arXiv Computation and Language

Translators as Invisible Teachers of AI: Copyright, Translation Memory, and the Political Economy of Linguistic Data

arXiv AI
Sep 10

Alignment Whack-a-Mole : Finetuning Activates Verbatim Recall of Copyrighted Books in Large Language Models

The paper demonstrates that fine‑tuning large language models on a single author’s works can trigger the models to reproduce large verbatim excerpts from copyrighted books, even when prompted only with semantic descriptions. Experiments on GPT‑4o, Gemini‑2.5‑Pro, and DeepSeek‑V3.1 show up to 85‑90% recall of held‑out books, with spans exceeding 460 words, and this effect generalizes across authors and model providers. The findings suggest that fine‑tuning reactivates latent memorization from pre‑training, revealing a widespread vulnerability in industry models.

By Xinyue Liu, Niloofar Mireshghallah, Jane C. Ginsburg, Tuhin Chakrabarty
arXiv AI
Aug 26

The Invisible Editorial Layer: Formalizing Undisclosed Inference-Time Steering, Probability Placement, and the Attribution Problem in Deployed Language Models

The paper argues that modern inference pipelines add an unseen layer of control between a language model’s frozen weights and its output, altering probability distributions before token selection. It introduces the concepts of the Inference Attribution Problem, Probability Placement, and Inference Policy Transparency to describe how such interventions can bias generated language toward specific frames and how these biases cannot be traced solely to model weights. The authors discuss the governance, security, and economic implications of these undisclosed inference policies, referencing EU AI Act, Digital Services Act, and FTC doctrines.

By Augusto Camargo
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 10

AI translation of literary texts is "fine", but readers still prefer human translations

arXiv:2606.26040v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: AI translation of literary works is increasingly common. While the content may be rendered adequately, we do not know enough about how readers expe...

By Yves Ferstler, Adam Podoxin, Ty Brassington, Ga\"elle Laperri\`ere, Roman Grundkiewicz, Marie-Jean Meurs, Maite Taboada, Marzena Karpinska
arXiv AI
Sep 2

Human-AI Co-Interpretation for Responsible AI: A Hermeneutic Perspective

The paper examines how large language model (LLM) outputs are increasingly used in contexts that demand justified interpretations, such as law, education, policy analysis, and public moral debate. It identifies a recurring failure—interpretive misplacement—where model-generated readings are treated as settled meanings without explicit interpretive frames, provenance, or defensible alternatives, leading to accountability loss. Drawing on philosophical hermeneutics, the author proposes design principles for human‑AI co‑interpretation, reorganizes existing LLM techniques into hermeneutically responsible patterns, and discusses implications for legal practice, education, scholarship, and public discourse, while framing digital hermeneutics as a literacy for critically engaging with AI‑mediated texts.

By Behrooz Razeghi
arXiv Computation and Language
Oct 7

Common Corpus: The Largest Collection of Ethical Data for LLM Pre-Training

arXiv:2506.01732v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) are pre-trained on large amounts of data from different sources and domains. Such datasets often contain trillions of...

By Pierre-Carl Langlais, Pavel Chizhov, Catherine Arnett, Carlos Rosas-Hinostroza, Mattia Nee, Eliot Krzystof Jones, Ir\`ene Girard, David Mach, Anastasia Stasenko, Ivan P. Yamshchikov
arXiv AI
Sep 4

Translation as a Decision Space: A Multi-Agent Perspective on Low-Resource Dialect Generation

The paper proposes treating translation as a structured decision space explored by multiple autonomous agents, rather than producing a single output. Using Turkish–Syrian Arabic dialogue, three agents—zero‑shot, dialect‑stabilized, and pivot translation—are compared on 5,000 sentences, with stabilization nearly doubling dialect marker usage and reducing structural instability. The study introduces an interpretability framework that quantifies decision flexibility through dialect marker frequency, lexical proximity, and structural variance.

By Hasan Alkhder, Mohammad Abboush, Igor Tchappi, Ahmet Zengin, Amro Najjar
arXiv Computation and Language
Oct 22

Translation and data ethics

This chapter introduces data ethics for translation, outlining key ethical concerns such as copyright, ownership, and bias that affect all data types. It also highlights specific challenges for minoritized language communities and those on the digital divide, where data can reinforce power imbalances. The authors conclude by discussing responsibility, regulation, and the increasing focus on data ethics within translation studies.

By Joss Moorkens, Monja Jannet
arXiv AI
Aug 25

Why we need an AI-resilient society- Profiling Large Language Models

The article discusses the evolution of AI across three generations—from explicit logic to neural networks to large language models (LLMs)—and how LLMs introduce new systemic risks. It applies a forensic‑psychology profiling method to identify ten key features of LLMs, such as hallucinations, bias, and cognitive atrophy, revealing an entity that confabulates, amplifies user biases, and erodes human competence. The report concludes with a four‑pillar framework for AI resilience, emphasizing cognitive sovereignty, measurable control, partial autonomy, and openness to safeguard society.

By Thomas Bartz-Beielstein, Eva Bartz