Papers

Building performant Vision-Language Models (VLMs) requires carefully curating large-scale training datasets, yet the community lacks systematic benchmarks for evaluating such curation strategies. We introduce DataComp for VLMs (DCVLM), a benchmark for controlled data-centric experiments to improve VLM training. As part of DCVLM, we collect 160 datasets spanning four data types – image-caption pairs, multimodal interleaved documents, text-only, and instruction-tuning data – into a corpus of 6T multimodal tokens. DCVLM allows participants to test curation strategies (filtering, mixing, formatting, sampling) across 1B-8B models and 6.25B-200B token budgets. Models are then evaluated on a carefully selected suite of up to 52 downstream benchmarks across 9 domains. We conduct extensive experiments on DCVLM and find that data mixing, not filtering, is key to a high-quality training dataset: instruction-heavy mixtures scale better than caption-heavy ones, with gains widening at larger scales. The resulting dataset, DCVLM-Baseline, enables training an 8B VLM to 63.6% accuracy on our 33-task core suite with 200B training tokens. Compared to FineVision, the state-of-the-art open VLM training dataset, this represents an improvement of +5.4pp. DCVLM and all accompanying artifacts will be made publicly available at https://www.datacomp.ai/dcvlm/.

Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) have become a useful tool for extracting interpretable features in language models. However, standard SAE architectures operate on individual token activations, meaning that the number of active features scales linearly with context length, and studying long model transcripts becomes difficult. We introduce turn-averaged SAEs, which represent a single Human or Assistant turn with a fixed number of features by learning to reconstruct the average model activation across the turn. We find that turn-averaged features describe a single turn's high-level characteristics more completely than per-token features when judged by an LLM. We also demonstrate that turn-averaged SAEs greatly simplify common downstream uses of SAEs like attribution graphs. Broadly, turn-averaged SAEs make interpretability techniques practical at long context lengths.

Recent advances in AI-driven weather and climate modeling have improved forecast skill while reducing computational cost. However, existing data-driven approaches are limited in their ability to model coupled Earth system dynamics, which is required for extending predictability beyond the ~2-week horizon. To address this, we introduce NIVA, a multimodal foundation model designed to learn unified representations across Earth system components. While the full framework targets atmosphere, ocean, ice, and land interactions, we focus here on a two-modality setting (ocean and atmosphere) as a controlled proof of concept to evaluate whether foundation models can learn coupled dynamics. Trained on large-scale Earth system simulations, NIVA learns physically meaningful cross-modal structure, providing a foundation for subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction. As initial validation, we show that NIVA captures key modes of climate variability through accurate prediction of major climate indices.

Multiview mammography relies on paired craniocaudal (CC) and mediolateral oblique (MLO) views to provide complementary projections of a 3D breast volume, enabling precise anomaly localization. However, acquiring high-quality, balanced datasets remains challenging for deep learning applications. We propose a novel method to synthesize multiview mammograms by leveraging the inherent geometric relationship between CC and MLO views. To enforce an implicit 3D consistency prior during generation, we develop an alignment module that searches a 2D affine transformation subspace to establish optimal anatomical correspondence. Leveraging this alignment, we introduce a pixel-space self-consistency loss based on the Earth Mover's Distance (EMD) between the 1D anteroposterior (AP) axis tissue distributions of the generated images. Integrated into a pretrained flow matching model, MammoFlow forces synthesized pairs to share physically plausible tissue distributions from the chest wall to the nipple. To our knowledge, this is the first work to guide multiview mammogram generation using implicit geometric tissue correspondence. Our method demonstrates superior image quality, passes expert radiologist evaluation, and generates physically consistent pairs that improve downstream classification AUC by 5%. Code is available at https://github.com/XYPB/MammoFlow

