Abstract:Federated Learning (FL) enables collaborative and privacy-preserving model training across distributed clients, but most existing FL systems implicitly assume data stationarity. In real-world settings-such as healthcare, industrial IoT (IIOT), cybersecurity, and smart cities-data streams are inherently non-stationary, leading classical FL methods to suffer from performance degradation, instability, and catastrophic forgetting. Continual Learning (CL) addresses learning under evolving data distributions but has been largely studied in centralized settings, overlooking key constraints of federated systems, including privacy, limited communication, and client heterogeneity. Federated Continual Learning (FCL) emerges at the intersection of FL and CL, aiming to support lifelong, adaptive, and privacy-aware learning over distributed and non-stationary data. This survey provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of FCL. We first present a formal definition of the FCL problem and clarify its distinctive characteristics. We then analyze the limitations of classical FL under non-stationary conditions, highlighting how CL principles support long-term adaptation. To organize the rapidly growing literature, we propose a multi-dimensional taxonomy of FCL approaches. Furthermore, we review representative application domains and data modalities, summarize commonly used evaluation metrics, and discuss experimental perspectives for assessing long-term performance and forgetting. Finally, we highlight key open challenges, including handling extreme heterogeneity under temporal drift, designing scalable and privacy-preserving memory mechanisms, and establishing standardized benchmarks. This survey aims to serve as a reference and a roadmap for advancing FCL toward robust and deployable real-world systems.
Abstract:In recent years, fake news detection has received increasing attention in public debate and scientific research. Despite advances in detection techniques, the production and spread of false information have become more sophisticated, driven by Large Language Models (LLMs) and the amplification power of social media. We present a critical assessment of 12 representative fake news detection approaches, spanning traditional machine learning, deep learning, transformers, and specialized cross-domain architectures. We evaluate these methods on 10 publicly available datasets differing in genre, source, topic, and labeling rationale. We address text-only English fake news detection as a binary classification task by harmonizing labels into "Real" and "Fake" to ensure a consistent evaluation protocol. We acknowledge that label semantics vary across datasets and that harmonization inevitably removes such semantic nuances. Each dataset is treated as a distinct domain. We conduct in-domain, multi-domain and cross-domain experiments to simulate real-world scenarios involving domain shift and out-of-distribution data. Fine-tuned models perform well in-domain but struggle to generalize. Cross-domain architectures can reduce this gap but are data-hungry, while LLMs offer a promising alternative through zero- and few-shot learning. Given inherent dataset confounds and possible pre-training exposure, results should be interpreted as robustness evaluations within this English, text-only protocol.
Abstract:This study proposes a novel methodology for generating personalized fake news debunking messages by prompting Large Language Models (LLMs) with persona-based inputs aligned to the Big Five personality traits: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. Our approach guides LLMs to transform generic debunking content into personalized versions tailored to specific personality profiles. To assess the effectiveness of these transformations, we employ a separate LLM as an automated evaluator simulating corresponding personality traits, thereby eliminating the need for costly human evaluation panels. Our results show that personalized messages are generally seen as more persuasive than generic ones. We also find that traits like Openness tend to increase persuadability, while Neuroticism can lower it. Differences between LLM evaluators suggest that using multiple models provides a clearer picture. Overall, this work demonstrates a practical way to create more targeted debunking messages exploiting LLMs, while also raising important ethical questions about how such technology might be used.
Abstract:The development of autonomous robotic systems offers significant potential for performing complex tasks with precision and consistency. Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have enabled more capable intelligent automation systems, addressing increasingly complex challenges. However, this progress raises questions about human roles in such systems. Human-Centered AI (HCAI) aims to balance human control and automation, ensuring performance enhancement while maintaining creativity, mastery, and responsibility. For real-world applications, autonomous robots must balance task performance with reliability, safety, and trustworthiness. Integrating HCAI principles enhances human-robot collaboration and ensures responsible operation. This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of intelligent autonomous robotic systems, utilizing SciMAT and VOSViewer to examine data from the Scopus database. The findings highlight academic trends, emerging topics, and AI's role in self-adaptive robotic behaviour, with an emphasis on HCAI architecture. These insights are then projected onto the IBM MAPE-K architecture, with the goal of identifying how these research results map into actual robotic autonomous systems development efforts for real-world scenarios.