Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915

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    Modeling the Chaotic Semantic States of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Quantum Mechanics Analogy Approach
    (Association for Computing Machinery, 2025-12-01) Liu T; McIntosh TR; Susnjak T; Watters P; Halgamuge MN
    Generative artificial intelligence (AI) models have revolutionized intelligent systems by enabling machines to produce human-like content across diverse domains. However, their outputs often exhibit unpredictability due to complex and opaque internal semantic states, posing challenges for reliability in real-world applications. In this paper, we introduce the AI Uncertainty Principle, a novel theoretical framework inspired by quantum mechanics, to model and quantify the inherent unpredictability in generative AI outputs. By drawing parallels with the uncertainty principle and superposition, we formalize the trade-off between the precision of internal semantic states and output variability. Through comprehensive experiments involving state-of-the-art models and a variety of prompt designs, we analyze how factors such as specificity, complexity, tone, and style influence model behavior. Our results demonstrate that carefully engineered prompts can significantly enhance output predictability and consistency, while excessive complexity or irrelevant information can increase uncertainty. We also show that ensemble techniques, such as Sigma-weighted aggregation across models and prompt variations, effectively improve reliability. Our findings have profound implications for the development of intelligent systems, emphasizing the critical role of prompt engineering and theoretical modeling in creating AI technologies that perceive, reason, and act predictably in the real world.
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    Developing a Framework for Sustainable Management of Archaeological Site Parks: Cross-Case Analysis Based on Public Perception
    (MDPI, Basel, Switzerland, 2025-04) Xi Y; Liu T; Wang Y; Ying FJ; Han Y; Luo S; Zhang P
    As official terms included in the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) documents, archaeological site parks have gradually emphasized the establishment of sustainable management frameworks for archaeological sites open to the public and enhancing public experiences. The management frameworks should be closely related to the goals of the United Nations and other international conventions on sustainable development. However, they lack implementation strategies to promote archaeological site protection and provide responsible tourism. This research adopts a multi-case study approach to analyze the management of representative archaeological site parks in the United States, Japan, and China to develop a framework for the sustainable management of archaeological site parks. Various values, heritage tourism activities, and public perceptions of each park are examined based on cross-case analysis, which identifies principal elements and strategies for the sustainable management of archaeological parks. The principal elements reflect the archaeological parks’ intrinsic value, utility value, and other values. The strategies are closely related to the design of heritage tourism activities and are in alignment with the UN’s sustainable development goals. The theoretical and practical contributions of this research include the reflection and explanation of the sustainable management practices of archaeological site parks in different national and cultural contexts, considering public perceptions. The proposed framework and strategy integrate management guidelines, theoretical knowledge, and practical experience of public archaeological site parks. The outcomes of this research provide a reference for the study of archaeological parks and the management of heritage landscapes.
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    From Google Gemini to OpenAI Q* (Q-Star): A Survey on Reshaping the Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Landscape
    (MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2025-02-01) McIntosh TR; Susnjak T; Liu T; Watters P; Xu D; Liu D; Halgamuge MN; Mladenov V
    This comprehensive survey explored the evolving landscape of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a specific focus on the recent technological breakthroughs and the gathering advancements toward possible Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). It critically examined the current state and future trajectory of generative AI, exploring how innovations in developing actionable and multimodal AI agents with the ability scale their “thinking” in solving complex reasoning tasks are reshaping research priorities and applications across various domains, while the survey also offers an impact analysis on the generative AI research taxonomy. This work has assessed the computational challenges, scalability, and real-world implications of these technologies while highlighting their potential in driving significant progress in fields like healthcare, finance, and education. Our study also addressed the emerging academic challenges posed by the proliferation of both AI-themed and AI-generated preprints, examining their impact on the peer-review process and scholarly communication. The study highlighted the importance of incorporating ethical and human-centric methods in AI development, ensuring alignment with societal norms and welfare, and outlined a strategy for future AI research that focuses on a balanced and conscientious use of generative AI as its capabilities continue to scale.
