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Instance-SpecificAsymmetricSensitivityin DifferentialPrivacy

Neural Information Processing Systems

While the inverse sensitivity mechanism was shown to be instance optimal, it was only with respect to a class of unbiased mechanisms such that the most likely outcome matches the underlying data.



Equality of Opportunity in Classification: A Causal Approach

Neural Information Processing Systems

The Equalized Odds (for short, EO) is one of the most popular measures of discrimination used in the supervised learning setting. It ascertains fairness through the balance of the misclassification rates (false positive and negative) across the protected groups - e.g., in the context of law enforcement, an African-American defendant who would not commit a future crime will have an equal opportunity of being released, compared to a non-recidivating Caucasian defendant. Despite this noble goal, it has been acknowledged in the literature that statistical tests based on the EO are oblivious to the underlying causal mechanisms that generated the disparity in the first place (Hardt et al. 2016). This leads to a critical disconnect between statistical measures readable from the data and the meaning of discrimination in the legal system, where compelling evidence that the observed disparity is tied to a specific causal process deemed unfair by society is required to characterize discrimination. The goal of this paper is to develop a principled approach to connect the statistical disparities characterized by the EO and the underlying, elusive, and frequently unobserved, causal mechanisms that generated such inequality. We start by introducing a new family of counterfactual measures that allows one to explain the misclassification disparities in terms of the underlying mechanisms in an arbitrary, non-parametric structural causal model. This will, in turn, allow legal and data analysts to interpret currently deployed classifiers through causal lens, linking the statistical disparities found in the data to the corresponding causal processes. Leveraging the new family of counterfactual measures, we develop a learning procedure to construct a classifier that is statistically efficient, interpretable, and compatible with the basic human intuition of fairness. We demonstrate our results through experiments in both real (COMPAS) and synthetic datasets.


Encyclopedia Britannica sues OpenAI for copyright and trademark infringement

Engadget

The encyclopedia company's lawsuit also said ChatGPT cannibalizes traffic to the Britannica and Merriam-Webster websites. OpenAI has been hit with another lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, ChatGPT generates made-up content or ' hallucinations ' and falsely attributes them to Encyclopedia Britannica. The lawsuit doesn't specify an amount for monetary damages, but Britannica is also seeking an injunction to prevent OpenAI from repeating these accusations. When reached out for comment, a spokesperson for OpenAI told Engadget that, ChatGPT helps enhance human creativity, advance scientific discovery and medical research, and enable hundreds of millions of people to improve their daily lives.


Amazon is clearing out last season's Hisense TVs for up to 40% off

Popular Science

Gear Home Theater Televisions Amazon is clearing out last season's Hisense TVs for up to 40% off Get an upgraded 55-inch TV for less than $300 right now and enjoy the upcoming World Cup the way it deserves to be watched. This is a great price on a TV with impressive specs. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Amazon is running limited-time deals on Hisense's full 2025 TV lineup, with up to 40 percent off the brand's newest Mini-LED models. The standout deals are in the QD7 series -- Hisense's flagship 2025 Mini-LED QLED line -- which pairs quantum dot color with a native 144Hz panel, HDR10+, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and Fire TV built-in.


Flexible neural representation for physics prediction

Neural Information Processing Systems

Humans have a remarkable capacity to understand the physical dynamics of objects in their environment, flexibly capturing complex structures and interactions at multiple levels of detail. Inspired by this ability, we propose a hierarchical particle-based object representation that covers a wide variety of types of three-dimensional objects, including both arbitrary rigid geometrical shapes and deformable materials. We then describe the Hierarchical Relation Network (HRN), an end-to-end differentiable neural network based on hierarchical graph convolution, that learns to predict physical dynamics in this representation. Compared to other neural network baselines, the HRN accurately handles complex collisions and nonrigid deformations, generating plausible dynamics predictions at long time scales in novel settings, and scaling to large scene configurations. These results demonstrate an architecture with the potential to form the basis of next-generation physics predictors for use in computer vision, robotics, and quantitative cognitive science.


Graphene-based sensor to improve robot touch

Robohub

Multiscale-structured miniaturized 3D force sensors CC BY 4.0 Robots are becoming increasingly capable in vision and movement, yet touch remains one of their major weaknesses. Now, researchers have developed a miniature tactile sensor that could give robots something much closer to a human sense of touch. The technology, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, is based on liquid metal composites and graphene - a two-dimensional form of carbon. The'skin' allows robots to detect not just how hard they are pressing on an object, but also the direction of applied forces, whether an object is slipping, and even how rough a surface is, at a scale small enough to rival the spatial resolution of human fingertips. Their results are reported in the journal .


3,500-year-old loom tells a revolutionary tale

Popular Science

The remains of a Bronze Age loom highlights a turning point in human history. Recreation of an area of activities related to textile work as documented at Cabezo Redondo. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Clothes make the man, and have helped keep humans from freezing for thousands of years. But how exactly did Bronze Age people make their clothes?


Google Gemini declares only GOP senators violate hate speech policy, zero Democrats, author claims

FOX News

Author Wynton Hall alleges Google Gemini flagged Republican senators' rhetoric as hate speech while identifying no Democratic violations, raising questions about AI bias.


OpenAI's adult mode reportedly won't generate pornographic audio, images or video

Engadget

OpenAI's adult mode reportedly won't generate pornographic audio, images or video The company's own council on wellbeing and AI appears to be against the feature. OpenAI's forthcoming adult mode will allow users to engage in lewd conversations with ChatGPT, but not use the chatbot to generate explicit images, audio or video. In response to reporting from an OpenAI spokesperson characterized the upcoming release as capable of producing smut rather than pornography. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman first floated the idea of allowing people to use ChatGPT for erotica, saying the company wanted to treat adult users like adults. OpenAI originally planned to release adult mode at the start of 2026.