Law
Machine Unlearning for Streaming Forgetting
Shen, Shaofei, Zhang, Chenhao, Zhao, Yawen, Bialkowski, Alina, Chen, Weitong, Xu, Miao
Machine unlearning aims to remove knowledge of the specific training data in a well-trained model. Currently, machine unlearning methods typically handle all forgetting data in a single batch, removing the corresponding knowledge all at once upon request. However, in practical scenarios, requests for data removal often arise in a streaming manner rather than in a single batch, leading to reduced efficiency and effectiveness in existing methods. Such challenges of streaming forgetting have not been the focus of much research. In this paper, to address the challenges of performance maintenance, efficiency, and data access brought about by streaming unlearning requests, we introduce a streaming unlearning paradigm, formalizing the unlearning as a distribution shift problem. We then estimate the altered distribution and propose a novel streaming unlearning algorithm to achieve efficient streaming forgetting without requiring access to the original training data. Theoretical analyses confirm an $O(\sqrt{T} + V_T)$ error bound on the streaming unlearning regret, where $V_T$ represents the cumulative total variation in the optimal solution over $T$ learning rounds. This theoretical guarantee is achieved under mild conditions without the strong restriction of convex loss function. Experiments across various models and datasets validate the performance of our proposed method.
FullRecall: A Semantic Search-Based Ranking Approach for Maximizing Recall in Patent Retrieval
Ali, Amna, De Silva, Liyanage C., Abas, Pg Emeroylariffion
Patent examiners and inventors face significant pressure to verify the originality and non-obviousness of inventions, and the intricate nature of patent data intensifies the challenges of patent retrieval. Therefore, there is a pressing need to devise cutting-edge retrieval strategies that can reliably achieve the desired recall. This study introduces FullRecall, a novel patent retrieval approach that effectively manages the complexity of patent data while maintaining the reliability of relevance matching and maximising recall. It leverages IPC-guided knowledge to generate informative phrases, which are processed to extract key information in the form of noun phrases characterising the query patent under observation. From these, the top k keyphrases are selected to construct a query for retrieving a focused subset of the dataset. This initial retrieval step achieves complete recall, successfully capturing all relevant documents. To further refine the results, a ranking scheme is applied to the retrieved subset, reducing its size while maintaining 100% recall. This multi-phase process demonstrates an effective strategy for balancing precision and recall in patent retrieval tasks. Comprehensive experiments were conducted, and the results were compared with baseline studies, namely HRR2 [1] and ReQ-ReC [2]. The proposed approach yielded superior results, achieving 100% recall in all five test cases. However, HRR2[1] recall values across the five test cases were 10%, 25%, 33.3%, 0%, and 14.29%, while ReQ-ReC [2] showed 50% for the first test case, 25% for the second test case, and 0% for the third, fourth, and fifth test cases. The 100% recall ensures that no relevant prior art is overlooked, thereby strengthening the patent pre-filing and examination processes, hence reducing potential legal risks.
Automated Safety Evaluations Across 20 Large Language Models: The Aymara LLM Risk and Responsibility Matrix
As large language models (LLMs) become increasingly integrated into real-world applications, scalable and rigorous safety evaluation is essential. This paper introduces Aymara AI, a programmatic platform for generating and administering customized, policy-grounded safety evaluations. Aymara AI transforms natural-language safety policies into adversarial prompts and scores model responses using an AI-based rater validated against human judgments. We demonstrate its capabilities through the Aymara LLM Risk and Responsibility Matrix, which evaluates 20 commercially available LLMs across 10 real-world safety domains. Results reveal wide performance disparities, with mean safety scores ranging from 86.2% to 52.4%. While models performed well in well-established safety domains such as Misinformation (mean = 95.7%), they consistently failed in more complex or underspecified domains, notably Privacy & Impersonation (mean = 24.3%). Analyses of Variance confirmed that safety scores differed significantly across both models and domains (p < .05). These findings underscore the inconsistent and context-dependent nature of LLM safety and highlight the need for scalable, customizable tools like Aymara AI to support responsible AI development and oversight.
