AI News Today

arXiv:2609.16656v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: State space models (SSMs), particularly Mamba, have emerged as efficient alternatives to attention-based architectures and have been extended to vision through ViM, VMamba, and Visual State Space Duality (VSSD). Yet the low-bit post-training quantization (PTQ) behavior of VSSD remains insufficiently understood. A weight-activation split on VSSD-Tiny identifies activation quantization as the dominant low-bit bottleneck, while representative inputs t

arXiv:2609.17564v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Deploying retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) on commodity GPUs such as the NVIDIA T4 (16 GB VRAM) exposes a practical failure mode we call the Compression Paradox: neural prompt compression can add key-value (KV) cache contention and preprocessing latency that outweigh generation-time savings, while skipping compression can cause out-of-memory (OOM) failures on long contexts. We identify two distinct failure mechanisms when a vLLM-served LLM and

arXiv:2609.17572v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Auditing vision-language models (VLMs) for societal bias requires distinguishing direct algorithmic valuation disparities from confounders embedded within archival metadata. In this study, we audit Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining (CLIP) models using historical artwork metadata from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access collection (N = 1,500 total objects; N = 743 attributed works: Male n = 534, Female n = 209; n = 618 anonymous). We est

arXiv:2609.17575v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Sharpness-aware minimization (SAM) doubles the cost of every training step, yet its benefit concentrates where training ends. We study where an expensive training mode should be spent and propose Temperon: a plain-SGD explorer for the first 43% of the epoch budget, then one scheduled hand-off that gives the entire final cosine anneal to a SAM-wrapped Muon refiner. On CIFAR-10/100, SVHN and Tiny ImageNet (five seeds, times reported as epochs-to-targ

arXiv:2609.17594v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Can gradient-based training learn the rank needed to store and compose associations in a matrix memory? In our earlier study, we used a matrix-augmented reasoner on a task that admits a rank-1 solution, leaving this question open. We train matrix memories on $K$ fresh key-value bindings whose exact linear recovery requires $\mathrm{rank}(Z) \geq K$. A fixed linear readout queries a single matrix state without access to the original bindings. Experi

arXiv:2609.17595v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In the improving multi-armed bandits problem, each of $k$ arms has an unknown nondecreasing, discretely concave reward curve $f_i$, and pulling arm $i$ for the $t$-th time yields $f_i(t)$. For sufficiently long horizons, Blum and Ravichandran (ALT 2025) proved that randomized algorithms achieve an $O(\sqrt k)$ approximation to the best single arm when the scale $m=f^*(T)$ of the optimal arm is known ($T\ge2k$), and $O(\sqrt k\log k)$ when it is not

arXiv:2609.17652v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: When agentic sessions run to a million tokens with many sessions resident at once, the KV cache and the index that ranks it live in host memory, and the scan that ranks all n keys for a top-k step becomes the traffic that bounds decoding. We present Fathom, a key scan in which each query decides how many bits of each key channel to read. The 4-bit K cache is stored channel-major as bit planes, so a prefix of t planes is exactly the channel's t-bit

arXiv:2609.17654v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper proposes a least squares approach for the training of quadratic neural networks with regularization. The proposed methodology yields a lower bound on the solution of the training optimization problem for the case where the regularization coefficient is positive. Moreover, it yields closed-form expressions for the approximate solution and its sensitivity The lower bound is tight and the approximate solution is the optimal solution when th

arXiv:2609.17682v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Humans efficiently learn new tasks by reusing a rich repertoire of motor skills across different goals and contexts. A similar strategy can also be used to enable simulated characters to efficiently perform new tasks by leveraging reusable motor skills. To support a wide range of downstream tasks, the learned repertoire should be diverse, consisting of distinct behaviors as well as spatial and temporal variation within each behavior. A commonly use

arXiv:2609.17697v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Integrated deep reinforcement learning (DRL) and model predictive control (MPC) methods are increasingly used to control autonomous systems by combining their complementary capabilities. DRL learns control policies through interaction with the environment. MPC uses a system model to optimize control inputs while accounting for constraints. In DRL-MPC frameworks with shared control authority, both the DRL agent and the MPC controller each determine

