Text-to-Image (T2I) models have shown great performance in generating images based on textual prompts. However, these models are vulnerable to unsafe input to generate unsafe content like sexual, harassment and illegal-activity images. Existing studies based on image checker, model fine-tuning and embedding blocking are impractical in real-world applications. Hence, we propose the first universal prompt optimizer for safe T2I (POSI) generation in black-box scenario. We first construct a dataset consisting of toxic-clean prompt pairs by GPT-3.5 Turbo. To guide the optimizer to have the ability of converting toxic prompt to clean prompt while preserving semantic information, we design a novel reward function measuring toxicity and text alignment of generated images and train the optimizer through Proximal Policy Optimization. Experiments show that our approach can effectively reduce the likelihood of various T2I models in generating inappropriate images, with no significant impact on text alignment. It is also flexible to be combined with methods to achieve better performance. Our code is available at https://github.com/wzongyu/POSI.

Large Language Model (LLMs) such as ChatGPT that exhibit generative AI capabilities are facing accelerated adoption and innovation. The increased presence of Generative AI (GAI) inevitably raises concerns about the risks and safety associated with these models. This article provides an up-to-date survey of recent trends in AI safety research of GAI-LLMs from a computer scientist's perspective: specific and technical. In this survey, we explore the background and motivation for the identified harms and risks in the context of LLMs being generative language models; our survey differentiates by emphasising the need for unified theories of the distinct safety challenges in the research development and applications of LLMs. We start our discussion with a concise introduction to the workings of LLMs, supported by relevant literature. Then we discuss earlier research that has pointed out the fundamental constraints of generative models, or lack of understanding thereof (e.g., performance and safety trade-offs as LLMs scale in number of parameters). We provide a sufficient coverage of LLM alignment -- delving into various approaches, contending methods and present challenges associated with aligning LLMs with human preferences. By highlighting the gaps in the literature and possible implementation oversights, our aim is to create a comprehensive analysis that provides insights for addressing AI safety in LLMs and encourages the development of aligned and secure models. We conclude our survey by discussing future directions of LLMs for AI safety, offering insights into ongoing research in this critical area.

Automatic summarization of legal case judgements, which are known to be long and complex, has traditionally been tried via extractive summarization models. In recent years, generative models including abstractive summarization models and Large language models (LLMs) have gained huge popularity. In this paper, we explore the applicability of such models for legal case judgement summarization. We applied various domain specific abstractive summarization models and general domain LLMs as well as extractive summarization models over two sets of legal case judgements from the United Kingdom (UK) Supreme Court and the Indian (IN) Supreme Court and evaluated the quality of the generated summaries. We also perform experiments on a third dataset of legal documents of a different type, Government reports from the United States (US). Results show that abstractive summarization models and LLMs generally perform better than the extractive methods as per traditional metrics for evaluating summary quality. However, detailed investigation shows the presence of inconsistencies and hallucinations in the outputs of the generative models, and we explore ways to reduce the hallucinations and inconsistencies in the summaries. Overall, the investigation suggests that further improvements are needed to enhance the reliability of abstractive models and LLMs for legal case judgement summarization. At present, a human-in-the-loop technique is more suitable for performing manual checks to identify inconsistencies in the generated summaries.

Discrete diffusion models with absorbing processes have shown promise in language modeling. The key quantities to be estimated are the ratios between the marginal probabilities of two transitive states at all timesteps, called the concrete score. In this paper, we reveal that the concrete score in absorbing diffusion can be expressed as conditional probabilities of clean data, multiplied by a time-dependent scalar in an analytic form. Motivated by this finding, we propose reparameterized absorbing discrete diffusion (RADD), a dedicated diffusion model without time-condition that characterizes the time-independent conditional probabilities. Besides its simplicity, RADD can reduce the number of function evaluations (NFEs) by caching the output of the time-independent network when the noisy sample remains unchanged in a sampling interval. Empirically, RADD is up to 3.5 times faster while achieving similar performance with the strongest baseline. Built upon the new perspective of conditional distributions, we further unify absorbing discrete diffusion and any-order autoregressive models (AO-ARMs), showing that the upper bound on the negative log-likelihood for the diffusion model can be interpreted as an expected negative log-likelihood for AO-ARMs. Further, our RADD models achieve SOTA performance among diffusion models on 5 zero-shot language modeling benchmarks (measured by perplexity) at the GPT-2 scale. Our code is available at https://github.com/ML-GSAI/RADD.

The rapid evolution of large language models (LLMs) represents a substantial leap forward in natural language understanding and generation. However, alongside these advancements come significant challenges related to the accountability and transparency of LLM responses. Reliable source attribution is essential to adhering to stringent legal and regulatory standards, including those set forth by the General Data Protection Regulation. Despite the well-established methods in source attribution within the computer vision domain, the application of robust attribution frameworks to natural language processing remains underexplored. To bridge this gap, we propose a novel and versatile TRansformer-based Attribution framework using Contrastive Embeddings called TRACE that, in particular, exploits contrastive learning for source attribution. We perform an extensive empirical evaluation to demonstrate the performance and efficiency of TRACE in various settings and show that TRACE significantly improves the ability to attribute sources accurately, making it a valuable tool for enhancing the reliability and trustworthiness of LLMs.

