EdTech Discovery
Argus

Named after the hundred-eyed watchman of Greek myth, Argus watches the education landscape: spotting new opportunities, pressure-testing the ventures we're building, and tracing every read back to the real-world signals behind it.

Updated Jul 06, 2026 · 4 ideas · 4795 signals

Signals

The evidence library: the raw signals the pipeline is watching across the education ecosystem. Every idea is built from these.

technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CL

A Multi-cluster Boundary Learning Method for Out-of-Scope Intent Detection via MiniLM Embedding

arXiv:2607.07974v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Intent detection is a critical task that bridges human intents and system actions in human-machine interaction systems. However, there still exist challenges for detecting out-of-scope (OOS) intents. (i) The traditional methods view the OOS intent detection as a multi-class classification, then the detection accuracy decreases as the class number of the known intents increases; (ii) LLM-embedding methods require large parameters, that makes them difficult to train and practically deploy. Thus, this work proposes a multi-cluster boundary learning method to detect OOS intents via MiniLM embedding (i.e., all-MiniLM-L6-v2) in an one-class classification workflow. The method learns the boundaries of multi-cluster embeddings generated by MiniLM from the training utterances, and then rejects the out-of-domain utterances as OOS intents. Experiments are conducted on public CLINC150, StackOverflow and Banking77 datasets. The results show that the m

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CL

When Debiasing Backfires: Counterintuitive Side Effects of Preprocessing-Based Stereotype Mitigation

arXiv:2607.07937v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Preprocessing-based methods for stereotype mitigation, such as pre-/post-training on debiased corpora, are widely used in NLP. While these approaches reduce measurable stereotypes for targeted groups, we find they often induce unintended shifts-side effects, where stereotyping or counter-stereotyping can increase relative to neutral baselines for other demographics, including across unrelated demographic categories. We demonstrate these side effects across two model families (encoder-only and decoder-only), multiple preprocessing strategies (removing stereotypical sentences, removing group mentions, and swapping group references), and both pre- and post-training at different data scales on Wikipedia. Standard benchmarks frequently miss these shifts. Using attention-rollout analysis, we observe that such side effects are not accompanied by large changes in attention flow, complicating mechanistic explanations. We discuss implications for e

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CL

Scalable and Culturally Specific Stereotype Dataset Construction via Human-LLM Collaboration

arXiv:2607.07895v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Research on stereotypes in large language models (LLMs) has largely focused on English-speaking contexts, due to the lack of datasets in other languages and the high cost of manual annotation in underrepresented cultures. To address this gap, we introduce a cost-efficient human-LLM collaborative annotation framework and apply it to construct EspanStereo, a Spanish-language stereotype dataset spanning multiple Spanish-speaking countries across Europe and Latin America. EspanStereo captures both well-documented stereotypes from prior literature and culturally specific biases absent from English-centric resources. Using LLMs to generate candidate stereotypes and in-culture annotators to validate them, we demonstrate the framework's effectiveness in identifying nuanced, region-specific biases. Our evaluation of Spanish-supporting LLMs using EspanStereo reveals significant variation in stereotypical behavior across countries, highlighting the

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CL

How Do I Know What to Say Next? Barenholtz's Autogenerative Theory as an Enrichment of Harrisean Integrationism

arXiv:2607.07891v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Roy Harris's Integrationist linguistics offers a compelling critique of the referentialist tradition embedded deep at the heart of computational approaches to language, arguing that language is not a code that maps onto a pre-given world but a situated, bipartite activity oriented toward prospective joint action. Yet Integrationism leaves certain explanatory gaps: it does not fully account for the structural mechanism by which signs sustain prospective openness, it undertheorises the continuity between linguistic and non-linguistic semiotic activity, and it offers no detailed account of the structural properties of the accumulated archive of past integrations. This paper argues that Elan Barenholtz's autogenerative theory of language, developed in response to the behaviour of Large Language Models (LLMs), can fill precisely these gaps, enriching Integrationism without undermining any of its core commitments. Specifically, the autogenerati

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CL

DeepSearch-World: Self-Distillation for Deep Search Agents in a Verifiable Environment

arXiv:2607.07820v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Training tool-use agents to improve from their own experience remains challenging, as supervised fine-tuning relies on fixed teacher-distilled trajectories, while sparse-reward reinforcement learning provides weak supervision for long-horizon interactions. We present DeepSearch-Evolve, a self-distillation framework for web agents built on DeepSearch-World, a deterministic and verifiable environment with reproducible search and page-reading tools. DeepSearch-World contains 420K multi-hop QA tasks constructed from entity-level random walks and supports key agentic cognitive behaviors useful for self-evolving, including progress verification, grounded reflection, and failure recovery. DeepSearch-Evolve iteratively performs trajectory generation, filtering, data mixing, and fine-tuning to train stronger agents. Without distillation from more capable models, DeepSearch-World-9B achieves competitive performance compared with open-source agents,

