Goto

Collaborating Authors

 Chennai


The tech bros might show more humility in Delhi – but will they make AI any safer?

BBC News

The tech bros might show more humility in Delhi - but will they make AI any safer? Those who shout the loudest about artificial intelligence tend to be in the West, notably the US and Europe. So it's significant that a gathering of powerful leaders is being held in the Global South, a region of the world that runs the risk of being left behind in the AI race. Tech bosses, politicians, scientists, academics and campaigners are meeting at the AI Impact Summit in India this week for top-level discussions about what the world should be doing to try to marshal the AI revolution in the right direction. At last year's AI Action Summit, as it was then known, an ugly power struggle broke out between some Western countries over who should be in charge.



OSIL: Learning Offline Safe Imitation Policies with Safety Inferred from Non-preferred Trajectories

Burnwal, Returaj, Bhatt, Nirav Pravinbhai, Ravindran, Balaraman

arXiv.org Machine Learning

This work addresses the problem of offline safe imitation learning (IL), where the goal is to learn safe and reward-maximizing policies from demonstrations that do not have per-timestep safety cost or reward information. In many real-world domains, online learning in the environment can be risky, and specifying accurate safety costs can be difficult. However, it is often feasible to collect trajectories that reflect undesirable or unsafe behavior, implicitly conveying what the agent should avoid. We refer to these as non-preferred trajectories. We propose a novel offline safe IL algorithm, OSIL, that infers safety from non-preferred demonstrations. We formulate safe policy learning as a Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP). Instead of relying on explicit safety cost and reward annotations, OSIL reformulates the CMDP problem by deriving a lower bound on reward maximizing objective and learning a cost model that estimates the likelihood of non-preferred behavior. Our approach allows agents to learn safe and reward-maximizing behavior entirely from offline demonstrations. We empirically demonstrate that our approach can learn safer policies that satisfy cost constraints without degrading the reward performance, thus outperforming several baselines.



offbetweenSpatial

Neural Information Processing Systems

Neural network (NN) models have achieved state-of-the-art performance on several image tasks overthelastfewyears.


Deep Recurrent Optimal Stopping

Neural Information Processing Systems

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have recently emerged as a powerful paradigm for solving Markovian optimal stopping problems. However, a ready extension of DNN-based methods to non-Markovian settings requires significant state and parameter space expansion, manifesting the curse of dimensionality.


KAN-AFT: An Interpretable Nonlinear Survival Model Integrating Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks with Accelerated Failure Time Analysis

Jose, Mebin, Francis, Jisha, Kattumannil, Sudheesh Kumar

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Survival analysis relies fundamentally on the semi-parametric Cox Proportional Hazards (CoxPH) model and the parametric Accelerated Failure Time (AFT) model. CoxPH assumes constant hazard ratios, often failing to capture real-world dynamics, while traditional AFT models are limited by rigid distributional assumptions. Although deep learning models like DeepAFT address these constraints by improving predictive accuracy and handling censoring, they inherit the significant challenge of black-box interpretability. The recent introduction of CoxKAN demonstrated the successful integration of Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs), a novel architecture that yields highly accurate and interpretable symbolic representations, within the CoxPH framework. Motivated by the interpretability gains of CoxKAN, we introduce KAN-AFT (Kolmogorov Arnold Network-based AFT), the first framework to apply KANs to the AFT model. Our primary contributions include: (i) a principled AFT-KAN formulation, (ii) robust optimization strategies for right-censored observations (e.g., Buckley-James and IPCW), and (iii) an interpretability pipeline that converts the learned spline functions into closed-form symbolic equations for survival time. Empirical results on multiple datasets confirm that KAN-AFT achieves performance comparable to or better than DeepAFT, while uniquely providing transparent, symbolic models of the survival process.


