Multi-modal multi-task (M3T) foundation models (FMs) have recently shown transformative potential in artificial intelligence, with emerging applications in education. However, their deployment in real-world educational settings is hindered by privacy regulations, data silos, and limited domain-specific data availability. We introduce M3T Federated Foundation Models (FedFMs) for education: a paradigm that integrates federated learning (FL) with M3T FMs to enable collaborative, privacy-preserving training across decentralized institutions while accommodating diverse modalities and tasks. Subsequently, this position paper aims to unveil M3T FedFMs as a promising yet underexplored approach to the education community, explore its potentials, and reveal its related future research directions. We outline how M3T FedFMs can advance three critical pillars of next-generation intelligent education systems: (i) privacy preservation, by keeping sensitive multi-modal student and institutional data local; (ii) personalization, through modular architectures enabling tailored models for students, instructors, and institutions; and (iii) equity and inclusivity, by facilitating participation from underrepresented and resource-constrained entities. We finally identify various open research challenges, including studying of (i) inter-institution heterogeneous privacy regulations, (ii) the non-uniformity of data modalities' characteristics, (iii) the unlearning approaches for M3T FedFMs, (iv) the continual learning frameworks for M3T FedFMs, and (v) M3T FedFM model interpretability, which must be collectively addressed for practical deployment.

Contemporary robots are increasingly mimicking human social behaviours to facilitate interaction, such as smiling to signal approachability, or hesitating before taking an action to allow people time to react. Such techniques can activate a person's entrenched social instincts, triggering emotional responses as though they are interacting with a fellow human, and can prompt them to treat a robot as if it truly possesses the underlying life - like processes it outwardly presents, raising significant ethical questions. We engage these issues through the lens of informed consent: drawing upon pr evailing legal principles and ethics, we examine how social robots can influence user behaviour in novel ways, and whether under those circumstances users can be appropriately informed to consent to these heightened interactions. We explore the complex cir cumstances of human - robot interaction and highlight how it differ s from more familiar interaction contexts, and we apply legal principles relating to informed consent to social robots in order to reconceptualize the current ethical debates surrounding the field. From this investigation, we synthesize design goals for robot developers to achieve more ethical and informed human - robot interaction.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are large-scale pretrained models that have achieved remarkable success across diverse domains. These successes have been driven by unprecedented complexity and scale in both data and computations. However, due to the high costs of training such models, brute-force trial-and-error approaches to improve LLMs are not feasible. Inspired by the success of inverse problems in uncovering fundamental scientific laws, this position paper advocates that inverse problems can also efficiently uncover scaling laws that guide the building of LLMs to achieve the desirable performance with significantly better cost-effectiveness.

Active Membership Inference T est (aMINT) is a method designed to detect whether given data were used during the training of machine learning models. In Active MINT, we propose a novel multitask learning process that involves training simultaneously two models: the original or Audited Model, and a secondary model, referred to as the MINT Model, responsible for identifying the data used for training the Audited Model. This novel multi-task learning approach has been designed to incorporate the auditability of the model as an optimization objective during the training process of neural networks. The proposed approach incorporates intermediate activation maps as inputs to the MINT layers, which are trained to enhance the detection of training data. W e present results using a wide range of neural networks, from lighter architectures such as MobileNet to more complex ones such as Vision Transformers, evaluated in 5 public benchmarks. Our proposed Active MINT achieves over 80% accuracy in detecting if given data was used for training, significantly outperforming previous approaches in the literature.

The spread of fake news, polarizing, politically biased, and harmful content on online platforms has been a serious concern. With large language models becoming a promising approach, however, no study has properly benchmarked their performance across different models, usage methods, and languages. This study presents a comprehensive overview of different Large Language Models adaptation paradigms for the detection of hyperpartisan and fake news, harmful tweets, and political bias. Our experiments spanned 10 datasets and 5 different languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Bulgarian), covering both binary and multiclass classification scenarios. We tested different strategies ranging from parameter efficient Fine-Tuning of language models to a variety of different In-Context Learning strategies and prompts. These included zero-shot prompts, codebooks, few-shot (with both randomly-selected and diversely-selected examples using Determinantal Point Processes), and Chain-of-Thought. We discovered that In-Context Learning often underperforms when compared to Fine-Tuning a model. This main finding highlights the importance of Fine-Tuning even smaller models on task-specific settings even when compared to the largest models evaluated in an In-Context Learning setup - in our case LlaMA3.1-8b-Instruct,

As the demand for exercising the "right to be forgotten" grows, the need for verifiable machine unlearning has become increasingly evident to ensure both transparency and accountability. We present {\em zkUnlearner}, the first zero-knowledge framework for verifiable machine unlearning, specifically designed to support {\em multi-granularity} and {\em forgery-resistance}. First, we propose a general computational model that employs a {\em bit-masking} technique to enable the {\em selectivity} of existing zero-knowledge proofs of training for gradient descent algorithms. This innovation enables not only traditional {\em sample-level} unlearning but also more advanced {\em feature-level} and {\em class-level} unlearning. Our model can be translated to arithmetic circuits, ensuring compatibility with a broad range of zero-knowledge proof systems. Furthermore, our approach overcomes key limitations of existing methods in both efficiency and privacy. Second, forging attacks present a serious threat to the reliability of unlearning. Specifically, in Stochastic Gradient Descent optimization, gradients from unlearned data, or from minibatches containing it, can be forged using alternative data samples or minibatches that exclude it. We propose the first effective strategies to resist state-of-the-art forging attacks. Finally, we benchmark a zkSNARK-based instantiation of our framework and perform comprehensive performance evaluations to validate its practicality.

