Research Papers

Depression is a major contributor to the mental-health burden in Nigeria, yet screening coverage remains limited due to low access to clinicians, stigma, and language barriers. Traditional tools like the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) were validated in high-income countries but may be linguistically or culturally inaccessible for low- and middle-income countries and communities such as Nigeria where people communicate in Nigerian Pidgin and more than 520 local languages. This study presents a novel approach to automated depression screening using fine-tuned large language models (LLMs) adapted for conversational Nigerian Pidgin. We collected a dataset of 432 Pidgin-language audio responses from Nigerian young adults aged 18-40 to prompts assessing psychological experiences aligned with PHQ-9 items, performed transcription, rigorous preprocessing and annotation, including semantic labeling, slang and idiom interpretation, and PHQ-9 severity scoring. Three LLMs - Phi-3-mini-4k-instruct, Gemma-3-4B-it, and GPT-4.1 - were fine-tuned on this annotated dataset, and their performance was evaluated quantitatively (accuracy, precision and semantic alignment) and qualitatively (clarity, relevance, and cultural appropriateness). GPT-4.1 achieved the highest quantitative performance, with 94.5% accuracy in PHQ-9 severity scoring prediction, outperforming Gemma-3-4B-it and Phi-3-mini-4k-instruct. Qualitatively, GPT-4.1 also produced the most culturally appropriate, clear, and contextually relevant responses. AI-mediated depression screening for underserved Nigerian communities. This work provides a foundation for deploying conversational mental-health tools in linguistically diverse, resource-constrained environments.

The 2nd Workshop on Human-Centered Recommender Systems

Kaike Zhang, Jiakai Tang, Du Su +6

Recommender systems shape how people discover information, form opinions, and connect with society. Yet, as their influence grows, traditional metrics, e.g., accuracy, clicks, and engagement, no longer capture what truly matters to humans. The workshop on Human-Centered Recommender Systems (HCRS) calls for a paradigm shift from optimizing engagement toward designing systems that truly understand, involve, and benefit people. It brings together researchers in recommender systems, human-computer interaction, AI safety, and social computing to explore how human values, e.g., trust, safety, fairness, transparency, and well-being, can be integrated into recommendation processes. Centered around three thematic axes-Human Understanding, Human Involvement, and Human Impact-HCRS features keynotes, panels, and papers covering topics from LLM-based interactive recommenders to societal welfare optimization. By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, HCRS aims to shape the next decade of responsible and human-aligned recommendation research.

Foundation models hold promise for specialized medical imaging tasks, though their effectiveness in breast imaging remains underexplored. This study leverages BiomedCLIP as a foundation model to address challenges in model generalization. BiomedCLIP was adapted for automated BI-RADS breast density classification using multi-modality mammographic data (synthesized 2D images, digital mammography, and digital breast tomosynthesis). Using 96,995 images, we compared single-modality (s2D only) and multi-modality training approaches, addressing class imbalance through weighted contrastive learning. Both approaches achieved similar accuracy (multi-modality: 0.74, single-modality: 0.73), with the multi-modality model offering broader applicability across different imaging modalities and higher AUC values consistently above 0.84 across BI-RADS categories. External validation on the RSNA and EMBED datasets showed strong generalization capabilities (AUC range: 0.80-0.93). GradCAM visualizations confirmed consistent and clinically relevant attention patterns, highlighting the models interpretability and robustness. This research underscores the potential of foundation models for breast imaging applications, paving the way for future extensions for diagnostic tasks.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly employed in software engineering tasks such as requirements elicitation, design, and evaluation, raising critical questions regarding their alignment with human judgments on responsible AI values. This study investigates how closely LLMs' value preferences align with those of two human groups: a US-representative sample and AI practitioners. We evaluate 23 LLMs across four tasks: (T1) selecting key responsible AI values, (T2) rating their importance in specific contexts, (T3) resolving trade-offs between competing values, and (T4) prioritizing software requirements that embody those values. The results show that LLMs generally align more closely with AI practitioners than with the US-representative sample, emphasizing fairness, privacy, transparency, safety, and accountability. However, inconsistencies appear between the values that LLMs claim to uphold (Tasks 1-3) and the way they prioritize requirements (Task 4), revealing gaps in faithfulness between stated and applied behavior. These findings highlight the practical risk of relying on LLMs in requirements engineering without human oversight and motivate the need for systematic approaches to benchmark, interpret, and monitor value alignment in AI-assisted software development.

