Research Papers

Image transmission and processing systems in resource-critical applications face significant challenges from adversarial perturbations that compromise mission-specific object classification. Current robustness testing methods require excessive computational resources through exhaustive frame-by-frame processing and full-image perturbations, proving impractical for large-scale deployments where massive image streams demand immediate processing. This paper presents DDSA (Dual-Domain Strategic Attack), a resource-efficient adversarial robustness testing framework that optimizes testing through temporal selectivity and spatial precision. We introduce a scenario-aware trigger function that identifies critical frames requiring robustness evaluation based on class priority and model uncertainty, and employ explainable AI techniques to locate influential pixel regions for targeted perturbation. Our dual-domain approach achieves substantial temporal-spatial resource conservation while maintaining attack effectiveness. The framework enables practical deployment of comprehensive adversarial robustness testing in resource-constrained real-time applications where computational efficiency directly impacts mission success.

The increase in the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has tremendously increased the attack surface of cyber threats thus making a strong intrusion detection system (IDS) with a clear explanation of the process essential towards resource-constrained environments. Nevertheless, current IoT IDS systems are usually traded off with detection quality, model elucidability, and computational effectiveness, thus the deployment on IoT devices. The present paper counteracts these difficulties by suggesting an explainable AI (XAI) framework based on an optimized Decision Tree classifier with both local and global importance methods: SHAP values that estimate feature attribution using local explanations, and Morris sensitivity analysis that identifies the feature importance in a global view. The proposed system attains the state of art on the test performance with 99.91% accuracy, F1-score of 99.51% and Cohen Kappa of 0.9960 and high stability is confirmed by a cross validation mean accuracy of 98.93%. Efficiency is also enhanced in terms of computations to provide faster inferences compared to those that are generalized in ensemble models. SrcMac has shown as the most significant predictor in feature analyses according to SHAP and Morris methods. Compared to the previous work, our solution eliminates its major drawback lack because it allows us to apply it to edge devices and, therefore, achieve real-time processing, adhere to the new regulation of transparency in AI, and achieve high detection rates on attacks of dissimilar classes. This combination performance of high accuracy, explainability, and low computation make the framework useful and reliable as a resource-constrained IoT security problem in real environments.

Glioblastoma, IDH-wildtype (GBM-IDHwt) is the most common malignant brain tumor. While histomorphology is a crucial component of GBM-IDHwt diagnosis, it is not further considered for prognosis. Here, we present an explainable artificial intelligence (AI) framework to identify and interpret histomorphological features associated with patient survival. The framework combines an explainable multiple instance learning (MIL) architecture that directly identifies prognostically relevant image tiles with a sparse autoencoder (SAE) that maps these tiles to interpretable visual patterns. The MIL model was trained and evaluated on a new real-world dataset of 720 GBM-IDHwt cases from three hospitals and four cancer registries across Germany. The SAE was trained on 1,878 whole-slide images from five independent public glioblastoma collections. Despite the many factors influencing survival time, our method showed some ability to discriminate between patients living less than 180 days or more than 360 days solely based on histomorphology (AUC: 0.67; 95% CI: 0.63-0.72). Cox proportional hazards regression confirmed a significant survival difference between predicted groups after adjustment for established prognostic factors (hazard ratio: 1.47; 95% CI: 1.26-1.72). Three neuropathologists categorized the identified visual patterns into seven distinct histomorphological groups, revealing both established prognostic features and unexpected associations, the latter being potentially attributable to surgery-related confounders. The presented explainable AI framework facilitates prognostic biomarker discovery in GBM-IDHwt and beyond, highlighting promising histomorphological features for further analysis and exposing potential confounders that would be hidden in black-box models.

Enhancing the moral alignment of Large Language Models (LLMs) is a critical challenge in AI safety. Current alignment techniques often act as superficial guardrails, leaving the intrinsic moral representations of LLMs largely untouched. In this paper, we bridge this gap by leveraging Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) to map and manipulate the fine-grained moral landscape of LLMs. Through cross-lingual linear probing, we validate the shared nature of moral representations in middle layers and uncover a shared yet different moral subspace between English and Chinese. Building upon this, we extract steerable Moral Vectors and successfully validate their efficacy at both internal and behavioral levels. Leveraging the high generalizability of morality, we propose Adaptive Moral Fusion (AMF), a dynamic inference-time intervention that synergizes probe detection with vector injection to tackle the safety-helpfulness trade-off. Empirical results confirm that our approach acts as a targeted intrinsic defense, effectively reducing incorrect refusals on benign queries while minimizing jailbreak success rates compared to standard baselines.

