Heterogeneous tabular data are the most commonly used form of data and are essential for numerous critical and computationally demanding applications. On homogeneous datasets, deep neural networks have repeatedly shown excellent performance and have therefore been widely adopted. However, their adaptation to tabular data for inference or data generation tasks remains highly challenging. To facilitate further progress in the field, this work provides an overview of state-of-the-art deep learning methods for tabular data. We categorize these methods into three groups: data transformations, specialized architectures, and regularization models. For each of these groups, our work offers a comprehensive overview of the main approaches. Moreover, we discuss deep learning approaches for generating tabular data and also provide an overview over strategies for explaining deep models on tabular data. Thus, our first contribution is to address the main research streams and existing methodologies in the mentioned areas while highlighting relevant challenges and open research questions. Our second contribution is to provide an empirical comparison of traditional machine learning methods with 11 deep learning approaches across five popular real-world tabular datasets of different sizes and with different learning objectives. Our results, which we have made publicly available as competitive benchmarks, indicate that algorithms based on gradient-boosted tree ensembles still mostly outperform deep learning models on supervised learning tasks, suggesting that the research progress on competitive deep learning models for tabular data is stagnating. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first in-depth overview of deep learning approaches for tabular data; as such, this work can serve as a valuable starting point to guide researchers and practitioners interested in deep learning with tabular data.

Explainable AI (XAI) is widely viewed as a sine qua non for ever-expanding AI research. A better understanding of the needs of XAI users, as well as human-centered evaluations of explainable models are both a necessity and a challenge. In this paper, we explore how human-computer interaction (HCI) and AI researchers conduct user studies in XAI applications based on a systematic literature review. After identifying and thoroughly analyzing 97 core papers with human-based XAI evaluations over the past five years, we categorize them along the measured characteristics of explanatory methods, namely trust, understanding, usability , and human-AI collaboration performance . Our research shows that XAI is spreading more rapidly in certain application domains, such as recommender systems than in others, but that user evaluations are still rather sparse and incorporate hardly any insights from cognitive or social sciences. Based on a comprehensive discussion of best practices, i.e., common models, design choices, and measures in user studies, we propose practical guidelines on designing and conducting user studies for XAI researchers and practitioners. Lastly, this survey also highlights several open research directions, particularly linking psychological science and human-centered XAI.

Large language models represent a significant advancement in the field of AI. The underlying technology is key to further innovations and, despite critical views and even bans within communities and regions, large language models are here to stay. This position paper presents the potential benefits and challenges of educational applications of large language models, from student and teacher perspectives. We briefly discuss the current state of large language models and their applications. We then highlight how these models can be used to create educational content, improve student engagement and interaction, and personalize learning experiences. With regard to challenges, we argue that large language models in education require teachers and learners to develop sets of competencies and literacies necessary to both understand the technology as well as their limitations and unexpected brittleness of such systems. In addition, a clear strategy within educational systems and a clear pedagogical approach with a strong focus on critical thinking and strategies for fact checking are required to integrate and take full advantage of large language models in learning settings and teaching curricula. Other challenges such as the potential bias in the output, the need for continuous human oversight, and the potential for misuse are not unique to the application of AI in education. But we believe that, if handled sensibly, these challenges can offer insights and opportunities in education scenarios to acquaint students early on with potential societal biases, criticalities, and risks of AI applications. We conclude with recommendations for how to address these challenges and ensure that such models are used in a responsible and ethical manner in education.

Understanding the main factors contributing to individual differences in fluid intelligence is one of the main challenges of psychology. A vast body of research has evolved from the theoretical framework put forward by Cattell, who developed the Culture-Fair IQ Test (CFT 20-R) to assess fluid intelligence. In this work, we extend and complement the current state of research by analysing the differential and combined relationship between eye-movement patterns and socio-demographic information and the ability of a participant to correctly solve a CFT item. Our work shows that a participant’s eye movements while solving a CFT item contain discriminative information and can be used to predict whether the participant will succeed in solving the test item. Moreover, the information related to eye movements complements the information provided by socio-demographic data when it comes to success prediction. In combination, both types of information yield a significantly higher predictive performance than each information type individually. To better understand the contributions of features related to eye movements and socio-demographic information to predict a participant’s success in solving a CFT item, we employ state-of-the-art explainability techniques and show that, along with socio-demographic variables, eye-movement data. Especially the number of saccades and the mean pupil diameter, significantly increase the discriminating power. The eye-movement features are likely indicative of processing efficiency and invested mental effort. Beyond the specific contribution to research on how eye movements can serve as a means to uncover mechanisms underlying cognitive processes, the findings presented in this work pave the way for further in-depth investigations of factors predicting individual differences in fluid intelligence.

Large language models have made great advances in the past years, creating compelling responses to extended verbal inputs. After the release of ChatGPT 3.5, researchers have identified several opportunities and challenges of large language models in various fields of education. However, at that point, it was unforeseeable how fast a multitude of technological advances would erupt and how dynamically educational research would change, undoubtedly facing and increasing number of challenges related to large language models. Now, large language models can be used as a middleware connecting various AI tools and other large language models to solve complex tasks. This led to the development of so-called large multimodal foundation models, such as ChatGPT-4-Turbo and Gemini, that do not only interact via written text with the user, but have the power to process spoken text, music, images and videos. These models open up vast new territories of opportunities and come with unexpected challenges. In this overview, we outline and explain the new set of opportunities and challenges in education that arise from large multimodal foundation models for learners, teachers, educational researchers and developers of educational tools additionally to the opportunities and challenges of conventional large language models.