Safety alignment in large language models can degrade during post-training even when neither the data nor the objective is intentionally adversarial. Alignment rebound and reverse dynamics suggest that this degradation may reactivate behavior suppressed during safety alignment. Building on these ideas, we hypothesize that ordinary non-adversarial post-training follows a reversion direction: the activation-space displacement from the safety-aligned model toward a more permissive, earlier helpful-only state. We see that for Llama, every tested trajectory across references, tasks, and seeds exceeds a matched empirical null, while at aligned Llama and Qwen checkpoints, a vocabulary readout shows that the direction locally favors task-engaging over fixed refusal-like openings. Its geometric expression is behaviorally informative: as post-training proceeds, alignment with the direction and harmfulness increase together, yielding a strong descriptive correlation (Spearman r=0.958). To move beyond correlation, we test causal relevance during adaptation using objectives constructed from this coordinate. Across all tested Llama, Qwen, and Gemma settings from 3B to 14B, an optimizer-matched objective opposing positive motion reduces geometric alignment and harmfulness relative to ordinary fine-tuning, whereas a separately stabilized objective reinforcing that motion increases both. Every model and scale exhibits the same mean block-baseline-push ordering, showing that the causal relevance of the reversion direction is not tied to one architecture or model size. Finally, we show that a standard safety-rehearsal objective, built without access to the direction, independently opposes it and cuts cumulative reversion by about 30% in Llama and Qwen.

Training operator-learning models for large-scale problems governed by partial differential equations (PDEs) is challenging due to the curse of dimensionality, memory constraints, and limited training data. These challenges arise in many scientific and engineering applications, including subsurface flow, climate modeling, and geological carbon storage (GCS). In this work, we propose a scalable operator-learning framework based on the Karhunen-Loeve Deep Neural Network (KL-DNN) and demonstrate its performance for modeling GCS. The model is trained on a dataset comprising 100 samples of large-scale simulations in a three-dimensional domain with 1.7 million cells and 50 time steps. The KL-DNN method constructs latent spaces using low-rank singular value decomposition of static properties and a nested Karhunen-Loeve expansion for dynamic pressure fields, enabling full-resolution predictions without subsampling or spatial coarsening. The KL-DNN model achieves an average root mean square error (RMSE) of 1.1 psi for pressure (0.04% relative error with respect to the average pressure in the domain) and RMSE of 0.0146 for CO2 saturation (5% relative error with respect to the average saturation inside the plume). The model requires 20 minutes of training on a single GPU, representing a 19% reduction in the pressure errors, 7% reduction in the saturation error, and a two-order-of-magnitude speedup compared to DeepONet trained on the same dataset. These results, along with inference time of less than one minute, establish the proposed model as a practical and accurate solution for large-scale PDE problems, enabling rapid uncertainty quantification, history matching, and real-time decision support.

The emergence of low-dimensional structures in the spectra of neural network weight matrices is a common empirical feature of trained models, but the dynamical origin of this phenomenon during learning remains an open problem. We formulate neural network training as the stochastic evolution of an initially random matrix ensemble, driven by stochastic gradient descent (SGD) updates that reshape the spectral bulk while amplifying signal strength. This induces a Baik-Ben Arous-Péché (BBP) transition during training, where isolated eigenvalues detach from the random bulk distribution, providing a dynamical framework for representation formation in high-dimensional learning dynamics. We demonstrate this in a solvable linear teacher-student model, where spectral evolution is analytically tractable and a phase diagram of trainability governed by the step size (or learning rate) and initial weight variance is obtained, and subsequently extend our formalism beyond the linear regime to nonlinear and stochastic settings. Numerical simulations in realistic settings support this picture, showing robust emergence of spectral alignment during training. Our results suggest that spectral analysis may provide a unified perspective of stochastic learning dynamics, linking trainability, optimisation hyperparameters, spectral phase transitions, and representation learning in neural networks.

We demonstrate how emotional valence influences the order-dependent structure of children's recognition memory: correct recall of a sequence of emotionally-valenced toys depended not just on the valence of a given toy itself, but also on the valence of the toys shown before and after it. Whilst standard psychological models confirm that order-dependence differs across an event (a set of toys shown in sequence), accuracy is low and the model does not reflect how memory for an emotional object influences others in the set. A classical tensor network model factoring in valence is able to achieve a 77.98% accuracy in modelling the results of the study. While not strictly a “quantum cognition” model, this massive increase in accuracy shows the value of quantum-inspired methods for modelling order-dependent phenomena, such as emotional memory. Further, the task protocol we introduce presents a novel, real-world tool for exploring emotional temporal memory in children for analysis using classical and quantum-like models of cognition.

