pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Competing LLM Agents in a Non-Cooperative Game of Opinion Polarisation
Authors: Amin Qasmi, Usman Naseem, Mehwish Nasim
Date: 2025-02-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model, Misinformation

We introduce a novel non-cooperative game to analyse opinion formation and resistance, incorporating principles from social psychology such as confirmation bias, resource constraints, and influence penalties. Our simulation features Large Language Model (LLM) agents competing to influence a population, with penalties imposed for generating messages that propagate or counter misinformation. This framework integrates resource optimisation into the agents' decision-making process. Our findings demonstrate that while higher confirmation bias strengthens opinion alignment within groups, it also exacerbates overall polarisation. Conversely, lower confirmation bias leads to fragmented opinions and limited shifts in individual beliefs. Investing heavily in a high-resource debunking strategy can initially align the population with the debunking agent, but risks rapid resource depletion and diminished long-term influence.
UniGO: A Unified Graph Neural Network for Modeling Opinion Dynamics on Graphs
Authors: Hao Li, Hao Jiang, Yuke Zheng, Hao Sun, Wenying Gong
Date: 2025-02-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Graph Neural Network

Polarization and fragmentation in social media amplify user biases, making it increasingly important to understand the evolution of opinions. Opinion dynamics provide interpretability for studying opinion evolution, yet incorporating these insights into predictive models remains challenging. This challenge arises due to the inherent complexity of the diversity of opinion fusion rules and the difficulty in capturing equilibrium states while avoiding over-smoothing. This paper constructs a unified opinion dynamics model to integrate different opinion fusion rules and generates corresponding synthetic datasets. To fully leverage the advantages of unified opinion dynamics, we introduces UniGO, a framework for modeling opinion evolution on graphs. Using a coarsen-refine mechanism, UniGO efficiently models opinion dynamics through a graph neural network, mitigating over-smoothing while preserving equilibrium phenomena. UniGO leverages pretraining on synthetic datasets, which enhances its ability to generalize to real-world scenarios, providing a viable paradigm for applications of opinion dynamics. Experimental results on both synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate UniGO's effectiveness in capturing complex opinion formation processes and predicting future evolution. The pretrained model also shows strong generalization capability, validating the benefits of using synthetic data to boost real-world performance.
Evolving Hate Speech Online: An Adaptive Framework for Detection and Mitigation
Authors: Shiza Ali, Jeremy Blackburn, Gianluca Stringhini
Date: 2025-02-15 00:00:00
Tasks: Blocking, Word Embeddings

The proliferation of social media platforms has led to an increase in the spread of hate speech, particularly targeting vulnerable communities. Unfortunately, existing methods for automatically identifying and blocking toxic language rely on pre-constructed lexicons, making them reactive rather than adaptive. As such, these approaches become less effective over time, especially when new communities are targeted with slurs not included in the original datasets. To address this issue, we present an adaptive approach that uses word embeddings to update lexicons and develop a hybrid model that adjusts to emerging slurs and new linguistic patterns. This approach can effectively detect toxic language, including intentional spelling mistakes employed by aggressors to avoid detection. Our hybrid model, which combines BERT with lexicon-based techniques, achieves an accuracy of 95% for most state-of-the-art datasets. Our work has significant implications for creating safer online environments by improving the detection of toxic content and proactively updating the lexicon. Content Warning: This paper contains examples of hate speech that may be triggering.
Human-Centric Community Detection in Hybrid Metaverse Networks with Integrated AI Entities
Authors: Shih-Hsuan Chiu, Ya-Wen Teng, De-Nian Yang, Ming-Syan Chen
Date: 2025-02-15 00:00:00
Tasks: Community Detection, Graph Neural Network, Navigate

Community detection is a cornerstone problem in social network analysis (SNA), aimed at identifying cohesive communities with minimal external links. However, the rise of generative AI and Metaverse introduce complexities by creating hybrid human-AI social networks (denoted by HASNs), where traditional methods fall short, especially in human-centric settings. This paper introduces a novel community detection problem in HASNs (denoted by MetaCD), which seeks to enhance human connectivity within communities while reducing the presence of AI nodes. Effective processing of MetaCD poses challenges due to the delicate trade-off between excluding certain AI nodes and maintaining community structure. To address this, we propose CUSA, an innovative framework incorporating AI-aware clustering techniques that navigate this trade-off by selectively retaining AI nodes that contribute to community integrity. Furthermore, given the scarcity of real-world HASNs, we devise four strategies for synthesizing these networks under various hypothetical scenarios. Empirical evaluations on real social networks, reconfigured as HASNs, demonstrate the effectiveness and practicality of our approach compared to traditional non-deep learning and graph neural network (GNN)-based methods.
Interpretable Early Warnings using Machine Learning in an Online Game-experiment
Authors: Guillaume Falmagne, Anna B. Stephenson, Simon A. Levin
Date: 2025-02-14 00:00:00

