arXiv subjects

Roberto V. Zicari

Publications and source records attributed to Roberto V. Zicari.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Co-design for Trustworthy AI: An Interpretable and Explainable Tool for Type 2 Diabetes Prediction Using Genomic Polygenic Risk Scores

The polygenic risk scores (PRS) have emerged as an important methodology for quantifying genetic predisposition to complex traits and clinical disease. Significant progress has been made in applying PRS to conditions such as obesity, cancer, and type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Studies have demonstrated that PRS can effectively identify individuals at high risk, thereby enabling early screening, personalized treatment, and targeted interventions for diseases with a genetic predisposition. One current limitation of PRS, however, is the lack of interpretability tools. To address this problem for T2DM, researchers at the Graduate School of Data Science at the Seoul National University introduced eXplainable PRS (XPRS). This visualization tool decomposes PRSs into gene-level and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) contribution scores via Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP), providing granular insights into the specific genetic factors driving an individual's risk profile. We used a co-design approach to assess XPRS trustworthiness by considering legal, medical, ethical, and technical robustness during early design and potential clinical use. For that, we used Z-inspection, an ethically aligned Trustworthy AI co-design methodology, and piloted the Council of Europe's Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law Impact Assessment for AI Systems (HUDERIA) (Council of Europe (CAI) 2025). The findings of this use-case comprise a comprehensive set of ethical, legal, and technical lessons learned. These insights, identified by a multidisciplinary team of experts (ethics, legal, human rights, computer science, and medical), serve as a framework for designers to navigate future challenges with this and other AI systems. The findings also provide a useful reference for researchers developing explainability frameworks for PRS in diverse clinical contexts.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

Getting Ready for the EU AI Act in Healthcare. A call for Sustainable AI Development and Deployment

Assessments of trustworthiness have become a cornerstone of responsible AI development. Especially in high-stakes fields like healthcare, aligning technical, evidence-based, and ethical practices with forthcoming legal requirements is increasingly urgent. We argue that developers and deployers of AI systems for the medical domain should be proactive and take steps to progressively ensure that such systems, both those currently in use and those being developed or planned, respect the requirements of the AI Act, which has come into force in August 2024. This is necessary if full and effective compliance is to be ensured when the most relevant provisions of the Act become effective (August 2026). The engagement with the AI Act cannot be viewed as a formalistic exercise. Compliance with the AI Act needs to be carried out through the proactive commitment to the ethical principles of trustworthy AI. These principles provide the background for the Act, which mentions them several times and connects them to the protection of public interest. They can be used to interpret and apply the Act's provisions and to identify good practices, increasing the validity and sustainability of AI systems over time.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2024

Lessons Learned in Performing a Trustworthy AI and Fundamental Rights Assessment

This report shares the experiences, results and lessons learned in conducting a pilot project ``Responsible use of AI'' in cooperation with the Province of Friesland, Rijks ICT Gilde-part of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK) (both in The Netherlands) and a group of members of the Z-Inspection$^{\small{\circledR}}$ Initiative. The pilot project took place from May 2022 through January 2023. During the pilot, the practical application of a deep learning algorithm from the province of Frŷslan was assessed. The AI maps heathland grassland by means of satellite images for monitoring nature reserves. Environmental monitoring is one of the crucial activities carried on by society for several purposes ranging from maintaining standards on drinkable water to quantifying the CO2 emissions of a particular state or region. Using satellite imagery and machine learning to support decisions is becoming an important part of environmental monitoring. The main focus of this report is to share the experiences, results and lessons learned from performing both a Trustworthy AI assessment using the Z-Inspection$^{\small{\circledR}}$ process and the EU framework for Trustworthy AI, and combining it with a Fundamental Rights assessment using the Fundamental Rights and Algorithms Impact Assessment (FRAIA) as recommended by the Dutch government for the use of AI algorithms by the Dutch public authorities.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2022

Using Sentence Embeddings and Semantic Similarity for Seeking Consensus when Assessing Trustworthy AI