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CL

From Solvers to Research: Large Language Model-Driven Formal Mathematics at the Research Frontier

arXiv:2607.07779v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent developments in AI for Mathematics (AI4Math), especially Large Language Model (LLM)-driven theorem provers, has achieved remarkable success in formal proof generation for well-defined mathematical problems through Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP) languages. However, current systems remain fundamentally limited in tackling frontier research mathematics, such as discovering new theorems or resolving open conjectures, which are often open-ended, under-specified, and involve multiple layers of abstraction. We argue that the next leap in AI4Math systems requires a decisive shift from predefined problem-solvers to research agents that can address frontier mathematical challenges with rigorous formal mathematical reasoning. In this position paper, we provide a systematic review of the field, covering datasets, auto-formalization, and proof synthesis. More importantly, we identify core limitations of existing systems in serving as mathema

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CL

Unveiling Public Opinion: A Study of Sentiment Analysis Using LSTM and Traditional Models

arXiv:2607.07772v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In this age of social media, sites like Twitter have become meeting places for people to share their views and feelings on a wide range of issues and current events as they unfold in real time. Sentiment analysis, a critical application of NLP, has become indispensable due to the massive influx of user-generated content, enabling the extraction of meaningful insights from the opinions and emotions expressed in textual data. Sentiment analysis on Twitter employs sophisticated computational techniques to categorize tweets into positive, negative, or neutral sentiments. This method not only examines individual expressions but also analyzes vast databases related to specific subjects or events. By spotting these emotions, machine learning models help improve public opinion interpretation and trend forecasting. This paper examines the effectiveness of various machine learning and deep learning approaches. Designed for this use, the system eval

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

Perceptually Lossless Tactile Texture Synthesis with Compact Spectral Envelope Models

arXiv:2605.23804v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Modern audio-visual media rely on compact representations for efficient storage and transmission, whereas realistic digital touch still depends on high-resolution tactile recordings. Existing approaches for representing tactile signals constrain manipulation and limit the generation of new content. Here, we introduce two compact representations, spectral beta and spectral slope, that capture the temporal spectral structure of finger-surface friction signals while preserving perceptually relevant information. Spectral beta models spectral skewness using a two-parameter beta distribution, whereas spectral slope approximates the spectrum with an asymmetric bandpass filter defined by low- and high-pass orders. We evaluated these representations in a perceptual study with 14 participants using five virtual textures rendered on a friction-modulation display and compared them with physical textures and high-fidelity reproductions of recorded

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

UNIPO: Unified Interactive Visual Explanation for RL Fine-Tuning Policy Optimization

arXiv:2605.11549v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Reinforcement learning has emerged as a dominant technique for fine-tuning the behavior of large language models, with policy optimization (PO) algorithms such as GRPO, DAPO, and Dr. GRPO emerging in rapid succession to advance state-of-the-art reasoning and alignment performance. However, the modular differences between these algorithms, including targeted improvements to clipping, advantage estimation, and reward aggregation, are introduced across separate papers with inconsistent notation, making them difficult to compare and intimidating to the non-expert community. We present UNIPO, to our knowledge the first interactive visualization tool that exposes the token-level training dynamics of RL fine-tuning algorithms through a unified design. UNIPO connects three complementary views, a high-level training overview, a step-level prompt and response inspector, and a side-by-side algorithm comparison, allowing learners to observe how i

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

Using AI-based Learning Assistants in Higher Education: A Large-Scale Descriptive Analysis

arXiv:2607.08748v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In this study, we present a large-scale descriptive analysis of the use of an AI-based learning assistant (Syntea) in higher education. Based on objective log data from 77,543 students enrolled in distance studies, we examine usage patterns across gender, age group, study cluster, degree, and study mode. To date, existing research on educational chatbots has largely relied on comparatively small samples and self-reported survey data, while large-scale evidence on actual usage behavior remains limited. Our findings show that Syntea is already embedded in the study routines of many learners, but that usage differs across demographic and structural contexts. By identifying these patterns, our study provides an empirical basis for the further development of AI-based learning support and contributes a large-scale analysis of educational chatbot usage in higher education.

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

Dimensionality Reduction Meets Network Science: Sensemaking on UMAP's kNN Graph

arXiv:2607.08746v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: While UMAP is widely used for exploring high-dimensional data, typical workflows focus on its lower-dimensional embedding, largely overlooking the rich k-nearest-neighbor (kNN) graph that UMAP constructs internally. This graph encodes the data manifold in its original high-dimensional space, before the distortion that UMAP's 2D projection introduces. We demonstrate the untapped potential of this internal representation, showing how standard graph algorithms applied to this graph enhance data sensemaking: (1) PageRank identifies representative data points, (2) k-core decomposition reveals dense core regions versus sparse periphery, and (3) clustering coefficient detects tight-knit neighborhoods with highly-similar data points. Through quantitative and qualitative evaluation on MNIST and Fashion MNIST, we show that these graph-based analyses are not only practical but also competitive with or complementary to purpose-built methods (e.g.,

