Accurate prediction of contagious disease outbreaks is vital for informed decision-making. Our study addresses the gap between machine learning algorithms and their epidemiological applications, noting that methods optimal for benchmark datasets often underperform with real-world data due to difficulties in incorporating mobility information. We adopt a two-phase approach: first, assessing the significance of mobility data through a pilot study, then evaluating the impact of Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) on a transformer backbone. Our findings reveal that while mobility data and GCN modules do not significantly enhance forecasting performance, the inclusion of mortality and hospitalization data markedly improves model accuracy. Additionally, a comparative analysis between GCN-derived spatial maps and lockdown orders suggests a notable correlation, highlighting the potential of spatial maps as sensitive indicators for mobility. Our research offers a novel perspective on mobility representation in predictive modeling for contagious diseases, empowering decision-makers to better prepare for future outbreaks.

Vision-Language Translation (VLT) is a challenging task that requires accurately recognizing multilingual text embedded in images and translating it into the target language with the support of visual context. While recent Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) have demonstrated strong multilingual and visual understanding capabilities, there is a lack of systematic evaluation and understanding of their performance on VLT. In this work, we present a comprehensive study of VLT from three key perspectives: data quality, model architecture, and evaluation metrics. (1) We identify critical limitations in existing datasets, particularly in semantic and cultural fidelity, and introduce AibTrans -- a multilingual, parallel, human-verified dataset with OCR-corrected annotations. (2) We benchmark 11 commercial LVLMs/LLMs and 6 state-of-the-art open-source models across end-to-end and cascaded architectures, revealing their OCR dependency and contrasting generation versus reasoning behaviors. (3) We propose Density-Aware Evaluation to address metric reliability issues under varying contextual complexity, introducing the DA Score as a more robust measure of translation quality. Building upon these findings, we establish a new evaluation benchmark for VLT. Notably, we observe that fine-tuning LVLMs on high-resource language pairs degrades cross-lingual performance, and we propose a balanced multilingual fine-tuning strategy that effectively adapts LVLMs to VLT without sacrificing their generalization ability.

Machine learning models should not reveal particular information that is not otherwise accessible. Differential privacy provides a formal framework to mitigate privacy risks by ensuring that the inclusion or exclusion of any single data point does not significantly alter the output of an algorithm, thus limiting the exposure of private information. This survey paper explores the foundational definitions of differential privacy, reviews its original formulations and tracing its evolution through key research contributions. It then provides an in-depth examination of how DP has been integrated into machine learning models, analyzing existing proposals and methods to preserve privacy when training ML models. Finally, it describes how DP-based ML techniques can be evaluated in practice. %Finally, it discusses the broader implications of DP, highlighting its potential for public benefit, its real-world applications, and the challenges it faces, including vulnerabilities to adversarial attacks. By offering a comprehensive overview of differential privacy in machine learning, this work aims to contribute to the ongoing development of secure and responsible AI systems.

--Research on lane change prediction has gained a lot of momentum in the last couple of years. However, most research is confined to simulation or results obtained from datasets, leaving a gap between algorithmic advances and on-road deployment. This work closes that gap by demonstrating, on real hardware, a lane-change prediction system based on Knowledge Graph Embeddings (KGEs) and Bayesian inference. Moreover, the ego-vehicle employs a longitudinal braking action to ensure the safety of both itself and the surrounding vehicles. Our architecture consists of two modules: (i) a perception module that senses the environment, derives input numerical features, and converts them into linguistic categories; and communicates them to the prediction module; (ii) a pretrained prediction module that executes a KGE and Bayesian inference model to anticipate the target vehicle's maneuver and transforms the prediction into longitudinal braking action. Real-world hardware experimental validation demonstrates that our prediction system anticipates the target vehicle's lane change three to four seconds in advance, providing the ego vehicle sufficient time to react and allowing the target vehicle to make the lane change safely. Traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of death worldwide. As road networks become more complex and the number of vehicles increases, the ability to anticipate the lane change maneuvers of surrounding vehicles becomes not only beneficial but also essential for enhancing road safety. That's why research on lane change prediction has gained significant momentum in recent years.