Stemming from physics and later applied to other fields such as ecology, the theory of critical transitions suggests that some regime shifts are preceded by statistical early warning signals. Reddit's r/place experiment, a large-scale social game, provides a unique opportunity to test these signals consistently across thousands of subsystems undergoing critical transitions. In r/place, millions of users collaboratively created compositions, or pixel-art drawings, in which transitions occur when one composition rapidly replaces another. We develop a machine-learning-based early warning system that combines the predictive power of multiple system-specific time series via gradient-boosted decision trees with memory-retaining features. Our method significantly outperforms standard early warning indicators. Trained on the 2022 r/place data, our algorithm detects half of the transitions occurring within 20 minutes at a false positive rate of just 3.7%. Its performance remains robust when tested on the 2023 r/place event, demonstrating generalizability across different contexts. Using SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) for interpreting the predictions, we investigate the underlying drivers of warnings, which could be relevant to other complex systems, especially online social systems. We reveal an interplay of patterns preceding transitions, such as critical slowing down or speeding up, a lack of innovation or coordination, turbulent histories, and a lack of image complexity. These findings show the potential of machine learning indicators in socio-ecological systems for predicting regime shifts and understanding their dynamics.
Prioritized Ranking Experimental Design Using Recommender Systems in Two-Sided Platforms
Authors: Mahyar Habibi, Zahra Khanalizadeh, Negar Ziaeian
Date: 2025-02-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Experimental Design, Recommendation Systems

Interdependencies between units in online two-sided marketplaces complicate estimating causal effects in experimental settings. We propose a novel experimental design to mitigate the interference bias in estimating the total average treatment effect (TATE) of item-side interventions in online two-sided marketplaces. Our Two-Sided Prioritized Ranking (TSPR) design uses the recommender system as an instrument for experimentation. TSPR strategically prioritizes items based on their treatment status in the listings displayed to users. We designed TSPR to provide users with a coherent platform experience by ensuring access to all items and a consistent realization of their treatment by all users. We evaluate our experimental design through simulations using a search impression dataset from an online travel agency. Our methodology closely estimates the true simulated TATE, while a baseline item-side estimator significantly overestimates TATE.
VoLUT: Efficient Volumetric streaming enhanced by LUT-based super-resolution
Authors: Chendong Wang, Anlan Zhang, Yifan Yang, Lili Qiu, Yuqing Yang, Xinyang Jiang, Feng Qian, Suman Banerjee
Date: 2025-02-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Super-Resolution

3D volumetric video provides immersive experience and is gaining traction in digital media. Despite its rising popularity, the streaming of volumetric video content poses significant challenges due to the high data bandwidth requirement. A natural approach to mitigate the bandwidth issue is to reduce the volumetric video's data rate by downsampling the content prior to transmission. The video can then be upsampled at the receiver's end using a super-resolution (SR) algorithm to reconstruct the high-resolution details. While super-resolution techniques have been extensively explored and advanced for 2D video content, there is limited work on SR algorithms tailored for volumetric videos. To address this gap and the growing need for efficient volumetric video streaming, we have developed VoLUT with a new SR algorithm specifically designed for volumetric content. Our algorithm uniquely harnesses the power of lookup tables (LUTs) to facilitate the efficient and accurate upscaling of low-resolution volumetric data. The use of LUTs enables our algorithm to quickly reference precomputed high-resolution values, thereby significantly reducing the computational complexity and time required for upscaling. We further apply adaptive video bit rate algorithm (ABR) to dynamically determine the downsampling rate according to the network condition and stream the selected video rate to the receiver. Compared to related work, VoLUT is the first to enable high-quality 3D SR on commodity mobile devices at line-rate. Our evaluation shows VoLUT can reduce bandwidth usage by 70% , boost QoE by 36.7% for volumetric video streaming and achieve 3D SR speed-up with no quality compromise.
WeVibe: Weight Change Estimation Through Audio-Induced Shelf Vibrations In Autonomous Stores
Authors: Jiale Zhang, Yuyan Wu, Jesse R Codling, Yen Cheng Chang, Julia Gersey, Pei Zhang, Hae Young Noh, Yiwen Dong
Date: 2025-02-17 00:00:00