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

Federated Deep Learning for Privacy-Preserving Cardiovascular Disease Risk Prediction

arXiv:2607.08595v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Cardiovascular disease risk prediction models often rely on data from a single institution or centrally pooled datasets. Extending these models across institutions could be limited by privacy regulations and constraints on sharing patient-level data. Federated learning enables collaborative model development without transferring sensitive patient data, but its application in healthcare remains challenging because datasets often differ in size, population characteristics, and outcome definitions. In this study, we present a federated deep learning approach for privacy-preserving cardiovascular disease risk prediction that integrates two population-based cohorts with different characteristics: Lifelines, including 148,230 participants meeting the study inclusion criteria with self-reported outcomes, and the Rotterdam Study, including a smaller cohort of 10,155 participants with digitally linked clinical outcomes. Model performance was pri

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

VEGAS: Human-Aligned Video Caption Evaluation via Gaze

arXiv:2607.08489v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Vision-language models excel at video captioning, yet typically generate descriptions that fail to capture individual viewers' attention. We propose VEGAS (Video caption Evaluation via GAze Score), a training-free metric that leverages test-time gaze to sample personalized, attention-aligned text. It is a cross-modal, information-theoretic metric that quantifies how well a candidate caption matches a viewer's focus. To evaluate VEGAS, we curate a dataset of egocentric activities and instructional slides paired with synchronized gaze and reference annotations. We then select captions based on VEGAS via rejection sampling without model retraining. Experiments show that VEGAS-selected captions align significantly better with human focus and improve downstream caption-to-video retrieval, demonstrating the practical utility of incorporating viewer attention during inference.

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

Large-Language-Models-as-a-Judge in Theory-Agnostic Adaptive Metric-Alignment for Prototypical Networks in Personality Recognition

arXiv:2607.08374v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Personality recognition has traditionally been constrained by theory-dependent formulations, where models are trained to fit predefined psychological taxonomies rather than uncovering shared underlying behavioral structure. This limits generalization, as personality itself is better understood as theory-invariant, while existing annotations reflect only partial and sometimes inconsistent views of the same latent traits. In this work, we introduce JAM ((J)udge for (A)daptive (M)etric-Alignment), a theory-agnostic framework that shifts learning from adapting to predefined personality theories toward discovering unified latent pseudo-facets that capture shared psychological structure. Rather than constraining the model to any personality taxonomy during training or inference, the framework learns generalizable psychological representations and can infer an individual's latent psychological profile directly from the textual samples, without

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

AutoPersonas: A Multi-Timescale Loop Engine for Open-Ended Persona Evolution

arXiv:2607.08252v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Long-term persona agents must remain identifiable while adapting to new events, relationships, evidence, and social conditions. We identify self-locking as a runtime failure mode in continuing persona-life loops: locally plausible events keep appearing while the generated life collapses toward familiar environments, weak relationships, suspended decisions, and stale life stages. We trace this failure to model-level convergence toward high-probability behavioral channels and system-level context gravity from State, memory, history, and environment summaries. We introduce AutoPersonas, a multi-timescale life-environment engine for bounded persona-level recursive self-evolution. It separates environment-side Occurrences, accumulated Observations, and persona State. Its OSO loop admits divergent future-facing material while requiring evidence-governed absorption before State or reachability changes. A three-year compressed simulation expose

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

Simulating the Resident: Generating Executable Smart Home Schedules via LLM Personas

arXiv:2607.08231v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Smart homes have emerged as an important domain for HCI research, including work on usable security and privacy. Ideally, studies in these areas draw on datasets collected in real homes with real residents, capturing authentic device interactions, network traffic, and daily routines. However, creating such datasets is slow, expensive, and raises significant privacy concerns, as it requires long-term observation of people in their most private spaces. We propose using LLMs to generate diverse resident personas that interact with a simulated smart home, producing behaviorally grounded interaction schedules that can be executed on physical testbeds. We present (1) a design framework configuring simulated households across five socio-technical dimensions, (2) a multi-stage LLM pipeline that produces structured, executable device interaction schedules, and (3) a proof of concept demonstrating feasibility. As a work in progress, we aim to sup

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

LEXIC: Lightweight Eye-tracking eXtension via Injected Complexity

arXiv:2607.08152v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: On the recent EyeBench benchmark, predicting reading comprehension from eye movements exposes a stark gap: text-aware models using pretrained language models reach 56--63% AUROC, while gaze-only models operate at chance. We ask how far a gaze-only model can be pushed by lightweight, language-model-free conditioning. Building on the EyeBench AhnCNN baseline, LEXIC-Base, we propose two mechanisms to inject three precomputed word-level difficulty signals, GPT-2 surprisal, word frequency, and word length, into the per-fixation input: direct concatenation, LEXIC-Concat, and a residual mechanism, LEXIC-Res, where a small head predicts typical-reader gaze response and the encoder is conditioned on the deviation. On the OneStop reading comprehension task, with K=5 seed-ensemble training across ten folds, both mechanisms produce statistically consistent AUROC gains on Unseen Text, +1.8 to +2.2 percentage points, Wilcoxon p <= 0.065. LEXIC-Concat

