Existing function-calling benchmarks focus on single-turn interactions. However, they overlook the complexity of real-world scenarios. To quantify how existing benchmarks address practical applications, we introduce DICE-SCORE, a metric that evaluates the dispersion of tool-related information such as function name and parameter values throughout the dialogue. Analyzing existing benchmarks through DICE-SCORE reveals notably low scores, highlighting the need for more realistic scenarios. To address this gap, we present DICE-BENCH, a framework that constructs practical function-calling datasets by synthesizing conversations through a tool graph that maintains dependencies across rounds and a multi-agent system with distinct personas to enhance dialogue naturalness. The final dataset comprises 1,607 high-DICE-SCORE instances. Our experiments on 19 LLMs with DICE-BENCH show that significant advances are still required before such models can be deployed effectively in real-world settings. Our code and data are all publicly available: https://snuhcc.github.io/DICE-Bench/.

In the stance detection task, a text is classified as either favorable, opposing, or neutral towards a target. Prior work suggests that the use of external information, e.g., excerpts from Wikipedia, improves stance detection performance. However, whether or not such information can benefit large language models (LLMs) remains an unanswered question, despite their wide adoption in many reasoning tasks. In this study, we conduct a systematic evaluation on how Wikipedia and web search external information can affect stance detection across eight LLMs and in three datasets with 12 targets. Surprisingly, we find that such information degrades performance in most cases, with macro F1 scores dropping by up to 27.9\%. We explain this through experiments showing LLMs' tendency to align their predictions with the stance and sentiment of the provided information rather than the ground truth stance of the given text. We also find that performance degradation persists with chain-of-thought prompting, while fine-tuning mitigates but does not fully eliminate it. Our findings, in contrast to previous literature on BERT-based systems which suggests that external information enhances performance, highlight the risks of information biases in LLM-based stance classifiers. Code is available at https://github.com/ngqm/acl2025-stance-detection.

Global warming, loss of biodiversity, and air pollution are among the most significant problems facing Earth. One of the primary challenges in addressing these issues is the lack of monitoring forests to protect them. To tackle this problem, it is important to leverage remote sensing and computer vision methods to automate monitoring applications. Hence, automatic tree crown detection algorithms emerged based on traditional and deep learning methods. In this study, we first introduce two different tree crown detection methods based on these approaches. Then, we form a novel rule-based approach that integrates these two methods to enhance robustness and accuracy of tree crown detection results. While traditional methods are employed for feature extraction and segmentation of forested areas, deep learning methods are used to detect tree crowns in our method. With the proposed rule-based approach, we post-process these results, aiming to increase the number of detected tree crowns through neighboring trees and localized operations. We compare the obtained results with the proposed method in terms of the number of detected tree crowns and report the advantages, disadvantages, and areas for improvement of the obtained outcomes.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) enhances large language models (LLMs) by integrating their parametric knowledge with external retrieved content. However, knowledge conflicts caused by internal inconsistencies or noisy retrieved content can severely undermine the generation reliability of RAG systems.In this work, we argue that LLMs should rethink all evidence, including both retrieved content and internal knowledge, before generating responses.We propose CARE-RAG (Conflict-Aware and Reliable Evidence for RAG), a novel framework that improves trustworthiness through Conflict-Driven Summarization of all available evidence.CARE-RAG first derives parameter-aware evidence by comparing parameter records to identify diverse internal perspectives. It then refines retrieved evidences to produce context-aware evidence, removing irrelevant or misleading content. To detect and summarize conflicts, we distill a 3B LLaMA3.2 model to perform conflict-driven summarization, enabling reliable synthesis across multiple sources.To further ensure evaluation integrity, we introduce a QA Repair step to correct outdated or ambiguous benchmark answers.Experiments on revised QA datasets with retrieval data show that CARE-RAG consistently outperforms strong RAG baselines, especially in scenarios with noisy or conflicting evidence.

As the demand for large scale AI models continues to grow, the optimization of their training to balance computational efficiency, execution time, accuracy and energy consumption represents a critical multidimensional challenge. Achieving this balance requires not only innovative algorithmic techniques and hardware architectures but also comprehensive tools for monitoring, analyzing, and understanding the underlying processes involved in model training and deployment. Provenance data information about the origins, context, and transformations of data and processes has become a key component in this pursuit. By leveraging provenance, researchers and engineers can gain insights into resource usage patterns, identify inefficiencies, and ensure reproducibility and accountability in AI development workflows. For this reason, the question of how distributed resources can be optimally utilized to scale large AI models in an energy efficient manner is a fundamental one. To support this effort, we introduce the yProv4ML library, a tool designed to collect provenance data in JSON format, compliant with the W3C PROV and ProvML standards. yProv4ML focuses on flexibility and extensibility, and enables users to integrate additional data collection tools via plugins. The library is fully integrated with the yProv framework, allowing for higher level pairing in tasks run also through workflow management systems.