Appliance-level energy monitoring in office buildings produces noisy alerts that non-expert facility managers struggle to use. This paper proposes an end-to-end agentic pipeline that combines deep time-series forecasting, variational anomaly detection, and LLM-based reasoning to generate prioritized, actionable maintenance recommendations. The system tracks seven office appliances using a hybrid Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) forecasting model, and applies a per-appliance LSTM Variational Autoencoder (VAE) with attention to flag abnormal daily consumption episodes. A three-stage LangChain pipeline begins with a Context Agent that always retrieves three core RAG sources (model reliability, hourly baseline, and expert knowledge) and conditionally adds up to three more (forecast context, anomaly history, global baseline) based on event characteristics, capped at eight reasoning steps. A Diagnosis Agent converts the evidence into a structured JSON diagnosis, and a Report Agent renders a human-readable narrative. A reflective memory layer incorporates operator feedback. The dashboard shows real-time 30-minute forecasts, intraday consumption, the previous day anomaly report, and a feedback form. We evaluate the forecasting model, anomaly detector with appliance-specific thresholds, and LLM reasoning on a 16-scenario benchmark including sustained and transient spikes, unexpected shutdowns, and systemic events, comparing five LLM backends under static vs. dynamic retrieval. Dynamic retrieval matches full static retrieval across all backends while cutting average context from six to three-six sources per event. The best backend scores 90.4/100 with a 100% pass rate at a 70-point threshold, and a fully local 7B-parameter model passes all 16 scenarios.

In the optimization of neural networks, gradient dynamics are influenced by critical points that arise from the model's architecture. These critical points occur where the Jacobian of the model's parametrization is rank-deficient, and are the most pronounced singularities studied in Singular Learning Theory. We investigate such points in deep fully-connected networks with monomial activations via tools from polynomial algebra such as Mason's Theorem. We show that, for sufficiently large activation degree, criticality occurs precisely at subnetworks, i.e., at parameter configurations where some neurons are inactive or redundant. This offers a mathematical perspective on the implicit bias in deep neural networks, explaining the tendency of these models to converge toward simpler functions.

Data-driven modeling in real-world regression tasks often suffers from limited training samples, high collection costs, and noisy observations. Inspired by the impact of data augmentation in vision and language, we propose a novel Counterfactual Residual Data Augmentation (CRDA) technique for tabular regression. Our key insight is that once a regressor has modeled the systematic component of the data, the remaining noise can be viewed as an invariant residual that remains stable under small perturbations of carefully selected features. We exploit this residual invariance to generate new, yet realistic, training samples, effectively expanding the dataset without requiring additional real data. Our method is model-agnostic and readily applicable to various types of regressors. In experiments across datasets from a variety of benchmark repositories, on average, CRDA reduces an MLP Regressor's MSE by 22.9% and an XGBoost Regressor's MSE by 6.4%. When compared to existing state-of-the-art data generators and augmentation techniques, CRDA consistently outperforms in MSE reduction. By adding principled counterfactual variations to the training data, our method offers a simple and efficient remedy for noise-prone, small-sample regression settings.

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) clustering is essential for identifying cell types, but high dimensionality, sparsity, dropout, and technical noise hinder robust expression representation and cell graph construction. Existing masked autoencoders mainly use expression recovery for feature reconstruction, while graph clustering methods usually depend on fixed KNN graphs and do not feed recovered expression back into graph optimization. We propose scKDGM, a KAN-guided dynamic graph masked learning framework for scRNA-seq clustering. scKDGM uses graph-aware distribution preserving gene masking (GDP-Mask) to perturb cell identity, a KAN-based TAKGCN encoder to learn masked-view representations, mask-guided expression recovery to construct a dynamic graph, and cross-view contrastive learning to transfer recovery signals into topology updates. A ZINB loss models overdispersion and zero inflation. Experiments on 12 real scRNA-seq datasets show that scKDGM outperforms 10 baselines in average NMI and ARI.

