Research Papers

What is the role of product managers in the responsible use of generative AI (genAI) in products and everyday work -- and what enables or constrains their ability to take action? Past literature has examined the ways in which organizational policies can become decoupled from practices when incentives for responsible action are misaligned or impeded by profit motives. While the role of engineers and professional ethicists in the context of AI has been examined in detail, the role of product managers -- who are frequently portrayed as "gatekeepers" or critical decision-makers in product teams -- remains unclear. In this paper, we examine what organizational conditions promote responsible use of genAI by product managers by drawing on twenty-five interviews and a global survey of over three hundred respondents in product management-related roles. We find that uncertainty around responsible AI and a sense of diffused responsibility constrain ethical action, while leadership commitment and organizational principles enable ethical action -- making some responsible practices up to fourteen times more likely. Further, we find two sets of actions product managers take to "recouple" ethical commitments and practices. The first includes low-resource, individual actions product managers can implement without explicit organizational incentives. The second includes high-resource, collective actions that require organizational incentives. Our research suggests recoupling ethical policies and practices at the level of product teams requires institutional buy-in and higher level leadership commitment. Nevertheless, we show that individual actors are able to exhibit agency through some meaningful, low resource actions, even in the absence of organizational incentives, though this alone is insufficient to operationalize responsible AI at scale.

Importance: Emergency department (ED) returns for mental health conditions pose a major healthcare burden, with 24-27% of patients returning within 30 days. Traditional machine learning models for predicting these returns often lack interpretability for clinical use. Objective: To assess whether integrating large language models (LLMs) with machine learning improves predictive accuracy and clinical interpretability of ED mental health return risk models. Methods: This retrospective cohort study analyzed 42,464 ED visits for 27,904 unique mental health patients at an academic medical center in the Deep South from January 2018 to December 2022. Main Outcomes and Measures: Two primary outcomes were evaluated: (1) 30-day ED return prediction accuracy and (2) model interpretability using a novel LLM-enhanced framework integrating SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) values with clinical knowledge. Results: For chief complaint classification, LLaMA 3 (8B) with 10-shot learning outperformed traditional models (accuracy: 0.882, F1-score: 0.86). In SDoH classification, LLM-based models achieved 0.95 accuracy and 0.96 F1-score, with Alcohol, Tobacco, and Substance Abuse performing best (F1: 0.96-0.89), while Exercise and Home Environment showed lower performance (F1: 0.70-0.67). The LLM-based interpretability framework achieved 99% accuracy in translating model predictions into clinically relevant explanations. LLM-extracted features improved XGBoost AUC from 0.74 to 0.76 and AUC-PR from 0.58 to 0.61. Conclusions and Relevance: Integrating LLMs with machine learning models yielded modest but consistent accuracy gains while significantly enhancing interpretability through automated, clinically relevant explanations. This approach provides a framework for translating predictive analytics into actionable clinical insights.

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become increasingly integral to critical infrastructure and global operations, the need for a unified, trustworthy governance framework is more urgent that ever. This paper proposes a novel approach to AI governance, utilizing blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) to establish a decentralized, globally recognized framework that ensures security, privacy, and trustworthiness of AI systems across borders. The paper presents specific implementation scenarios within the financial sector, outlines a phased deployment timeline over the next decade, and addresses potential challenges with solutions grounded in current research. By synthesizing advancements in blockchain, AI ethics, and cybersecurity, this paper offers a comprehensive roadmap for a decentralized AI governance framework capable of adapting to the complex and evolving landscape of global AI regulation.

As urbanization accelerates, open spaces are increasingly recognized for their role in enhancing sustainability and well-being, yet they remain underexplored compared to built spaces. This study introduces an AI-driven framework that integrates machine learning models (MLMs) and explainable AI techniques to optimize Sky View Factor (SVF) and visibility, key spatial metrics influencing thermal comfort and perceived safety in urban spaces. Unlike global optimization methods, which are computationally intensive and impractical for localized adjustments, this framework supports incremental design improvements with lower computational costs and greater flexibility. The framework employs SHapley Adaptive Explanations (SHAP) to analyze feature importance and Counterfactual Explanations (CFXs) to propose minimal design changes. Simulations tested five MLMs, identifying XGBoost as the most accurate, with building width, park area, and heights of surrounding buildings as critical for SVF, and distances from southern buildings as key for visibility. Compared to Genetic Algorithms, which required approximately 15/30 minutes across 3/4 generations to converge, the tested CFX approach achieved optimized results in 1 minute with a 5% RMSE error, demonstrating significantly faster performance and suitability for scalable retrofitting strategies. This interpretable and computationally efficient framework advances urban performance optimization, providing data-driven insights and practical retrofitting solutions for enhancing usability and environmental quality across diverse urban contexts.