Personalized AI systems, from recommendation systems to chatbots, are a prevalent method for distributing content to users based on their learned preferences. However, there is growing concern about the adverse effects of these systems, including their potential tendency to expose users to sensitive or harmful material, negatively impacting overall well-being. To address this concern quantitatively, it is necessary to create datasets with relevant sensitivity labels for content, enabling researchers to evaluate personalized systems beyond mere engagement metrics. To this end, we introduce two novel datasets that include a taxonomy of sensitivity labels alongside user-content ratings: one that integrates MovieLens rating data with content warnings from the Does the Dog Die? community ratings website, and another that combines fan-fiction interaction data and user-generated warnings from Archive of Our Own.

Large language models (LLMs) are incredible and versatile tools for text-based tasks that have enabled countless, previously unimaginable, applications. Retrieval models, in contrast, have not yet seen such capable general-purpose models emerge. To achieve this goal, retrieval models must be able to perform complex retrieval tasks, where queries contain multiple parts, constraints, or requirements in natural language. These tasks represent a natural progression from the simple, single-aspect queries that are used in the vast majority of existing, commonly used evaluation sets. Complex queries naturally arise as people expect search systems to handle more specific and often ambitious information requests, as is demonstrated by how people use LLM-based information systems. Despite the growing desire for retrieval models to expand their capabilities in complex retrieval tasks, there exist limited resources to assess the ability of retrieval models on a comprehensive set of diverse complex tasks. The few resources that do exist feature a limited scope and often lack realistic settings making it hard to know the true capabilities of retrieval models on complex real-world retrieval tasks. To address this shortcoming and spur innovation in next-generation retrieval models, we construct a diverse and realistic set of complex retrieval tasks and benchmark a representative set of state-of-the-art retrieval models. Additionally, we explore the impact of LLM-based query expansion and rewriting on retrieval quality. Our results show that even the best models struggle to produce high-quality retrieval results with the highest average nDCG@10 of only 0.346 and R@100 of only 0.587 across all tasks. Although LLM augmentation can help weaker models, the strongest model has decreased performance across all metrics with all rewriting techniques.

Abstract--Rule-Based Moral Principles for Explaining Uncertainty in Natural Language Generation As large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in high-stakes applications, the challenge of explaining uncertainty in natural language generation has become both a technical and moral imperative. Traditional approaches rely on probabilistic methods that are often opaque, difficult to interpret, and misaligned with human expectations of transparency and accountability. In response to these limitations, this paper introduces a novel framework based on rule-based moral principles--simple, human-inspired ethical guidelines--for responding to uncertainty in LLM-generated text. Drawing on insights from experimental moral psychology and virtue ethics, we define a set of symbolic behavioral rules such as precaution, deference, and responsibility to guide system responses under conditions of epistemic or aleatoric uncertainty. These rules are implemented declaratively and are designed to generate adaptive, context-sensitive explanations even in the absence of precise confidence metrics. The moral principles are encoded as symbolic rules within a lightweight Prolog-based engine, where each uncertainty tag (low, medium, high) activates an ethically aligned system action along with an automatically generated, plain-language rationale. We evaluate the framework through scenario-based simulations that benchmark rule coverage, assess fairness implications, and analyze trust calibration. An interpretive explanation module is integrated to reveal both the assigned uncertainty level and its underlying justification in a transparent and accessible way. We illustrate the framework through hypothetical yet plausible use cases in clinical and legal domains, demonstrating how rule-based moral reasoning can enhance user trust, promote fairness, and improve the interpretability of AI-generated language. By offering a lightweight, philosophically grounded alternative to probabilistic uncertainty modeling, our approach paves the way for more ethical, human-aligned, and socially responsible natural language generation.

The introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the domains of traditional art (visual arts, performing arts, and crafts) has sparked a complicated discussion about whether this might be an agent of disruption or an enhancement of our traditional art forms. This paper looks at the duality of AI, exploring the ways that recent technologies like Generative Adversarial Networks and Diffusion Models, and text-to-image generators are changing the fields of painting, sculpture, calligraphy, dance, music, and the arts of craft. Using examples and data, we illustrate the ways that AI can democratize creative expression, improve productivity, and preserve cultural heritage, while also examining the negative aspects, including: the threats to authenticity within art, ethical concerns around data, and issues including socio-economic factors such as job losses. While we argue for the context-dependence of the impact of AI (the potential for creative homogenization and the devaluation of human agency in artmaking), we also illustrate the potential for hybrid practices featuring AI in cuisine, etc. We advocate for the development of ethical guidelines, collaborative approaches, and inclusive technology development. In sum, we are articulating a vision of AI in which it amplifies our innate creativity while resisting the displacement of the cultural, nuanced, and emotional aspects of traditional art. The future will be determined by human choices about how to govern AI so that it becomes a mechanism for artistic evolution and not a substitute for the artist's soul.