifelogging and self-monitoring, (ii) remote monitoring of vital signs, (iii) emotional state recognition, (iv) food intake monitoring, activity and behaviour recognition, (v) activity and personal assistance, (vi) gesture recognition, (vii) fall detection and prevention, (viii) mobility assessment and frailty recognition, and (ix) cognitive and motor rehabilitation. For these application scenarios, the report illustrates the state of play in terms of scientific advances, available products and research project. The open challenges are also highlighted.
Aligning Artificial Intelligence with Humans through Public Policy
Authors: John Nay, James Daily
Date: 2022-06-25 00:00:00

Given that Artificial Intelligence (AI) increasingly permeates our lives, it is critical that we systematically align AI objectives with the goals and values of humans. The human-AI alignment problem stems from the impracticality of explicitly specifying the rewards that AI models should receive for all the actions they could take in all relevant states of the world. One possible solution, then, is to leverage the capabilities of AI models to learn those rewards implicitly from a rich source of data describing human values in a wide range of contexts. The democratic policy-making process produces just such data by developing specific rules, flexible standards, interpretable guidelines, and generalizable precedents that synthesize citizens' preferences over potential actions taken in many states of the world. Therefore, computationally encoding public policies to make them legible to AI systems should be an important part of a socio-technical approach to the broader human-AI alignment puzzle. This Essay outlines research on AI that learn structures in policy data that can be leveraged for downstream tasks. As a demonstration of the ability of AI to comprehend policy, we provide a case study of an AI system that predicts the relevance of proposed legislation to any given publicly traded company and its likely effect on that company. We believe this represents the "comprehension" phase of AI and policy, but leveraging policy as a key source of human values to align AI requires "understanding" policy. Solving the alignment problem is crucial to ensuring that AI is beneficial both individually (to the person or group deploying the AI) and socially. As AI systems are given increasing responsibility in high-stakes contexts, integrating democratically-determined policy into those systems could align their behavior with human goals in a way that is responsive to a constantly evolving society.
Breaking Bad News in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Algorithmic Medicine: An Exploration of Disclosure and its Ethical Justification using the Hedonic Calculus
Authors: Benjamin Post, Cosmin Badea, Aldo Faisal, Stephen J. Brett
Date: 2022-06-23 00:00:00

An appropriate ethical framework around the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare has become a key desirable with the increasingly widespread deployment of this technology. Advances in AI hold the promise of improving the precision of outcome prediction at the level of the individual. However, the addition of these technologies to patient-clinician interactions, as with any complex human interaction, has potential pitfalls. While physicians have always had to carefully consider the ethical background and implications of their actions, detailed deliberations around fast-moving technological progress may not have kept up. We use a common but key challenge in healthcare interactions, the disclosure of bad news (likely imminent death), to illustrate how the philosophical framework of the 'Felicific Calculus' developed in the 18th century by Jeremy Bentham, may have a timely quasi-quantitative application in the age of AI. We show how this ethical algorithm can be used to assess, across seven mutually exclusive and exhaustive domains, whether an AI-supported action can be morally justified.
Experts' View on Challenges and Needs for Fairness in Artificial Intelligence for Education
Authors: Gianni Fenu, Roberta Galici, Mirko Marras
Date: 2022-06-23 00:00:00
Tasks: Fairness

In recent years, there has been a stimulating discussion on how artificial intelligence (AI) can support the science and engineering of intelligent educational applications. Many studies in the field are proposing actionable data mining pipelines and machine-learning models driven by learning-related data. The potential of these pipelines and models to amplify unfairness for certain categories of students is however receiving increasing attention. If AI applications are to have a positive impact on education, it is crucial that their design considers fairness at every step. Through anonymous surveys and interviews with experts (researchers and practitioners) who have published their research at top-tier educational conferences in the last year, we conducted the first expert-driven systematic investigation on the challenges and needs for addressing fairness throughout the development of educational systems based on AI. We identified common and diverging views about the challenges and the needs faced by educational technologies experts in practice, that lead the community to have a clear understanding on the main questions raising doubts in this topic. Based on these findings, we highlighted directions that will facilitate the ongoing research towards fairer AI for education.
Can Population-based Engagement Improve Personalisation? A Novel Dataset and Experiments
Authors: Sahan Bulathwela, Meghana Verma, Maria Perez-Ortiz, Emine Yilmaz, John Shawe-Taylor
Date: 2022-06-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Descriptive, Prediction

