arXiv:2605.23981v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Generative AI research increasingly confronts a shared problem: systems must sustain yet govern their own generative activity when uncertainty is high, evidence is missing, or context is insufficient. This position paper argues that metacognition should become the scientific framework for bounded and effective self governance in generative AI, where output generation is properly evaluated together with the capacities through which generative systems navigate and regulate their own activity. We advance this position by showing that bounded and effective AI self-governance requires metacognitive alignment across computational, algorithmic, and ecological levels. At the computational level, metacognition specifies the meta-level functions a system is meant to serve, such as monitoring, evaluation, control, and adaptation. At the algorithmic level, these functions are realized through procedures such as elicitation, iteration, and modularization. At the ecological level, metacognitive signals become meaningful, actionable, and accountable within the interface, workflow, and accountability arrangements. Metacognition thus makes it possible to conceive generative AI as both capable and well-governed, rather than treating capability and governance as competing aims.

arXiv:2605.25489v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Visual analytics (VA) workflows are inherently complex, involving data transformation, feature engineering, visual representation, and human interpretation. They are typically described in unstructured prose, hindering systematic comparison, reuse of proven strategies, and training of novices. We present Artifact-Transform Workflow Language (ATWL), a domain-agnostic, declarative language that formally represents VA workflows by capturing their structure and underlying analytical intent. ATWL is built upon a modular ontology of eight artifact types (entities, features, arrangements, visualisations, patterns, models, knowledge, specifications) and transforms characterised by standardised intents (e.g., define-unit, characterise, contextualise, abstract). To show that formalisation effort need not impede adoption, we extract workflows from research papers through supervised interaction with LLM agents, reducing the human role to review and refinement. Using this process, we constructed a library of seventeen ATWL workflows from published VA papers. Cross-workflow analysis reveals structural regularities -- a recurrent meta-structure, recurring motifs, reusable building blocks, diverse iterative strategies, and cross-domain equivalences -- that remain invisible in prose. We further evaluate practical utility through a controlled experiment in which the same LLM addressed two analytical problems with the library supplied either as original papers or as ATWL representations. Both forms enabled useful recommendations, but the formal representation systematically added explicit iteration structure, typed data flow, fragment-level adaptation provenance, and compactness supporting scaling beyond what prose libraries can fit in an LLM's context. ATWL enables a transition from narrative descriptions to formally represented, comparable, and reusable analytical knowledge.

arXiv:2605.24180v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Collaboration is the defining mode of modern science, yet its core mechanism -- feedback -- remains hard to observe, difficult to scale, and unequally distributed. Here we test whether large language models (LLMs) can contribute to this hidden but vital practice and reallocate scientific feedback, an essential yet scarce resource for knowledge production. In a global large-scale randomized field experiment, we delivered customized LLM-generated feedback for over 31,000 arXiv preprints across 150 fields and more than 45,000 researchers from 133 geographic regions. Relative to controls, authors who received feedback had a significantly higher likelihood of revising their manuscripts, corresponding to a 12.55% relative increase over the baseline revision rate. Exposure to AI feedback also increased authors' subsequent use of LLM tools in their future papers, suggesting longer-run shifts in scientific practice. These effects were strongest among authors from non-English-dominant research regions, manuscripts less embedded in the scholarly literature, and teams with lower h-indexes and earlier career stages, consistent with the idea that AI feedback may provide the greatest benefit where access to timely critique is otherwise limited. Together, these findings provide causal evidence that structured AI-based interventions can transform access to scientific feedback from a largely private advantage into a more widely distributed resource, with broader implications for productivity, equity, and capacity across the global research system.

arXiv:2605.24526v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Interactive assistance systems typically provide feedback after an action has been completed, supporting error recovery but not preventing the error itself. We present TRAFA, a real-time predictive feedback system for procedural tasks that intervenes before errors are committed. TRAFA operationalizes predictive feedback through a Track-Forecast-Act framework that tracks hand and object state, forecasts user motion conditioned on scene context, and triggers feedback when a predicted action is likely to violate task constraints. We instantiate this pipeline in a sequential assembly setting and evaluate it through both technical benchmarking and a controlled user study against conventional reactive feedback. Our results show that predictive feedback improves task accuracy and efficiency while maintaining a comparable number of feedback events. These findings position feedback timing as a key dimension in system design and show how real-time anticipation can be integrated into interactive systems to prevent errors before they occur.

