Why Algorithms Remain Unjust: Power Structures Surrounding Algorithmic Activity

Algorithms play an increasingly-significant role in our social lives. Unfortunately, they often perpetuate social injustices while doing so. The popular means of addressing these algorithmic injustices has been through algorithmic reformism: fine-tuning the algorithm itself to be more fair, accountable, and transparent. While commendable, the emerging discipline of critical algorithm studies shows that reformist approaches have failed to curtail algorithmic injustice because they ignore the power structure surrounding algorithms. Heeding calls from critical algorithm studies to analyze this power structure, I employ a framework developed by Erik Olin Wright to examine the configuration of power surrounding Algorithmic Activity: the ways in which algorithms are researched, developed, trained, and deployed within society. I argue that the reason Algorithmic Activity is unequal, undemocratic, and unsustainable is that the power structure shaping it is one of economic empowerment rather than social empowerment. For Algorithmic Activity to be socially just, we need to transform this power configuration to empower the people at the other end of an algorithm. To this end, I explore Wright's symbiotic, interstitial, and raptural transformations in the context of Algorithmic Activity, as well as how they may be applied in a hypothetical research project that uses algorithms to address a social issue. I conclude with my vision for socially just Algorithmic Activity, asking that future work strives to integrate the proposed transformations and develop new mechanisms for social empowerment.

Büyük dil modellerinin Türkçe verisetleri ile eğitilmesi ve ince ayarlanması

Large language models have advanced enormously, gained vast attraction and are having a phase of intensed research. Some of the developed models and training datasets have been made open-accessible. Hence these may be further fine-tuned with some techniques to obtain specialized models for specific tasks. When it comes to Turkish language, open-access models do not provide satisfactory coverage. This is also observed over published datasets. In this work, we propose some ideas to mitigate this issue: creating large Turkish datasets, training LLMs with these and fine-tuning pre-trained models with Turkish inputs. We report our findings on Turkish-based trainings with the problems encountered along the way. We conclude with outcomes of these experiments and propose ideas for further works. -- B\"uy\"uk dil modelleri inan{\i}lmaz \"ol\c{c}\"ude geli\c{s}mekte, b\"uy\"uk ilgi toplayarak ve \"uzerlerinde yo\u{g}un ara\c{s}tirmalarin yapildi\u{g}i bir d\"onemdedirler. Geli\c{s}tirilen modeller ve e\u{g}itimde kullanilan verisetlerinden bazilari a\c{c}ik eri\c{s}imli olarak sunulmaktadir. B\"oylece ince ayarlama teknikleri uygulayarak \"ozelle\c{s}mi\c{s} g\"orevler i\c{c}in \c{c}ali\c{s}abilir modeller elde edilmektedir. T\"urk\c{c}e s\"oz konusu oldu\u{g}unda bu modellerinin kapsayicili\u{g}i yeterli d\"uzeyde de\u{g}ildir. Bu durum, yayimlanan verisetlerinde de g\"ozlemlenebilir. Bunu a\c{s}manin yollari T\"urk\c{c}e i\c{c}erikli b\"uy\"uk verisetlerinin olu\c{s}turulmasi, b\"uy\"uk dil modellerinin bunlarla e\u{g}itilmesi ve \"onceden e\u{g}itilmi\c{s} modellerin T\"urk\c{c}e girdilerle ince ayarlanmalari olabilir. Bu \c{c}ali\c{s}mada a\c{c}ik eri\c{s}imli dil modelleri ve verisetleri \"uzerinde durulmakta ve T\"urk\c{c}e temelli bazi deneyler, kar\c{s}ila\c{s}ilan sorunlar ve sonu\c{c}lar irdelenmektedir.