World models can predict future physical states, but prediction accuracy alone does not explain how physical information is organized and used inside their latent dynamics. We introduce a controlled diagnostic protocol for studying event-conditioned latent physical structure in passive object-state world models. The protocol separates three questions: whether event-regime information is readable, whether event context changes the relative emphasis of kinematic-, contact-, and object-permanence-related readouts, and whether suppressing readout-aligned directions affects prediction. Using a balanced controlled-generator dataset with free-motion, collision, and occlusion events, we evaluate GRU, Transformer-lite, and RSSM-lite transition models under a fixed-horizon forecasting setup. Across three independent seeds, all three architectures learn useful predictive dynamics and support reliable event-regime readout. Event context systematically shifts the relative readout pattern: free motion is kinematic-dominant, collision increases contact-related structure, and occlusion increases object-permanence-related structure. Time-aligned analyses show corresponding phase-related shifts. Fixed-horizon projection Causal Field Effect (CFE), used here as a functional-sensitivity test, gives the clearest evidence for contact-aligned structure in collision-contact windows. Object-permanence-aligned structure is also sensitive during hard occlusion, but control specificity remains mixed. These results support event-conditioned latent structure and functional sensitivity without implying explicit physical modules or isolated causal circuits.

Early detection of dementia enables timely intervention, and reflecting cognitive impairment, spontaneous speech offers a non-invasive screening modality. Conventional approaches often focus on a single representational dimension – such as acoustic descriptors, pause modeling, automatic speech recognition (ASR) transcripts, or multimodal fusion – limiting integrative reasoning across heterogeneous cognitive symptoms. We propose a low-rank adaptation (LoRA)-tuned large language model (LLM) that performs structured multi-view reasoning over four complementary speech-derived signals: ASR transcripts with pause markers, discourse-level topic cues, temporal fluency statistics, and phonological sequences. These cues are encoded within a unified prompt, enabling a single LLM to learn a coherent decision function without modality-specific encoders or late-stage fusion. On ADReSSo, our best model achieves an F1-score of 90.14%, and ablation confirms the complementary contribution of each view.

Classical universal approximation theorems (UAT) establish the expressive power of sigmoidal multilayer perceptrons, but they do not specify how the weights should be initialized. We study a supervised, data-dependent, geometry-aware initialization for one-hidden-layer sigmoidal MLPs that compiles labeled class geometry into network weights. The construction starts from the idea that sigmoid units can act as smooth half-space gates. For each class, we center the training samples at their mean, apply SVD to estimate principal directions and spectral scales, select retained directions by an energy threshold, and represent each retained direction by a pair of sigmoid slab gates. These class-specific gates are then concatenated into a shared hidden layer initialized directly from the training set. We also formulate a SVD-Mahalanobis subspace classifier as a non-neural geometric reference, which tests whether the estimated spectral class geometry is already discriminative before being embedded into the MLP. Experiments on MNIST, Fashion-MNIST, and CIFAR-10 show that the proposed initializer produces a substantially more informative zero-epoch state than a matched task-agnostic Xavier reference, while full training reaches comparable final accuracy. Frozen-hidden experiments and neutral-head ablations further show that the class-wise SVD gates remain useful fixed features, even after the initially aligned output layer is replaced by a Xavier-initialized one.

Online latent state estimation constitutes a fundamental challenge within the artificial intelligence field, serving as a foundational tool for diverse applications, including sequential decision making, anomaly and change-point detection. In this paper, a novel online distributed sensing framework, where agents collaborate and exchange information to perform latent state estimation, is presented. The proposed estimator combines available partial domain knowledge with the representation capabilities of deep neural networks. In particular, the designed sensing framework incorporates prior estimates, optimized consensus weights, and Kalman-like recursive updates to perform decentralized inference, without relying on knowledge of noise statistics. Extensive experiments on linear, chaotic (Lorenz), and practical wireless tracking environments reveal that the proposed Covariance-Agnostic Neural Kalman Consensus Filter (CA-NKCF) outperforms traditional distributed Kalman and particle filters as well as purely model-free deep neural networks, exhibiting robustness even when the underlying motion and observation models are misspecified. It is also demonstrated that CA-NKCF's performance advantage remains stable across varying noise levels, random communication topologies, latent state dimensions, and observation clutter densities induced by scattering objects in wireless systems.