Smart homes that integrate Internet of Things (IoT) devices face increasing cybersecurity risks, posing significant challenges to these environments. The study explores security threats in smart homes ecosystems, categorizing them into vulnerabilities at the network layer, device level, and those from cloud-based and AI-driven systems. Research findings indicate that post-quantum encryption, coupled with AI-driven anomaly detection, is highly effective in enhancing security; however, computational resource demands present significant challenges. Blockchain authentication together with zero-trust structures builds security resilience, although they need changes to existing infrastructure. The specific security strategies show their effectiveness through ANOVA, Chi-square tests, and Monte Carlo simulations yet lack sufficient scalability according to the results. The research demonstrates the requirement for improvement in cryptographic techniques, alongside AI-enhanced threat detection and adaptive security models which must achieve a balance between performance and efficiency and real-time applicability within smart home ecosystems.

A local health department in Memphis has granted Elon Musk's xAI data center an air permit to continue operating the gas turbines that power the company's Grok chatbot. The permit comes amid widespread community opposition and a looming lawsuit alleging the company violated the Clean Air Act. The Shelby County Health Department released its air permit for the xAI project Wednesday, after receiving hundreds of public comments. The news was first reported by the Daily Memphian. In June, the Memphis Chamber of Commerce announced that xAI had chosen a site in Memphis to build its new supercomputer.

To combat the shortcuts and risk-taking, Lorenzo is working on a tool for the San Francisco–based company DroneDeploy, which sells software that creates daily digital models of work progress from videos and images, known in the trade as "reality capture." The tool, called Safety AI, analyzes each day's reality capture imagery and flags conditions that violate Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules, with what he claims is 95% accuracy. That means that for any safety risk the software flags, there is 95% certainty that the flag is accurate and relates to a specific OSHA regulation. Launched in October 2024, it's now being deployed on hundreds of construction sites in the US, Lorenzo says, and versions specific to the building regulations in countries including Canada, the UK, South Korea, and Australia have also been deployed. Safety AI is one of multiple AI construction safety tools that have emerged in recent years, from Silicon Valley to Hong Kong to Jerusalem.

A Ukrainian drone attack on an industrial plant in Izhevsk, in central Russia, killed three people and injured 35 others, regional Governor Alexander Brechalov said in a post on Telegram. The drone struck the Kupol Electromechanical Plant, which produces air defence systems and drones for the Russian military, an unnamed official with Ukraine's Security Service, the SBU, told the Associated Press news agency. A Russian attack on a vehicle evacuating civilians from Pokrovsk, in Ukraine's Donetsk region, killed one person and injured a policeman, police said. The Ministry of Defence in Moscow said that 60 Ukrainian drones were downed overnight over several regions, including 17 over Russian-occupied Crimea, 16 over Russia's Rostov region and four over Russia's Saratov region. Ukraine's Air Force said on Tuesday that Russia launched 52 Shahed and decoy drones at the country overnight.

Humans increasingly rely on large language models (LLMs) to support decisions in social settings. Previous work suggests that such tools shape people's moral and political judgements. However, the long-term implications of LLM-based social decision-making remain unknown. How will human cooperation be affected when the assessment of social interactions relies on language models? This is a pressing question, as human cooperation is often driven by indirect reciprocity, reputations, and the capacity to judge interactions of others. Here, we assess how state-of-the-art LLMs judge cooperative actions. We provide 21 different LLMs with an extensive set of examples where individuals cooperate -- or refuse cooperating -- in a range of social contexts, and ask how these interactions should be judged. Furthermore, through an evolutionary game-theoretical model, we evaluate cooperation dynamics in populations where the extracted LLM-driven judgements prevail, assessing the long-term impact of LLMs on human prosociality. We observe a remarkable agreement in evaluating cooperation against good opponents. On the other hand, we notice within- and between-model variance when judging cooperation with ill-reputed individuals. We show that the differences revealed between models can significantly impact the prevalence of cooperation. Finally, we test prompts to steer LLM norms, showing that such interventions can shape LLM judgements, particularly through goal-oriented prompts. Our research connects LLM-based advices and long-term social dynamics, and highlights the need to carefully align LLM norms in order to preserve human cooperation.