BanglaNirTox: A Large-scale Parallel Corpus for Explainable AI in Bengali Text Detoxification

Ayesha Afroza Mohsin, Mashrur Ahsan, Nafisa Maliyat +4

Toxic language in Bengali remains prevalent, especially in online environments, with few effective precautions against it. Although text detoxification has seen progress in high-resource languages, Bengali remains underexplored due to limited resources. In this paper, we propose a novel pipeline for Bengali text detoxification that combines Pareto class-optimized large language models (LLMs) and Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting to generate detoxified sentences. To support this effort, we construct BanglaNirTox, an artificially generated parallel corpus of 68,041 toxic Bengali sentences with class-wise toxicity labels, reasonings, and detoxified paraphrases, using Pareto-optimized LLMs evaluated on random samples. The resulting BanglaNirTox dataset is used to fine-tune language models to produce better detoxified versions of Bengali sentences. Our findings show that Pareto-optimized LLMs with CoT prompting significantly enhance the quality and consistency of Bengali text detoxification.

We present the first application of federated learning (FL) to the U.S. National Financial Capability Study, introducing an interpretable framework for predicting consumer financial distress across all 50 states and the District of Columbia without centralizing sensitive data. Our cross-silo FL setup treats each state as a distinct data silo, simulating real-world governance in nationwide financial systems. Unlike prior work, our approach integrates two complementary explainable AI techniques to identify both global (nationwide) and local (state-specific) predictors of financial hardship, such as contact from debt collection agencies. We develop a machine learning model specifically suited for highly categorical, imbalanced survey data. This work delivers a scalable, regulation-compliant blueprint for early warning systems in finance, demonstrating how FL can power socially responsible AI applications in consumer credit risk and financial inclusion.

Towards the Formalization of a Trustworthy AI for Mining Interpretable Models explOiting Sophisticated Algorithms

Riccardo Guidotti, Martina Cinquini, Marta Marchiori Manerba +2

Interpretable-by-design models are crucial for fostering trust, accountability, and safe adoption of automated decision-making models in real-world applications. In this paper we formalize the ground for the MIMOSA (Mining Interpretable Models explOiting Sophisticated Algorithms) framework, a comprehensive methodology for generating predictive models that balance interpretability with performance while embedding key ethical properties. We formally define here the supervised learning setting across diverse decision-making tasks and data types, including tabular data, time series, images, text, transactions, and trajectories. We characterize three major families of interpretable models: feature importance, rule, and instance based models. For each family, we analyze their interpretability dimensions, reasoning mechanisms, and complexity. Beyond interpretability, we formalize three critical ethical properties, namely causality, fairness, and privacy, providing formal definitions, evaluation metrics, and verification procedures for each. We then examine the inherent trade-offs between these properties and discuss how privacy requirements, fairness constraints, and causal reasoning can be embedded within interpretable pipelines. By evaluating ethical measures during model generation, this framework establishes the theoretical foundations for developing AI systems that are not only accurate and interpretable but also fair, privacy-preserving, and causally aware, i.e., trustworthy.

FST.ai 2.0: An Explainable AI Ecosystem for Fair, Fast, and Inclusive Decision-Making in Olympic and Paralympic Taekwondo

Keivan Shariatmadar, Ahmad Osman, Ramin Ray +1

Fair, transparent, and explainable decision-making remains a critical challenge in Olympic and Paralympic combat sports. This paper presents \emph{FST.ai 2.0}, an explainable AI ecosystem designed to support referees, coaches, and athletes in real time during Taekwondo competitions and training. The system integrates {pose-based action recognition} using graph convolutional networks (GCNs), {epistemic uncertainty modeling} through credal sets, and {explainability overlays} for visual decision support. A set of {interactive dashboards} enables human--AI collaboration in referee evaluation, athlete performance analysis, and Para-Taekwondo classification. Beyond automated scoring, FST.ai~2.0 incorporates modules for referee training, fairness monitoring, and policy-level analytics within the World Taekwondo ecosystem. Experimental validation on competition data demonstrates an {85\% reduction in decision review time} and {93\% referee trust} in AI-assisted decisions. The framework thus establishes a transparent and extensible pipeline for trustworthy, data-driven officiating and athlete assessment. By bridging real-time perception, explainable inference, and governance-aware design, FST.ai~2.0 represents a step toward equitable, accountable, and human-aligned AI in sports.