arXiv:2605.25058v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Current AI interaction models treat the prompt as the primary object of exchange, omitting a critical layer: the user's latent source intent, the goal state preceding and motivating the prompt. Here we introduce Intent Signal Theory (IST), a computational framework that formalises this missing intent layer. IST distinguishes four objects routinely conflated: latent source intent (I*), observable intent proxy (I-hat), encoded carrier (P), and model output (O). It formalises dimensional weights, encoding masks, structural and fidelity recovery scores, and public-private intent decomposition. The Theorem of Irreversible Intent Loss establishes that private intent absent from the carrier cannot be recovered beyond generic substitution. Evidence from four companion studies spanning six LLMs, three languages and three task domains shows structural-fidelity splits, human-validated metric dissociation, and weight-tolerance plateaus consistent with IST's predictions. IST reframes prompt engineering as intent-protocol design and identifies a computational layer that current AI systems lack.

arXiv:2605.25120v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Radiology reports remain the primary mechanism by which imaging findings are communicated to clinical teams. However, much of the structured information behind these reports, including measurements, image evidence, prior comparisons, lesion identity, uncertainty, and terminology, often remains trapped in free text or fragmented across picture archiving and communication systems, radiology information systems, reporting workstations, worksheets, advanced visualization tools, and electronic health records. This paper proposes a human-supervised, evidence-linked reference architecture for structured radiology reporting. The framework combines exam-specific templates, speech-to-structure processing, measurement and segmentation capture, controlled AI-assisted drafting, and standards-based interoperability using DICOM, DICOM Structured Reporting, DICOM Segmentation, HL7 FHIR, RadLex, SNOMED CT, LOINC, and UCUM. The system is positioned not as an autonomous report generator, but as a structured intelligence layer for enterprise imaging that supports reviewed reporting, longitudinal comparison, clinical data reuse, governance, and integration with PACS, RIS, EHR, analytics, and registry workflows. The paper also discusses modality-specific deployment considerations, clinical safety risks, validation requirements, cybersecurity, privacy, quality management, and regulatory boundaries for AI-assisted radiology reporting systems.

arXiv:2605.25454v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly being used for emotional support. They are also being developed for formal therapy purposes. However, LLMs like ChaptGPT or Llama are often developed with content moderation guardrails that prevent them from discussing sensitive subjects with users for both liability and safety purposes, and this inability to broach these subjects may affect their capacity as therapists. In this study, we perform an algorithm audit on three state-of-the-art moderation systems (OpenAI's moderation endpoint, Meta's Llama Guard, and Google's Shield Gemma) to investigate the extent to which these systems flag the content of real-life therapy sessions as undesirable. Our results raise implications for the limitations that users and organizations may encounter when designing LLMs to play the part of a therapist.

arXiv:2605.25541v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Neural networks encode inputs as high-dimensional vectors, known as representations, that capture how models process data by encoding task-relevant structure and semantics. Representation alignment refers to the degree to which different models, layers, or training conditions produce similar representations for the same inputs, with important implications for model interpretation, selection, and robustness analysis. Existing approaches to measure alignment primarily rely on geometric properties, such as neighborhood and cluster similarity, offering limited insight into the global organization of representations. In this work, we present TopoAlign, a topology-aware framework for visually comparing model representations from a structural perspective. Leveraging mapper graphs from topological data analysis, TopoAlign jointly analyzes graphs constructed from representations of shared inputs across different models or layers. The framework supports a top-down comparative workflow: it first performs global structure alignment via joint force-directed optimization to produce coordinated graph layouts; it then identifies local correspondences through automated detection of structurally matching regions, visualized with Bubble Sets; and finally it enables fine-grained pattern inspection through motif-based queries and membrane-inspired visualizations. We demonstrate TopoAlign through case studies on language and multimodal models, complemented by expert feedback. Our results show that TopoAlign provides meaningful insights into representation structure and alignment from a topological perspective.

arXiv:2605.25664v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Poor posture is a significant concern due to its detrimental effects on health and productivity. This paper presents a collar-clipped device called PostureClip, designed to restrict users from sitting and working at a bent angle, by blacking out the screen and resuming on correcting posture, thereby promoting better posture. The device integrates sensors and feedback mechanisms to provide real-time posture feedback to users. To evaluate the effectiveness of PostureClip, a controlled experiment was conducted with participants (n=165) who were working on a laptop/PC for over 6 hours per day. The participants were randomly assigned to both the intervention group (IG1,n=54 ; IG2,n=55), which used the collar-clipped device, and the control group (CG, n=56), which did not use the device. IG1 didn't get feedback while IG2 got feedback from the device by notifying and further darkening the screen. The study was conducted in the office environment of the participants, for 4 weeks, and metrics such as posture angle, duration of bent angle, and user feedback were collected. Analysis revealed significant improvements in posture angle (p

