Cognitive psychology investigates perception, attention, memory, language, problem-solving, decision-making, and reasoning. Kahneman's dual-system theory elucidates the human decision-making process, distinguishing between the rapid, intuitive System 1 and the deliberative, rational System 2. Recent advancements have positioned large language Models (LLMs) as formidable tools nearing human-level proficiency in various cognitive tasks. Nonetheless, the presence of a dual-system framework analogous to human cognition in LLMs remains unexplored. This study introduces the \textbf{CogniDual Framework for LLMs} (CFLLMs), designed to assess whether LLMs can, through self-training, evolve from deliberate deduction to intuitive responses, thereby emulating the human process of acquiring and mastering new information. Our findings reveal the cognitive mechanisms behind LLMs' response generation, enhancing our understanding of their capabilities in cognitive psychology. Practically, self-trained models can provide faster responses to certain queries, reducing computational demands during inference.

This research investigates the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to predict the toxicity of nanoparticles, a pressing concern due to their pervasive use in various industries and the inherent challenges in assessing their biological interactions. Employing models such as Decision Trees, Random Forests, and XGBoost, the study focuses on analyzing physicochemical properties like size, shape, surface charge, and chemical composition to determine their influence on toxicity. Our findings highlight the significant role of oxygen atoms, particle size, surface area, dosage, and exposure duration in affecting toxicity levels. The use of machine learning allows for a nuanced understanding of the intricate patterns these properties form in biological contexts, surpassing traditional analysis methods in efficiency and predictive power. These advancements aid in developing safer nanomaterials through computational chemistry, reducing reliance on costly and time-consuming experimental methods. This approach not only enhances our understanding of nanoparticle behavior in biological systems but also streamlines the safety assessment process, marking a significant stride towards integrating computational techniques in nanotoxicology.

The United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and several other countries have signed an AI safety treaty laid out by the Council of Europe (COE), an international standards and human rights organization. This landmark treaty, known as the Framework Convention on artificial intelligence and human rights, democracy, and the rule of law, opened for signature in Vilnius, Lithuania. It is the first legally binding international agreement aimed at ensuring that AI systems align with democratic values. The treaty focuses on three main areas: protecting human rights (including privacy and preventing discrimination), safeguarding democracy, and upholding the rule of law. It also provides a legal framework covering the entire lifecycle of AI systems, promoting innovation, and managing potential risks.

John Lewis brings back'never knowingly undersold' Getty Images Retailer John Lewis is bringing back its "never knowingly undersold" price pledge from Monday, two years after abandoning it. It will also apply to online sales for the first time, whereas it previously only applied to in-store shopping, and will use AI to match the prices of 25 top retailers. The department store chain has been trying to win back customers after a tough few years that has seen it cut jobs and close several stores. It swung back to profit earlier this year, but is expected to continue shedding jobs as it seeks to revive its fortunes. The decision by John Lewis' new managing director Pete Ruis to restore the price pledge marks a change of direction from his predecessor.

Language models are known to absorb biases from their training data, leading to predictions driven by statistical regularities rather than semantic relevance. We investigate the impact of these biases on answer choice preferences in the Massive Multi-Task Language Understanding (MMLU) task. Our findings reveal that differences in learned regularities across answer options are predictive of model preferences and mirror human test-taking strategies. To address this issue, we introduce two novel methods: Counterfactual Prompting with Chain of Thought (CoT) and Counterfactual Prompting with Agnostically Primed CoT (APriCoT). We demonstrate that while Counterfactual Prompting with CoT alone is insufficient to mitigate bias, our novel Primed Counterfactual Prompting with CoT approach effectively reduces the influence of base-rate probabilities while improving overall accuracy. Our results suggest that mitigating bias requires a "System-2" like process and that CoT reasoning is susceptible to confirmation bias under some prompting methodologies. Our contributions offer practical solutions for developing more robust and fair language models.

The development of Large Language Models (LLMs) has revolutionized Q&A across various industries, including the database domain. However, there is still a lack of a comprehensive benchmark to evaluate the capabilities of different LLMs and their modular components in database Q&A. To this end, we introduce DQA, the first comprehensive database Q&A benchmark. DQA features an innovative LLM-based method for automating the generation, cleaning, and rewriting of database Q&A, resulting in over 240,000 Q&A pairs in English and Chinese. These Q&A pairs cover nearly all aspects of database knowledge, including database manuals, database blogs, and database tools. This inclusion allows for additional assessment of LLMs' Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and Tool Invocation Generation (TIG) capabilities in the database Q&A task. Furthermore, we propose a comprehensive LLM-based database Q&A testbed on DQA. This testbed is highly modular and scalable, with both basic and advanced components like Question Classification Routing (QCR), RAG, TIG, and Prompt Template Engineering (PTE). Besides, DQA provides a complete evaluation pipeline, featuring diverse metrics and a standardized evaluation process to ensure comprehensiveness, accuracy, and fairness. We use DQA to evaluate the database Q&A capabilities under the proposed testbed comprehensively. The evaluation reveals findings like (i) the strengths and limitations of nine different LLM-based Q&A bots and (ii) the performance impact and potential improvements of various service components (e.g., QCR, RAG, TIG). We hope our benchmark and findings will better guide the future development of LLM-based database Q&A research.

