Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Ai's Ethical Frontier

DePaul Magazine

Artificial intelligence (AI) is affecting every aspect of the university and society. Experts from across DePaul share their insights on artificial intelligence's advantages and pitfalls. Learn about DePaul's new Artificial Intelligence Institute and research projects that use AI for societal benefit.

Demystifying The "Social Media Algorithm": The Legacy Of Surveillance Advertising And Platformization, Garrett Crites

Honors Projects

Recently, more individuals are becoming aware that they are being served content on social media platforms by automated means. Due to the lack of transparency, a colloquial understanding of the “social media algorithm” has emerged in popular discourse. To shed light on the real–world phenomena that these ideas surround, I look at the rise of surveillance advertising and the platformization of the internet in conjunction with the automated platform operations employed by large social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and X. In doing so I provide a clearer idea of the colloquial “social media algorithm” to encourage the reader …

Machines Of The Absurd: Leveraging Generative Ai For Creativity, Humor, And Playfulness, Tyler Sanders

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

Machines of The Absurd is a collection of four projects exploring how generative AI can be leveraged for creativity, humor and playfulness.

1. neverOS — A node-based visual playground for interacting with large language models.

2. Other Calc — An iOS app with a calculator interface, where players can “calculate” text instead of numbers.

3. What Must Burn — An experiment where players type in text that can be dragged into a campfire to produce contextually appropriate sound effects.

4. Jazz vs Waffles — A turn-based comedy game, where players battle anything they type in.

Together, these projects make the …

Evaluating The Basement Design Of Low-Rise Building With Two-Stage Analysis Using Bim Integration: Hangar Study Case, Given Tohho, Jessica Sjah, Ayomi Dita Rarasati, Bambang Trigunarsyah

Smart City

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has revolutionized the way the construction industry designs, constructs, and manages buildings. Certainly, the utilization of BIM can optimize the usage of materials in a construction project, considering the high level of concrete consumption globally and its significant environmental impact. The implementation of BIM is intended to calculate the volume of concrete and steel material usage in the design process of low-rise buildings with basements, exemplified in this case by a 5-story laboratory hangar with a 1-story basement. The building design is carried out through a two-stage analysis, which involves separating the upper portion from the …

Experimental Methods In Predicting Market Drift And Other Portfolio Optimization Factors Using Graph Theory, Perry Harrison Zhang

Computer Science Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Shader-Based Real-Time Image Tracking For Mobile Augmented Reality, Andrew Wang Chen

Computer Science Senior Theses

Image target tracking is a technique widely used in a variety of augmented reality (AR) applications to trigger AR interaction and accurately locate virtual objects relative to physical space. This project is a Unity image tracking pipeline based on the ORB feature detection and description technique that seeks to be robust enough to track images despite partial occlusion, uneven lighting, and image target depth. This pipeline employs compute shader code to conduct image tracking computations on the GPU to track images in real-time for mobile AR apps.

Back To The Future: A Case For The Resurgence Of Approximation Theory For Enabling Data Driven “Intelligence”, Michael Dominic Ciocco

Theses and Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has exploded into mainstream consciousness with commercial investments exceeding $90 billion in the last year alone. Inasmuch as consumer-facing applications such ChatGPT offer astounding access to algorithms that were hitherto restricted to academic research labs, public focus of attention on AI has created an avalanche of misinformation. The nexus of investor-driven hype, “surprising” inaccuracies in the answers provided by AI models – now anthropomorphically labeled as “hallucinations”, and impending legislation by well-meaning and concerned governments has resulted in a crisis of confidence in the science of AI. The primary driver for AI’s recent growth is the convergence …

An Alternative Approach To Data Carving Portable Document Format (Pdf) Files, Kevin Hughes, Michael Black

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Traditional data carving relies on the successful identification of headers and trailers, unique hexadecimal signatures which are exclusive to specific file types. This can present a challenge for digital forensics examiners when pitted against modern anti-forensics techniques. The interest of this study is file signature obfuscation, a technique which alters headers and trailers. This research will focus on the development of a new, proof-of-concept algorithm that analyzes content in segments based on unique elements found within the body of a file. The file type being targeted is the Portable Document Format (PDF) and this research is built upon previously successful …

College Course Assignment: Maximality, Fairness, Scheduling, Emily Y. Gao

Computer Science Senior Theses

Course selection processes in universities are crucial for shaping students’ academic experiences. At Dartmouth College, undergraduates participate in a structured course selection process each term, governed by specific constraints and priorities. This thesis examines the optimization of course assignment algorithms within Dartmouth’s environment to enhance student satisfaction and maximize course enrollment. An initial investigation reveals that Dartmouth’s registrar effectively fills course seats but identifies areas for improving student satisfaction. Hypothetical scenarios beyond Dartmouth’s framework, such as indistinct priorities and excess course selections, are also explored, proposing efficient solutions with polynomial time complexity.