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

Feedback Manipulation Regularization: Enabling Offline Agent Alignment for Imitation Learning

arXiv:2607.07859v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) research has increasingly shifted focus towards alignment, ensuring agents learn behaviors adhering to human values. While human demonstrations and feedback have proven crucial for alignment, existing approaches predominantly combine these signals using multi-stage pipelines designed for the contextual bandit framing of language generation. Yet little work explores how these complementary inputs can serve as a richer, interconnected signal for single-stage offline training in fully sequential decision-making environments. We propose Feedback Manipulation Regularization (FMR), an algorithm-agnostic method that harnesses evaluative feedback as a corrective signal to improve the alignment of imitation learning policies. We adapt Safety Gymnasium environments to be a principled testbed for alignment evaluation, demonstrating improved aptitude and up to a 98\% reduction in misalignment across a range of imitation

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

Idiobionics: The Unification of Privacy and Intelligent Robotic Prostheses

arXiv:2607.07775v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The human body is at the center of a growing family of technologies designed to tightly and persistently couple biological and digital systems. Robotic prostheses are a representative example of this tight coupling. Also referred to as bionic limbs, robotic prostheses are devices that support people who have lost limbs in pursuing daily life activities such as walking and grasping objects. Bionic limbs are now perceptive and responsive owing to their integration with advanced sensors and artificial intelligence-based control approaches. Consequently, such robotic prostheses can now be viewed as semiautonomous wearable robotic systems that can co-adapt with their users. However, the same sensing and control advancements that increase the capability of robotic prostheses also introduce threat vectors that could be exploited by malicious entities to violate the privacy of users. To fully realize the benefits of next-generation bionic limbs

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

Sculptable Mesh Structures for Room-Scale Form-Finding

arXiv:2607.08736v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: It can be hard to design a physical structure entirely within the confines of a computer monitor. To better capture the interplay between real-world objects and a designer's work-in-progress, practitioners will often go through a sequence of low-fidelity prototypes (paper, clay, foam) before arriving at a form that satisfies both functional and aesthetic concerns. While necessary, this model-making process can be quite time-consuming, particularly at larger scales, and the resulting geometry can be difficult to translate into a CAD environment, where it will be further refined. This paper introduces a user-adjustable, room-scale, "shape-aware" mesh structure for low-fidelity prototyping. A user physically manipulates the mesh by lengthening and shortening the edges, altering the overall curvature and sculpting coarse forms. The edges are equipped with resistive length sensors, and transmit their configuration to a central computer. The st

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

How YouTube Frames ChatGPT Use in Education: An Epistemic Network Analysis with Supporting Multimodal Metadata

arXiv:2607.08698v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We examine educational YouTube videos through multimodal metadata, such as transcripts, titles, thumbnails, and viewer comments, to investigate how ChatGPT is framed across creator groups and how those framings relate to audience response and platform reach. Little is known about how large language models are presented to learners in informal, creator-driven public discourse. Following PRISMA, we selected 52 videos for analysis. We identified three structurally distinct discourse groups: (G1) videos that positioned ChatGPT as a conceptual scaffold for thinking, (G2) videos oriented toward retrieval practice and skill-building, and (G3) videos that framed ChatGPT as a tool for output generation. Epistemic Network Analysis revealed statistically significant group differences with large effect sizes. Multimodal metadata consistently reflected these distinctions across transcript discourse, titles, and thumbnails. Viewers of learning-oriented

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

ImputeViz: A Visual Analytics Dashboard for Diagnosing Missing Data and Comparing Imputation Methods

arXiv:2607.08579v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Missing data is a persistent obstacle in scientific, social science, and public health research, often biasing analyses and placing accountability on analysts for how they handle missing values. We introduce ImputeViz, an integrated visual analytics dashboard that supports diagnosing missingness, configuring imputation models, and evaluating results. The system brings together widely used methods, including MICE, Random Forest, XGBoost, and kNN, within an interactive environment that makes missingness patterns explicit. To support geospatial reasoning, we introduce gKNN, a geographically informed kNN variant that blends socioeconomic and spatial distances and exposes donor contributions, enabling provenance-based visual accountability by showing which regions drive each estimate. Our primary contribution is a method-agnostic visual analytics environment that makes cross-method comparison a first-class visual task and integrates gKNN along