This work explores how population-based engagement prediction can address cold-start at scale in large learning resource collections. The paper introduces i) VLE, a novel dataset that consists of content and video based features extracted from publicly available scientific video lectures coupled with implicit and explicit signals related to learner engagement, ii) two standard tasks related to predicting and ranking context-agnostic engagement in video lectures with preliminary baselines and iii) a set of experiments that validate the usefulness of the proposed dataset. Our experimental results indicate that the newly proposed VLE dataset leads to building context-agnostic engagement prediction models that are significantly performant than ones based on previous datasets, mainly attributing to the increase of training examples. VLE dataset's suitability in building models towards Computer Science/ Artificial Intelligence education focused on e-learning/ MOOC use-cases is also evidenced. Further experiments in combining the built model with a personalising algorithm show promising improvements in addressing the cold-start problem encountered in educational recommenders. This is the largest and most diverse publicly available dataset to our knowledge that deals with learner engagement prediction tasks. The dataset, helper tools, descriptive statistics and example code snippets are available publicly.
SmartMask- Developing an automated self-care system
Authors: Ruchita Bhadre, Prathamesh Yeole, Tejas Ranka, Rohini Mudhalwadkar
Date: 2022-06-15 00:00:00

COVID-19 has changed our world and has filled people with fear and anxiety. Everyone has a fear of coming in contact with people having the Coronavirus. In Spite of releasing full lockdowns, there is still a pressing need to maintain social distancing in the short- to medium-term to control the spread of coronavirus. Due to lack of self discipline or obviously pulling down the mask to get some fresh air, might pose a threat when you come near a person showing COVID symptoms. Abiding to WHO guidelines to avoid touching the mask while wearing it, we propose a wearable device for no contact pulling up of mask on face and additionally to implement social distancing with sensors mounted on the device. The SmartMask will detect if we are in the vicinity of any other person and will pull itself up. With sensors for detecting the closeness of objects around you and prompting you to take a proper action or pull the mask automatically. Along with the automated mask we will incorporate a temperature sensor to check vitals of an individual at all times and give an alert to the peers around him. This will ensure social distancing and help in avoiding spread of the virus.
"COVID-19 was a FIFA conspiracy #curropt": An Investigation into the Viral Spread of COVID-19 Misinformation
Authors: Alexander Wang, Jerry Sun, Kaitlyn Chen, Kevin Zhou, Edward Li Gu, Chenxin Fang
Date: 2022-06-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Misinformation

The outbreak of the infectious and fatal disease COVID-19 has revealed that pandemics assail public health in two waves: first, from the contagion itself and second, from plagues of suspicion and stigma. Now, we have in our hands and on our phones an outbreak of moral controversy. Modern dependency on social medias has not only facilitated access to the locations of vaccine clinics and testing sites but also-and more frequently-to the convoluted explanations of how "COVID-19 was a FIFA conspiracy"[1]. The MIT Media Lab finds that false news "diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than truth, in all categories of information, and by an order of magnitude"[2]. The question is, how does the spread of misinformation interact with a physical epidemic disease? In this paper, we estimate the extent to which misinformation has influenced the course of the COVID-19 pandemic using natural language processing models and provide a strategy to combat social media posts that are likely to cause widespread harm.
Think About the Stakeholders First! Towards an Algorithmic Transparency Playbook for Regulatory Compliance
Authors: Andrew Bell, Oded Nov, Julia Stoyanovich
Date: 2022-06-10 00:00:00

Increasingly, laws are being proposed and passed by governments around the world to regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems implemented into the public and private sectors. Many of these regulations address the transparency of AI systems, and related citizen-aware issues like allowing individuals to have the right to an explanation about how an AI system makes a decision that impacts them. Yet, almost all AI governance documents to date have a significant drawback: they have focused on what to do (or what not to do) with respect to making AI systems transparent, but have left the brunt of the work to technologists to figure out how to build transparent systems. We fill this gap by proposing a novel stakeholder-first approach that assists technologists in designing transparent, regulatory compliant systems. We also describe a real-world case-study that illustrates how this approach can be used in practice.
Auxiliary Task Guided Interactive Attention Model for Question Difficulty Prediction
Authors: Venktesh V, Md. Shad Akhtar, Mukesh Mohania, Vikram Goyal
Date: 2022-05-24 00:00:00

Online learning platforms conduct exams to evaluate the learners in a monotonous way, where the questions in the database may be classified into Bloom's Taxonomy as varying levels in complexity from basic knowledge to advanced evaluation. The questions asked in these exams to all learners are very much static. It becomes important to ask new questions with different difficulty levels to each learner to provide a personalized learning experience. In this paper, we propose a multi-task method with an interactive attention mechanism, Qdiff, for jointly predicting Bloom's Taxonomy and difficulty levels of academic questions. We model the interaction between the predicted bloom taxonomy representations and the input representations using an attention mechanism to aid in difficulty prediction. The proposed learning method would help learn representations that capture the relationship between Bloom's taxonomy and difficulty labels. The proposed multi-task method learns a good input representation by leveraging the relationship between the related tasks and can be used in similar settings where the tasks are related. The results demonstrate that the proposed method performs better than training only on difficulty prediction. However, Bloom's labels may not always be given for some datasets. Hence we soft label another dataset with a model fine-tuned to predict Bloom's labels to demonstrate the applicability of our method to datasets with only difficulty labels.