arXiv:2605.25856v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large Language Model interfaces are increasingly verbose, exposing intermediate reasoning traces alongside final answers. Traces are framed as transparency mechanisms, yet it is unclear how people use them to solve problems. We report a preregistered between-subjects study (N = 559) in which participants solved ten LSAT-style reasoning problems under one of three conditions: an Answer-only baseline, a Full-trace revealed before the answer, and a Summary-trace presented alongside the answer. Summaries preserved task performance at the no-trace baseline while significantly elevating trust and hedonic appeal, establishing that trace exposure shifts subjective appraisal of the interaction without bringing performance benefits. Under an open-weight reasoning model exposing verbose intermediate output, full traces additionally impaired performance relative to the answer-only baseline. Across all conditions, participants substantially overestimated their performance, and no trace format supported calibrated self-evaluation. Further analysis indicates that hedonic appeal, not trust, carries the indirect path to overestimation, consistent with a processing-fluency account. Reasoning traces are best understood as user-facing interface artifacts rather than transparent windows into model cognition, and calibration is unlikely to emerge from the traces themselves and may best be scaffolded by interactions that elicit users' own reasoning first.

arXiv:2507.10644v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The Web of Agents (WoA) transforms the document-centric Web into an environment of autonomous agents acting on users' behalf, a vision newly tractable as large language models (LLMs) mature. We argue that across three decades the WoA has undergone a \emph{semantic-effort migration} in chronological order: from platform-side coordination (Multi-Agent Systems, Generation~I), through data-side annotation (Semantic Web, Generation~II), to model-side interpretation (LLM-era, Generation~III). The central Gen~II~$\rightarrow$~Gen~III transition within this trajectory, which we call the \emph{semantics-in-data $\rightarrow$ semantics-in-models} shift, is predictive: each generation's failure modes and current open problems follow from where that generation located its semantic effort. The survey makes five contributions: (i)~a unified evolutionary narrative spanning 1990--2026; (ii)~a four-dimensional comparative framework (semantic foundation, communication paradigm, locus of intelligence, discovery mechanism) applied uniformly across all three generations; (iii)~classification of sixteen representative systems on these dimensions, including hybrid LLM--knowledge-graph and computer-use agents; (iv)~coverage of the November~2024--August~2026 institutional convergence (Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation, A2A v1.0, MCP November~2024 launch and November~2025 specification, Visa/Mastercard/Stripe payment-network protocols, EU AI Act phased enforcement, the NIST AI Agent Standards Initiative, International AI Safety Report 2026); and (v)~seven named lessons grounded in cross-generational evidence paired with seven generation-invariant challenges that persist regardless of which protocol prevails. Further progress depends less on protocol design than on the socio-technical infrastructure now being assembled by standards bodies, regulators, and commercial payment networks.

arXiv:2502.10311v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Most commonly used non-linear machine learning methods are closed-box models, uninterpretable to humans. The field of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) aims to develop tools to examine the inner workings of these closed boxes. An often-used model-agnostic approach to XAI involves using simple models as local approximations to produce so-called local explanations; examples of this approach include LIME, SHAP, and SLISEMAP. This paper shows how a large set of local explanations can be reduced to a small "proxy set" of simple models, which can act as a generative global explanation. This reduction procedure, ExplainReduce, can be formulated as an optimisation problem and approximated efficiently using greedy heuristics. We show that, for many problems, as few as five explanations can faithfully emulate the closed-box model and that our reduction procedure is competitive with other model aggregation methods.

arXiv:2506.01982v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: This study investigates emotional expression and perception in music performance using computational and neurophysiological methods. The influence of different performance settings, such as repertoire, diatonic modal etudes, and improvisation, as well as levels of expressiveness, on performers' emotional communication and listeners' reactions is explored. Professional musicians performed various tasks, and emotional annotations were provided by both performers and the audience. Audio analysis revealed that expressive and improvisational performances exhibited unique acoustic features, while emotion analysis showed stronger emotional responses. Neurophysiological measurements indicated greater relaxation in improvisational performances. This multimodal study highlights the significance of expressivity in enhancing emotional communication and audience engagement.

arXiv:2512.10961v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: A growing body of empirical research suggests that generative AI narrows performance gaps between novice and expert workers on routine tasks--the so-called "equalizer" effect. This paper challenges the generality of that conclusion. Drawing on cognitive augmentation theory, expert-novice research, and structured observations of in-house generative-AI use across a small software product team, we argue that AI functions primarily as a cognitive amplifier: a system whose output quality depends fundamentally on the expertise of the human who directs it. We present a framework comprising three layers of human contribution (problem definition, quality evaluation, iterative refinement) and three levels of engagement (passive acceptance, iterative collaboration, cognitive direction), demonstrating that domain expertise--not prompt engineering skill--determines amplification effectiveness. We reconcile the equalizer and amplifier perspectives by proposing that AI equalizes performance on well-structured, routine tasks while amplifying pre-existing differences on complex tasks requiring deep judgment. This reconciliation carries direct implications for hybrid human-AI system design: rather than building AI that replaces expertise, we should build AI that rewards and develops it. We outline a research agenda for the HHAI community centered on expertise-sensitive AI design, adaptive collaboration interfaces, and longitudinal studies of human capability development in AI-augmented work.

