Dylan Seychell

Matthias Bartolo, Dylan Seychell, Josef Bajada

With the ever-growing variety of object detection approaches, this study explores a series of experiments that combine reinforcement learning (RL)-based visual attention methods with saliency ranking techniques to investigate transparent and sustainable solutions. By integrating saliency ranking for initial bounding box prediction and subsequently applying RL techniques to refine these predictions through a finite set of actions over multiple time steps, this study aims to enhance RL object detection accuracy. Presented as a series of experiments, this research investigates the use of various image feature extraction methods and explores diverse Deep Q-Network (DQN) architectural variations for deep reinforcement learning-based localisation agent training. Additionally, we focus on optimising the detection pipeline at every step by prioritising lightweight and faster models, while also incorporating the capability to classify detected objects, a feature absent in previous RL approaches. We show that by evaluating the performance of these trained agents using the Pascal VOC 2007 dataset, faster and more optimised models were developed. Notably, the best mean Average Precision (mAP) achieved in this study was 51.4, surpassing benchmarks set by RL-based single object detectors in the literature.

Matthias Bartolo, Dylan Seychell

As object detection techniques continue to evolve, understanding their relationships with complementary visual tasks becomes crucial for optimising model architectures and computational resources. This paper investigates the correlations between object detection accuracy and two fundamental visual tasks: depth prediction and visual saliency prediction. Through comprehensive experiments using state-of-the-art models (DeepGaze IIE, Depth Anything, DPT-Large, and Itti's model) on COCO and Pascal VOC datasets, we find that visual saliency shows consistently stronger correlations with object detection accuracy (mA$ρ$ up to 0.459 on Pascal VOC) compared to depth prediction (mA$ρ$ up to 0.283). Our analysis reveals significant variations in these correlations across object categories, with larger objects showing correlation values up to three times higher than smaller objects. These findings suggest incorporating visual saliency features into object detection architectures could be more beneficial than depth information, particularly for specific object categories. The observed category-specific variations also provide insights for targeted feature engineering and dataset design improvements, potentially leading to more efficient and accurate object detection systems.

Matthew Kenely, Dylan Seychell, Carl James Debono et al.

News outlets' competition for attention in news interfaces has highlighted the need for demographically-aware saliency prediction models. Despite recent advancements in saliency detection applied to user interfaces (UI), existing datasets are limited in size and demographic representation. We present a deep learning framework that enhances the SaRa (Saliency Ranking) model with DeepGaze IIE, improving Salient Object Ranking (SOR) performance by 10.7%. Our framework optimizes three key components: saliency map generation, grid segment scoring, and map normalization. Through a two-fold experiment using eye-tracking (30 participants) and mouse-tracking (375 participants aged 13--70), we analyze attention patterns across demographic groups. Statistical analysis reveals significant age-based variations (p < 0.05, {ε^2} = 0.042), with older users (36--70) engaging more with textual content and younger users (13--35) interacting more with images. Mouse-tracking data closely approximates eye-tracking behavior (sAUC = 0.86) and identifies UI elements that immediately stand out, validating its use in large-scale studies. We conclude that saliency studies should prioritize gathering data from a larger, demographically representative sample and report exact demographic distributions.

Ljubisa Bojic, Dylan Seychell, Milan Cabarkapa

As general-purpose artificial intelligence systems become increasingly integrated into society and are used for information seeking, content generation, problem solving, textual analysis, coding, and running processes, it is crucial to assess their long-term impact on humans. This research explores the sentiment of large language models (LLMs) and humans toward artificial general intelligence (AGI) using a Likert-scale survey. Seven LLMs, including GPT-4 and Bard, were analyzed and compared with sentiment data from three independent human sample populations. Temporal variations in sentiment were also evaluated over three consecutive days. The results show a diversity in sentiment scores among LLMs, ranging from 3.32 to 4.12 out of 5. GPT-4 recorded the most positive sentiment toward AGI, while Bard leaned toward a neutral sentiment. In contrast, the human samples showed a lower average sentiment of 2.97. The analysis outlines potential conflicts of interest and biases in the sentiment formation of LLMs, and indicates that LLMs could subtly influence societal perceptions. To address the need for regulatory oversight and culturally grounded assessments of AI systems, we introduce the Societal AI Alignment and Sentiment Benchmark (SAAS-AI), which leverages multidimensional prompts and empirically validated societal value frameworks to evaluate language model outputs across temporal, model, and multilingual axes. This benchmark is designed to guide policymakers and AI agencies, including within frameworks such as the EU AI Act, by providing robust, actionable insights into AI alignment with human values, public sentiment, and ethical norms at both national and international levels. Future research should further refine the operationalization of the SAAS-AI benchmark and systematically evaluate its effectiveness through comprehensive empirical testing.

Michele La Ferla, Matthew Montebello, Dylan Seychell

The results showed that XAI could indeed be used as a proof of concept to begin discussions on the implementation of assistive AI systems within the clinical community.

Stefan Cassar, Adrian Muscat, Dylan Seychell

Vision and language tasks such as Visual Relation Detection and Visual Question Answering benefit from semantic features that afford proper grounding of language. The 3D depth of objects depicted in 2D images is one such feature. However it is very difficult to obtain accurate depth information without learning the appropriate features, which are scene dependent. The state of the art in this area are complex Neural Network models trained on stereo image data to predict depth per pixel. Fortunately, in some tasks, its only the relative depth between objects that is required. In this paper the extent to which semantic features can predict course relative depth is investigated. The problem is casted as a classification one and geometrical features based on object bounding boxes, object labels and scene attributes are computed and used as inputs to pattern recognition models to predict relative depth. i.e behind, in-front and neutral. The results are compared to those obtained from averaging the output of the monodepth neural network model, which represents the state-of-the art. An overall increase of 14% in relative depth accuracy over relative depth computed from the monodepth model derived results is achieved.