Overview
Long-Term, Store-Front Robotics: Interactive Music for Robotic Arm, Caxixi and Frame Drums
Savery, Richard, Sukkar, Fouad
This paper presents an innovative exploration into the integration of interactive robotic musicianship within a commercial retail environment, specifically through a three-week-long in-store installation featuring a UR3 robotic arm, custom-built frame drums, and an adaptive music generation system. Situated in a prominent storefront in one of the world's largest cities, this project aimed to enhance the shopping experience by creating dynamic, engaging musical interactions that respond to the store's ambient soundscape. Key contributions include the novel application of industrial robotics in artistic expression, the deployment of interactive music to enrich retail ambiance, and the demonstration of continuous robotic operation in a public setting over an extended period. Challenges such as system reliability, variation in musical output, safety in interactive contexts, and brand alignment were addressed to ensure the installation's success. The project not only showcased the technical feasibility and artistic potential of robotic musicianship in retail spaces but also offered insights into the practical implications of such integration, including system reliability, the dynamics of human-robot interaction, and the impact on store operations. This exploration opens new avenues for enhancing consumer retail experiences through the intersection of technology, music, and interactive art, suggesting a future where robotic musicianship contributes meaningfully to public and commercial spaces.
Comprehensive Overview of Reward Engineering and Shaping in Advancing Reinforcement Learning Applications
Ibrahim, Sinan, Mostafa, Mostafa, Jnadi, Ali, Osinenko, Pavel
The aim of Reinforcement Learning (RL) in real-world applications is to create systems capable of making autonomous decisions by learning from their environment through trial and error. This paper emphasizes the importance of reward engineering and reward shaping in enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of reinforcement learning algorithms. Reward engineering involves designing reward functions that accurately reflect the desired outcomes, while reward shaping provides additional feedback to guide the learning process, accelerating convergence to optimal policies. Despite significant advancements in reinforcement learning, several limitations persist. One key challenge is the sparse and delayed nature of rewards in many real-world scenarios, which can hinder learning progress. Additionally, the complexity of accurately modeling real-world environments and the computational demands of reinforcement learning algorithms remain substantial obstacles. On the other hand, recent advancements in deep learning and neural networks have significantly improved the capability of reinforcement learning systems to handle high-dimensional state and action spaces, enabling their application to complex tasks such as robotics, autonomous driving, and game playing. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the current state of reinforcement learning, focusing on the methodologies and techniques used in reward engineering and reward shaping. It critically analyzes the limitations and recent advancements in the field, offering insights into future research directions and potential applications in various domains.
Artificial Intelligence-based Decision Support Systems for Precision and Digital Health
Deliu, Nina, Chakraborty, Bibhas
Precision health, increasingly supported by digital technologies, is a domain of research that broadens the paradigm of precision medicine, advancing everyday healthcare. This vision goes hand in hand with the groundbreaking advent of artificial intelligence (AI), which is reshaping the way we diagnose, treat, and monitor both clinical subjects and the general population. AI tools powered by machine learning have shown considerable improvements in a variety of healthcare domains. In particular, reinforcement learning (RL) holds great promise for sequential and dynamic problems such as dynamic treatment regimes and just-in-time adaptive interventions in digital health. In this work, we discuss the opportunity offered by AI, more specifically RL, to current trends in healthcare, providing a methodological survey of RL methods in the context of precision and digital health. Focusing on the area of adaptive interventions, we expand the methodological survey with illustrative case studies that used RL in real practice. This invited article has undergone anonymous review and is intended as a book chapter for the volume "Frontiers of Statistics and Data Science" edited by Subhashis Ghoshal and Anindya Roy for the International Indian Statistical Association Series on Statistics and Data Science, published by Springer. It covers the material from a short course titled "Artificial Intelligence in Precision and Digital Health" taught by the author Bibhas Chakraborty at the IISA 2022 Conference, December 26-30 2022, at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.
