Blind people are often called to contribute image data to datasets for AI innovation with the hope for future accessibility and inclusion. Yet, the visual inspection of the contributed images is inaccessible. To this day, we lack mechanisms for data inspection and control that are accessible to the blind community. To address this gap, we engage 10 blind participants in a scenario where they wear smartglasses and collect image data using an AI-infused application in their homes. We also engineer a design probe, a novel data access interface called AccessShare, and conduct a co-design study to discuss participants' needs, preferences, and ideas on consent, data inspection, and control. Our findings reveal the impact of interactive informed consent and the complementary role of data inspection systems such as AccessShare in facilitating communication between data stewards and blind data contributors. We discuss how key insights can guide future informed consent and data control to promote inclusive and responsible data practices in AI.

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 306 N Wright St, Urbana, IL 61801, USA (Dated: July 30, 2024) A central question in deep learning is how deep neural networks (DNNs) learn features. This collective effect of non-linearity, noise, learning rate, width, depth, and numerous other parameters, has eluded first-principles theories which are built from microscopic neuronal dynamics. Here we present a noise-non-linearity phase diagram that highlights where shallow or deep layers learn features more effectively. We then propose a macroscopic mechanical theory of feature learning that accurately reproduces this phase diagram, offering a clear intuition for why and how some DNNs are "lazy" and some are "active", and relating the distribution of feature learning over layers with test accuracy. Deep neural networks (DNNs) progressively compute propose a macroscopic theory of feature learning in deep, features from which the final layer generates predictions.

Artificial neural networks (ANNs), particularly those employing deep learning models, have found widespread application in fields such as computer vision, signal processing, and wireless communications, where complex numbers are crucial. Despite the prevailing use of real-number implementations in current ANN frameworks, there is a growing interest in developing ANNs that utilize complex numbers. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of recent advancements in complex-valued neural networks (CVNNs), focusing on their activation functions (AFs) and learning algorithms. We delve into the extension of the backpropagation algorithm to the complex domain, which enables the training of neural networks with complex-valued inputs, weights, AFs, and outputs. This survey considers three complex backpropagation algorithms: the complex derivative approach, the partial derivatives approach, and algorithms incorporating the Cauchy-Riemann equations. A significant challenge in CVNN design is the identification of suitable nonlinear Complex Valued Activation Functions (CVAFs), due to the conflict between boundedness and differentiability over the entire complex plane as stated by Liouville's theorem. We examine both fully complex AFs, which strive for boundedness and differentiability, and split AFs, which offer a practical compromise despite not preserving analyticity. This review provides an in-depth analysis of various CVAFs essential for constructing effective CVNNs. Moreover, this survey not only offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of CVNNs but also contributes to ongoing research and development by introducing a new set of CVAFs (fully complex, split and complex amplitude-phase AFs).

Interpretability of Deep Neural Networks using concept-based models offers a promising way to explain model behavior through human-understandable concepts. A parallel line of research focuses on disentangling the data distribution into its underlying generative factors, in turn explaining the data generation process. While both directions have received extensive attention, little work has been done on explaining concepts in terms of generative factors to unify mathematically disentangled representations and human-understandable concepts as an explanation for downstream tasks. In this paper, we propose a novel method CoLiDR - which utilizes a disentangled representation learning setup for learning mutually independent generative factors and subsequently learns to aggregate the said representations into human-understandable concepts using a novel aggregation/decomposition module. Experiments are conducted on datasets with both known and unknown latent generative factors. Our method successfully aggregates disentangled generative factors into concepts while maintaining parity with state-of-the-art concept-based approaches. Quantitative and visual analysis of the learned aggregation procedure demonstrates the advantages of our work compared to commonly used concept-based models over four challenging datasets. Lastly, our work is generalizable to an arbitrary number of concepts and generative factors - making it flexible enough to be suitable for various types of data.

Recent advancements in NLP systems, particularly with the introduction of LLMs, have led to widespread adoption of these systems by a broad spectrum of users across various domains, impacting decision-making, the job market, society, and scientific research. This surge in usage has led to an explosion in NLP model interpretability and analysis research, accompanied by numerous technical surveys. Yet, these surveys often overlook the needs and perspectives of explanation stakeholders. In this paper, we address three fundamental questions: Why do we need interpretability, what are we interpreting, and how? By exploring these questions, we examine existing interpretability paradigms, their properties, and their relevance to different stakeholders. We further explore the practical implications of these paradigms by analyzing trends from the past decade across multiple research fields. To this end, we retrieved thousands of papers and employed an LLM to characterize them. Our analysis reveals significant disparities between NLP developers and non-developer users, as well as between research fields, underscoring the diverse needs of stakeholders. For example, explanations of internal model components are rarely used outside the NLP field. We hope this paper informs the future design, development, and application of methods that align with the objectives and requirements of various stakeholders.

