The discussion focused on replacing anglocentric LLM evaluation benchmarks—which inject foreign values, biases, and cultural contexts—with continuous, language-specific testing. The panelists underscored that evaluation frameworks must be treated as essential linguistic infrastructure, tailored directly to Slovenian cultural and societal values.

Slides are already available.

Read more about the conference.

A significant part of the discussion also focused on the business support ecosystem, highlighting the Slovenian AI Factory (SLAIF) and the Slovenian Competence Center for Artificial Intelligence (KCUI). The role of the KCUI lies precisely in bridging research expertise with the needs of the business sector and in fostering the transfer of best practices and AI solutions into practical application.

📍 𝗕𝗿𝗱𝗼 𝗽𝗿𝗶 𝗞𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗷𝘂 📅 𝟭𝟭 𝗦𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲

The authors, including Marko Debeljak and Vid Podpečan from the EcoEnvAI research group, from E8 at the Jožef Stefan Institute, alongside an international team of collaborators, developed an LLM-assisted workflow to automatically extract and structure knowledge from scientific abstracts, enabling rapid evidence mapping in soil science.

The study demonstrates the application of AI in supporting environmental research, identifying knowledge gaps, and accelerating scientific synthesis.

The open-access paper is available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016706126002181

This framework improves off-the-shelf LLM embeddings (such as OpenAI text-embedding) for classification tasks by incorporating global knowledge from Wikidata KGs and local knowledge learned from task-specific knowledge graphs. High-dimensional fusion can be matched by searching for low-dimensional weighted modality contributions via Bayesian Optimization. Furthermore, tabular foundation models serve as effective surrogates, achieving results comparable to more expensive AutoML runs at a fraction of the computational cost.

📄 Link: https://lnkd.in/dUmENV-e

This new release focuses heavily on reproducibility and ease of use. Key updates include:
– Easier Sharing: Seamlessly share your code, configuration, data, and experimental setups.
– Grammars and constraints: Add custom constraints to your search space effortlessly.
– Performance Boosts: Significant speed and efficiency gains.

Check out the package and documentation here: https://lnkd.in/dw59pkbi

Graph Instance Landscapes: When Structural Similarity Does (Not) Reflect Shortest-Path Performance

The study investigates whether the structural similarity of graph instances accounts for the performance of shortest-path algorithms.

An instance-landscape framework was introduced to benchmark shortest-path algorithms by embedding graph instances into a structural feature space and analyzing algorithmic behavior across structurally similar regions. The evaluation covered four representative shortest-path algorithms across weighted Erdős–Rényi graphs, random geometric (wireless) graphs, and real-world road networks.

The findings indicate that structural similarity does not consistently correlate with similar algorithmic performance. Substantial runtime variations occurred even within identical structural landscape regions, demonstrating both the utility and the limitations of structure-aware benchmarking.

This study offers new insights into graph benchmarking and underscores the necessity of considering factors beyond structural characteristics when designing representative benchmark suites for shortest-path algorithms.

Buildings should no longer be considered only as passive energy consumers. By combining renewable energy, electrified heating, energy storage and smart monitoring, they can become flexible assets within the wider energy system.

During this interactive session, we will explore practical and cost-effective pathways for accelerating building decarbonisation and moving from theory to real-world applications.

📅 30 June 2026
🕘 09:30–11:00 CEST
💻 Online

🔗 REGISTER HERE : https://events.ringcentral.com/events/beyond-the-boiler-integrated-pathways-for-building-decarbonisation-2026-06-30

#SEEDSProject #HorizonEurope #BuildingDecarbonisation #EnergyTransition #SmartBuildings #Sustainability