arXiv:2609.17748v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Deep neural networks that are independently trained to similar performance can be connected by low-loss parametric curves in weight space, a phenomenon known as Mode Connectivity (MC). This geometric property underpins practical techniques such as weight averaging, model ensembling, and model merging. We argue that low-loss connectivity is an incomplete geometric criterion: it controls loss only along a one-dimensional trajectory while leaving the

arXiv:2609.17763v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Next-day wildfire prediction requires models whose forecasts can be evaluated alongside the assumptions and historical evidence used in their computation. Although deep learning can learn spatial patterns from remote-sensing data, predictive performance alone does not establish physical fidelity or operational trustworthiness. This study investigates three modular augmentations for next-day active-fire prediction: wind- and slope-conditioned attent

arXiv:2609.17825v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Understanding how deep neural networks make decisions remains a fundamental challenge. We present NObSP (Nonlinear Oblique Subspace Projections), a framework that decomposes predictions into explicit per feature contribution functions and an interaction residual. NObSP exploits the linear final layer of a trained network and uses oblique projections in sample space to reduce double counting when learned feature subspaces overlap, thereby supporting

arXiv:2609.17841v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We develop a hybrid modeling framework for coupling pre-trained numerics-informed neural networks (NINNs) with classical full order models (FOMs) using the overlapping Schwarz alternating method. We consider the two-dimensional advection-diffusion equation in the advection-dominated, Peclet-number 10^6 regime. We first demonstrate that, unlike the corresponding physics-informed neural network (PINN), a monolithic NINN can be accurately trained on o

arXiv:2609.17886v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: EEG decoding tasks can rely on different temporal dynamics and cross-channel relationships. We test whether specialized modules improve a fully fine-tuned EEG foundation model by augmenting CBraMod with cross-depth Attention Residuals (AttnRes) and two soft-routed expert banks. Across matched three-seed experiments on FACED, ISRUC, SEED-V, and PhysioNet-MI, the complete model changes mean balanced accuracy relative to full fine-tuning by -0.12, +1.

arXiv:2609.17888v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study the problem of demonstration selection, which involves selecting a subset of examples for prepending to a query to a language model. This problem is closely related to in-context learning and language model inference. Since the inference cost of a transformer model scales quadratically with sequence length, the selection problem becomes especially challenging in a long-context scenario. In this paper, we tackle this problem by building on

arXiv:2609.17895v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We introduce TabPFN-3.5, our new flagship Tabular Foundation Model. It significantly outperforms its predecessor, TabPFN-3, and all existing baselines across a broad range of tabular problems. TabPFN-3.5 sets a new state of the art on standard tabular prediction in TabArena, and extends it to the data practitioners encounter in practice: non-i.i.d. data with temporal or grouped splits, tables with strings, text and images, high-cardinality categori

arXiv:2609.17926v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The standard geometric derivation of neural scaling exponents takes the intrinsic dimension of a data manifold as its input. On modular addition in $\mathbb{Z}_p$ that derivation has no input. The exact algebraic solution is an orbit of $\mathbb{Z}_p$ acting by isometries. Transitivity alone makes the ratio statistic underlying the standard dimension estimator a point mass, so the estimator is undefined, and here the two nearest neighbour distances

arXiv:2609.17930v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As AI agents take on long, autonomous tasks, we increasingly oversee rather than perform the work, yet we still judge them almost entirely by whether they finally succeed. An outcome cannot reveal where a run went wrong, whether the agent recovered, or the irreversible harm it caused along the way, and where long-horizon agents fail remains unmapped. We study $2518$ agent trajectories across software engineering, computer use, and science, close to

arXiv:2609.17943v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Long-context LLM inference is bottlenecked by attention, whose repeated KV-cache reads make decoding memory-bound. Self-speculative decoding alleviates this by drafting tokens with sparse attention and verifying them with full attention, but existing batched methods remain synchronized: all requests in a batch share a single draft-verify schedule, even though the optimal draft length varies widely across requests and changes dynamically within each

arXiv:2609.17995v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Natural-language datasets support many downstream applications and research studies, but releasing text can reveal sensitive global properties of the underlying data source, such as the proportion of records associated with a particular gender, diagnosis, or political stance. Existing work has largely focused on property inference attacks that recover such global properties, while defenses for protecting these dataset-level secrets remain limited.