Assessing the trustworthiness of artificial intelligence systems requires knowledge from many different disciplines. These disciplines do not necessarily share concepts between them and might use words with different meanings, or even use the same words differently. Additionally, experts from different disciplines might not be aware of specialized terms readily used in other disciplines. Therefore, a core challenge of the assessment process is to identify when experts from different disciplines talk about the same problem but use different terminologies. In other words, the problem is to group problem descriptions (a.k.a. issues) with the same semantic meaning but described using slightly different terminologies. In this work, we show how we employed recent advances in natural language processing, namely sentence embeddings and semantic textual similarity, to support this identification process and to bridge communication gaps in interdisciplinary teams of experts assessing the trustworthiness of an artificial intelligence system used in healthcare.

cs.IR↗

arXiv2022

How to Assess Trustworthy AI in Practice

This report is a methodological reflection on Z-Inspection$^{\small{\circledR}}$. Z-Inspection$^{\small{\circledR}}$ is a holistic process used to evaluate the trustworthiness of AI-based technologies at different stages of the AI lifecycle. It focuses, in particular, on the identification and discussion of ethical issues and tensions through the elaboration of socio-technical scenarios. It uses the general European Union's High-Level Expert Group's (EU HLEG) guidelines for trustworthy AI. This report illustrates for both AI researchers and AI practitioners how the EU HLEG guidelines for trustworthy AI can be applied in practice. We share the lessons learned from conducting a series of independent assessments to evaluate the trustworthiness of AI systems in healthcare. We also share key recommendations and practical suggestions on how to ensure a rigorous trustworthy AI assessment throughout the life-cycle of an AI system.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2014

Benchmarking DataStax Enterprise/Cassandra with HiBench

This report evaluates the new analytical capabilities of DataStax Enterprise (DSE) [1] through the use of standard Hadoop workloads. In particular, we run experiments with CPU and I/O bound micro-benchmarks as well as OLAP-style analytical query workloads. The performed tests should show that DSE is capable of successfully executing Hadoop applications without the need to adapt them for the underlying Cassandra distributed storage system [2]. Due to the Cassandra File System (CFS) [3], which supports the Hadoop Distributed File System API, Hadoop stack applications should seamlessly run in DSE. The report is structured as follows: Section 2 provides a brief description of the technologies involved in our study. An overview of our used hardware and software components of the experimental environment is given in Section 3. Our benchmark methodology is defined in Section 4. The performed experiments together with the evaluation of the results are presented in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 concludes with lessons learned.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2014

Performance Evaluation of Virtualized Hadoop Clusters

In this report we investigate the performance of Hadoop clusters, deployed with separated storage and compute layers, on top of a hypervisor managing a single physical host. We have analyzed and evaluated the different Hadoop cluster configurations by running CPU bound and I/O bound workloads. The report is structured as follows: Section 2 provides a brief description of the technologies involved in our study. An overview of the experimental platform, setup test and configurations are presented in Section 3. Our benchmark methodology is defined in Section 4. The performed experiments together with the evaluation of the results are presented in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 concludes with lessons learned.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2013

On the inequality of the 3V's of Big Data Architectural Paradigms: A case for heterogeneity

The well-known 3V architectural paradigm for Big Data introduced by Laney (2011), provides a simplified framework for defining the architecture of a big data platform to be deployed in various scenarios tackling processing of massive datasets. While additional components such as Variability and Veracity have been discussed as an extension to the 3V model, the basic components (volume, variety, velocity) provide a quantitative framework while variability and veracity target a more qualitative approach. In this paper we argue why the basic 3V's are not equal due to the different requirements that need to be covered in case higher demands for a particular "V". Similar to other conjectures such as the CAP theorem 3V based architectures differ on their implementation. We call this paradigm heterogeneity and we provide a taxonomy of the existing tools (as of 2013) covering the Hadoop ecosystem from the perspective of heterogeneity. This paper contributes on the understanding of the Hadoop ecosystem from the perspective of different workloads and aims to help researchers and practitioners on the design of scalable platforms targeting different operational needs.

cs.DB↗