Natural Language Processing and Generation systems have recently shown the potential to complement and streamline the costly and time-consuming job of professional fact-checkers. In this work, we lift several constraints of current state-of-the-art pipelines for automated fact-checking based on the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) paradigm. Our goal is to benchmark, under more realistic scenarios, RAG-based methods for the generation of verdicts - i.e., short texts discussing the veracity of a claim - evaluating them on stylistically complex claims and heterogeneous, yet reliable, knowledge bases. Our findings show a complex landscape, where, for example, LLM-based retrievers outperform other retrieval techniques, though they still struggle with heterogeneous knowledge bases; larger models excel in verdict faithfulness, while smaller models provide better context adherence, with human evaluations favouring zero-shot and one-shot approaches for informativeness, and fine-tuned models for emotional alignment.

Disinformation, irrespective of domain or language, aims to deceive or manipulate public opinion, typically through employing advanced persuasion techniques. Qualitative and quantitative research on the weaponisation of persuasion techniques in disinformation has been mostly topic-specific (e.g., COVID-19) with limited cross-domain studies, resulting in a lack of comprehensive understanding of these strategies. This study employs a state-of-the-art persuasion technique classifier to conduct a large-scale, multi-domain analysis of the role of 16 persuasion techniques in disinformation narratives. It shows how different persuasion techniques are employed disproportionately in different disinformation domains. We also include a detailed case study on climate change disinformation, highlighting how linguistic, psychological, and cultural factors shape the adaptation of persuasion strategies to fit unique thematic contexts.

The proliferation of radical content on online platforms poses significant risks, including inciting violence and spreading extremist ideologies. Despite ongoing research, existing datasets and models often fail to address the complexities of multilingual and diverse data. To bridge this gap, we introduce a publicly available multilingual dataset annotated with radicalization levels, calls for action, and named entities in English, French, and Arabic. This dataset is pseudonymized to protect individual privacy while preserving contextual information. Beyond presenting our freely available dataset, we analyze the annotation process, highlighting biases and disagreements among annotators and their implications for model performance. Additionally, we use synthetic data to investigate the influence of socio-demographic traits on annotation patterns and model predictions. Our work offers a comprehensive examination of the challenges and opportunities in building robust datasets for radical content detection, emphasizing the importance of fairness and transparency in model development.

Abstract--In this study, we propose a cross-domain multiobjective 2.478 in unseen noise environments) over a CNN-based baseline speech assessment model called MOSA-Net, which SE model. Index Terms--non-intrusive speech assessment models, deep More specifically, MOSA-Net is designed to estimate the speech learning, multi-objective learning, speech enhancement. PEECH assessment metrics are indicators that quantitatively measure the specific attributes of speech signals. LCC by 0.021 (0.985 vs 0.964 in seen noise environments) For example, QIA-SE can improve PESQ by 0.301 Ryandhimas E. Zezario is with the Department of Computer Science and Fei Chen is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology of China, Shenzhen, China. Hsin-Min Wang is with the Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. This testing strategy is prohibitive To attain a higher assessment accuracy, the MBNet adopts the and may not always be feasible. Hence, several objective BiasNet architecture to compensate for the biased scores of a evaluations metrics have been developed as surrogates for certain judge [49], In addition, the multi-task learning criterion human listening tests [6]-[31]. Meanwhile, different acoustic comprises two stages. The first stage includes a series of features are used as input to the assessment model to consider signal processing units designed to convert speech waveforms information from different acoustic domains [51], [52].

Despite the widespread use of LLMs due to their superior performance in various tasks, their high computational costs often lead potential users to opt for the pretraining-finetuning pipeline. However, biases prevalent in manually constructed datasets can introduce spurious correlations between tokens and labels, creating so-called shortcuts and hindering the generalizability of fine-tuned models. Existing debiasing methods often rely on prior knowledge of specific dataset biases, which is challenging to acquire a priori. We propose RAZOR (Rewriting And Zero-bias Optimization Refinement), a novel, unsupervised, and data-focused debiasing approach based on text rewriting for shortcut mitigation. RAZOR leverages LLMs to iteratively rewrite potentially biased text segments by replacing them with heuristically selected alternatives in a shortcut space defined by token statistics and positional information. This process aims to align surface-level text features more closely with diverse label distributions, thereby promoting the learning of genuine linguistic patterns. Compared with unsupervised SoTA models, RAZOR improves by 3.5% on the FEVER and 6.5% on MNLI and SNLI datasets according to the F1 score. Additionally, RAZOR effectively mitigates specific known biases, reducing bias-related terms by x2 without requiring prior bias information, a result that is on par with SoTA models that leverage prior information. Our work prioritizes data manipulation over architectural modifications, emphasizing the pivotal role of data quality in enhancing model performance and fairness. This research contributes to developing more robust evaluation benchmarks for debiasing methods by incorporating metrics for bias reduction and overall model efficacy.