Objectives: To overcome challenges in diagnosing pericoronitis on panoramic radiographs, an AI-assisted assessment system integrating anatomical localization, pathological classification, and interpretability. Methods: A two-stage deep learning pipeline was implemented. The first stage used YOLOv8 to detect third molars and classify their anatomical positions and angulations based on Winter's classification. Detected regions were then fed into a second-stage classifier, a modified ResNet-50 architecture, for detecting radiographic features suggestive of pericoronitis. To enhance clinical trust, Grad-CAM was used to highlight key diagnostic regions on the radiographs. Results: The YOLOv8 component achieved 92% precision and 92.5% mean average precision. The ResNet-50 classifier yielded F1-scores of 88% for normal cases and 86% for pericoronitis. Radiologists reported 84% alignment between Grad-CAM and their diagnostic impressions, supporting the radiographic relevance of the interpretability output. Conclusion: The system shows strong potential for AI-assisted panoramic assessment, with explainable AI features that support clinical confidence.

Digital platforms have an ever-expanding user base, and act as a hub for communication, business, and connectivity. However, this has also allowed for the spread of hate speech and misogyny. Artificial intelligence models have emerged as an effective solution for countering online hate speech but are under explored for low resource and code-mixed languages and suffer from a lack of interpretability. Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) can enhance transparency in the decisions of deep learning models, which is crucial for a sensitive domain such as hate speech detection. In this paper, we present a multi-modal and explainable web application for detecting misogyny in text and memes in code-mixed Hindi and English. The system leverages state-of-the-art transformer-based models that support multilingual and multimodal settings. For text-based misogyny identification, the system utilizes XLM-RoBERTa (XLM-R) and multilingual Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (mBERT) on a dataset of approximately 4,193 comments. For multimodal misogyny identification from memes, the system utilizes mBERT + EfficientNet, and mBERT + ResNET trained on a dataset of approximately 4,218 memes. It also provides feature importance scores using explainability techniques including Shapley Additive Values (SHAP) and Local Interpretable Model Agnostic Explanations (LIME). The application aims to serve as a tool for both researchers and content moderators, to promote further research in the field, combat gender based digital violence, and ensure a safe digital space. The system has been evaluated using human evaluators who provided their responses on Chatbot Usability Questionnaire (CUQ) and User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) to determine overall usability.

A Novel Approach to Explainable AI with Quantized Active Ingredients in Decision Making

A. M. A. S. D. Alagiyawanna, Asoka Karunananda, Thushari Silva +1

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems have shown good success at classifying. However, the lack of explainability is a true and significant challenge, especially in high-stakes domains, such as health and finance, where understanding is paramount. We propose a new solution to this challenge: an explainable AI framework based on our comparative study with Quantum Boltzmann Machines (QBMs) and Classical Boltzmann Machines (CBMs). We leverage principles of quantum computing within classical machine learning to provide substantive transparency around decision-making. The design involves training both models on a binarised and dimensionally reduced MNIST dataset, where Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied for preprocessing. For interpretability, we employ gradient-based saliency maps in QBMs and SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) in CBMs to evaluate feature attributions.QBMs deploy hybrid quantum-classical circuits with strongly entangling layers, allowing for richer latent representations, whereas CBMs serve as a classical baseline that utilises contrastive divergence. Along the way, we found that QBMs outperformed CBMs on classification accuracy (83.5% vs. 54%) and had more concentrated distributions in feature attributions as quantified by entropy (1.27 vs. 1.39). In other words, QBMs not only produced better predictive performance than CBMs, but they also provided clearer identification of "active ingredient" or the most important features behind model predictions. To conclude, our results illustrate that quantum-classical hybrid models can display improvements in both accuracy and interpretability, which leads us toward more trustworthy and explainable AI systems.

