Author

Greg Bacon

Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Computer Science

Committee Chair

Vineetha Menon

Committee Member

Letha Etzkorn

Committee Member

Tathagata Mukherjee

Committee Member

Bryan Mesmer

Committee Member

Kristin Weger

Research Advisor

Vineetha Menon

Subject(s)

Artificial intelligence--Moral and ethical aspects, Big data, Natural language processing (Computer science)

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) have been a hot area for popular and research audiences. Users marvel subjectively at Artificial Intelligence (AI) outputs — so much that OpenAI delayed public release of Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2 (GPT-2) back in 2019, citing ``safety and security concerns.'' This research advances ethical and transparent AI through qualitative and quantitative measures between user intent and LLM responses in a way that aims to assist users with clear indications of good and poor alignment and of where to backtrack to minimize bias and hallucinations. The use case is recommending grant topics in a United States Department of Defense Small Business Innovation Research solicitation that match academic or industrial research teams' natural-language capability descriptions.

Available for download on Tuesday, August 04, 2026

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