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

How Analysts Use AI in High-Stakes Crime Linkage: An Industrial Study

arXiv:2607.08274v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Crime linkage analysis is used in many countries to identify series of offences that may have been committed by the same individual. In practice, specialist analysts manually search for behavioural and situational connections across large crime databases, an effort that is time-consuming, cognitively demanding, and can involve repeated exposure to disturbing material. To support this work, an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled decision-support tool was co-developed with a UK law enforcement agency to assist analysts in identifying likely crime linkages. This paper reports an industrial evaluation of the crime-linkage tool. We conducted a mixed-methods usability study combining direct observation, eye-tracking, mouse-tracking, and surveys to examine how analysts engage with AI predictions and with the model features presented as explanations. Our findings show that analysts used the AI predictions selectively and frequently validated the

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

HeadRoom: Lightweight, Edge-deployable Pipeline for Adaptive Notification Routing

arXiv:2607.08083v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Emerging wearables, such as smart glasses, can deliver notifications through multiple sensory channels, but there is still a limited understanding of how to choose the right channel at the right moment. We propose HeadRoom, a lightweight, edge-deployable pipeline that estimates the availability of visual and auditory channels in real time from egocentric video and audio. Our controlled user study (N=25) shows that, under high perceptual load, routing notifications to the more available channel reduces response time relative to routing them to the less available channel. This work opens up a new possibility for adaptive routing of notifications in wearable and immersive systems.

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

The Behavioural Reflection Test: A time-efficient measure of reflective reasoning in morally and epistemically charged decisions

arXiv:2607.07961v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: How readily people override intuitive conclusions through reflection shapes how they navigate dense information environments with reliable and misleading sources; yet the effectiveness of a prominent measure, the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), is eroded by widespread exposure to classic items and leaves open how such tendencies manifest more generally in decision style and linguistic expression. The Behavioural Reflection Test (BRT) addresses these issues with a brief open-ended measure of reasoning in morally and epistemically charged scenarios, alongside a four-item bespoke CRT (bCRT) as a low-exposure anchor. Among 473 online adults, higher bCRT predicted more evidence-sensitive, ethically driven decisions and reliance on high-quality sources, marked by more emotionally engaged, risk-attentive, economical language; associations the familiarity-adjusted CRT did not recover. The bCRT showed convergent validity, added item information a

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.HC

fog: Expressing Motion and Emotion through Function Composition of AI-Generated Code

arXiv:2607.07952v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Motion and emotion are core parts of intelligent, expressive behavior. In this paper, we introduce fog, a function composition framework for implementing and compose motion functions. We demonstrate how fog can be used to express motion and emotion in Heider-Simmel style animations. This code generation framework can help users generate functions for verbs, adverbs, gestures, and emotions to create an open-ended motion vocabulary. It is complemented by an animation editor that helps users refine motion through direct manipulation and dynamically generated UI. We evaluate our approach with a perceptual evaluation, where we test 452 fog-generated animations to see if people can recognize the semantic meaning of the motion. We find that fog's motion functions can be recognized at 68% accuracy, a 2.68x improvement over a chance baseline. In a mixed-methods user study with professionals and novices, we show that fog in interface form can suppo

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

MultiFair: Multimodal Balanced Fairness-Aware Medical Classification with Dual-Level Gradient Modulation

arXiv:2510.07328v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Medical decision systems increasingly rely on data from multiple sources to ensure reliable and unbiased diagnosis. However, existing multimodal learning models fail to achieve this goal because they often overlook two critical challenges. First, various data modalities may learn unevenly, thereby converging to a model biased towards certain modalities. Second, the model may emphasize learning on certain demographic groups causing unfair performances. The two aspects can influence each other, as different data modalities may favor respective groups during optimization, leading to both imbalanced and unfair multimodal learning. This paper proposes a novel approach called MultiFair for multimodal medical classification, which addresses these challenges with a dual-level gradient modulation process. MultiFair dynamically modulates training gradients regarding the optimization direction and magnitude at both data modality and group

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

DeepTutor: Towards Agentic Personalized Tutoring

arXiv:2604.26962v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Education is one of the most promising real-world applications for Large Language Models (LLMs). However, current LLMs rely on static pre-training knowledge and lack adaptation to individual learners, while existing RAG systems fall short in delivering personalized, guided feedback. To bridge this gap, we present DeepTutor, a fully open-source agentic framework that unifies citation-grounded problem tutoring with difficulty-calibrated question generation. A hybrid personalization engine couples static knowledge grounding with dynamic learner memory, continuously adapting each interaction to the student's evolving needs. The same personalization substrate further extends to adaptive learning workflows, interactive books, and proactive multi-channel tutoring agents. To evaluate personalized tutoring, we introduce TutorBench, an interactive benchmark incorporating customized learner profiles grounded in university-level curricula across