Avant-Satie! Using ERIK to encode task-relevant expressivity into the animation of autonomous social robots

ERIK is an expressive inverse kinematics technique that has been previously presented and evaluated both algorithmically and in a limited user-interaction scenario. It allows autonomous social robots to convey posture-based expressive information while gaze-tracking users. We have developed a new scenario aimed at further validating some of the unsupported claims from the previous scenario. Our experiment features a fully autonomous Adelino robot, and concludes that ERIK can be used to direct a user's choice of actions during execution of a given task, fully through its non-verbal expressive queues.

Expressive Inverse Kinematics Solving in Real-time for Virtual and Robotic Interactive Characters

With new advancements in interaction techniques, character animation also requires new methods, to support fields such as robotics, and VR/AR. Interactive characters in such fields are becoming driven by AI which opens up the possibility of non-linear and open-ended narratives that may even include interaction with the real, physical world. This paper presents and describes ERIK, an expressive inverse kinematics technique aimed at such applications. Our technique allows an arbitrary kinematic chain, such as an arm, snake, or robotic manipulator, to exhibit an expressive posture while aiming its end-point towards a given target orientation. The technique runs in interactive-time and does not require any pre-processing step such as e.g. training in machine learning techniques, in order to support new embodiments or new postures. That allows it to be integrated in an artist-friendly workflow, bringing artists closer to the development of such AI-driven expressive characters, by allowing them to use their typical animation tools of choice, and to properly pre-visualize the animation during design-time, even on a real robot. The full algorithmic specification is presented and described so that it can be implemented and used throughout the communities of the various fields we address. We demonstrate ERIK on different virtual kinematic structures, and also on a low-fidelity robot that was crafted using wood and hobby-grade servos, to show how well the technique performs even on a low-grade robot. Our evaluation shows how well the technique performs, i.e., how well the character is able to point at the target orientation, while minimally disrupting its target expressive posture, and respecting its mechanical rotation limits.

Creation of digital elevation models for river floodplains

A procedure for constructing a digital elevation model (DEM) of the northern part of the Volga-Akhtuba interfluve is described. The basis of our DEM is the elevation matrix of Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) for which we carried out the refinement and updating of spatial data using satellite imagery, GPS data, depth measurements of the River Volga and River Akhtuba stream beds. The most important source of high-altitude data for the Volga-Akhtuba floodplain (VAF) can be the results of observations of the coastlines dynamics of small reservoirs (lakes, eriks, small channels) arising in the process of spring flooding and disappearing during low-flow periods. A set of digitized coastlines at different times of flooding can significantly improve the quality of the DEM. The method of constructing a digital elevation model includes an iterative procedure that uses the results of morphostructural analysis of the DEM and the numerical hydrodynamic simulations of the VAF flooding based on the shallow water model.

An Application of ASP Theories of Intentions to Understanding Restaurant Scenarios: Insights and Narrative Corpus

This paper presents a practical application of Answer Set Programming to the understanding of narratives about restaurants. While this task was investigated in depth by Erik Mueller, exceptional scenarios remained a serious challenge for his script-based story comprehension system. We present a methodology that remedies this issue by modeling characters in a restaurant episode as intentional agents. We focus especially on the refinement of certain components of this methodology in order to increase coverage and performance. We present a restaurant story corpus that we created to design and evaluate our methodology. Under consideration in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).

An ASP Methodology for Understanding Narratives about Stereotypical Activities

We describe an application of Answer Set Programming to the understanding of narratives about stereotypical activities, demonstrated via question answering. Substantial work in this direction was done by Erik Mueller, who modeled stereotypical activities as scripts. His systems were able to understand a good number of narratives, but could not process texts describing exceptional scenarios. We propose addressing this problem by using a theory of intentions developed by Blount, Gelfond, and Balduccini. We present a methodology in which we substitute scripts by activities (i.e., hierarchical plans associated with goals) and employ the concept of an intentional agent to reason about both normal and exceptional scenarios. We exemplify the application of this methodology by answering questions about a number of restaurant stories. This paper is under consideration for acceptance in TPLP.