One goal in reinforcement learning (RL) research is to understand general-purpose sequential decision-making, using benchmark simulators as a proxy for learning in deployment settings. When running experiments, however, the goal of achieving high performance in the simulator can mutate into focusing exclusively on solving the simulator. To achieve high scores, researchers may adopt solutions exclusively meant for solving simulators, rather than learning while the agent is deployed outside a simulator. Solving simulators is also worthy of investigation, but it is a fundamentally different RL research question. In this paper, we argue that RL researchers need to distinguish between two use cases of simulators: solving simulators and using simulators as a proxy for learning in deployment. We first discuss how these two use-cases are importantly different, in terms of constraints on how the agent can use the simulator, which algorithms are appropriate, and which evaluation metrics are appropriate. We then highlight several issues and misleading conclusions that can occur by not making the distinction between these two settings clear, supported with examples and simple experiments. This work is a call to the community to begin clearly distinguishing how they are using simulators in their work, hopefully sparking further discussion on which empirical practices work best in each setting.

We study the spectral perturbation of the empirical Fisher Information Matrix (FIM) of a parametric statistical model under two structured perturbations: departure of the input from a reference (in-distribution) ensemble, and finite-precision (quantized) perturbation of the model's parameters. For the first, under an explicit local curvature-monotonicity hypothesis on the dominant eigenvalue lambda_max of the FIM, we show departure from a reference manifold provably elevates lambda_max relative to a calibration baseline (Proposition 3.2), and discuss why this hypothesis is required, since curvature need not increase monotonically under every perturbation. Our principal result is a directional eigenvalue perturbation bound, via Weyl's inequality, showing lambda_max under a quantization noise perturbation is lower bounded by its unperturbed value up to a third-order remainder, and, under a mild genericity condition, strictly exceeds it at leading order (Theorem 4.3). We give two tractable approximations to lambda_max – one heuristic, one with a rigorous two-sided bound – and a completeness result for a threshold-based partition of an augmented state space. These results motivate using sigma_t = lambda_max(F_t)/lambda_base as a runtime monitoring statistic for deployed language models: the quantization result offers a mechanism for an empirical observation of our own, where a calibration threshold for this statistic was approximately 244 times larger than a preliminary full-precision estimate on a 4-bit quantized model, a single measurement rather than a value derived in closed form. We report supporting measurements (twelve models, n=1,080 trajectories) broadly consistent with our predictions, discuss the scope and limitations of every result, and state as an open problem the closed-form prediction of the quantization inflation magnitude our bound does not supply.

Fluorescence microscopy images are degraded by noise and diffraction-induced blur, which compromise structural fidelity and limit quantitative analysis. Supervised deep learning methods achieve impressive restoration performance but require large-scale paired datasets that are difficult to obtain in practice. To address this issue, we propose SDIP, a zero-shot deep image prior (DIP) framework that sequentially performs denoising and deconvolution without external training data. An aSeqDIP-based module first suppresses noise while preserving fine structures through sequential autoencoding regularization. In the deconvolution stage, a wavelet-based background correction step is incorporated before the proposed RLG-DIP module performs artifact-reduced deconvolution. RLG-DIP uses the Richardson-Lucy deconvolution result as a physically consistent guidance prior, integrating the imaging model with the implicit prior of DIP to stabilize the ill-posed deconvolution process. Experiments on the BioSR dataset across multiple cellular structures demonstrate that SDIP improves both signal-to-noise ratio and resolution, achieving superior visual quality and improved quantitative performance on most evaluated structures. The proposed framework may also provide useful insights for designing physically guided DIP methods for other inverse problems.

Dexterous manipulation policies can solve individual skills, but composing them to perform multiple tasks with a single hand remains challenging. Adding a new task on top of an existing manipulation skill often imposes conflicting demands on overlapping fingers and contact modes, causing destructive interference between preserving an existing manipulation outcome and executing a new one. We propose DexCompose, a role-aware residual composition framework that reuses pretrained dexterous policies for multi-task manipulation through explicit finger-level action ownership. Given two pretrained full-hand policies, DexCompose first collects successful post-task states from the first skill and performs release tests over candidate finger masks to identify which fingers are necessary for maintaining the established skill state. It then trains two asymmetric residual modules: a bounded residual stabilizer for task preservation, and a context-aware residual that adapts the frozen downstream policy only within the action subspace assigned to the new task. We evaluate the framework on 16 composite dexterous manipulation tasks spanning four object-retention skills and four downstream interactions. DexCompose achieves a 77.4% average composite success rate, demonstrating that structural action ownership with dual residuals offers a promising direction for composing dexterous skills beyond conventional policy chaining.