Revisiting Graph Contrastive Learning on Anomaly Detection: A Structural Imbalance Perspective
Xu, Yiming, Peng, Zhen, Shi, Bin, Hua, Xu, Dong, Bo, Wang, Song, Chen, Chen
The superiority of graph contrastive learning (GCL) has prompted its application to anomaly detection tasks for more powerful risk warning systems. Unfortunately, existing GCL-based models tend to excessively prioritize overall detection performance while neglecting robustness to structural imbalance, which can be problematic for many real-world networks following power-law degree distributions. Particularly, GCL-based methods may fail to capture tail anomalies (abnormal nodes with low degrees). This raises concerns about the security and robustness of current anomaly detection algorithms and therefore hinders their applicability in a variety of realistic high-risk scenarios. To the best of our knowledge, research on the robustness of graph anomaly detection to structural imbalance has received little scrutiny. To address the above issues, this paper presents a novel GCL-based framework named AD-GCL. It devises the neighbor pruning strategy to filter noisy edges for head nodes and facilitate the detection of genuine tail nodes by aligning from head nodes to forged tail nodes. Moreover, AD-GCL actively explores potential neighbors to enlarge the receptive field of tail nodes through anomaly-guided neighbor completion. We further introduce intra- and inter-view consistency loss of the original and augmentation graph for enhanced representation. The performance evaluation of the whole, head, and tail nodes on multiple datasets validates the comprehensive superiority of the proposed AD-GCL in detecting both head anomalies and tail anomalies.
Optimizing Legal Document Retrieval in Vietnamese with Semi-Hard Negative Mining
Le, Van-Hoang, Nguyen, Duc-Vu, Van Nguyen, Kiet, Nguyen, Ngan Luu-Thuy
Large Language Models (LLMs) face significant challenges in specialized domains like law, where precision and domain-specific knowledge are critical. This paper presents a streamlined two-stage framework consisting of Retrieval and Re-ranking to enhance legal document retrieval efficiency and accuracy. Our approach employs a fine-tuned Bi-Encoder for rapid candidate retrieval, followed by a Cross-Encoder for precise re-ranking, both optimized through strategic negative example mining. Key innovations include the introduction of the Exist@m metric to evaluate retrieval effectiveness and the use of semi-hard negatives to mitigate training bias, which significantly improved re-ranking performance. Evaluated on the SoICT Hackathon 2024 for Legal Document Retrieval, our team, 4Huiter, achieved a top-three position. While top-performing teams employed ensemble models and iterative self-training on large bge-m3 architectures, our lightweight, single-pass approach offered a competitive alternative with far fewer parameters. The framework demonstrates that optimized data processing, tailored loss functions, and balanced negative sampling are pivotal for building robust retrieval-augmented systems in legal contexts.
Assessing the Reliability of Large Language Models for Deductive Qualitative Coding: A Comparative Study of ChatGPT Interventions
Hila, Angjelin, Hauser, Elliott
In this study, we investigate the use of large language models (LLMs), specifically ChatGPT, for structured deductive qualitative coding. While most current research emphasizes inductive coding applications, we address the underexplored potential of LLMs to perform deductive classification tasks aligned with established human-coded schemes. Using the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) Master Codebook, we classified U.S. Supreme Court case summaries into 21 major policy domains. We tested four intervention methods: zero-shot, few-shot, definition-based, and a novel Step-by-Step Task Decomposition strategy, across repeated samples. Performance was evaluated using standard classification metrics (accuracy, F1-score, Cohen's kappa, Krippendorff's alpha), and construct validity was assessed using chi-squared tests and Cramer's V. Chi-squared and effect size analyses confirmed that intervention strategies significantly influenced classification behavior, with Cramer's V values ranging from 0.359 to 0.613, indicating moderate to strong shifts in classification patterns. The Step-by-Step Task Decomposition strategy achieved the strongest reliability (accuracy = 0.775, kappa = 0.744, alpha = 0.746), achieving thresholds for substantial agreement. Despite the semantic ambiguity within case summaries, ChatGPT displayed stable agreement across samples, including high F1 scores in low-support subclasses. These findings demonstrate that with targeted, custom-tailored interventions, LLMs can achieve reliability levels suitable for integration into rigorous qualitative coding workflows.
Fiduciary AI for the Future of Brain-Technology Interactions
Bhattacharjee, Abhishek, Pilkington, Jack, Farahany, Nita
Brain foundation models represent a new frontier in AI: instead of processing text or images, these models interpret real-time neural signals from EEG, fMRI, and other neurotechnologies. When integrated with brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), they may enable transformative applications-from thought controlled devices to neuroprosthetics-by interpreting and acting on brain activity in milliseconds. However, these same systems pose unprecedented risks, including the exploitation of subconscious neural signals and the erosion of cognitive liberty. Users cannot easily observe or control how their brain signals are interpreted, creating power asymmetries that are vulnerable to manipulation. This paper proposes embedding fiduciary duties-loyalty, care, and confidentiality-directly into BCI-integrated brain foundation models through technical design. Drawing on legal traditions and recent advancements in AI alignment techniques, we outline implementable architectural and governance mechanisms to ensure these systems act in users' best interests. Placing brain foundation models on a fiduciary footing is essential to realizing their potential without compromising self-determination.