Algorithmic bias is a pressing concern in educational data mining (EDM), as it risks amplifying inequities in learning outcomes. The Area Between ROC Curves (ABROCA) metric is frequently used to measure discrepancies in model performance across demographic groups to quantify overall model fairness. However, its skewed distribution--especially when class or group imbalances exist--makes significance testing challenging. This study investigates ABROCA's distributional properties and contributes robust methods for its significance testing. Specifically, we address (1) whether ABROCA follows any known distribution, (2) how to reliably test for algorithmic bias using ABROCA, and (3) the statistical power achievable with ABROCA-based bias assessments under typical EDM sample specifications. Simulation results confirm that ABROCA does not match standard distributions, including those suited to accommodate skewness. We propose nonparametric randomization tests for ABROCA and demonstrate that reliably detecting bias with ABROCA requires large sample sizes or substantial effect sizes, particularly in imbalanced settings. Findings suggest that ABROCA-based bias evaluations based on sample sizes common in EDM tend to be underpowered, undermining the reliability of conclusions about model fairness. By offering open-source code to simulate power and statistically test ABROCA, this paper aims to foster more reliable statistical testing in EDM research. It supports broader efforts toward replicability and equity in educational modeling.

We propose Group Shapley, a metric that extends the classical individual-level Shapley value framework to evaluate the importance of feature groups, addressing the structured nature of predictors commonly found in business and economic data. More importantly, we develop a significance testing procedure based on a three-cumulant chi-square approximation and establish the asymptotic properties of the test statistics for Group Shapley values. Our approach can effectively handle challenging scenarios, including sparse or skewed distributions and small sample sizes, outperforming alternative tests such as the Wald test. Simulations confirm that the proposed test maintains robust empirical size and demonstrates enhanced power under diverse conditions. To illustrate the method's practical relevance in advancing Explainable AI, we apply our framework to bond recovery rate predictions using a global dataset (1996-2023) comprising 2,094 observations and 98 features, grouped into 16 subgroups and five broader categories: bond characteristics, firm fundamentals, industry-specific factors, market-related variables, and macroeconomic indicators. Our results identify the market-related variables group as the most influential. Furthermore, Lorenz curves and Gini indices reveal that Group Shapley assigns feature importance more equitably compared to individual Shapley values.

AI and Cultural Context: An Empirical Investigation of Large Language Models' Performance on Chinese Social Work Professional Standards

Zia Qi, Brian E. Perron, Miao Wang +3

Objective: This study examines how well leading Chinese and Western large language models understand and apply Chinese social work principles, focusing on their foundational knowledge within a non-Western professional setting. We test whether the cultural context in the developing country influences model reasoning and accuracy. Method: Using a published self-study version of the Chinese National Social Work Examination (160 questions) covering jurisprudence and applied knowledge, we administered three testing conditions to eight cloud-based large language models - four Chinese and four Western. We examined their responses following official guidelines and evaluated their explanations' reasoning quality. Results: Seven models exceeded the 60-point passing threshold in both sections. Chinese models performed better in jurisprudence (median = 77.0 vs. 70.3) but slightly lower in applied knowledge (median = 65.5 vs. 67.0). Both groups showed cultural biases, particularly regarding gender equality and family dynamics. Models demonstrated strong professional terminology knowledge but struggled with culturally specific interventions. Valid reasoning in incorrect answers ranged from 16.4% to 45.0%. Conclusions: While both Chinese and Western models show foundational knowledge of Chinese social work principles, technical language proficiency does not ensure cultural competence. Chinese models demonstrate advantages in regulatory content, yet both Chinese and Western models struggle with culturally nuanced practice scenarios. These findings contribute to informing responsible AI integration into cross-cultural social work practice.

SHAP scores fail pervasively even when Lipschitz succeeds

Olivier Letoffe, Xuanxiang Huang, Joao Marques-Silva

The ubiquitous use of Shapley values in eXplainable AI (XAI) has been triggered by the tool SHAP, and as a result are commonly referred to as SHAP scores. Recent work devised examples of machine learning (ML) classifiers for which the computed SHAP scores are thoroughly unsatisfactory, by allowing human decision-makers to be misled. Nevertheless, such examples could be perceived as somewhat artificial, since the selected classes must be interpreted as numeric. Furthermore, it was unclear how general were the issues identified with SHAP scores. This paper answers these criticisms. First, the paper shows that for Boolean classifiers there are arbitrarily many examples for which the SHAP scores must be deemed unsatisfactory. Second, the paper shows that the issues with SHAP scores are also observed in the case of regression models. In addition, the paper studies the class of regression models that respect Lipschitz continuity, a measure of a function's rate of change that finds important recent uses in ML, including model robustness. Concretely, the paper shows that the issues with SHAP scores occur even for regression models that respect Lipschitz continuity. Finally, the paper shows that the same issues are guaranteed to exist for arbitrarily differentiable regression models.