ExaCraft: Dynamic Learning Context Adaptation for Personalized Educational Examples

Chatterjee, Akaash, Kundu, Suman

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Learning is most effective when it's connected to relevant, relatable examples that resonate with learners on a personal level. However, existing educational AI tools don't focus on generating examples or adapting to learners' changing understanding, struggles, or growing skills. We've developed ExaCraft, an AI system that generates personalized examples by adapting to the learner's dynamic context. Through the Google Gemini AI and Python Flask API, accessible via a Chrome extension, ExaCraft combines user-defined profiles (including location, education, profession, and complexity preferences) with real-time analysis of learner behavior. This ensures examples are both culturally relevant and tailored to individual learning needs. The system's core innovation is its ability to adapt to five key aspects of the learning context: indicators of struggle, mastery patterns, topic progression history, session boundaries, and learning progression signals. Our demonstration will show how ExaCraft's examples evolve from basic concepts to advanced technical implementations, responding to topic repetition, regeneration requests, and topic progression patterns in different use cases.


A Granular Framework for Construction Material Price Forecasting: Econometric and Machine-Learning Approaches

Lyu, Boge, Yin, Qianye, Tommelein, Iris Denise, Liu, Hanyang, Ranka, Karnamohit, Yeluripati, Karthik, Shi, Junzhe

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This study develops a forecasting framework t hat leverages the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) MasterFormat as the target data structure, enabling predictions at the six - digit section level and supporting detailed cost projections across a wide spectrum of building materials. To enhance p redictive accuracy, the framework integrates explanatory variables such as raw material prices, commodity indexes, and macroeconomic indicators. Four time - series models, Long Short - Term Memory (LSTM), Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA), Vecto r Error Correction Model (VECM), and Chronos - Bolt, were evaluated under both baseline configurations (using CSI data only) and extended versions with explanatory variables. Results demonstrate that incorporating explanatory variables significantly improves predictive performance across all models. Among the tested approaches, the LSTM model consistently ach ieved the highest accuracy, with RMSE values as low as 1.390 and MAPE values of 0.957, representing improvements of up to 59 % over traditional statistical time - series model, ARIMA. Validation across multiple CSI divisions confirmed the framework's scalability, while Division 06 (Wood, Plastics, and Composites) is presented in detail as a demonstration case. This research offers a robust methodology that enables owners and contractors to improve budgeting practices and achieve more reliable cost estimation at the Definitive level. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Motivation The construction industry continues to demonstrate steady long - term growth, with global activity projected to reach US$9.8 trillion by 2026 [1] . Major upcoming programs in the United States, such as the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics and TSMC's fabrication facility in Arizona [2] [3], highlight the scale of high - value projects in the near future. However, volatility in construction material prices has emerged as a critical challenge, creating significant uncertainty for contractors in project planning, budgeting, and cost management. Price fluctuations, driven by raw material costs, macroeconomic conditions such as inflation and interest rates, and supply - demand imbalances, have amplified risks of cost overruns and delays [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] . Traditional econometric methods (i.e.,multiple regression analysis) and modern econometric methods (i.e., univariate, and multivariate time series methods) have faced limitations in effectively capturing the high - frequency volatility observed in constructi on material prices [9] . These models often struggle to handle the complexity of input data and exhibit limited predictive accuracy in real - world applications.


BERTO: an Adaptive BERT-based Network Time Series Predictor with Operator Preferences in Natural Language

Shankar, Nitin Priyadarshini, Singh, Vaibhav, Kalyani, Sheetal, Maciocco, Christian

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Abstract--We introduce BERTO, a BERT -based framework for traffic prediction and energy optimization in cellular networks. Built on transformer architectures, BERTO delivers high prediction accuracy, while its Balancing Loss Function and prompt-based customization allow operators to adjust the trade-off between power savings and performance. Natural language prompts guide the model to manage underprediction and overprediction in accordance with the operator's intent. Experiments on real-world datasets show that BERTO improves upon existing models with a 4.13% reduction in MSE while introducing the feature of balancing competing objectives of power saving and performance through simple natural language inputs, operating over a flexible range of 1.4 kW in power and up to 9 variation in service quality, making it well suited for intelligent RAN deployments. Time series data is ubiquitous across all layers of modern communication networks.