As AI systems enter high-stakes domains, evaluation must extend beyond predictive accuracy to include explainability, fairness, robustness, and sustainability. We introduce RAISE (Responsible AI Scoring and Evaluation), a unified framework that quantifies model performance across these four dimensions and aggregates them into a single, holistic Responsibility Score. We evaluated three deep learning models: a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), a Tabular ResNet, and a Feature Tokenizer Transformer, on structured datasets from finance, healthcare, and socioeconomics. Our findings reveal critical trade-offs: the MLP demonstrated strong sustainability and robustness, the Transformer excelled in explainability and fairness at a very high environmental cost, and the Tabular ResNet offered a balanced profile. These results underscore that no single model dominates across all responsibility criteria, highlighting the necessity of multi-dimensional evaluation for responsible model selection. Our implementation is available at: https://github.com/raise-framework/raise.

Mental health assessments are of central importance to individuals' well-being. Conventional assessment methodologies predominantly depend on clinical interviews and standardised self-report questionnaires. Nevertheless, the efficacy of these methodologies is frequently impeded by factors such as subjectivity, recall bias, and accessibility issues. Furthermore, concerns regarding bias and privacy may result in misreporting in data collected through self-reporting in mental health research. The present study examined the design opportunities and challenges inherent in the development of a mental health assessment tool based on natural language interaction with large language models (LLMs). An interactive prototype system was developed using conversational AI for non-invasive mental health assessment, and was evaluated through semi-structured interviews with 11 mental health professionals (six counsellors and five psychiatrists). The analysis identified key design considerations for future development, highlighting how AI-driven adaptive questioning could potentially enhance the reliability of self-reported data while identifying critical challenges, including privacy protection, algorithmic bias, and cross-cultural applicability. This study provides an empirical foundation for mental health technology innovation by demonstrating the potential and limitations of natural language interaction in mental health assessment.

Employers increasingly expect graduates to utilize large language models (LLMs) in the workplace, yet the competencies needed for computing roles across Africa remain unclear given varying national contexts. This study examined how six LLMs, namely ChatGPT 4, DeepSeek, Gemini, Claude 3.5, Llama 3, and Mistral AI, describe entry-level computing career expectations across ten African countries. Using the Computing Curricula 2020 framework and drawing on Digital Colonialism Theory and Ubuntu Philosophy, content analysis of 60 LLM responses to standardized prompts reveals consistent coverage of technical competencies such as cloud computing and programming, but notable differences in non-technical competencies, particularly ethics and responsible AI use. Models vary considerably in recognizing country-specific factors, including local technology ecosystems, language requirements, and national policies averaging only 35.4% contextual awareness overall. Open-source models demonstrated stronger contextual awareness and better balance between technical and professional skills, with Llama (4.47/5) and DeepSeek (4.25/5) outperforming proprietary alternatives ChatGPT-4 (3.90/5) and Claude (3.46/5). However, Mistral's poor contextual performance (0.00/4) despite being open-source indicates that development philosophy alone does not guarantee contextual responsiveness. This first comprehensive comparison of LLM career guidance for African computing students uncovers entrenched infrastructure assumptions and Western-centric biases that create gaps between technical recommendations and local realities. The findings challenge assumptions about AI tool quality in resource-constrained settings and underscore the need for decolonial approaches to AI in education, emphasizing contextual relevance and hybrid human-AI guidance models.

As design thinking education grows in secondary and tertiary contexts, educators face the challenge of evaluating creative artefacts that combine visual and textual elements. Traditional rubric-based assessment is laborious, time-consuming, and inconsistent due to reliance on Teaching Assistants (TA) in large, multi-section cohorts. This paper presents an exploratory study investigating the reliability and perceived accuracy of AI-assisted assessment compared to TA-assisted assessment in evaluating student posters in design thinking education. Two activities were conducted with 33 Ministry of Education (MOE) Singapore school teachers to (1) compare AI-generated scores with TA grading across three key dimensions: empathy and user understanding, identification of pain points and opportunities, and visual communication, and (2) examine teacher preferences for AI-assigned, TA-assigned, and hybrid scores. Results showed low statistical agreement between instructor and AI scores for empathy and pain points, with slightly higher alignment for visual communication. Teachers preferred TA-assigned scores in six of ten samples. Qualitative feedback highlighted the potential of AI for formative feedback, consistency, and student self-reflection, but raised concerns about its limitations in capturing contextual nuance and creative insight. The study underscores the need for hybrid assessment models that integrate computational efficiency with human insights. This research contributes to the evolving conversation on responsible AI adoption in creative disciplines, emphasizing the balance between automation and human judgment for scalable and pedagogically sound assessment.