The Generative AI Ethics Playbook

Jessie J. Smith, Wesley Hanwen Deng, William H. Smith +3

The Generative AI Ethics Playbook provides guidance for identifying and mitigating risks of machine learning systems across various domains, including natural language processing, computer vision, and generative AI. This playbook aims to assist practitioners in diagnosing potential harms that may arise during the design, development, and deployment of datasets and models. It offers concrete strategies and resources for mitigating these risks, to help minimize negative impacts on users and society. Drawing on current best practices in both research and ethical considerations, this playbook aims to serve as a comprehensive resource for AI/ML practitioners. The intended audience of this playbook includes machine learning researchers, engineers, and practitioners who are involved in the creation and implementation of generative and multimodal models (e.g., text-to-text, image-to-image, text-to-image, text-to-video). Specifically, we provide transparency/documentation checklists, topics of interest, common questions, examples of harms through case studies, and resources and strategies to mitigate harms throughout the Generative AI lifecycle. This playbook was made collaboratively over the course of 16 months through extensive literature review of over 100 resources and peer-reviewed articles, as well as through an initial group brainstorming session with 18 interdisciplinary AI ethics experts from industry and academia, and with additional feedback from 8 experts (5 of whom were in the initial brainstorming session). We note that while this playbook provides examples, discussion, and harm mitigation strategies, research in this area is ongoing. Our playbook aims to be a practically useful survey, taking a high-level view rather than aiming for covering the entire existing body of research.

Intrusion detection has been a commonly adopted detective security measures to safeguard systems and networks from various threats. A robust intrusion detection system (IDS) can essentially mitigate threats by providing alerts. In networks based IDS, typically we deal with cyber threats like distributed denial of service (DDoS), spoofing, reconnaissance, brute-force, botnets, and so on. In order to detect these threats various machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) models have been proposed. However, one of the key challenges with these predictive approaches is the presence of false positive (FP) and false negative (FN) instances. This FPs and FNs within any black-box intrusion detection system (IDS) make the decision-making task of an analyst further complicated. In this paper, we propose an explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) based visual analysis approach using overlapping SHAP plots that presents the feature explanation to identify potential false positive and false negatives in IDS. Our approach can further provide guidance to security analysts for effective decision-making. We present case study with multiple publicly available network traffic datasets to showcase the efficacy of our approach for identifying false positive and false negative instances. Our use-case scenarios provide clear guidance for analysts on how to use the visual analysis approach for reliable course-of-actions against such threats.

Credit card fraud detection is a critical concern for financial institutions, intensified by the rise of contactless payment technologies. While deep learning models offer high accuracy, their lack of explainability poses significant challenges in financial settings. This paper explores the integration of fuzzy logic into Deep Symbolic Regression (DSR) to enhance both performance and explainability in fraud detection. We investigate the effectiveness of different fuzzy logic implications, specifically Łukasiewicz, Gödel, and Product, in handling the complexity and uncertainty of fraud detection datasets. Our analysis suggest that the Łukasiewicz implication achieves the highest F1-score and overall accuracy, while the Product implication offers a favorable balance between performance and explainability. Despite having a performance lower than state-of-the-art (SOTA) models due to information loss in data transformation, our approach provides novelty and insights into into integrating fuzzy logic into DSR for fraud detection, providing a comprehensive comparison between different implications and methods.

The debate between self-interpretable models and post-hoc explanations for black-box models is central to Explainable AI (XAI). Self-interpretable models, such as concept-based networks, offer insights by connecting decisions to human-understandable concepts but often struggle with performance and scalability. Conversely, post-hoc methods like Shapley values, while theoretically robust, are computationally expensive and resource-intensive. To bridge the gap between these two lines of research, we propose a novel method that combines their strengths, providing theoretically guaranteed self-interpretability for black-box models without compromising prediction accuracy. Specifically, we introduce a parameter-efficient pipeline, AutoGnothi, which integrates a small side network into the black-box model, allowing it to generate Shapley value explanations without changing the original network parameters. This side-tuning approach significantly reduces memory, training, and inference costs, outperforming traditional parameter-efficient methods, where full fine-tuning serves as the optimal baseline. AutoGnothi enables the black-box model to predict and explain its predictions with minimal overhead. Extensive experiments show that AutoGnothi offers accurate explanations for both vision and language tasks, delivering superior computational efficiency with comparable interpretability.