Distrust in (X)AI -- Measurement Artifact or Distinct Construct?

Trust is a key motivation in developing explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). However, researchers attempting to measure trust in AI face numerous challenges, such as different trust conceptualizations, simplified experimental tasks that may not induce uncertainty as a prerequisite for trust, and the lack of validated trust questionnaires in the context of AI. While acknowledging these issues, we have identified a further challenge that currently seems underappreciated - the potential distinction between trust as one construct and \emph{distrust} as a second construct independent of trust. While there has been long-standing academic discourse for this distinction and arguments for both the one-dimensional and two-dimensional conceptualization of trust, distrust seems relatively understudied in XAI. In this position paper, we not only highlight the theoretical arguments for distrust as a distinct construct from trust but also contextualize psychometric evidence that likewise favors a distinction between trust and distrust. It remains to be investigated whether the available psychometric evidence is sufficient for the existence of distrust or whether distrust is merely a measurement artifact. Nevertheless, the XAI community should remain receptive to considering trust and distrust for a more comprehensive understanding of these two relevant constructs in XAI

SGXIO: Generic Trusted I/O Path for Intel SGX

Application security traditionally strongly relies upon security of the underlying operating system. However, operating systems often fall victim to software attacks, compromising security of applications as well. To overcome this dependency, Intel introduced SGX, which allows to protect application code against a subverted or malicious OS by running it in a hardware-protected enclave. However, SGX lacks support for generic trusted I/O paths to protect user input and output between enclaves and I/O devices. This work presents SGXIO, a generic trusted path architecture for SGX, allowing user applications to run securely on top of an untrusted OS, while at the same time supporting trusted paths to generic I/O devices. To achieve this, SGXIO combines the benefits of SGX's easy programming model with traditional hypervisor-based trusted path architectures. Moreover, SGXIO can tweak insecure debug enclaves to behave like secure production enclaves. SGXIO surpasses traditional use cases in cloud computing and makes SGX technology usable for protecting user-centric, local applications against kernel-level keyloggers and likewise. It is compatible to unmodified operating systems and works on a modern commodity notebook out of the box. Hence, SGXIO is particularly promising for the broad x86 community to which SGX is readily available.Comment: To appear in CODASPY'1

Analysis of Security Overhead in Broadcast V2V Communications

This paper concerns security issues for broadcast vehicle to vehicle (V2V) messages carrying vehicle status information ((location, heading, speed, etc.). These are often consumed by safety-related applications that e.g. augment situational awareness, issue alerts, recommend courses of action, and even trigger autonomous action. Consequently, the messages need to be both trustworthy and timely. We explore the impact of authenticity and integrity protection mechanisms on message latency using a model based on queuing theory. In conditions of high traffic density such as found in busy city centres, even the latency requirement of 100ms for first generation V2V applications was found to be challenging. Our main objective was to compare the performance overhead of the standard, PKC-based, message authenticity and integrity protection mechanism with that of an alternative scheme, TESLA, which uses symmetric-key cryptography combine with hash chains. This type of scheme has been dismissed in the past due to sup-posed high latency, but we found that in high traffic density conditions it outperformed the PKC-based scheme. without invoking congestion management measures. Perhaps the most significant observation from a security perspective is that denial of service attacks appear very easy to carry out and hard to defend against. This merits attention from the research and practitioner communities and is a topic we intend to address in the future

High Speed Flow Visualisation of an Impinging Jet on a Pelton Turbine Bucket

This paper deals with flow investigations using endoscopes in a single-injector reduced scale Pelton turbine performed with a CMOS high-speed camera. Both onboard and external visualizations techniques of the flow in a bucket are presented. The flow observations evidence the unsteadiness of the successive steps of jet/bucket interaction, free surface flow development and evolution throughout the bucket duty cycle

More than just meat: Carcass decomposition shapes trophic identities in a terrestrial vertebrate

Most food web models fail to account for the full complexity of interactions within a community, particularly where microbes are involved. Carcasses are microbe-rich resources and may represent a common nexus for the macrobiome and microbiome, effectively uniting autotrophs, consumers, predators and microbiota. We evaluated the role of carcasses as multitrophic resources and explored dietary partitioning for a sexually dimorphic obligate scavenger known for its hierarchical social system. This study was set in a well-studied community of camelids Vicugna, Lama guanicoe, pumas Puma concolor and Andean condors Vultur gryphus in the Andes. We hypothesized that condors, by feeding on trophically distinct dietary substrates within any given carcass, would have highly variable trophic position (TP) values. Furthermore, we expected that the microbial consumers within the carcass would inflate TP values in both, the carrion and the condors. Thus, we expected that the trophic heterogeneity within a carcass could facilitate sex-based dietary partitioning in condors. We used a multifaceted approach to assess the foraging of Andean condors, using regurgitated pellet and bulk isotopic analyses, and also quantified the TP of the entire community of graminoids, camelids, camelid carrion, pumas, and female and male condors employing compound-specific stable isotopes analysis of amino acids. Our analysis of condor pellets and bulk isotopes revealed non-trivial plant consumption, close to 10% of condor diet. Isotope analysis of amino acids revealed that condors had highly variable TPs (2.9 ± 0.3) compared to pumas (3.0 ± 0.0) and camelids (2.0 ± 0.1), likely representing ‘trophic omnivory’, wherein the condors consume plants (TP = 1.0 ± 0.1) and microbe-colonized carrion (2.3 ± 0.1). Female condors exhibited a TP (2.8 ± 0.2) lower than strict carnivory, suggesting that they consume more plant biomass in a carcass, while males (TP = 3.1 ± 0.3) are likely consuming more of the microbe-rich animal tissue. Our study highlights that carcasses represent a trophically heterogeneous resource and that vertebrate scavengers can feed across trophic groups within the carcass, from autotrophs to secondary consumers, and from both the macrobiome and microbiome. Thus, integration of microbes in macroecological contexts can help to resolve trophic identity, and better characterize the importance of microbes in detritivorous and omnivorous species. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.Fil: Barceló, Gonzalo. University of Wisconsin; Estados UnidosFil: Perrig, Paula Leticia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universidad Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente; Argentina. University of Wisconsin; Estados UnidosFil: Dharampal, Prarthana. University of Wisconsin; Estados UnidosFil: Donadio, Emiliano. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universidad Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente; Argentina. Fundación Rewilding Argentina; ArgentinaFil: Steffan, Shawn A.. United States Department of Agriculture. Agriculture Research Service; Estados Unidos. University of Wisconsin; Estados UnidosFil: Pauli, Jonathan Nicholas. University of Wisconsin; Estados Unido