Background: The 2024 Mpox outbreak, particularly severe in Africa with clade 1b emergence, has highlighted critical gaps in diagnostic capabilities in resource-limited settings. This study aimed to develop and validate an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven, on-device screening tool for Mpox, designed to function offline in low-resource environments. Methods: We developed a YOLOv8n-based deep learning model trained on 2,700 images (900 each of Mpox, other skin conditions, and normal skin), including synthetic data. The model was validated on 360 images and tested on 540 images. A larger external validation was conducted using 1,500 independent images. Performance metrics included accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, sensitivity, and specificity. Findings: The model demonstrated high accuracy (96%) in the final test set. For Mpox detection, it achieved 93% precision, 97% recall, and an F1-score of 95%. Sensitivity and specificity for Mpox detection were 97% and 96%, respectively. Performance remained consistent in the larger external validation, confirming the model's robustness and generalizability. Interpretation: This AI-driven screening tool offers a rapid, accurate, and scalable solution for Mpox detection in resource-constrained settings. Its offline functionality and high performance across diverse datasets suggest significant potential for improving Mpox surveillance and management, particularly in areas lacking traditional diagnostic infrastructure.

Emerging marketplaces for large language models and other large-scale machine learning (ML) models appear to exhibit market concentration, which has raised concerns about whether there are insurmountable barriers to entry in such markets. In this work, we study this issue from both an economic and an algorithmic point of view, focusing on a phenomenon that reduces barriers to entry. Specifically, an incumbent company risks reputational damage unless its model is sufficiently aligned with safety objectives, whereas a new company can more easily avoid reputational damage. To study this issue formally, we define a multi-objective high-dimensional regression framework that captures reputational damage, and we characterize the number of data points that a new company needs to enter the market. Our results demonstrate how multi-objective considerations can fundamentally reduce barriers to entry -- the required number of data points can be significantly smaller than the incumbent company's dataset size. En route to proving these results, we develop scaling laws for high-dimensional linear regression in multi-objective environments, showing that the scaling rate becomes slower when the dataset size is large, which could be of independent interest.

Investors are continuously seeking profitable investment opportunities in startups and, hence, for effective decision-making, need to predict a startup's probability of success. Nowadays, investors can use not only various fundamental information about a startup (e.g., the age of the startup, the number of founders, and the business sector) but also textual description of a startup's innovation and business model, which is widely available through online venture capital (VC) platforms such as Crunchbase. To support the decision-making of investors, we develop a machine learning approach with the aim of locating successful startups on VC platforms. Specifically, we develop, train, and evaluate a tailored, fused large language model to predict startup success. Thereby, we assess to what extent self-descriptions on VC platforms are predictive of startup success. Using 20,172 online profiles from Crunchbase, we find that our fused large language model can predict startup success, with textual self-descriptions being responsible for a significant part of the predictive power. Our work provides a decision support tool for investors to find profitable investment opportunities.

The research on aerial manipulation systems has been increased rapidly in recent years. These systems are very attractive for a wide range of applications due to their unique features. However, dynamics, control and manipulation tasks of such systems are quite challenging because they are naturally unstable, have very fast dynamics, have strong nonlinearities, are very susceptible to parameters variations due to carrying a payload besides the external disturbances, and have complex inverse kinematics. In addition, the manipulation tasks require estimating (applying) a certain force of (at) the end-effector as well as the accurate positioning of it. Thus, in this article, a robust force estimation and impedance control scheme is proposed to address these issues. The robustness is achieved based on the Disturbance Observer (DOb) technique. Then, a tracking and performance low computational linear controller is used. For teleoperation purpose, the contact force needs to be identified. However, the current developed techniques for force estimation have limitations because they are based on ignoring some dynamics and/or requiring of an indicator of the environment contact. Unlike these techniques, we propose a technique based on linearization capabilities of DOb and a Fast Tracking Recursive Least Squares (FTRLS) algorithm. The complex inverse kinematics problem of such a system is solved by a Jacobin based algorithm. The stability analysis of the proposed scheme is presented. The algorithm is tested to achieve tracking of task space reference trajectories besides the impedance control. The efficiency of the proposed technique is enlightened via numerical simulation.