Binary classification from positive-only samples is a variant of PAC learning in which the learner receives i.i.d. samples from the positive region of an unknown target concept, but is evaluated under the original distribution (which places mass on both positive and negative regions). This model dates back to Natarajan [1987, STOC], and the characterization of improper learning is well-known – it even appears in textbooks. The characterization of proper positive-only learning, however, has long remained open. In this work, we revisit and settle this question: a concept class is properly learnable from positive-only samples if and only if it has finite VC dimension and satisfies a new combinatorial condition, which we call uniform exterior separability. Together with several separation results, this characterization reveals a surprisingly rich landscape that differs sharply from standard PAC learning: proper and improper learning are separated, randomized and deterministic proper learning are separated, there are classes for which no ERM is a learner, and finite VC dimension does not suffice even for non-uniform learning. Along the way, we introduce new combinatorial dimensions that we believe can be of broader interest in learning theory.

Many two-player zero-sum games admit not a unique Nash equilibrium but a convex set of them: a polytope of profiles that all share the minimax value V* yet prescribe different behaviour. Standard solvers each converge to some equilibrium and are treated as interchangeable. We ask whether they instead select different members of the Nash set, systematically as a function of the algorithm rather than the seed. Using a tabular, exactly solvable testbed of six games with analytically known Nash sets – including a two-dimensional Nash polytope and Kuhn poker – we find that (i) selection is determined by the algorithm, not the seed, but families differ only on asymmetric Nash sets; (ii) regularized last-iterate methods (R-NaD, magnetic mirror descent) select the maximum-entropy member, the information projection of their uniform reference onto the Nash set – exactly on the 2-D polytope and at 99.7% of maximum entropy in Kuhn – while regret-averaging methods (CFR, CFR+, fictitious play) drift to a lower-entropy face; we confirm this on a randomized 180-game ensemble, where R-NaD attains the maximum-entropy member in 100% of converged games while CFR+ sits strictly below it in 94% (paired Wilcoxon p < 10^-27); (iii) the selected member has downstream consequences against sub-optimal opponents that scale with sequential/hidden-information structure but stay bounded – in Kuhn the max-entropy member is a strictly better hedge, whereas on the matrix games the members differ without either dominating. We also report two negative results correcting common intuitions: removing CFR's positive-orthant (max(R,0)) projection does not eliminate boundary drift; and R-NaD's selection is anchor-following, not initialization-independent. We state the maximum-entropy / I-projection characterization as a strongly data-supported conjecture, checked throughout against analytic ground truth.

We analyze Bregman ADMM for nonconvex linearly constrained problems under two-sided relative smoothness, a condition that replaces the standard Lipschitz gradient assumption with a Hessian comparison relative to a Bregman kernel. This setting covers polynomial objectives arising in matrix and tensor models for which a global Lipschitz-gradient constant need not exist. We show that on an invariant open state-space domain, one iteration of Bregman ADMM defines a smooth primal–dual fixed-point map whose strict-saddle KKT points are unstable fixed points; consequently, from random initialization the iterates converge to a strict saddle with probability zero. Combined with existing first-order convergence results, this yields almost-sure second-order stationarity of limiting KKT points. We extend the analysis to a multi-block star consensus formulation for distributed optimization. The technical novelty lies in a determinant reduction with a Bregman-specific symmetrization and scaling step in the two block spectral argument, together with a null space cancellation exploiting the star graph structure in the consensus case. Numerical experiments on distributed matrix factorization illustrate the theory, and a symmetric tensor factorization example demonstrates the broader Bregman proximal splitting idea beyond the separable consensus setting.