Asymptotic Universal Alignment: A New Alignment Framework via Test-Time Scaling

Yang Cai, Weiqiang Zheng

Aligning large language models (LLMs) to serve users with heterogeneous and potentially conflicting preferences is a central challenge for personalized and trustworthy AI. We formalize an ideal notion of universal alignment through test-time scaling: for each prompt, the model produces $k\ge 1$ candidate responses and a user selects their preferred one. We introduce $(k,f(k))$-robust alignment, which requires the $k$-output model to have win rate $f(k)$ against any other single-output model, and asymptotic universal alignment (U-alignment), which requires $f(k)\to 1$ as $k\to\infty$. Our main result characterizes the optimal convergence rate: there exists a family of single-output policies whose $k$-sample product policies achieve U-alignment at rate $f(k)=\frac{k}{k+1}$, and no method can achieve a faster rate in general. We show that popular post-training methods, including Nash learning from human feedback (NLHF), can fundamentally underutilize the benefits of test-time scaling. Even though NLHF is optimal for $k=1$, sampling from the resulting (often deterministic) policy cannot guarantee win rates above $\tfrac{1}{2}$ except for an arbitrarily small slack. This stems from a lack of output diversity: existing alignment methods can collapse to a single majority-preferred response, making additional samples redundant. In contrast, our approach preserves output diversity and achieves the optimal test-time scaling rate. In particular, we propose a family of symmetric multi-player alignment games and prove that any symmetric Nash equilibrium policy of the $(k+1)$-player alignment game achieves the optimal $(k,\frac{k}{k+1})$-robust alignment. Finally, we provide theoretical convergence guarantees for self-play learning dynamics in these games and extend the framework to opponents that also generate multiple responses.

Early-exit neural networks enable adaptive inference by allowing predictions at intermediate layers, reducing computational cost. However, early exits often lack interpretability and may focus on different features than deeper layers, limiting trust and explainability. This paper presents Explanation-Guided Training (EGT), a multi-objective framework that improves interpretability and consistency in early-exit networks through attention-based regularization. EGT introduces an attention consistency loss that aligns early-exit attention maps with the final exit. The framework jointly optimizes classification accuracy and attention consistency through a weighted combination of losses. Experiments on a real-world image classification dataset demonstrate that EGT achieves up to 98.97% overall accuracy (matching baseline performance) with a 1.97x inference speedup through early exits, while improving attention consistency by up to 18.5% compared to baseline models. The proposed method provides more interpretable and consistent explanations across all exit points, making early-exit networks more suitable for explainable AI applications in resource-constrained environments.

This paper examines refusal behavior in generative AI systems through a governance lens. Drawing on historical frameworks of censorship and contemporary design logics, it argues that refusal is not a neutral safeguard but a site of power, shaped by institutional risk management and opaque decision-making. The analysis concludes with user-centered recommendations for ethical refusal design. Keywords: Generative AI governance, AI refusal behavior, Censorship, Ethical design

Glioblastoma (GBM) is a highly aggressive primary brain tumor with limited therapeutic options and poor prognosis. The methylation status of the O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) gene promoter is a critical molecular biomarker that influences patient response to temozolomide chemotherapy. Traditional methods for determining MGMT status rely on invasive biopsies and are limited by intratumoral heterogeneity and procedural risks. This study presents a radiogenomic molecular imaging analysis framework for the non-invasive prediction of MGMT promoter methylation using multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI). Our approach integrates radiomics, deep learning, and explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) to analyze MRI-derived imaging phenotypes and correlate them with molecular labels. Radiomic features are extracted from FLAIR, T1-weighted, T1-contrast-enhanced, and T2-weighted MRI sequences, while a 3D convolutional neural network learns deep representations from the same modalities. These complementary features are fused using both early fusion and attention-based strategies and classified to predict MGMT methylation status. To enhance clinical interpretability, we apply XAI methods such as Grad-CAM and SHAP to visualize and explain model decisions. The proposed framework is trained on the RSNA-MICCAI Radiogenomic Classification dataset and externally validated on the BraTS 2021 dataset. This work advances the field of molecular imaging by demonstrating the potential of AI-driven radiogenomics for precision oncology, supporting non-invasive, accurate, and interpretable prediction of clinically actionable molecular biomarkers in GBM.

While machine learning shows promise for maternal health risk prediction, clinical adoption in resource-constrained settings faces a critical barrier: lack of explainability and trust. This study presents a hybrid explainable AI (XAI) framework combining ante-hoc fuzzy logic with post-hoc SHAP explanations, validated through systematic clinician feedback. We developed a fuzzy-XGBoost model on 1,014 maternal health records, achieving 88.67% accuracy (ROC-AUC: 0.9703). A validation study with 14 healthcare professionals in Bangladesh revealed strong preference for hybrid explanations (71.4% across three clinical cases) with 54.8% expressing trust for clinical use. SHAP analysis identified healthcare access as the primary predictor, with the engineered fuzzy risk score ranking third, validating clinical knowledge integration (r=0.298). Clinicians valued integrated clinical parameters but identified critical gaps: obstetric history, gestational age, and connectivity barriers. This work demonstrates that combining interpretable fuzzy rules with feature importance explanations enhances both utility and trust, providing practical insights for XAI deployment in maternal healthcare.