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    Ransomware Reloaded: Re-examining Its Trend, Research and Mitigation in the Era of Data Exfiltration
    (Association for Computing Machinery New York, NY, United States, 2024-10-07) McIntosh T; Susnjak T; Liu T; Xu D; Watters P; Liu D; Hao Y; Ng A; Halgamuge M; Atienza D; Milano M
    Ransomware has grown to be a dominant cybersecurity threat by exfiltrating, encrypting, or destroying valuable user data and causing numerous disruptions to victims. The severity of the ransomware endemic has generated research interest from both the academia and the industry. However, many studies held stereotypical assumptions about ransomware, used unverified, outdated, and limited self-collected ransomware samples, and did not consider government strategies, industry guidelines, or cyber intelligence. We observed that ransomware no longer exists simply as an executable file or limits to encrypting files (data loss); data exfiltration (data breach) is the new norm, espionage is an emerging theme, and the industry is shifting focus from technical advancements to cyber governance and resilience. We created a ransomware innovation adoption curve, critically evaluated 212 academic studies published during 2020 and 2023, and cross-verified them against various government strategies, industry reports, and cyber intelligence on ransomware. We concluded that many studies were becoming irrelevant to the contemporary ransomware reality and called for the redirection of ransomware research to align with the continuous ransomware evolution in the industry. We proposed to address data exfiltration as priority over data encryption, to consider ransomware in a business-practical manner, and recommended research collaboration with the industry.
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    A Semi-automatic Diagnosis of Hip Dysplasia on X-Ray Films
    (Frontiers Media S.A., 2020-12-17) Yang G; Jiang Y; Liu T; Zhao X; Chang X; Qiu Z; Gao X
    Background: Diagnosis of hip joint plays an important role in early screening of hip diseases such as coxarthritis, heterotopic ossification, osteonecrosis of the femoral head, etc. Early detection of hip dysplasia on X-ray films may probably conduce to early treatment of patients, which can help to cure patients or relieve their pain as much as possible. There has been no method or tool for automatic diagnosis of hip dysplasia till now. Results: A semi-automatic method for diagnosis of hip dysplasia is proposed. Considering the complexity of medical imaging, the contour of acetabulum, femoral head, and the upper side of thigh-bone are manually marked. Feature points are extracted according to marked contours. Traditional knowledge-driven diagnostic criteria is abandoned. Instead, a data-driven diagnostic model for hip dysplasia is presented. Angles including CE, sharp, and Tonnis angle which are commonly measured in clinical diagnosis, are automatically obtained. Samples, each of which consists of these three angle values, are used for clustering according to their densities in a descending order. A three-dimensional normal distribution derived from the cluster is built and regarded as the parametric model for diagnosis of hip dysplasia. Experiments on 143 X-ray films including 286 samples (i.e., 143 left and 143 right hip joints) demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. According to the method, a computer-aided diagnosis tool is developed for the convenience of clinicians, which can be downloaded at http://www.bio-nefu.com/HIPindex/. The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon request. Conclusions: This data-driven method provides a more objective measurement of the angles. Besides, it provides a new criterion for diagnosis of hip dysplasia other than doctors' experience deriving from knowledge-driven clinical manual, which actually corresponds to very different way for clinical diagnosis of hip dysplasia.
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    Harnessing GPT-4 for generation of cybersecurity GRC policies: A focus on ransomware attack mitigation
    (Elsevier B.V., 2023-11-01) McIntosh T; Liu T; Susnjak T; Alavizadeh H; Ng A; Nowrozy R; Watters P
    This study investigated the potential of Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs), a state-of-the-art large language model, in generating cybersecurity policies to deter and mitigate ransomware attacks that perform data exfiltration. We compared the effectiveness, efficiency, completeness, and ethical compliance of GPT-generated Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) policies, with those from established security vendors and government cybersecurity agencies, using game theory, cost-benefit analysis, coverage ratio, and multi-objective optimization. Our findings demonstrated that GPT-generated policies could outperform human-generated policies in certain contexts, particularly when provided with tailored input prompts. To address the limitations of our study, we conducted our analysis with thorough human moderation, tailored input prompts, and the inclusion of legal and ethical experts. Based on these results, we made recommendations for corporates considering the incorporation of GPT in their GRC policy making.