This thesis emphasizes fairness in the optimization process, …

For Discrete-Time Linear Dynamical Systems Under Interval Uncertainty, Predicting Two Moments Ahead Is Np-Hard, Luc Jaulin, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In the first approximation, when changes are small, most real-world systems are described by linear dynamical equations. If we know the initial state of the system, and we know its dynamics, then we can, in principle, predict the system's state many moments ahead. In practice, however, we usually know both the initial state and the coefficients of the system's dynamics with some uncertainty. Frequently, we encounter interval uncertainty, when for each parameter, we only know its range, but we have no information about the probability of different values from this range. In such situations, we want to know the range …

What To Do If An Inflexible Tolerance Problem Has No Solutions: Probabilistic Justification Of Piegat's Semi-Heuristic Idea, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, it is desirable to select the control parameters x1, ..., xn in such a way that the resulting quantities y1, ..., ym of the system lie within desired ranges. In such situations, we usually know the general formulas describing the dependence of yi on xj, but the coefficients of these formulas are usually only known with interval uncertainty. In such a situation, we want to find the tuples for which all yi's are in the desired intervals for all possible tuples of coefficients. But what if no such parameters are possible? Since we cannot guarantee the …

How To Make Ai More Reliable, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

One of the reasons why the results of the current AI methods (especially deep-learning-based methods) are not absolutely reliable is that, in contrast to more traditional data processing techniques which are based on solid mathematical and statistical foundations, modern AI techniques use a lot of semi-heuristic methods. These methods have been, in many cases, empirically successful, but the absence of solid justification makes us less certain that these methods will work in other cases as well. To make AI more reliable, it is therefore necessary to provide mathematical foundations for the current semi-heuristic techniques. In this paper, we show that …

Why Magenta Is Not A Real Color, And How It Is Related To Fuzzy Control And Quantum Computing, Victor L. Timchenko, Yuriy P. Kondratenko, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

It is well known that every color can be represented as a combination of three basic colors: red, green, and blue. In particular, we can get several colors by combining two of the basic colors. Interestingly, while a combination of two neighboring colors leads to a color that corresponds to a certain frequency, the combination of two non-neighboring colors -- red and blue -- leads to magenta, a color that does not correspond to any frequency. In this paper, we provide a simple explanation for this phenomenon, and we also show that a similar phenomenon happens in two other areas …

How To Propagate Uncertainty Via Ai Algorithms, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Any data processing starts with measurement results. Measurement results are never absolutely accurate. Because of this measurement uncertainty, the results of processing measurement results are, in general, somewhat different from what we would have obtained if we knew the exact values of the measured quantities. To make a decision based on the result of data processing, we need to know how accurate is this result, i.e., we need to propagate the measurement uncertainty through the data processing algorithm. There are many techniques for uncertainty propagation. Usually, they involve applying the same data processing algorithm several times to appropriately modified data. …

Decentralized Optimization Over Slowly Time-Varying Graphs: Algorithms And Lower Bounds, Dmitry Metelev, Aleksandr Beznosikov, Alexander Rogozin, Alexander Gasnikov, Anton Proskurnikov

Machine Learning Faculty Publications

We consider a decentralized convex unconstrained optimization problem, where the cost function can be decomposed into a sum of strongly convex and smooth functions, associated with individual agents, interacting over a static or time-varying network. Our main concern is the convergence rate of first-order optimization algorithms as a function of the network’s graph, more specifically, of the condition numbers of gossip matrices. We are interested in the case when the network is time-varying but the rate of changes is restricted. We study two cases: randomly changing network satisfying Markov property and a network changing in a deterministic manner. For the …

Public Data Resources And Total Factor Productivity Of Enterprises: A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based On Local Government Data Opening, Wuping Wu, Qiheng Li, Liuyi Zhang, Yue Zhao