Social media platforms have become vital spaces for public discourse, serving as modern agor\'as where a wide range of voices influence societal narratives. However, their open nature also makes them vulnerable to exploitation by malicious actors, including state-sponsored entities, who can conduct information operations (IOs) to manipulate public opinion. The spread of misinformation, false news, and misleading claims threatens democratic processes and societal cohesion, making it crucial to develop methods for the timely detection of inauthentic activity to protect the integrity of online discourse. In this work, we introduce a methodology designed to identify users orchestrating information operations, a.k.a. \textit{IO drivers}, across various influence campaigns. Our framework, named \texttt{IOHunter}, leverages the combined strengths of Language Models and Graph Neural Networks to improve generalization in \emph{supervised}, \emph{scarcely-supervised}, and \emph{cross-IO} contexts. Our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance across multiple sets of IOs originating from six countries, significantly surpassing existing approaches. This research marks a step toward developing Graph Foundation Models specifically tailored for the task of IO detection on social media platforms.

Recent studies have demonstrated that the representations of artificial neural networks (ANNs) can exhibit notable similarities to cortical representations when subjected to identical auditory sensory inputs. In these studies, the ability to predict cortical representations is probed by regressing from ANN representations to cortical representations. Building upon this concept, our approach reverses the direction of prediction: we utilize ANN representations as a supervisory signal to train recognition models using noisy brain recordings obtained through non-invasive measurements. Specifically, we focus on constructing a recognition model for music identification, where electroencephalography (EEG) brain recordings collected during music listening serve as input. By training an EEG recognition model to predict ANN representations-representations associated with music identification-we observed a substantial improvement in classification accuracy. This study introduces a novel approach to developing recognition models for brain recordings in response to external auditory stimuli. It holds promise for advancing brain-computer interfaces (BCI), neural decoding techniques, and our understanding of music cognition. Furthermore, it provides new insights into the relationship between auditory brain activity and ANN representations.

In the era of increasing privacy concerns and demand for personalized experiences, traditional Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) frameworks face significant challenges due to their reliance on centralized data. We introduce Federated Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (FedRLHF), a novel framework that decentralizes the RLHF process. FedRLHF enables collaborative policy learning across multiple clients without necessitating the sharing of raw data or human feedback, thereby ensuring robust privacy preservation. Leveraging federated reinforcement learning, each client integrates human feedback locally into their reward functions and updates their policies through personalized RLHF processes. We establish rigorous theoretical foundations for FedRLHF, providing convergence guarantees, and deriving sample complexity bounds that scale efficiently with the number of clients. Empirical evaluations on the MovieLens and IMDb datasets demonstrate that FedRLHF not only preserves user privacy but also achieves performance on par with centralized RLHF, while enhancing personalization across diverse client environments.

Concerns about the risks and harms posed by artificial intelligence (AI) have resulted in significant study into algorithmic transparency, giving rise to a sub-field known as Explainable AI (XAI). Unfortunately, despite a decade of development in XAI, an existential challenge remains: progress in research has not been fully translated into the actual implementation of algorithmic transparency by organizations. In this work, we test an approach for addressing the challenge by creating transparency advocates, or motivated individuals within organizations who drive a ground-up cultural shift towards improved algorithmic transparency. Over several years, we created an open-source educational workshop on algorithmic transparency and advocacy. We delivered the workshop to professionals across two separate domains to improve their algorithmic transparency literacy and willingness to advocate for change. In the weeks following the workshop, participants applied what they learned, such as speaking up for algorithmic transparency at an organization-wide AI strategy meeting. We also make two broader observations: first, advocacy is not a monolith and can be broken down into different levels. Second, individuals' willingness for advocacy is affected by their professional field. For example, news and media professionals may be more likely to advocate for algorithmic transparency than those working at technology start-ups.

The rapid spread of information in the digital age highlights the critical need for effective fact-checking tools, particularly for languages with limited resources, such as Vietnamese. In response to this challenge, we introduce ViFactCheck, the first publicly available benchmark dataset designed specifically for Vietnamese fact-checking across multiple online news domains. This dataset contains 7,232 human-annotated pairs of claim-evidence combinations sourced from reputable Vietnamese online news, covering 12 diverse topics. It has been subjected to a meticulous annotation process to ensure high quality and reliability, achieving a Fleiss Kappa inter-annotator agreement score of 0.83. Our evaluation leverages state-of-the-art pre-trained and large language models, employing fine-tuning and prompting techniques to assess performance. Notably, the Gemma model demonstrated superior effectiveness, with an impressive macro F1 score of 89.90%, thereby establishing a new standard for fact-checking benchmarks. This result highlights the robust capabilities of Gemma in accurately identifying and verifying facts in Vietnamese. To further promote advances in fact-checking technology and improve the reliability of digital media, we have made the ViFactCheck dataset, model checkpoints, fact-checking pipelines, and source code freely available on GitHub. This initiative aims to inspire further research and enhance the accuracy of information in low-resource languages.