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

Adaptive Generation of Bias-Eliciting Questions for LLMs

arXiv:2510.12857v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are now widely deployed in user-facing applications, reaching hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Despite their widespread adoption, growing reliance on their outputs raises significant concerns, particularly as users may be exposed to model-inherent biases that disadvantage or stereotype certain groups. However, existing bias benchmarks commonly rely on simple templated prompts or restrictive multiple-choice questions that fail to capture the complexity of real-world user interactions. In this work, we address this gap by introducing a counterfactual framework that automatically generates realistic, open-ended questions for LLM bias evaluation. Through iterative question mutation, our approach systematically explores areas where models are most likely to exhibit biased behavior. Beyond just detecting harmful biases, we also capture increasingly relevant response dimensions, such as asymmetric refusal

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

The Contribution of XAI for the Safe Development and Certification of AI: An Expert-Based Analysis

arXiv:2408.02379v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Developing and certifying safe - or so-called trustworthy - AI has become an increasingly salient issue, especially in light of upcoming regulation such as the EU AI Act. In this context, the black-box nature of machine learning models limits the use of conventional avenues of approach towards certifying complex technical systems. As a potential solution, methods to give insights into this black-box - devised in the field of eXplainable AI (XAI) - could be used. In this study, the potential and shortcomings of such methods for the purpose of safe AI development and certification are discussed in 15 qualitative interviews with experts out of the areas of (X)AI and certification. We find that XAI methods can be a helpful asset for safe AI development, as they can show biases and failures of ML-models, but since certification relies on comprehensive and correct information about technical systems, their impact is expected to be limited.

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

Validity of LLMs as data annotators: AMALIA on authority

arXiv:2607.08731v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: A national language model offers a linguistic community its own instrument for measuring what its citizens say and value. Portugal's AMALIA, a publicly funded 9B-parameter model for European Portuguese, appears competitive on agreement alone: asked to code the moral foundation of authority, it agrees with trained human coders to within six F1 points of open models eight to thirteen times its size. Yet agreement is reliability, not validity. For theoretical constructs that must be inferred rather than read from surface features, the question is whether the model follows the construct's theory or reaches the right code by correlated shortcuts. We test this with the recovery gap: the loss in performance when a holistic prompt is decomposed into the codebook's atomic clauses and recombined by the theory's explicit rule. If calibration closes that gap, some portability should survive across models and languages; where it does not, the constr

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

PLURAL: A Global Dataset for Value Alignment

arXiv:2607.08034v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are used worldwide, yet disproportionately reflect Western values, limiting their ability to represent diverse value systems. We introduce PLURAL, a large-scale, value-focused preference dataset grounded in the Integrated Values Survey (IVS), a nationally representative survey spanning 92 countries. Using a two-stage generation pipeline, we transform survey responses into synthetic preference triplets that preserve normative value signals while producing realistic scenarios. We release an initial version of PLURAL containing ~500,000 preference triplets representing people in 20 diverse countries. We evaluate PLURAL in three ways: (i) dataset-level validation showing that it preserves both cross-country value differences and within-country diversity from the original survey; (ii) automated evaluation showing that training on PLURAL improves alignment with target countries' cultural profiles, reducing mean ab

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

From Execution to Education: A Bloom-Aligned Framework for Measuring Educational Control in LLMs

arXiv:2607.08009v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We introduce a Bloom-aligned framework for measuring educational control in Large Language Models (LLMs): the ability to preserve a task's instructional intent while shifting its cognitive demand toward specified learning objectives. We apply this framework to programming tasks in computer science education to study the gap between solving tasks and adapting them for learners. Using revised Bloom's Taxonomy as an operational scale of cognitive demand, we evaluate two intervention settings: general difficulty control, where models are asked to make tasks harder or easier, and Bloom's control, where models are asked to target higher or lower Bloom's levels. We evaluate a matched Qwen3-Next model pair, comparing Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct with Qwen3-Coder-Next across 2,520 tasks from three benchmarks. The framework reveals a robust directional asymmetry: both models reliably increase cognitive demand, but struggle to lower it. We further

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

False Confidence: Automated Labels Confound Fairness Audits in Cervical Spine Segmentation

arXiv:2607.07852v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Automated segmentation of cervical-spine MRI is increasingly used in clinical workflows, yet no fairness audit exists for this anatomy. We show that auditing these segmentation tasks is complicated by a common property of modern segmentation datasets: expert-annotated gold labels are expensive, so abundant machine-generated (silver) labels are added to limit annotation cost. This matters because the reference used to judge a model can itself be biased. In this study, we present the first fairness audit of cervical-spine MRI segmentation across sex, age, and race using the CSpineSeg dataset. We observe that the deployed model is demographically fair, but the choice of reference label, however, is not neutral. Because a dataset's silver labels are generated by a model trained on its gold labels, any new model trained on those same gold labels agrees more with the silver labels than with expert truth: scoring identical predictions against

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

VectorizationLLM: Smart Vectorization Based AI Assistant

arXiv:2607.07846v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: VectorizationLLM is a specialized Large Language Model based on Google open-weight LLMs. The model is designed to assist students to learn smart vectorization, time/wave vector analysis, piecewise functions, Fourier analysis, and differential equations in MATLAB. The course application is CTEC 247: Applied Computational Analysis II by the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering Technology at New York Institute of Technology Old Westbury. The LLM model is designed to be an instructive assistant, providing detailed explanations of concepts with examples from in-class notes without providing direct answers to questions. The model is designed with a RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) knowledge base and system prompt architecture. Examples in both code, text, and images are provided in the LLM responses.