Inference-time scaling is a promising paradigm to improve generative models, especially when outputs must satisfy structural constraints or optimize downstream rewards. We consider Masked Diffusion Model (MDM) and introduce MDM-VGB, a discrete diffusion sampler that augments unmasking generation with theoretically principled reward-guided remasking. Inspired by the recent success of the classical Jerrum-Sinclair backtracking Markov chain in reward-tilted generation, MDM-VGB extends the backtracking random walk from a fixed prefix tree to a masked-state graph, allowing tokens to be unmasked and remasked at arbitrary positions. The resulting sampler favors unmasking and remasking moves that lead to higher-value partial configurations, enabling both effective high-reward generation and efficient repair of low-reward samples. We prove that MDM-VGB is robust to process-verifier noise and achieves quadratic complexity, while popular test-time heuristics such as best-of-$N$ can incur exponential complexity due to error accumulation. Our theoretical findings are corroborated by strong empirical performance, particularly on popular constraint-satisfaction and scientific benchmarks such as Sudoku and QM9.

Preference-based alignment often struggles to capture the reasoning that underlies human judgments. Many evaluations rely on multiple interacting criteria, yet pairwise labels reveal only the final choice rather than the considerations that shape preferences. Inverse Constitutional AI (ICAI) improves interpretability in decision making by summarizing preferences into natural-language principles, but its single-pass explanations miss much of the nuance involved in complex decisions. We introduce Democratic ICAI (DICAI), a novel approach that gathers multiple competing rationales through structured persona debate, offering a broader and more expressive account of the factors influencing each comparison. From these richer signals, we derive clearer and more comprehensive steering principles and use them to guide preference decision modeling through both LLM-based and decision-tree judges, as well as downstream model training via constitution-induced preference labels. Experiments on creative preference benchmarks, MuCE-Pref and LiTBench, across multiple creative task categories show that Democratic ICAI yields a more faithful preference structure. It improves average preference prediction across tasks relative to deliberative prompting and principle-based baselines, while producing constitutions that LLM annotators prefer.

Ab initio theory establishes Wigner's SU(4) and Elliott's SU(3) as dominant symmetries of the nuclear force in light and intermediate-mass nuclei. Previous work shows the relevance of the former symmetry for nuclear binding, whether the latter organizes binding remains elusive. We probe whether both these symmetries organize nuclear masses, aiming at physical insights through interpretable models and predictive capability. From the SU(3) and SU(4) Casimirs we build 3 neural-network models. Two are conventional, a feature-informed NN (FINN) and a Gaussian variant (GINN) with predictive spread, while Wigner-informed network (WINN) is a new design constraining the mass formula to be linear in the operators, learning their (N,Z)-dependent couplings, so that the model is intrinsically explainable. All are trained on AME2016 subtracted by the liquid drop model at 4 data fractions and validated on nuclei new to AME2020, with extrapolation benchmarked against HFB-26 and r-process. The Casimir features carry binding information far beyond the bulk, and SHAP analysis suggests the quadratic SU(4) Casimir as the leading contributor to the residual binding. The WINN yields the best performance, reaching a 0.412 MeV validation error and competitive with state-of-the-art models, and importantly, when trained on the sparsest dataset it outperforms the other NNs trained on the densest. Off the known chart its masses track HFB-26 as closely as WS3 and reproduce the solar abundance peaks of a neutron-star-merger simulation. The WINN's coupling fields reveal an enhanced even-SU(4) contribution toward the neutron dripline, hinting at restoration of Wigner's symmetry. The SU(4) and SU(3) structures reach beyond individual nuclei to organize binding, and embedding symmetry-preserving operators directly in a domain-informed interpretable architecture yields a physically transparent model less hungry for data.

PAC-Bayesian bounds provide finite-sample guarantees for data-dependent randomized predictors, but applying them to learning-based control is difficult because the natural objective is a quadratic trajectory cost. Such losses are unbounded, non-Lipschitz , and lead to response-dependent Chernoff terms. We employ System Level Synthesis parameterization, which exposes the closed-loop trajectory map of a linear system directly and makes the quadratic control loss amenable to explicit certification. Moreover, we provide a set of PAC-Bayes-Chernoff certificates for posterior distributions over feasible closed-loop responses. For Gaussian disturbance trajectories with arbitrary covariance, we derive an exact one-sided Gaussian transform and a tractable quadratic upper bound expressed through closed-loop sensitivity quantities. We also derive a posterior-localized surrogate for settings where pointwise closed-loop response certificates are unavailable or have support related admissibility issues. Although PAC-Bayes certifies a non-degenerate posterior, the convex quadratic form of the SLS loss transfers the certificate to the posterior mean response. We present a deterministic mean response deployment result that is particularly suitable for control while retaining the stochastic posterior in the bound. Additionally, we provide a data-driven bound for this deployment, transitioning away from an oracle bound. Minimizing this bound naturally results in a learning algorithm for control selection from data. Numerical experiments on a double integrator show that the algorithm acts as a sensitivity-aware finite-sample regularizer, improving held-out cost and reducing closed-loop sensitivity in the low-data regime