Impacts of Anthropomorphizing Large Language Models in Learning Environments
Schaaff, Kristina, Heidelmann, Marc-Andrรฉ
Similarly to the factors of anthropomorphism summarized by [11], we identified the following factors as relevant when Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly being used LLM-based chatbots are used in learning scenarios: The learning in learning environments to support teaching--be it as learning agent, i.e., chatbot, the learner itself, and environmental companions or as tutors [1]-[3]. With our contribution, we factors which influence the learner (see Figure 1). According to the media equation [4], people tend to respond to media in the same way as they would respond to another person. A study conducted by the Georgia Institute of Technology showed that chatbots can be successfully implemented in learning environments. As LLM-based chatbots such as OpenAI's GPT Looking at the agent, several factors can contribute to series are increasingly used in educational tools, it is important anthropomorphization. Cognitive intelligence refers to the to understand how the attribution processes to LLM-based ability to perceive, reason, and act on problems; to combine chatbots in terms of anthropomorphization affect learners' efficient, useful, goal-oriented, and autonomous actions with emotions.
A Survey of AI Reliance
Eckhardt, Sven, Kรผhl, Niklas, Dolata, Mateusz, Schwabe, Gerhard
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems have become an indispensable component of modern technology. However, research on human behavioral responses is lagging behind, i.e., the research into human reliance on AI advice (AI reliance). Current shortcomings in the literature include the unclear influences on AI reliance, lack of external validity, conflicting approaches to measuring reliance, and disregard for a change in reliance over time. Promising avenues for future research include reliance on generative AI output and reliance in multi-user situations. In conclusion, we present a morphological box that serves as a guide for research on AI reliance.
ALLaM: Large Language Models for Arabic and English
Bari, M Saiful, Alnumay, Yazeed, Alzahrani, Norah A., Alotaibi, Nouf M., Alyahya, Hisham A., AlRashed, Sultan, Mirza, Faisal A., Alsubaie, Shaykhah Z., Alahmed, Hassan A., Alabduljabbar, Ghadah, Alkhathran, Raghad, Almushayqih, Yousef, Alnajim, Raneem, Alsubaihi, Salman, Mansour, Maryam Al, Alrubaian, Majed, Alammari, Ali, Alawami, Zaki, Al-Thubaity, Abdulmohsen, Abdelali, Ahmed, Kuriakose, Jeril, Abujabal, Abdalghani, Al-Twairesh, Nora, Alowisheq, Areeb, Khan, Haidar
We present ALLaM: A rabic Large Language M odel, a series of large language models to support the ecosystem of Arabic Language Technologies (AL T). ALLaM is carefully trained considering the values of language alignment and knowledge transfer at scale. Our autoregressive decoder-only architecture models demonstrate how second-language acquisition via vocabulary expansion and pretraining on a mixture of Arabic and English text can steer a model towards a new language (Arabic) without any catastrophic forgetting in the original language (English). Furthermore, we highlight the effectiveness of using parallel/translated data to aid the process of knowledge alignment between languages. Finally, we show that extensive alignment with human preferences can significantly enhance the performance of a language model compared to models of a larger scale with lower quality alignment. ALLaM achieves state-of-the-art performance in various Arabic benchmarks, including MMLU Arabic, ACV A, and Arabic Exams. Our aligned models improve both in Arabic and English from their base aligned models.
AICircuit: A Multi-Level Dataset and Benchmark for AI-Driven Analog Integrated Circuit Design
Mehradfar, Asal, Zhao, Xuzhe, Niu, Yue, Babakniya, Sara, Alesheikh, Mahdi, Aghasi, Hamidreza, Avestimehr, Salman
Analog and radio-frequency circuit design requires extensive exploration of both circuit topology and parameters to meet specific design criteria like power consumption and bandwidth. Designers must review state-of-the-art topology configurations in the literature and sweep various circuit parameters within each configuration. This design process is highly specialized and time-intensive, particularly as the number of circuit parameters increases and the circuit becomes more complex. Prior research has explored the potential of machine learning to enhance circuit design procedures. However, these studies primarily focus on simple circuits, overlooking the more practical and complex analog and radio-frequency systems. A major obstacle for bearing the power of machine learning in circuit design is the availability of a generic and diverse dataset, along with robust metrics, which are essential for thoroughly evaluating and improving machine learning algorithms in the analog and radio-frequency circuit domain. We present AICircuit, a comprehensive multi-level dataset and benchmark for developing and evaluating ML algorithms in analog and radio-frequency circuit design. AICircuit comprises seven commonly used basic circuits and two complex wireless transceiver systems composed of multiple circuit blocks, encompassing a wide array of design scenarios encountered in real-world applications. We extensively evaluate various ML algorithms on the dataset, revealing the potential of ML algorithms in learning the mapping from the design specifications to the desired circuit parameters.