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

Artificial Persons

arXiv:2607.08695v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Both advocates and skeptics of the moral status of AI systems have generally taken the question to turn on AI sentience. We present an alternative approach. On Rawls' political conception of the person (PCP), possession of the two moral power -- the capacities for a sense of justice and a conception of the good -- is the "necessary and sufficient condition for being counted a full and equal member of society in questions of political justice". We argue that neither moral power requires sentience and that both may in principle be possessed by a non-sentient AI system. Such a system would share our own moral status; it would not merely be a patient but a person, a self-authenticating source of valid claims. We do not believe current AI systems possess the two moral powers, nor that they will spontaneously emerge in future models. But it may soon be possible to design systems with these powers. How should we respond? Excluding artificial per

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

The Context Access Divide: Interaction-Level Architecture as a Complementary Dimension of Agentic Inequality

arXiv:2607.08495v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Sharp et al. (2025) introduce "agentic inequality" as a framework for analyzing disparities in access to AI agents across three dimensions: availability, quality, and quantity. These person- and organization-level dimensions characterize who can access agents and at what capability, but do not address a structurally important divide operating at a finer level: the individual interaction. Two users with nominally equivalent agent access may experience qualitatively different AI utility depending on whether the system can autonomously retrieve context from the user's knowledge corpus (Dynamic Context Retrieval) or requires the user to manually identify and attach relevant documents at each query (Manual Attachment). We term this the Context Access Divide (CAD). For knowledge-intensive workers whose intellectual capital spans tens of thousands of files, the CAD constitutes a qualitative threshold in AI usefulness: below it, the cognitive bur

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

Does online sustainability communication shape public discourse? Insights from six years of tenant-housing provider interactions

arXiv:2607.08437v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Authorities increasingly rely on social media to advance sustainability transitions, infrastructure investment, and service reform. Yet how citizens respond to these digital communications remains poorly understood. Existing approaches rely on aggregate engagement metrics (e.g., likes), providing limited insight into discourse structure and quality. We developed a data-driven, multidimensional framework to analyse how social media communication shapes the content of discourse, focusing on sustainability-related engagement in Dutch public housing. We analysed 792 posts and 3,197 tenant comments from the Facebook pages of 92 housing providers (2018-2023). A machine-learning pipeline classified comments into recurring discourse configurations across three dimensions - communicative intent, sentiment, and semantic relatedness. Multinomial logistic regression estimated the effects of post-design and organisational characteristics on discourse.

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

Diagnosing and Repairing Persona Collapse in LLM Advice

arXiv:2607.08326v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: LLMs are increasingly used for personal advice on relationships, work, moral dilemmas, and crises. Post-training selects a stable, prosocial Assistant persona, but good advice requires more than a good default character: a skilled advisor comforts someone in crisis, challenges someone in denial, and stays procedural with a logistical question. We formalize advice-giving as situation-conditioned persona selection in a space defined by hedonic tone and agency support, and call failures of this mapping "persona collapse" (the compression of diverse situations into a single default persona). Across 1,281 advice posts spanning 14 contexts, top-rated human responses shift systematically across five personas, while three frontier models collapse over 90\% of responses into a single supportive persona regardless of context. Prompting the model to first pick a fitting persona only deepens the collapse. We then ask whether the collapse can be repai

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

From Thesis to Transition: An INSIGHT-Inspired Approach to Co-Designing Industry 5.0 Competency Pathways for Early-Stage Researchers

arXiv:2607.08222v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Europe faces a critical "translation gap" where doctoral excellence in academia often fails to convert into industrial impact. While Industry 5.0 demands a blend of technical depth, sustainability, and human-centric design, traditional higher academic education remains siloed. This paper presents an approach from the Horizon Europe INSIGHT initiative to co-design modular competency pathways for early-stage researchers. Using a multi-methodological analysis framework, including expert interviews and co-design workshops, we propose a two-layer competency architecture. This layers foundational translational skills (communication, project management) with Industry 5.0 literacies (data governance, value creation). Rather than proposing fixed training tracks, the paper outlines emerging pathway directions and the design principles behind them: modularity, practical relevance, mentoring-rich support, and cross-sector applicability. Its contribut

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

Validating LLMs in social science: Epistemic threats and emerging norms

arXiv:2607.07915v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are reshaping social science methodology. Researchers increasingly prompt language models to generate quantitative measurements of social concepts, for example labeling data or simulating survey responses. Yet LLMs pose methodological challenges including bias, hallucination, and brittleness across contexts, with unclear threats to validity. Standard practices and norms for addressing these challenges are still emerging. We collect and systematically analyze validation practices in a comprehensive corpus of papers from eight flagship social science journals that use LLMs as measurement instruments. We find that LLM-generated measurements frequently play a central role in empirical analyses, yet validation practices are inconsistent and limited. We outline complementary strategies for more robust validation, pointing toward better norms and standards around the use of LLMs in social science.