arXiv:2512.23076v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Emotional states manifest as coordinated yet heterogeneous physiological responses across central and autonomic systems, posing a fundamental challenge for multimodal representation learning in affective computing. Learning such joint dynamics is further complicated by the scarcity and subjectivity of affective annotations, which motivates the use of self-supervised learning (SSL). However, most existing SSL approaches rely on pairwise alignment objectives, which are insufficient to characterize dependencies among more than two modalities and fail to capture higher-order interactions arising from coordinated brain and autonomic responses. To address this limitation, we propose Multimodal Functional Maximum Correlation (MFMC), a principled SSL framework that maximizes higher-order multimodal dependence through a Dual Total Correlation (DTC) objective. By deriving a tight sandwich bound and optimizing it using a functional maximum correlation analysis (FMCA) based trace surrogate, MFMC captures joint multimodal interactions directly, without relying on pairwise contrastive losses. Experiments on three public affective computing benchmarks demonstrate that MFMC consistently achieves state-of-the-art or competitive performance under both subject-dependent and subject-independent evaluation protocols, highlighting its robustness to inter-subject variability. In particular, MFMC improves subject-dependent accuracy on CEAP-360VR from 78.9% to 86.8%, and subject-independent accuracy from 27.5% to 33.1% using the EDA signal alone. Moreover, MFMC remains within 0.8 percentage points of the best-performing method on the most challenging EEG subject-independent split of MAHNOB-HCI. Our code is available at https://github.com/DY9910/MFMC.

arXiv:2604.23703v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Slide-based teaching is widely used in higher education, yet in online, hybrid, and asynchronous contexts, slides often lose instructor presence, narrative continuity, and expressive framing that help learners connect with course content. Full lecture video can partly restore these qualities, but it is time-consuming to record, revise, and reuse. This study presents a practice-based implementation and analytic reflection of an open-source workflow for creating talking slide avatars. The workflow integrates OpenVoice for text-to-speech and authorized voice-style conversion with Ditto-TalkingHead for audio-driven talking-image synthesis, enabling instructors to transform a short script and an authorized or synthetic portrait image into a narrated video for slide decks or HTML-based lecture materials. Rather than treating this workflow only as a technical solution, the study frames talking slide avatars as multimodal communication artifacts at the intersection of digital pedagogy, aesthetic education, and art-technology practice. The paper documents the production pipeline, analyzes communicative and aesthetic affordances, and proposes practical guidelines for script length, image selection, pacing, disclosure, accessibility, consent, and ethical use. Its contribution is not a validated learning intervention, but an educator-oriented open-source production model and communication-design framework. The study concludes that short, transparent, and carefully designed avatars may provide a reusable communication layer for introductions, transitions, reminders, and recaps when used selectively and with appropriate ethical safeguards.

arXiv:2605.22715v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: As wearable and mobile devices become increasingly embedded in daily life, they offer a practical way to continuously sense human motion in the wild. But inertial signals are highly dependent on the sensing setup, including body location, mounting position, sensor orientation, device hardware, and sampling protocol. This setup dependence makes it difficult to learn motion representations that transfer across devices and datasets, and limits the broader use of wearable IMUs beyond closed-set recognition. We introduce AnyMo, a geometry-aware framework for setup-agnostic human motion modeling. AnyMo uses physics-grounded IMU simulation over dense body-surface placements to generate diverse and plausible synthetic signals, pre-trains a graph encoder from paired synthetic placement views and masked partial observations, tokenizes multi-position IMU into full-body motion tokens, and aligns these tokens with an LLM for motion-language understanding. We evaluate AnyMo on three complementary tasks: zero-shot activity recognition across 14 unseen downstream datasets, cross-modal retrieval, and wearable IMU motion captioning, where it improves average Accuracy/F1/R@2 by 11.7\%/11.6\%/22.6\% on HAR, increases zero-shot IMU-to-text and text-to-IMU retrieval MRR by 15.9\% and 28.6\%, respectively, and improves zero-shot captioning BERT-F1 by 18.8\%. These results support AnyMo as a generalist model for wearable motion understanding in the wild. Project page: https://baiyuchen.com/project/AnyMo.