Weight change estimation is crucial in various applications, particularly for detecting pick-up and put-back actions when people interact with the shelf while shopping in autonomous stores. Moreover, accurate weight change estimation allows autonomous stores to automatically identify items being picked up or put back, ensuring precise cost estimation. However, the conventional approach of estimating weight changes requires specialized weight-sensing shelves, which are densely deployed weight scales, incurring intensive sensor consumption and high costs. Prior works explored the vibration-based weight sensing method, but they failed when the location of weight change varies. In response to these limitations, we made the following contributions: (1) We propose WeVibe, a first item weight change estimation system through active shelf vibration sensing. The main intuition of the system is that the weight placed on the shelf influences the dynamic vibration response of the shelf, thus altering the shelf vibration patterns. (2) We model a physics-informed relationship between the shelf vibration response and item weight across multiple locations on the shelf based on structural dynamics theory. This relationship is linear and allows easy training of a weight estimation model at a new location without heavy data collection. (3) We evaluate our system on a gondola shelf organized as the real-store settings. WeVibe achieved a mean absolute error down to 38.07g and a standard deviation of 31.2g with one sensor and 10% samples from three weight classes on estimating weight change from 0g to 450g, which can be leveraged for differentiating items with more than 100g differences.
QoS based resource management for concurrent operation using MCTS
Authors: Sebastian Durst, Kilian Barth, Tobias Müller, Pascal Marquardt
Date: 2025-02-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, Management

Modern AESA technology enables RF systems to not only perform various radar, communication and electronic warfare tasks on a single aperture, but even to execute multiple tasks concurrently. These capabilities increase system complexity and require intelligent or cognitive resource management. This paper introduces such a resource management framework based on quality of service based resource allocation and Monte Carlo tree search allowing for optimal system usage and profound decision-making. Furthermore, we present experimental verification in a complex application scenario.
Runtime Enforcement of CPS against Signal Temporal Logic
Authors: Han Su, Saumya Shankar, Srinivas Pinisetty, Partha S. Roop, Naijun Zhan
Date: 2025-02-17 00:00:00

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs), especially those involving autonomy, need guarantees of their safety. Runtime Enforcement (RE) is a lightweight method to formally ensure that some specified properties are satisfied over the executions of the system. Hence, there is recent interest in the RE of CPS. However, existing methods are not designed to tackle specifications suitable for the hybrid dynamics of CPS. With this in mind, we develop runtime enforcement of CPS using properties defined in Signal Temporal Logic (STL). In this work, we aim to construct a runtime enforcer for a given STL formula to minimally modify a signal to satisfy the formula. To achieve this, the STL formula to be enforced is first translated into a timed transducer, while the signal to be corrected is encoded as timed words. We provide timed transducers for the temporal operators \emph{until} and \emph{release} noting that other temporal operators can be expressed using these two. Our approach enables effective enforcement of STL properties for CPS. A case study is provided to illustrate the approach and generate empirical evidence of its suitability for CPS.
Dictionary-Learning-Based Data Pruning for System Identification
Authors: Tingna Wang, Sikai Zhang, Limin Sun
Date: 2025-02-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Dictionary Learning, Time Series

System identification is normally involved in augmenting time series data by time shifting and nonlinearisation (via polynomial basis), which introduce redundancy both feature-wise and sample-wise. Many research works focus on reducing redundancy feature-wise, while less attention is paid to sample-wise redundancy. This paper proposes a novel data pruning method, called (mini-batch) FastCan, to reduce sample-wise redundancy based on dictionary learning. Time series data is represented by some representative samples, called atoms, via dictionary learning. The useful samples are selected based on their correlation with the atoms. The method is tested on one simulated dataset and two benchmark datasets. The R-squared between the coefficients of models trained on the full and the coefficients of models trained on pruned datasets is adopted to evaluate the performance of data pruning methods. It is found that the proposed method significantly outperforms the random pruning method.
Reducing Computational Complexity of Rigidity-Based UAV Trajectory Optimization for Real-Time Cooperative Target Localization
Authors: Halim Lee, Jiwon Seo
Date: 2025-02-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Position

Accurate and swift localization of the target is crucial in emergencies. However, accurate position data of a target mobile device, typically obtained from global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), cellular networks, or WiFi, may not always be accessible to first responders. For instance, 1) accuracy and availability can be limited in challenging signal reception environments, and 2) in regions where emergency location services are not mandatory, certain mobile devices may not transmit their location during emergencies. As an alternative localization method, a network of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be employed to passively locate targets by collecting radio frequency (RF) signal measurements, such as received signal strength (RSS). In these situations, UAV trajectories play a critical role in localization performance, influencing both accuracy and search time. Previous studies optimized UAV trajectories using the determinant of the Fisher information matrix (FIM), but its performance declines under unfavorable geometric conditions, such as when UAVs start from a single base, leading to position ambiguity. To address this, our prior work introduced a rigidity-based approach, which improved the search time compared to FIM-based methods in our simulation case. However, the high computational cost of rigidity-based optimization, primarily due to singular value decomposition (SVD), limits its practicality. In this paper, we applied techniques to reduce computational complexity, including randomized SVD, smooth SVD, and vertex pruning.
PPAC Driven Multi-die and Multi-technology Floorplanning
Authors: Cristhian Roman-Vicharra, Yiran Chen, Jiang Hu
Date: 2025-02-15 00:00:00