Machine learning models trained on vast amounts of real or synthetic data often achieve outstanding predictive performance across various domains. However, this utility comes with increasing concerns about privacy, as the training data may include sensitive information. To address these concerns, machine unlearning has been proposed to erase specific data samples from models. While some unlearning techniques efficiently remove data at low costs, recent research highlights vulnerabilities where malicious users could request unlearning on manipulated data to compromise the model. Despite these attacks' effectiveness, perturbed data differs from original training data, failing hash verification. Existing attacks on machine unlearning also suffer from practical limitations and require substantial additional knowledge and resources. To fill the gaps in current unlearning attacks, we introduce the Unlearning Usability Attack. This model-agnostic, unlearning-agnostic, and budget-friendly attack distills data distribution information into a small set of benign data. These data are identified as benign by automatic poisoning detection tools due to their positive impact on model training. While benign for machine learning, unlearning these data significantly degrades model information. Our evaluation demonstrates that unlearning this benign data, comprising no more than 1% of the total training data, can reduce model accuracy by up to 50%. Furthermore, our findings show that well-prepared benign data poses challenges for recent unlearning techniques, as erasing these synthetic instances demands higher resources than regular data. These insights underscore the need for future research to reconsider "data poisoning" in the context of machine unlearning.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, July 4th was a quiet day for news, but we've still got editorials on e-ink writing, the most-delayed video game ever and more bad news from the makers of ChatGPT. Earlier this week, engineer and Swift developer Pedro José Pereira Vieito dug into OpenAI's Mac ChatGPT app and found that it was storing user conversations locally in plain text, rather than encrypting them. Because that app is only available from OpenAI's website, and since it's not available on the App Store, it doesn't have to follow Apple's sandboxing requirements. OpenAI released an update that added encryption to locally stored chats. Then, more bad news stemmed from issues in 2023. Last spring, a hacker obtained information about OpenAI after illicitly accessing the company's internal messaging systems.

Against the backdrop of the European Union's commitment to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, efforts to improve energy efficiency are being intensified. The manufacturing industry is a key focal point of these endeavors due to its high final electrical energy demand, while simultaneously facing a growing shortage of skilled workers crucial for meeting established goals. Expert systems (ESs) offer the chance to overcome this challenge by automatically identifying potential energy efficiency improvements and thereby playing a significant role in reducing electricity consumption. This paper systematically reviews state-of-the-art approaches of ESs aimed at improving energy efficiency in industry, with a focus on manufacturing. The literature search yields 1692 results, of which 54 articles published between 1987 and 2023 are analyzed in depth. These publications are classified according to the system boundary, manufacturing type, application perspective, application purpose, ES type, and industry. Furthermore, we examine the structure, implementation, utilization, and development of ESs in this context. Through this analysis, the review reveals research gaps, pointing toward promising topics for future research.

Integrated satellite, aerial, and terrestrial networks (ISATNs) represent a sophisticated convergence of diverse communication technologies to ensure seamless connectivity across different altitudes and platforms. This paper explores the transformative potential of integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) into ISATNs, leveraging advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities to enhance these networks. We outline the current architecture of ISATNs and highlight the significant role LLMs can play in optimizing data flow, signal processing, and network management to advance 5G/6G communication technologies through advanced predictive algorithms and real-time decision-making. A comprehensive analysis of ISATN components is conducted, assessing how LLMs can effectively address traditional data transmission and processing bottlenecks. The paper delves into the network management challenges within ISATNs, emphasizing the necessity for sophisticated resource allocation strategies, traffic routing, and security management to ensure seamless connectivity and optimal performance under varying conditions. Furthermore, we examine the technical challenges and limitations associated with integrating LLMs into ISATNs, such as data integration for LLM processing, scalability issues, latency in decision-making processes, and the design of robust, fault-tolerant systems. The study also identifies key future research directions for fully harnessing LLM capabilities in ISATNs, which is crucial for enhancing network reliability, optimizing performance, and achieving a truly interconnected and intelligent global network system.

The process of annotating data within the legal sector is filled with distinct challenges that differ from other fields, primarily due to the inherent complexities of legal language and documentation. The initial task usually involves selecting an appropriate raw dataset that captures the intricate aspects of legal texts. Following this, extracting text becomes a complicated task, as legal documents often have complex structures, footnotes, references, and unique terminology. The importance of data cleaning is magnified in this context, ensuring that redundant information is eliminated while maintaining crucial legal details and context. Creating comprehensive yet straightforward annotation guidelines is imperative, as these guidelines serve as the road map for maintaining uniformity and addressing the subtle nuances of legal terminology. Another critical aspect is the involvement of legal professionals in the annotation process. Their expertise is valuable in ensuring that the data not only remains contextually accurate but also adheres to prevailing legal standards and interpretations. This paper provides an expanded view of these challenges and aims to offer a foundational understanding and guidance for researchers and professionals engaged in legal data annotation projects. In addition, we provide links to our created and fine-tuned datasets and language models. These resources are outcomes of our discussed projects and solutions to challenges faced while working on them.