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    Hierarchical graph learning with convolutional network for brain disease prediction
    (Springer Nature, 2024-10-23) Liu T; Liu F; Wan Y; Hu R; Zhu Y; Li L
    In computer-aided diagnostic systems, the functional connectome approach has become a common method for detecting neurological disorders. However, the existing methods either ignore the uniqueness of different subjects across the functional connectivities or neglect the commonality of the same disease for the functional connectivity of each subject, resulting in a lack of capacity of capturing a comprehensive functional model. To solve the issues, we develop a hierarchical graph learning with convolutional network that not only considers the unique information of each subject, but also takes the common information across subjects into account. Specifically, the proposed method consists of two structures, one is the individual graph model which selects the representative brain regions by combining each subject feature and its related brain region-based graph. The other is the population graph model to directly conduct classification performance by updating the information of each subject which considers both the subject itself and the nearest neighbours. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method on four real datasets outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches.
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    From COBIT to ISO 42001: Evaluating cybersecurity frameworks for opportunities, risks, and regulatory compliance in commercializing large language models
    (Elsevier B.V., 2024-09-01) McIntosh TR; Susnjak T; Liu T; Watters P; Xu D; Liu D; Nowrozy R; Halgamuge MN
    This study investigated the integration readiness of four predominant cybersecurity Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) frameworks – NIST CSF 2.0, COBIT 2019, ISO 27001:2022, and the latest ISO 42001:2023 – for the opportunities, risks, and regulatory compliance when adopting Large Language Models (LLMs), using qualitative content analysis and expert validation. Our analysis, with both LLMs and human experts in the loop, uncovered potential for LLM integration together with inadequacies in LLM risk oversight of those frameworks. Comparative gap analysis has highlighted that the new ISO 42001:2023, specifically designed for Artificial Intelligence (AI) management systems, provided most comprehensive facilitation for LLM opportunities, whereas COBIT 2019 aligned most closely with the European Union AI Act. Nonetheless, our findings suggested that all evaluated frameworks would benefit from enhancements to more effectively and more comprehensively address the multifaceted risks associated with LLMs, indicating a critical and time-sensitive need for their continuous evolution. We propose integrating human-expert-in-the-loop validation processes as crucial for enhancing cybersecurity frameworks to support secure and compliant LLM integration, and discuss implications for the continuous evolution of cybersecurity GRC frameworks to support the secure integration of LLMs.
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    Variable Selection from Image Texture Feature for Automatic Classification of Concrete Surface Voids.
    (Hindawi Limited, 2021-03-08) Zhao Z; Liu T; Zhao X; Haber RE
    Machine learning plays an important role in computational intelligence and has been widely used in many engineering fields. Surface voids or bugholes frequently appearing on concrete surface after the casting process make the corresponding manual inspection time consuming, costly, labor intensive, and inconsistent. In order to make a better inspection of the concrete surface, automatic classification of concrete bugholes is needed. In this paper, a variable selection strategy is proposed for pursuing feature interpretability, together with an automatic ensemble classification designed for getting a better accuracy of the bughole classification. A texture feature deriving from the Gabor filter and gray-level run lengths is extracted in concrete surface images. Interpretable variables, which are also the components of the feature, are selected according to a presented cumulative voting strategy. An ensemble classifier with its base classifier automatically assigned is provided to detect whether a surface void exists in an image or not. Experimental results on 1000 image samples indicate the effectiveness of our method with a comparable prediction accuracy and model explicable.
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    Clustering by Search in Descending Order and Automatic Find of Density Peaks
    (IEEE, 2019-01-01) Liu T; Li H; Zhao X; Liang Q
    Clustering by fast search and find of density peaks published on journal Science in 2014 is a density-based clustering technique, which is not only unnecessary to determine the number of clusters in advance, but also able to recognize the clusters of arbitrary shapes. Due to a manual selection of clustering centers on a decision graph, samples which belong to one cluster may be assigned to two or more clusters and vice versa. On assumption that boundary points which keep comparable densities with cluster centers should be regarded as inner points, we make a new method which not only can find all possible clusters automatically but also can combine those with similarities simultaneously to obtain the final clusters. Unlike clustering by fast search and find of density peaks, we only focus on densities with discarding the relative metric which measures the minimum distance between a cluster center and a point with a higher density. Qualitative and quantitative experimental results on sufficient datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.