UniBuc at SemEval-2025 Task 9: Similarity Approaches to Classification

Marius Micluta - Campeanu


Abstract
In this paper, we present a similarity-based method for explainable classification in the context of the SemEval 2025 Task 9: The Food Hazard Detection Challenge. Our proposed system is essentially unsupervised, leveraging the semantic properties of the labels. This approach brings some key advantages over typical classification systems. First, similarity metrics offer a more intuitive interpretation. Next, this technique allows for inference on novel labels. Finally, there is a non-negligible amount of ambiguous labels, so learning a direct mapping does not lead to meaningful representations.Our team ranks 13th for the second sub-task among participants that used only the title and the text as features. Our method is generic and can be applied to any classification task.
Anthology ID:
2025.semeval-1.40
Volume:
Proceedings of the 19th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval-2025)
Month:
July
Year:
2025
Address:
Vienna, Austria
Editors:
Sara Rosenthal, Aiala Rosá, Debanjan Ghosh, Marcos Zampieri
Venues:
SemEval | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
280–287
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/corrections-2025-08/2025.semeval-1.40/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Marius Micluta - Campeanu. 2025. UniBuc at SemEval-2025 Task 9: Similarity Approaches to Classification. In Proceedings of the 19th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval-2025), pages 280–287, Vienna, Austria. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
UniBuc at SemEval-2025 Task 9: Similarity Approaches to Classification (Micluta - Campeanu, SemEval 2025)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/corrections-2025-08/2025.semeval-1.40.pdf