We surveyed 582 AI researchers who have published in leading AI venues and 838 nationally representative US participants about their views on the potential development of AI systems with subjective experience and how such systems should be treated and governed. When asked to estimate the chances that such systems will exist on specific dates, the median responses were 1% (AI researchers) and 5% (public) by 2024, 25% and 30% by 2034, and 70% and 60% by 2100, respectively. The median member of the public thought there was a higher chance that AI systems with subjective experience would never exist (25%) than the median AI researcher did (10%). Both groups perceived a need for multidisciplinary expertise to assess AI subjective experience. Although support for welfare protections for such AI systems exceeded opposition, it remained far lower than support for protections for animals or the environment. Attitudes toward moral and governance issues were divided in both groups, especially regarding whether such systems should be created and what rights or protections they should receive. Y et a majority of respondents in both groups agreed that safeguards against the potential risks from AI systems with subjective experience should be implemented by AI developers now, and if created, AI systems with subjective experience should treat others well, behave ethically, and be held accountable. Overall, these results suggest that both AI researchers and the public regard the emergence of AI systems with subjective experience as a possibility this century, though substantial uncertainty and disagreement remain about the timeline and appropriate response. Noemi Dreksler (corresponding author) can be reached under noemi.dreksler@governance.ai.

Quantum error correction is crucial for protecting quantum information against decoherence. Traditional codes like the surface code require substantial overhead, making them impractical for near-term, early fault-tolerant devices. We propose a novel objective function for tailoring error correction codes to specific noise structures by maximizing the distinguishability between quantum states after a noise channel, ensuring efficient recovery operations. We formalize this concept with the distinguishability loss function, serving as a machine learning objective to discover resource-efficient encoding circuits optimized for given noise characteristics. We implement this methodology using variational techniques, termed variational quantum error correction (VarQEC). Our approach yields codes with desirable theoretical and practical properties and outperforms standard codes in various scenarios. We also provide proof-of-concept demonstrations on IBM and IQM hardware devices, highlighting the practical relevance of our procedure.

In sports analytics, home field advantage is a robust phenomenon where the home team wins more games than the away team. However, discovering the causal factors behind home field advantage presents unique challenges due to the non-stationary, time-varying environment of sports matches. In response, we propose a novel causal discovery method, DYnamic Non-stAtionary local M-estimatOrs (DYNAMO), to learn the time-varying causal structures of home field advantage. DYNAMO offers flexibility by integrating various loss functions, making it practical for learning linear and non-linear causal structures from a general class of non-stationary causal processes. By leveraging local information, we provide theoretical guarantees for the identifiability and estimation consistency of non-stationary causal structures without imposing additional assumptions. Simulation studies validate the efficacy of DYNAMO in recovering time-varying causal structures. We apply our method to high-resolution event data from the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 English Premier League seasons, during which the former season had no audience presence. Our results reveal intriguing, time-varying, team-specific field advantages influenced by referee bias, which differ significantly with and without crowd support. Furthermore, the time-varying causal structures learned by our method improve goal prediction accuracy compared to existing methods.

Evaluating generative models with open-ended generation is challenging due to inconsistencies in response formats. Multiple-choice (MC) evaluation mitigates this issue, but generating high-quality distractors is time-consuming and labor-intensive. We introduce D-GEN, the first open-source distractor generator model that transforms open-ended data into an MC format. To evaluate distractor quality, we propose two novel methods: (1) ranking alignment, ensuring generated distractors retain the discriminatory power of ground-truth distractors, and (2) entropy analysis, comparing model confidence distributions. Our results show that D-GEN preserves ranking consistency (Spearman's rho 0.99, Kendall's tau 0.94) and closely matches the entropy distribution of ground-truth distractors. Human evaluation further confirms the fluency, coherence, distractiveness, and incorrectness. Our work advances robust and efficient distractor generation with automated evaluation, setting a new standard for MC evaluation.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) speech generation and voice cloning technologies have produced naturalistic speech and accurate voice replication, yet their influence on sociotechnical systems across diverse accents and linguistic traits is not fully understood. This study evaluates two synthetic AI voice services (Speechify and ElevenLabs) through a mixed methods approach using surveys and interviews to assess technical performance and uncover how users' lived experiences influence their perceptions of accent variations in these speech technologies. Our findings reveal technical performance disparities across five regional, English-language accents and demonstrate how current speech generation technologies may inadvertently reinforce linguistic privilege and accent-based discrimination, potentially creating new forms of digital exclusion. Overall, our study highlights the need for inclusive design and regulation by providing actionable insights for developers, policymakers, and organizations to ensure equitable and socially responsible AI speech technologies.

A sewer robot that monitors pipework and raises blockage alerts before flooding occurs is set for its first mission. Pipebot Patrol is a 1.8m project led by Northumbrian Water and funded by the Ofwat Water Breakthrough Challenge. The robot can inspect miles of pipes over a 30-day period and automatically report back issues from underground. A spokesman for the water company said the robot would be a "game-changer" and would help cut down the number of emergency repairs. Northumbria Water said 10 organisations had played a part in the robot's development, including councils in Sunderland, Gateshead and Newcastle.