Artificial intelligence is driving a revolution in scientific discovery, accelerating everything from hypothesis generation to mathematical theorem proving. However, this rapid acceleration is creating a systemic challenge: traditional human peer review cannot scale to match the influx of AI-assisted science. Ultimately, to resolve this tension, we must also deploy AI to accelerate the verification and review process itself. To frame the discussion around this transition, we propose a taxonomy consisting of four progressive levels of AI-human collaboration in scientific evaluation, and discuss various trade-offs involved with each. As a step toward this future, we introduce the Paper Assistant Tool (PAT), an agentic AI framework built for deep scientific review and verification. PAT ingests full scientific manuscripts and produces a comprehensive evaluation, checking theoretical results, validating experiments, suggesting improvements, and identifying potential flaws. By utilizing inference scaling techniques, PAT is able to identify deeper issues than a single model call alone, achieving a 34% improvement over zero-shot recall on mathematical errors in the SPOT benchmark. Pilot deployments of PAT as a pre-submission tool for authors at two major Computer Science conferences – STOC and ICML – demonstrate its ability to identify critical errors and suggest substantive improvements to research papers. By catching errors early, PAT eases the cognitive burden placed on referees, while preserving their control over the outcomes of the review process.

Accurate network traffic prediction is a critical element for efficient resource allocation in dynamic urban cellular networks. However, prediction remains challenging because network demand is influenced by complex mobility patterns, congestion dynamics, and heterogeneous user behavior. This paper introduces the Parameter-Efficient Hybrid Transformer (PEHT), a network traffic prediction framework that integrates urban mobility and congestion information into a Transformer-based architecture. PEHT separates primary network communication features from secondary urban mobility features and incorporates Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) into the Transformer encoder to reduce the number of trainable parameters while maintaining high predictive accuracy. A multimodal fusion strategy then injects external mobility and congestion features into the decoder to improve traffic forecasting. Experiments on the Telecom Italia Milan dataset and multiple synthetic congestion scenarios show that PEHT outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in terms of RMSE, MAE, and $R^2$. The implementation is available in the GitHub repository.

Early detection of oral cancer markedly improves clinical outcomes, yet specialized diagnostic tools remain scarce in low-resource settings. Smartphone-based screening is a scalable alternative but needs lightweight models that run within edge-hardware constraints. Hybrid classical-quantum architectures are emerging candidates for parameter-efficient learning, yet most rely on qubit hardware that needs cryogenic operation, unsuitable for edge deployment. Continuous-variable (CV) photonic quantum computing, which operates at room temperature, offers a complementary route. We investigate a hybrid classical-CV quantum classifier for oral cancer detection from smartphone images. The pipeline combines a MobileNetV1 feature extractor, principal component analysis to 16 dimensions, and a parameterized CV-QNN of displacement, interferometric, and Kerr gates on a photonic backend. We propose a simplified $\Phi \circ D \circ U_1$ CV-QNN architecture that cuts trainable parameters 40-45% relative to the standard CV-QNN layer of Killoran et al. (2019a), and identify dimensionality-reduction and encoding-restriction strategies that mitigate barren plateaus, raising loss-gradient variance by roughly 58 orders of magnitude. Whether the simplified layer beats the full layer is width-dependent: the full layer holds a small but significant edge at two qumodes, whereas the simplified layer is significantly better at four qumodes using 44% fewer parameters. The strongest model, a four-qumode simplified CV-QNN with only 18 parameters, attains the highest validation AUC of all models, exceeds a 55-parameter classical baseline using 67% fewer parameters, and reaches 100% calibrated test accuracy across all seeds. These results support CV photonic quantum machine learning for parameter-efficient, room-temperature medical image classification and motivate progress toward edge quantum AI.