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The opening of public data is the government’s major strategic move to release the value of data factor. However, whether these data resources are used by the public to release their value needs to be empirically tested. Therefore, based on the perspective of high-quality development of firms, this paper examines the relation between open public data and firms’ total factor productivity so as to reflect the value of public data resources in driving force of promoting firms’ high-quality development. Taking A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2019 as samples, using a natural experiment based on the launch of the local …

Prescribed-Time Nash Equilibrium Seeking For Pursuit-Evasion Game, Lei Xue, Jianfeng Ye, Yongbao Wu, Jian Liu, D. C. Wunsch

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Dear Editor, this letter is concerned with prescribed-time Nash equilibrium (PTNE) seeking problem in a pursuit-evasion game (PEG) involving agents with second-order dynamics. In order to achieve the prior given and user-defined convergence time for the PEG, a PTNE seeking algorithm has been developed to facilitate collaboration among multiple pursuers for capturing the evader without the need for any global information. Then, it is theoretically proved that the prescribed-time convergence of the designed algorithm for achieving Nash equilibrium of PEG. Eventually, the effectiveness of the PTNE method was validated by numerical simulation results.

(R2073) Analysis Of Mmap/Ph(1), Ph(2)/1 Preemptive Priority Queueing Model With Single Vacation, Repair And Impatient Customers, S. Meena, G. Ayyappan

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

In this paper, we analyse a single server preemptive priority queue with phase-type vacation and repair, feedback, working breakdown, close-down and impatient customers. Customers arrive according to the Marked Markovian Arrival Process and their service time according to Phase-type distribution. If the High Priority customers need feedback, they lose their priority and join the Low Priority queue. At any instant, if the server is broken down, the server provide service with slow mode for that current customer and then the server will go into a repair process. When there are no customers present in both the queues, the server close-down …

Enhancing Government Service Delivery: A Case Study Of Acqar Implementation And Lessons Learned From Chatgpt Integration In A Singapore Government Agency, Hui Shan Lee, Shankararaman, Venky, Eng Lieh Ouh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper presents the pilot implementation of AI Based Citizen Question-Answer Recommender (ACQAR) as an attempt to enhance citizen service delivery within a Singaporean government agency. Drawing insights from previous studies on the Empath library's use in Service Level Agreement (SLA) prediction and the implementation of the Citizen Question-Answer system (CQAS), we redesigned the pilot system, ACQAR. ACQAR integrates the outputs from Empath X SLA predictor and CQAS as essential inputs to the ChatGPT engine, creating contextually aware responses for customer service officers to use as responses to the citizens.Empath X SLA predictor anticipates the expected service response time based …

Towards Faster Inference Of Transformers: Strategies For Accelerating Decoding Processes, Cunxiao Du

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This thesis delves into the acceleration and optimization of Transformer inference, a subject of increasing importance with the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs). The study primarily addresses the challenges posed by two inherent properties of Transformers during inference: the quadratic complexity of the attention mechanism and the sequential nature of autoregressive inference. The research is structured into three main parts. The first part enhances the learning capabilities of non-autoregressive Transformers, achieving a remarkable 15.0x acceleration on machine translation tasks. The following section focuses on lossless acceleration through speculative decoding, where the proposed algorithm, Glide with CAPE, is shown to …

Why Empirical Membership Functions Are Well-Approximated By Piecewise Quadratic Functions: Theoretical Explanation For Empirical Formulas Of Novak's Fuzzy Natural Logic, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Empirical analysis shows that membership functions describing expert opinions have a shape that is well described by a smooth combination of two quadratic segments. In this paper, we provide a theoretical explanation for this empirical phenomenon.

Why Fully Consistent Quantum Field Theories Require That The Space-Time Be At Least 10-Dimensional: A Commonsense Field-Based Explanation, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

It is known that quantum field theories that describe fields in our usual 4-dimensional space-times are not fully consistent: they predict meaningless infinite values for some physical quantities. There are some known tricks to avoid such infinities, but it is definitely desirable to have a fully consistent theory, a theory that would produce correct results without having to use additional tricks. It turns out that the only way to have such a theory is to consider space-times of higher dimensions, the smallest of which is 10. There are complex mathematical reasons for why 10 is the smallest such dimension. However, …

Why Is Grade Distribution Often Bimodal? Why Individualized Teaching Adds Two Sigmas To The Average Grade? And How Are These Facts Related?, Christian Servin, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To make education more effective, to better use emerging technologies in education, we need to better understand the education process, to gain insights on this process. How can we check whether a new idea is indeed a useful insight? A natural criterion is that the new idea should explain some previously-difficult-to-explain empirical phenomenon. Since one of the main advantages of emerging educational technologies -- such as AI -- is the possibility of individualized education, a natural phenomenon to explain is the fact -- discovered by Benjamin Bloom -- that individualization adds two sigmas to the average grade. In this paper, …