In heterogeneous integration, where different dies may utilize distinct technologies, floorplanning across multiple dies inherently requires simultaneous technology selection. This work presents the first systematic study of multi-die and multi-technology floorplanning. Unlike many conventional approaches, which are primarily driven by area and wirelength, this study additionally considers performance, power, and cost, highlighting the impact of technology selection. A simulated annealing method and a reinforcement learning techniques are developed. Experimental results show that the proposed techniques significantly outperform a naive baseline approach.
Superposition theorem for flexible grids
Authors: Antoine Marot, Noureddine Henka, Benjamin Donnot, Sami Tazi
Date: 2023-09-30 00:00:00

Flexible grid topology has become a key enabler of flexibility in modern power grids, particularly for congestion management. Studying the effects of combinatorial topological changes is therefore of significant interest, though it remains computationally intensive in most cases. To address this, we revisit the superposition theorem, which has served as the foundation for the decomposition of numerous power system problems over the past decades, particularly those involving changes in generation and loads. However, its application has traditionally been restricted to fixed grid topologies, breaking down as soon as a topology change occurs. In this paper, we extend the superposition theorem to accommodate varying grid topologies by leveraging well-known distribution factors. This unified framework applies to all types of topological changes, including line disconnection and reconnection, as well as bus splitting and merging. We provide numerical experiments to validate our approach and highlight its advantages in terms of speed-up and interpretability. Finally, we demonstrate its application in two key use cases: remedial action search and updated security analysis following a topological change. Our results show that the proposed approach achieves more than an order-of-magnitude speed-up for real-sized grids compared to the fastest power flow solvers.
Nonlinear Feedback Linearization and LQG/LTR Control: A Comparative Study for a Single-Machine Infinite-Bus System
Authors: Pratik Vernekar
Date: 2025-02-15 00:00:00

This paper presents a comparative study of three advanced control strategies for a single-machine infinite-bus (SMIB) system: the nonlinear feedback linearizing controller (NFLC), the integral-NFLC (INFLC), and the linear-quadratic-Gaussian/loop transfer recovery (LQG/LTR) control. The NFLC and INFLC techniques use exact feedback linearization to precisely cancel the SMIB system nonlinearities, enabling the use of decentralized, linear, and optimal controllers for the decoupled generator and turbine-governor systems while remaining unaffected by the SMIB system's internal dynamics and operating conditions. In contrast, the LQG/LTR approach employs an enhanced Kalman filter, designed using the LTR procedure and a detailed frequency-domain loop-shaping analysis, to achieve a reasonable trade-off between optimal performance, noise/disturbance rejection, robustness recovery, and stability margins for the SMIB system. We provide a control synthesis framework for constructing practical, verifiable, scalable, and resilient linear and nonlinear controllers for SMIB and multi-machine power systems by utilizing a high-fidelity plant model for validation, a reduced-order control-design model, and the correlations between the two models' control inputs. Rigorous simulations and comparative analysis of the proposed controllers and a full-state linear-quadratic regulator show the benefits, constraints, and trade-offs of each controller in terms of transient response, steady-state error, robustness, rotor angle stability, frequency control, and voltage regulation under different operating conditions. Ultimately, this study aims to guide the selection of appropriate control strategies for large-scale power systems, enhancing the overall resilience and reliability of the electric grid.
Can Large Language Model Agents Balance Energy Systems?
Authors: Xinxing Ren, Chun Sing Lai, Gareth Taylor, Zekun Guo
Date: 2025-02-14 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model

This paper presents a hybrid approach that integrates Large Language Models (LLMs) with a multi-scenario Stochastic Unit Commitment (SUC) framework to enhance both efficiency and reliability under high wind generation uncertainties. In a 10-trial study on the test energy system, the traditional SUC approach incurs an average total cost of 187.68 million dollars, whereas the LLM-assisted SUC (LLM-SUC) achieves a mean cost of 185.58 million dollars (range: 182.61 to 188.65 million dollars), corresponding to a cost reduction of 1.1 to 2.7 percent. Furthermore, LLM-SUC reduces load curtailment by 26.3 percent (2.24 plus/minus 0.31 GWh versus 3.04 GWh for SUC), while both methods maintain zero wind curtailment. Detailed temporal analysis shows that LLM-SUC achieves lower costs in the majority of time intervals and consistently outperforms SUC in 90 percent of cases, with solutions clustering in a favorable cost-reliability region (Coefficient of Variation = 0.93 percent for total cost and 13.8 percent for load curtailment). By leveraging an LLM agent to guide generator commitment decisions and dynamically adjust to stochastic conditions, the proposed framework improves demand fulfillment and operational resilience.