By training on text in various languages, large language models (LLMs) typically possess multilingual support and demonstrate remarkable capabilities in solving tasks described in different languages. However, LLMs can exhibit linguistic discrimination due to the uneven distribution of training data across languages. That is, LLMs are hard to keep the consistency of responses when faced with the same task but depicted in different languages. In this study, we first explore the consistency in the LLMs' outputs responding to queries in various languages from two aspects: safety and quality. We conduct this analysis with two datasets (AdvBench and NQ) based on four LLMs (Llama2-13b, Gemma-7b, GPT-3.5-turbo and Gemini-pro). The results show that LLMs exhibit stronger human alignment capabilities with queries in English, French, Russian, and Spanish (only 1.04\% of harmful queries successfully jailbreak on average) compared to queries in Bengali, Georgian, Nepali and Maithili (27.7\% of harmful queries jailbreak successfully on average). Moreover, for queries in English, Danish, Czech and Slovenian, LLMs tend to produce responses with a higher quality (with 0.1494 $F_1$ score on average) compared to the other languages. Upon these findings, we propose LDFighter, a similarity-based voting, to mitigate the linguistic discrimination in LLMs. LDFighter ensures consistent service for different language speakers. We evaluate LDFighter with both benign queries and harmful queries. The results show that LDFighter not only significantly reduces the jailbreak success rate but also improve the response quality on average, demonstrating its effectiveness.

Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized the AI field but also pose potential safety and ethical risks. Deciphering LLMs' embedded values becomes crucial for assessing and mitigating their risks. Despite extensive investigation into LLMs' values, previous studies heavily rely on human-oriented value systems in social sciences. Then, a natural question arises: Do LLMs possess unique values beyond those of humans? Delving into it, this work proposes a novel framework, ValueLex, to reconstruct LLMs' unique value system from scratch, leveraging psychological methodologies from human personality/value research. Based on Lexical Hypothesis, ValueLex introduces a generative approach to elicit diverse values from 30+ LLMs, synthesizing a taxonomy that culminates in a comprehensive value framework via factor analysis and semantic clustering. We identify three core value dimensions, Competence, Character, and Integrity, each with specific subdimensions, revealing that LLMs possess a structured, albeit non-human, value system. Based on this system, we further develop tailored projective tests to evaluate and analyze the value inclinations of LLMs across different model sizes, training methods, and data sources.

Nowadays, individuals tend to engage in dialogues with Large Language Models, seeking answers to their questions. In times when such answers are readily accessible to anyone, the stimulation and preservation of human's cognitive abilities, as well as the assurance of maintaining good reasoning skills by humans becomes crucial. This study addresses such needs by proposing hints (instead of final answers or before giving answers) as a viable solution. We introduce a framework for the automatic hint generation for factoid questions, employing it to construct TriviaHG, a novel large-scale dataset featuring 160,230 hints corresponding to 16,645 questions from the TriviaQA dataset. Additionally, we present an automatic evaluation method that measures the Convergence and Familiarity quality attributes of hints. To evaluate the TriviaHG dataset and the proposed evaluation method, we enlisted 10 individuals to annotate 2,791 hints and tasked 6 humans with answering questions using the provided hints. The effectiveness of hints varied, with success rates of 96%, 78%, and 36% for questions with easy, medium, and hard answers, respectively. Moreover, the proposed automatic evaluation methods showed a robust correlation with annotators' results. Conclusively, the findings highlight three key insights: the facilitative role of hints in resolving unknown questions, the dependence of hint quality on answer difficulty, and the feasibility of employing automatic evaluation methods for hint assessment.

Weighted conformal prediction (WCP), a recently proposed framework, provides uncertainty quantification with the flexibility to accommodate different covariate distributions between training and test data. However, it is pointed out in this paper that the effectiveness of WCP heavily relies on the overlap between covariate distributions; insufficient overlap can lead to uninformative prediction intervals. To enhance the informativeness of WCP, we propose two methods for scenarios involving multiple sources with varied covariate distributions. We establish theoretical guarantees for our proposed methods and demonstrate their efficacy through simulations.

In the bandits with knapsacks framework (BwK) the learner has $m$ resource-consumption (packing) constraints. We focus on the generalization of BwK in which the learner has a set of general long-term constraints. The goal of the learner is to maximize their cumulative reward, while at the same time achieving small cumulative constraints violations. In this scenario, there exist simple instances where conventional methods for BwK fail to yield sublinear violations of constraints. We show that it is possible to circumvent this issue by requiring the primal and dual algorithm to be weakly adaptive. Indeed, even in absence on any information on the Slater's parameter $\rho$ characterizing the problem, the interplay between weakly adaptive primal and dual regret minimizers yields a "self-bounding" property of dual variables. In particular, their norm remains suitably upper bounded across the entire time horizon even without explicit projection steps. By exploiting this property, we provide best-of-both-worlds guarantees for stochastic and adversarial inputs. In the first case, we show that the algorithm guarantees sublinear regret. In the latter case, we establish a tight competitive ratio of $\rho/(1+\rho)$. In both settings, constraints violations are guaranteed to be sublinear in time. Finally, this results allow us to obtain new result for the problem of contextual bandits with linear constraints, providing the first no-$\alpha$-regret guarantees for adversarial contexts.