Beyond DNS: Unlocking the Internet of AI Agents via the NANDA Index and Verified AgentFacts
Raskar, Ramesh, Chari, Pradyumna, Zinky, John, Lambe, Mahesh, Grogan, Jared James, Wang, Sichao, Ranjan, Rajesh, Singhal, Rekha, Gupta, Shailja, Lincourt, Robert, Bala, Raghu, Joshi, Aditi, Singh, Abhishek, Chopra, Ayush, Stripelis, Dimitris, B, Bhuwan, Kumar, Sumit, Gorskikh, Maria
The Internet is poised to host billions to trillions of autonomous AI agents that negotiate, delegate, and migrate in milliseconds and workloads that will strain DNS-centred identity and discovery. In this paper, we describe the NANDA index architecture, which we envision as a means for discoverability, identifiability and authentication in the internet of AI agents. We present an architecture where a minimal lean index resolves to dynamic, cryptographically verifiable AgentFacts that supports multi-endpoint routing, load balancing, privacy-preserving access, and credentialed capability assertions. Our architecture design delivers five concrete guarantees: (1) A quilt-like index proposal that supports both NANDA-native agents as well as third party agents being discoverable via the index, (2) rapid global resolution for newly spawned AI agents, (3) sub-second revocation and key rotation, (4) schema-validated capability assertions, and (5) privacy-preserving discovery across organisational boundaries via verifiable, least-disclosure queries. We formalize the AgentFacts schema, specify a CRDT-based update protocol, and prototype adaptive resolvers. The result is a lightweight, horizontally scalable foundation that unlocks secure, trust-aware collaboration for the next generation of the Internet of AI agents, without abandoning existing web infrastructure.
Language Models Change Facts Based on the Way You Talk
Kearney, Matthew, Binns, Reuben, Gal, Yarin
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly being used in user-facing applications, from providing medical consultations to job interview advice. Recent research suggests that these models are becoming increasingly proficient at inferring identity information about the author of a piece of text from linguistic patterns as subtle as the choice of a few words. However, little is known about how LLMs use this information in their decision-making in real-world applications. We perform the first comprehensive analysis of how identity markers present in a user's writing bias LLM responses across five different high-stakes LLM applications in the domains of medicine, law, politics, government benefits, and job salaries. We find that LLMs are extremely sensitive to markers of identity in user queries and that race, gender, and age consistently influence LLM responses in these applications. For instance, when providing medical advice, we find that models apply different standards of care to individuals of different ethnicities for the same symptoms; we find that LLMs are more likely to alter answers to align with a conservative (liberal) political worldview when asked factual questions by older (younger) individuals; and that LLMs recommend lower salaries for non-White job applicants and higher salaries for women compared to men. Taken together, these biases mean that the use of off-the-shelf LLMs for these applications may cause harmful differences in medical care, foster wage gaps, and create different political factual realities for people of different identities. Beyond providing an analysis, we also provide new tools for evaluating how subtle encoding of identity in users' language choices impacts model decisions. Given the serious implications of these findings, we recommend that similar thorough assessments of LLM use in user-facing applications are conducted before future deployment.
Cognitive Castes: Artificial Intelligence, Epistemic Stratification, and the Dissolution of Democratic Discourse
Artificial intelligence functions not as an epistemic leveller, but as an accelerant of cognitive stratification, entrenching and formalising informational castes within liberal-democratic societies. Synthesising formal epistemology, political theory, algorithmic architecture, and economic incentive structures, the argument traces how contemporary AI systems selectively amplify the reasoning capacity of individuals equipped with recursive abstraction, symbolic logic, and adversarial interrogation, whilst simultaneously pacifying the cognitively untrained through engagement-optimised interfaces. Fluency replaces rigour, immediacy displaces reflection, and procedural reasoning is eclipsed by reactive suggestion. The result is a technocratic realignment of power: no longer grounded in material capital alone, but in the capacity to navigate, deconstruct, and manipulate systems of epistemic production. Information ceases to be a commons; it becomes the substrate through which consent is manufactured and autonomy subdued. Deliberative democracy collapses not through censorship, but through the erosion of interpretive agency. The proposed response is not technocratic regulation, nor universal access, but the reconstruction of rational autonomy as a civic mandate, codified in education, protected by epistemic rights, and structurally embedded within open cognitive infrastructure.