Recent advancements have significantly enhanced the capabilities of Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) in generating and understanding image-to-text content. Despite these successes, progress is predominantly limited to English due to the scarcity of high quality multimodal resources in other languages. This limitation impedes the development of competitive models in languages such as Arabic. To alleviate this situation, we introduce an efficient Arabic multimodal assistant, dubbed Dallah, that utilizes an advanced language model based on LLaMA-2 to facilitate multimodal interactions. Dallah demonstrates state-of-the-art performance in Arabic MLLMs. Through fine-tuning six Arabic dialects, Dallah showcases its capability to handle complex dialectal interactions incorporating both textual and visual elements. The model excels in two benchmark tests: one evaluating its performance on Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and another specifically designed to assess dialectal responses. Beyond its robust performance in multimodal interaction tasks, Dallah has the potential to pave the way for further development of dialect-aware Arabic MLLMs.

Calls for engagement with the public in Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, development, and governance are increasing, leading to the use of surveys to capture people's values, perceptions, and experiences related to AI. In this paper, we critically examine the state of human participant surveys associated with these topics. Through both a reflexive analysis of a survey pilot spanning six countries and a systematic literature review of 44 papers featuring public surveys related to AI, we explore prominent perspectives and methodological nuances associated with surveys to date. We find that public surveys on AI topics are vulnerable to specific Western knowledge, values, and assumptions in their design, including in their positioning of ethical concepts and societal values, lack sufficient critical discourse surrounding deployment strategies, and demonstrate inconsistent forms of transparency in their reporting. Based on our findings, we distill provocations and heuristic questions for our community, to recognize the limitations of surveys for meeting the goals of engagement, and to cultivate shared principles to design, deploy, and interpret surveys cautiously and responsibly.

This paper studies gender bias in machine translation through the lens of Large Language Models (LLMs). Four widely-used test sets are employed to benchmark various base LLMs, comparing their translation quality and gender bias against state-of-the-art Neural Machine Translation (NMT) models for English to Catalan (En $\rightarrow$ Ca) and English to Spanish (En $\rightarrow$ Es) translation directions. Our findings reveal pervasive gender bias across all models, with base LLMs exhibiting a higher degree of bias compared to NMT models. To combat this bias, we explore prompting engineering techniques applied to an instruction-tuned LLM. We identify a prompt structure that significantly reduces gender bias by up to 12% on the WinoMT evaluation dataset compared to more straightforward prompts. These results significantly reduce the gender bias accuracy gap between LLMs and traditional NMT systems.

In modern healthcare, addressing the complexities of accurate disease prediction and personalized recommendations is both crucial and challenging. This research introduces MLtoGAI, which integrates Semantic Web technology with Machine Learning (ML) to enhance disease prediction and offer user-friendly explanations through ChatGPT. The system comprises three key components: a reusable disease ontology that incorporates detailed knowledge about various diseases, a diagnostic classification model that uses patient symptoms to detect specific diseases accurately, and the integration of Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) with ontology and ChatGPT to generate clear, personalized health advice. This approach significantly improves prediction accuracy and ensures results that are easy to understand, addressing the complexity of diseases and diverse symptoms. The MLtoGAI system demonstrates substantial advancements in accuracy and user satisfaction, contributing to developing more intelligent and accessible healthcare solutions. This innovative approach combines the strengths of ML algorithms with the ability to provide transparent, human-understandable explanations through ChatGPT, achieving significant improvements in prediction accuracy and user comprehension. By leveraging semantic technology and explainable AI, the system enhances the accuracy of disease prediction and ensures that the recommendations are relevant and easily understood by individual patients. Our research highlights the potential of integrating advanced technologies to overcome existing challenges in medical diagnostics, paving the way for future developments in intelligent healthcare systems. Additionally, the system is validated using 200 synthetic patient data records, ensuring robust performance and reliability.

Accurate forecasting of wind speed and direction is paramount across various domains, playing a pivotal role in weather prediction, renewable energy generation, agricultural management, and bushfire mitigation efforts. Accurate predictions enable meteorologists to deepen their understanding of atmospheric processes, leading to more precise weather forecasts and timely alerts for severe weather events [1]. In the realm of renewable energy, precise forecasts of wind conditions are indispensable to optimise the performance of wind farms and integrate wind energy efficiently into the power grid [2-4]. In agriculture, wind forecasts inform critical decisions such as crop spraying, sprinkler or central pivot irrigation timing, and pest control, ultimately improving crop yields and water management [5]. For bush-fire management, timely and accurate predictions of wind speed and direction are crucial for modelling fire behaviour, planning firefighter deployment, and planning evacuations, thereby reducing the impact of bushfires on communities and ecosystems [6, 7]. Given the multifaceted applications of wind forecasting, advancements in machine learning-based techniques for predicting wind speed and direction hold immense promise for bolstering societal resilience and fostering sustainable development. Traditionally, wind forecasting models fall into three categories: physical, statistical time series analysis and machine learning.