Network slicing is a key feature in 5G/NG cellular networks that creates customized slices for different service types with various quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, which can achieve service differentiation and guarantee service-level agreement (SLA) for each service type. In Wi-Fi networks, there is limited prior work on slicing, and a potential solution is based on a multi-tenant architecture on a single access point (AP) that dedicates different channels to different slices. In this paper, we define a flexible, constrained learning framework to enable slicing in Wi-Fi networks subject to QoS requirements. We specifically propose an unsupervised learning-based network slicing method that leverages a state-augmented primal-dual algorithm, where a neural network policy is trained offline to optimize a Lagrangian function and the dual variable dynamics are updated online in the execution phase. We show that state augmentation is crucial for generating slicing decisions that meet the ergodic QoS requirements.

Incomplete relevance judgments limit the re-usability of test collections. When new systems are compared against previous systems used to build the pool of judged documents, they often do so at a disadvantage due to the ``holes'' in test collection (i.e., pockets of un-assessed documents returned by the new system). In this paper, we take initial steps towards extending existing test collections by employing Large Language Models (LLM) to fill the holes by leveraging and grounding the method using existing human judgments. We explore this problem in the context of Conversational Search using TREC iKAT, where information needs are highly dynamic and the responses (and, the results retrieved) are much more varied (leaving bigger holes). While previous work has shown that automatic judgments from LLMs result in highly correlated rankings, we find substantially lower correlates when human plus automatic judgments are used (regardless of LLM, one/two/few shot, or fine-tuned). We further find that, depending on the LLM employed, new runs will be highly favored (or penalized), and this effect is magnified proportionally to the size of the holes. Instead, one should generate the LLM annotations on the whole document pool to achieve more consistent rankings with human-generated labels. Future work is required to prompt engineering and fine-tuning LLMs to reflect and represent the human annotations, in order to ground and align the models, such that they are more fit for purpose.

Flamenco, recognized by UNESCO as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, is a profound expression of cultural identity rooted in Andalusia, Spain. However, there is a lack of quantitative studies that help identify characteristic patterns in this long-lived music tradition. In this work, we present a computational analysis of Flamenco lyrics, employing natural language processing and machine learning to categorize over 2000 lyrics into their respective Flamenco genres, termed as $\textit{palos}$. Using a Multinomial Naive Bayes classifier, we find that lexical variation across styles enables to accurately identify distinct $\textit{palos}$. More importantly, from an automatic method of word usage, we obtain the semantic fields that characterize each style. Further, applying a metric that quantifies the inter-genre distance we perform a network analysis that sheds light on the relationship between Flamenco styles. Remarkably, our results suggest historical connections and $\textit{palo}$ evolutions. Overall, our work illuminates the intricate relationships and cultural significance embedded within Flamenco lyrics, complementing previous qualitative discussions with quantitative analyses and sparking new discussions on the origin and development of traditional music genres.

This study develops FusionTransNet, a framework designed for Origin-Destination (OD) flow predictions within smart and multimodal urban transportation systems. Urban transportation complexity arises from the spatiotemporal interactions among various traffic modes. Motivated by analyzing multimodal data from Shenzhen, a framework that can dissect complicated spatiotemporal interactions between these modes, from the microscopic local level to the macroscopic city-wide perspective, is essential. The framework contains three core components: the Intra-modal Learning Module, the Inter-modal Learning Module, and the Prediction Decoder. The Intra-modal Learning Module is designed to analyze spatial dependencies within individual transportation modes, facilitating a granular understanding of single-mode spatiotemporal dynamics. The Inter-modal Learning Module extends this analysis, integrating data across different modes to uncover cross-modal interdependencies, by breaking down the interactions at both local and global scales. Finally, the Prediction Decoder synthesizes insights from the preceding modules to generate accurate OD flow predictions, translating complex multimodal interactions into forecasts. Empirical evaluations conducted in metropolitan contexts, including Shenzhen and New York, demonstrate FusionTransNet's superior predictive accuracy compared to existing state-of-the-art methods. The implication of this study extends beyond urban transportation, as the method for transferring information across different spatiotemporal graphs at both local and global scales can be instrumental in other spatial systems, such as supply chain logistics and epidemics spreading.

As Large Language Models (LLMs) are nondeterministic, the same input can generate different outputs, some of which may be incorrect or hallucinated. If run again, the LLM may correct itself and produce the correct answer. Unfortunately, most LLM-powered systems resort to single results which, correct or not, users accept. Having the LLM produce multiple outputs may help identify disagreements or alternatives. However, it is not obvious how the user will interpret conflicts or inconsistencies. To this end, we investigate how users perceive the AI model and comprehend the generated information when they receive multiple, potentially inconsistent, outputs. Through a preliminary study, we identified five types of output inconsistencies. Based on these categories, we conducted a study (N=252) in which participants were given one or more LLM-generated passages to an information-seeking question. We found that inconsistency within multiple LLM-generated outputs lowered the participants' perceived AI capacity, while also increasing their comprehension of the given information. Specifically, we observed that this positive effect of inconsistencies was most significant for participants who read two passages, compared to those who read three. Based on these findings, we present design implications that, instead of regarding LLM output inconsistencies as a drawback, we can reveal the potential inconsistencies to transparently indicate the limitations of these models and promote critical LLM usage.