Towards A More Subtle (And Hopefully More Adequate) Fuzzy "And"-Operation: Normalization-Invariant Multi-Input Aggregation Operators, Yusuf Güven, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Many reasonable conditions have been formulated for a fuzzy "and"-operation: idempotency, commutativity, associativity, etc. It is known that the only "and"-operation that satisfies all these conditions is minimum, but minimum is not the most adequate description of expert's "and", and it often does not lead to the best control or the best decision. Many other more adequate "and"-operations (t-norms) have been proposed and effectively used, but they do not satisfy the natural idempotency condition. In this paper, we show that a small relaxation of the usual description of "and"-operations leads to the possibility of non-minimum idempotent operations. We also show …

Refining Chatgpt-Generated Code: Characterizing And Mitigating Code Quality Issues, Yue Liu, Thanh Le-Cong, Ratnadira Widyasari, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Since its introduction in November 2022, ChatGPT has rapidly gained popularity due to its remarkable ability in language understanding and human-like responses. ChatGPT, based on GPT-3.5 architecture, has shown great promise for revolutionizing various research fields, including code generation. However, the reliability and quality of code generated by ChatGPT remain unexplored, raising concerns about potential risks associated with the widespread use of ChatGPT-driven code generation.In this article, we systematically study the quality of 4,066 ChatGPT-generated programs of code implemented in two popular programming languages, i.e., Java and Python, for 2,033 programming tasks. The goal of this work is threefold. First, …

Combining Cloud Architecting With Education, Sharon P. Pagidipati

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

I pursued the AWS Solutions Architect Professional Certification while applying my knowledge to build and revise technical solutions for an educational company known as EDFX.

The Characteristics Of Digital Transformation Leadership: Theorizing The Practitioner Voice, Pat Mccarthy, David Sammon, Ibrahim Alhassan

Department of Computer Science Publications

Digital Transformation (DT) is more than simply integrating a new digital technology into the organization. Despite a growing volume of research, however, there is little coverage of the characteristics of DT leadership. Using a grounded approach, where 16 practitioner voices are central to the theorizing output, we present 10 DT leadership characteristics. Each characteristic links what action a DT leader needs to take and how a DT leader enables that action. We also asked 30 DT leaders to evaluate the importance of each of the 10 DT leadership characteristics. Our approach strengthens the relevance for practitioners striving for the best …

Impact Of Similarities In Gender And Physical Appearance Between User And Embodied Conversational Agents On Trustworthiness, Empathy, And Service Evaluation, Sookyoung Park

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) have significantly enhanced human-machine interactions and show considerable potential in various industries such as customer service, education, healthcare, entertainment, and finance [1, 2]. This study explores the impact of similarities in gender and physical appearance between ECAs and users on the perceptions of trustworthiness, empathy, and service evaluation within the context of counselor ECAs. We conducted a within-subject experiment (n=50), using a 2x2 factorial arrangement, that varied the gender and the physical appearance of four distinct AI avatars. Participants interacted with each avatar, completing a post-experiment survey and participating in semi-structured interviews. Our findings indicate that …

The Efficacy Of Using Machine Learning Techniques For Identifying And Classifying “Fake News”, Muhammad Islam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In today's digital world, detecting fake news has emerged as a critical challenge, one that has significant effects on democracy and public discourse at large both regionally and globally. This research studies how diversity of news sources in training datasets affects how well machine learning models can classify fake vs true news. I used the Linear Support Vector Classification (LinearSVC) to create and compare two classification models: one was trained on a dataset that only had real news from a singular source, Reuters (Dataset 1), and the other was trained on a dataset that contained real news from Reuters, The …

Assessing Job Vulnerability And Employment Growth In The Era Of Large Language Models (Llms), Prudence P. Brou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper explores the impact of Large Language Models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence (AI) on white-collar occupations in the context of job vulnerability and employment growth. Utilizing the Kaggle dataset "Occupation Salary and Likelihood of Automation," the study employs a data-driven approach to analyze trends across states. Through interactive data visualization, the project aims to provide actionable insights for affected workers, businesses, and policymakers navigating the changing dynamics of the workforce amidst technological advancements.