What makes a successful relationship? Subjective beliefs of older married, divorced and widowed individuals

Beliefs of a successful partnership influence goals, motivations, and behaviour in romantic relationships. Life transitions could have an influence on the personal templates of an ideal partnership. Every critical life event generates a discrepancy between perceptions and individual standards, which drives emotions and cognitions and motivates behaviour designed to reduce or resolve the discrepancy. We examined the differences between the beliefs of a successful relationship that divorced spouses, widowed persons and long-term married couples (N = 800, age 62–91 years) subscribe to, regarding what constitutes a successful marriage, and how their assumptions relate to various subjective dimensions of well-being. Results revealed that the prioritization given to the key elements of a successful relationship (i.e., mutual respect in long-term married couples, successful communication in divorced spouses and love in widowed persons) varied among the groups. Comparing low and high scores for individual well-being resulted in differences between beliefs of a successful partnership held by divorced and widowed persons but not married couples. These findings provide important considerations for counselling persons after the loss of a partner due to separation, divorce or death. An idealized view of the deceased spouse as a soulmate and emphasis on the shared love could be adaptive for widowed persons, whereas the emphasis on successful communication techniques could be an important step in improving cognitive and emotional well-being for divorced persons

Simulation des écoulements à surface libre dans les turbines Pelton par une méthode hybride SPH-ALE

International audienceAn Arbitrary Lagrange Euler (ALE) description of fluid flows is used together with the meshless numerical method Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) to simulate free surface flows. The ALE description leads to an hybrid method that can be closely connected to the finite volume approach. It is then possible to adapt some common techniques like upwind schemes and preconditioning to remedy some of the well known drawbacks of SPH like stability and accuracy. An efficient boundary treatment based on a proper upwinding of fluid information at the boundary surface is settled. The resulting SPH-ALE numerical method is applied to simulate free surface flows encountered in Pelton turbines.La méthode numérique sans maillage Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) est modifiée par l'adoption d'une description Arbitrary Lagrange Euler (ALE) des écoulements fluides, dans le but de simuler des écoulements à surface libre. Le formalisme ALE conduit à une méthode numérique hybride s'apparentant sur de nombreux points à une approche volumes finis. Il est alors possible d'adapter des techniques numériques courantes comme les schémas décentrés et le préconditionnement pour résoudre certains défauts majeurs de la méthode SPH, comme la stabilité numérique ou le manque de précision. Par ailleurs, le traitement des conditions limites est réalisé par un décentrement approprié des informations fluides sur les surfaces frontières. La méthode numérique SPH-ALE résultante est appliquée à la simulation d'écoulements à surface libre tels que ceux rencontrés dans les turbines Pelton

TARANET: Traffic-Analysis Resistant Anonymity at the Network Layer

Modern low-latency anonymity systems, no matter whether constructed as an overlay or implemented at the network layer, offer limited security guarantees against traffic analysis. On the other hand, high-latency anonymity systems offer strong security guarantees at the cost of computational overhead and long delays, which are excessive for interactive applications. We propose TARANET, an anonymity system that implements protection against traffic analysis at the network layer, and limits the incurred latency and overhead. In TARANET's setup phase, traffic analysis is thwarted by mixing. In the data transmission phase, end hosts and ASes coordinate to shape traffic into constant-rate transmission using packet splitting. Our prototype implementation shows that TARANET can forward anonymous traffic at over 50 Gbps using commodity hardware

Exploring the effects of human-centered AI explanations on trust and reliance

Transparency is widely regarded as crucial for the responsible real-world deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) and is considered an essential prerequisite to establishing trust in AI. There are several approaches to enabling transparency, with one promising attempt being human-centered explanations. However, there is little research into the effectiveness of human-centered explanations on end-users' trust. What complicates the comparison of existing empirical work is that trust is measured in different ways. Some researchers measure subjective trust using questionnaires, while others measure objective trust-related behavior such as reliance. To bridge these gaps, we investigated the effects of two promising human-centered post-hoc explanations, feature importance and counterfactuals, on trust and reliance. We compared these two explanations with a control condition in a decision-making experiment (N = 380). Results showed that human-centered explanations can significantly increase reliance but the type of decision-making (increasing a price vs. decreasing a price) had an even greater influence. This challenges the presumed importance of transparency over other factors in human decision-making involving AI, such as potential heuristics and biases. We conclude that trust does not necessarily equate to reliance and emphasize the importance of appropriate, validated, and agreed-upon metrics to design and evaluate human-centered AI