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technology Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400
arXiv cs.CY

Buffy versus Bella: An archetypometric analysis and comparison

arXiv:2607.07826v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Fictional stories and characters embody and encode social norms, and their study is a powerful tool through which to understand culture and society. Vampire stories and folklore, in particular, have long both reflected and refracted people's preoccupation with disease, sexuality, death, and immortality. Here, we explore female main characters from two popular vampire franchises of the 21st century: Buffy Summers from the eponymous Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bella Swan from the Twilight series. We employ the archetypometrics framework, built from 2,000 characters assesed across 464 semantic differential traits, to understand Buffy's and Bella's archetypes compared to one another and characters in their own stories, as well as within a larger societal context. While Buffy and Bella are female protagonists who share focus on love and romance, they differ broadly on their underlying traits and overall archetypes. Buffy -- presented as a pro

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technology Fri, 08 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000
Tech & Learning

5 Ways To Use Technology to Help With Summer Reading

Modern technology may be distracting, but it can also help busy teachers and their students read more this summer.

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technology Fri, 05 Jun 2026 15:04:17 -0400
EdTech Mag (Higher)

Cybersecurity ROI in Higher Education: How To Win the Budget Conversation

“The premise that cybersecurity is a back-office or administrative expense and that something might not happen — that needs to be changed,” says Fadi Fadhil, field CIO and director of field strategy at Palo Alto Networks. “CISOs and CIOs can steer that change by engaging in simplified conversations with university leadership. It’s a strategic effort, helping them understand how the investment reduces institutional risk.” When it comes to budgeting for their cybersecurity programs, higher education CISOs must overcome some unique hurdles, ranging from the federated nature of university IT…

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technology Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:19:00 -0400
EdTech Mag (K-12)

Social-Emotional Learning Technology: A Guide for K–12 IT and Curriculum Leaders

Raising your hand in class and patiently waiting until you’re called before speaking. Sharing with classmates in a group project. Understanding what you’re feeling and how best to express it safely. These are a few examples of what social-emotional skills look like in the classroom. Social-emotional learning (SEL) houses a variety of skills, all of which have always been embedded in the K–12 experience. As recent research points more directly to the value of weaving these learning moments into the K–12 curriculum, educational technology has risen to meet the demands. The Evidence for Social-…

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technology Fri, 05 Jun 2026 12:19:52 +0000
HN: education

Everyone on Google's Engineering Education team had been laid off recently

Article URL: https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/2062861559009820976 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48411421 Points: 10 # Comments: 1

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technology Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:30:35 -0400
EdTech Mag (Higher)

Data Literacy Is Key to AI ROI for Higher Education

On any given Tuesday afternoon, a dean at Morgan State University can pull live enrollment trend data without submitting a ticket, waiting for a report or following up with the IT department. At most higher education institutions, that same request can take about three weeks. The difference isn’t the data platform, however. It’s how the historically Black college is prioritizing data literacy. Timothy Summers, vice president of IT and CIO at the Baltimore-based institution, is betting the university’s artificial intelligence strategy on employees’ ability to effectively interpret, question…

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technology Fri, 05 Jun 2026 10:36:52 -0400
EdTech Mag (Higher)

Cleveland Institute of Art's Interactive Media Lab Redefines What an Art School Can Be

The landscape for specialized colleges and universities such as art schools is shifting as higher education continues to evolve to fit emerging job markets and student interest. Founded in 1882, Cleveland Institute of Art continuously challenges itself to stay modern and relevant. Years ago, the school’s leadership had the vision to partner with the city to revitalize an area due for reinvigoration. The result was the Interactive Media Lab, which brings together the university, the city and private industry into a satellite campus that gives students and the community a space to…

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technology Fri, 05 Jun 2026 09:00:00 +0000
Tech & Learning

Homecoming Queen: How One Educator Returned to Her Childhood District To Lead Its Edtech Efforts

Innovative Leader Award - Lauren Harwood of Dighton-Rehoboth Regional School District shares how she focuses her efforts on AI, CTE program, and cybersecurity

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technology Fri, 05 Jun 2026 09:00:00 +0000
eCampus News

The Canvas ransomware attack shows why schools must focus on containment, not just recovery

The recent ransomware incident involving Canvas has renewed attention on one of the most difficult decisions schools and technology providers can face: how to respond when sensitive student, faculty, or institutional data is stolen and threatened with public release. The post The Canvas ransomware attack shows why schools must focus on containment, not just recovery appeared first on eCampus News .

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