Ashutosh Bajpai

Ashutosh Bajpai, Aaryan Goyal, Atif Anwer et al.

The prolific use of Large Language Models (LLMs) as an alternate knowledge base requires them to be factually consistent, necessitating both correctness and consistency traits for paraphrased queries. Recently, significant attempts have been made to benchmark datasets and metrics to evaluate LLMs for these traits. However, structural simplicity (subject-relation-object) and contemporary association in their query formulation limit the broader definition of factuality and consistency. In this study, we introduce TeCFaP, a novel Temporally Consistent Factuality Probe task to expand the consistent factuality probe in the temporal dimension. To this end, we propose TEMP-COFAC, a high-quality dataset of prefix-style English query paraphrases. Subsequently, we extend the definitions of existing metrics to represent consistent factuality across temporal dimension. We experiment with a diverse set of LLMs and find most of them performing poorly on TeCFaP. Next, we propose a novel solution CoTSeLF (Consistent-Time-Sensitive Learning Framework) combining multi-task instruction tuning (MT-IT) with consistent-time-sensitive reinforcement learning (CTSRL) to improve temporally consistent factuality in LLMs. Our experiments demonstrate the efficacy of CoTSeLF over several baselines.

Sarah Masud, Ashutosh Bajpai, Tanmoy Chakraborty

Although pretrained large language models (PLMs) have achieved state-of-the-art on many natural language processing (NLP) tasks, they lack an understanding of subtle expressions of implicit hate speech. Various attempts have been made to enhance the detection of implicit hate by augmenting external context or enforcing label separation via distance-based metrics. Combining these two approaches, we introduce FiADD, a novel Focused Inferential Adaptive Density Discrimination framework. FiADD enhances the PLM finetuning pipeline by bringing the surface form/meaning of an implicit hate speech closer to its implied form while increasing the inter-cluster distance among various labels. We test FiADD on three implicit hate datasets and observe significant improvement in the two-way and three-way hate classification tasks. We further experiment on the generalizability of FiADD on three other tasks, detecting sarcasm, irony, and stance, in which surface and implied forms differ, and observe similar performance improvements. Consequently, we analyze the generated latent space to understand its evolution under FiADD, which corroborates the advantage of employing FiADD for implicit hate speech detection.

Ashutosh Bajpai, Tamal Majumder, Akshay Nambi et al.

Small Vision-Language Models (SVLMs) are efficient task controllers but often suffer from visual brittleness and poor tool orchestration. They typically require expensive supervised trajectory tuning to mitigate these deficits. In this work, we propose Self-supervised Perception Enabled by Cascaded Tool Rollout Alignment (SPECTRA), a supervision-free framework that bootstraps agentic capabilities via Coldstart Reinforcement Learning for SVLMs. SPECTRA enforces Soft Structured Multi-turn Rollouts, a topological constraint that directs agents to explicitly sequence tool derived evidence before synthesis, effectively grounding reasoning in visual observations. We employ a multi-objective reward signal that simultaneously maximizes task correctness, rollout structure, and tool utility, enabling agent to self-discover robust behaviors without human preference labels. We further introduce Tool Instrumental Utility (TIU), a novel metric to quantify tool efficacy in the absence of ground truth. Extensive evaluations across composite and out-of-distribution (MMMU-Pro) benchmarks demonstrate that SPECTRA boosts agentic trajectories, improving task accuracy by up to 5% and tool efficiency by 9%, enabling more efficient multimodal agents that learn effectively from environmental interaction alone.

Ashutosh Bajpai, Tanmoy Chakraborty

The increasing acceptance of large language models (LLMs) as an alternative to knowledge sources marks a significant paradigm shift across various domains, including time-sensitive fields such as law, healthcare, and finance. To fulfill this expanded role, LLMs must not only be factually accurate but also demonstrate consistency across temporal dimensions, necessitating robust temporal reasoning capabilities. Despite this critical requirement, efforts to ensure temporal consistency in LLMs remain scarce including noticeable absence of endeavors aimed at evaluating or augmenting LLMs across temporal references in time-sensitive inquiries. In this paper, we seek to address this gap by introducing a novel benchmark entitled temporal referential consistency, accompanied by a resource TEMP-ReCon designed to benchmark a wide range of both open-source and closed-source LLMs with various linguistic contexts characterized by differing resource richness (including English, French, and Romanian). The findings emphasis that LLMs do exhibit insufficient temporal referent consistency. To address this, we propose \newmodel, a reasoning path alignment-based model that aims to enhance the temporal referential consistency of LLMs. Our empirical experiments substantiate the efficacy of UnTRaP compared to several baseline models.

Ashutosh Bajpai, Tanmoy Chakraborty

The unwavering disparity in labeled resources between resource-rich languages and those considered low-resource remains a significant impediment for Large Language Models (LLMs). Recent strides in cross-lingual in-context learning (X-ICL), mainly through semantically aligned examples retrieved from multilingual pre-trained transformers, have shown promise in mitigating this issue. However, our investigation reveals that LLMs intrinsically reward in-language semantically aligned cross-lingual instances over direct cross-lingual semantic alignments, with a pronounced disparity in handling time-sensitive queries in the X-ICL setup. Such queries demand sound temporal reasoning ability from LLMs, yet the advancements have predominantly focused on English. This study aims to bridge this gap by improving temporal reasoning capabilities in low-resource languages. To this end, we introduce mTEMPREASON, a temporal reasoning dataset aimed at the varied degrees of low-resource languages and propose Cross-Lingual Time-Sensitive Semantic Alignment (CLiTSSA), a novel method to improve temporal reasoning in these contexts. To facilitate this, we construct an extension of mTEMPREASON comprising pairs of parallel cross-language temporal queries along with their anticipated in-language semantic similarity scores. Our empirical evidence underscores the superior performance of CLiTSSA compared to established baselines across three languages -- Romanian, German, and French, encompassing three temporal tasks and including a diverse set of four contemporaneous LLMs. This marks a significant step forward in addressing resource disparity in the context of temporal reasoning across languages.

Rupesh Kumar, Ashutosh Bajpai, Ayush Sinha

This research paper describes a realtime system for identifying American Sign Language (ASL) movements that employs modern computer vision and machine learning approaches. The suggested method makes use of the Mediapipe library for feature extraction and a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for ASL gesture classification. The testing results show that the suggested system can detect all ASL alphabets with an accuracy of 99.95%, indicating its potential for use in communication devices for people with hearing impairments. The proposed approach can also be applied to additional sign languages with similar hand motions, potentially increasing the quality of life for people with hearing loss. Overall, the study demonstrates the effectiveness of using Mediapipe and CNN for real-time sign language recognition, making a significant contribution to the field of computer vision and machine learning.

Rupesh Kumar, Ayush Sinha, Ashutosh Bajpai et al.

Sign language is a visual language that enhances communication between people and is frequently used as the primary form of communication by people with hearing loss. Even so, not many people with hearing loss use sign language, and they frequently experience social isolation. Therefore, it is necessary to create human-computer interface systems that can offer hearing-impaired people a social platform. Most commercial sign language translation systems now on the market are sensor-based, pricey, and challenging to use. Although vision-based systems are desperately needed, they must first overcome several challenges. Earlier continuous sign language recognition techniques used hidden Markov models, which have a limited ability to include temporal information. To get over these restrictions, several machine learning approaches are being applied to transform hand and sign language motions into spoken or written language. In this study, we compare various deep learning techniques for recognising sign language. Our survey aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the most recent approaches and challenges in this field.