Automated Road Safety: Enhancing Sign and Surface Damage Detection with AI
Merolla, Davide, Latorre, Vittorio, Salis, Antonio, Boanelli, Gianluca
Public transportation plays a crucial role in our lives, and the road network is a vital component in the implementation of smart cities. Recent advancements in AI have enabled the development of advanced monitoring systems capable of detecting anomalies in road surfaces and road signs, which, if unaddressed, can lead to serious road accidents. This paper presents an innovative approach to enhance road safety through the detection and classification of traffic signs and road surface damage using advanced deep learning techniques. This integrated approach supports proactive maintenance strategies, improving road safety and resource allocation for the Molise region and the city of Campobasso. The resulting system, developed as part of the Casa delle Tecnologie Emergenti (House of Emergent Technologies) Molise (Molise CTE) research project funded by the Italian Minister of Economic Growth (MIMIT), leverages cutting-edge technologies such as Cloud Computing and High Performance Computing with GPU utilization. It serves as a valuable tool for municipalities, enabling quick detection of anomalies and the prompt organization of maintenance operations
CHIME: LLM-Assisted Hierarchical Organization of Scientific Studies for Literature Review Support
Hsu, Chao-Chun, Bransom, Erin, Sparks, Jenna, Kuehl, Bailey, Tan, Chenhao, Wadden, David, Wang, Lucy Lu, Naik, Aakanksha
Literature review requires researchers to synthesize a large amount of information and is increasingly challenging as the scientific literature expands. In this work, we investigate the potential of LLMs for producing hierarchical organizations of scientific studies to assist researchers with literature review. We define hierarchical organizations as tree structures where nodes refer to topical categories and every node is linked to the studies assigned to that category. Our naive LLM-based pipeline for hierarchy generation from a set of studies produces promising yet imperfect hierarchies, motivating us to collect CHIME, an expert-curated dataset for this task focused on biomedicine. Given the challenging and time-consuming nature of building hierarchies from scratch, we use a human-in-the-loop process in which experts correct errors (both links between categories and study assignment) in LLM-generated hierarchies. CHIME contains 2,174 LLM-generated hierarchies covering 472 topics, and expert-corrected hierarchies for a subset of 100 topics. Expert corrections allow us to quantify LLM performance, and we find that while they are quite good at generating and organizing categories, their assignment of studies to categories could be improved. We attempt to train a corrector model with human feedback which improves study assignment by 12.6 F1 points. We release our dataset and models to encourage research on developing better assistive tools for literature review.
A Survey of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) in Financial Time Series Forecasting
Arsenault, Pierre-Daniel, Wang, Shengrui, Patenande, Jean-Marc
Artificial Intelligence (AI) models have reached a very significant level of accuracy. While their superior performance offers considerable benefits, their inherent complexity often decreases human trust, which slows their application in high-risk decision-making domains, such as finance. The field of eXplainable AI (XAI) seeks to bridge this gap, aiming to make AI models more understandable. This survey, focusing on published work from the past five years, categorizes XAI approaches that predict financial time series. In this paper, explainability and interpretability are distinguished, emphasizing the need to treat these concepts separately as they are not applied the same way in practice. Through clear definitions, a rigorous taxonomy of XAI approaches, a complementary characterization, and examples of XAI's application in the finance industry, this paper provides a comprehensive view of XAI's current role in finance. It can also serve as a guide for selecting the most appropriate XAI approach for future applications.