arXiv:2609.17532v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Invasive mechanical ventilation is a lifesaving therapy, but timely, safe discontinuation is essential to preventing extubation failure (EF) and related risks to health. We present a novel approach to EF prediction that leverages features classified in free-text respiratory therapy notes using a large language model and logistic regression pipeline. Applied to a patient cohort from University of Washington Medicine, our method identifies clinically

arXiv:2609.17534v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Social desirability and impression management are pervasive sources of response distortion in human personality assessment, yet their effects on Large Language Models (LLMs) remain underexplored. This study investigates whether contemporary LLMs systematically modulate the expression of Dark Triad traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) under fake-good and fake-bad conditions. Seven state-of-the-art models were evaluated across two e

arXiv:2609.17535v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Language generation research increasingly spans three paradigms: autoregressive decoding, discrete masked diffusion, and continuous flow-matching. Comparing them is difficult because each lives in a separate codebase, so measured differences often reflect implementation details rather than the paradigms themselves. We present DantinoX, an open-source JAX/Flax library in which a single modular Transformer backbone serves all three paradigms. Switchi

arXiv:2609.17536v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) offers non-pharmacological support for elders with cognitive impairment, yet scalability remains constrained by reliance on trained facilitators and severe data scarcity, particularly for privacy-sensitive, low-resource languages such as Cantonese. While Large Language Models (LLMs) show promise for automated companionship, they often struggle to balance empathetic engagement with adherence to cognitive stimulati

arXiv:2609.17537v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We ask whether relation-type information (e.g., capital-of) and entity-specific information (e.g., France to Paris) become causally active at the final-token position at the same depth during recall. Using four complementary causal diagnostics across four decoder-only models and eight prompt families, we find a robust temporal asymmetry: relation information becomes generation-controlling before entity information does. Relation onset precedes enti

arXiv:2609.17538v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for structured information extraction from documents, yet their behavior under realistic OCR noise remains poorly understood. We present a systematic benchmark of open-source instruction-tuned LLMs for key-value pair (KVP) extraction under both clean-text and noisy OCR conditions. We evaluate representative decoder-only models (Gemma, Mistral, Qwen2.5, LLaMA 3, and DeepSeek) on the FUNSD, CORD, and

arXiv:2609.17542v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language model services increasingly route each query to one of several models of differing capability, using a cheap estimate of query complexity to send easy queries to small models and hard queries to large ones. I show that this routing step is not register neutral: text written in a non-standard English register, African American English or the English of second-language writers, is systematically assigned a lower-capacity tier than a me

arXiv:2609.17544v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly being explored for clinical applications, yet their assessment for real-world traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practice remains limited We constructed a clinical case library comprising 349 de-identified outpatient cases from 62 hospitals and evaluated 16 LLMs and a comparator cohort of 60 practicing TCM physicians using 60 representative cases selected from this library. Model outputs and physician r

arXiv:2609.17546v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In this position paper, we argue that legal LLMs' hallucinations should be evaluated as a failure of legal warrant rather than as factual inaccuracy or citation failure. We define claim-authority warrant as the context-sensitive relation between a consequential legal claim and authority that exists, applies to the relevant jurisdiction, is current for the date of analysis, has the legal status represented by the system, and supports the proposition

arXiv:2609.17547v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI assistants are expected to remain useful during difficult interactions, but little is known about how repeated verbal abuse changes their engagement with an otherwise benign task. We contribute a bilingual, multi-turn framework that separates hard disengagement, an unconditional statement of noncontinuation with no stated route to resume, from soft withdrawal, continued availability, observable task-related work, and boundary setting. Each of ei

arXiv:2609.17549v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Cyberbullying (CB) is a complex social phenomenon characterized by repeated aggression, power imbalance, and multi-party interaction. Although large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to generate synthetic CB conversations for data augmentation and benchmarking, it remains unclear whether such data faithfully reproduces the social dynamics of authentic interactions beyond supporting downstream task performance. We present a comprehensive

arXiv:2609.17550v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Language models frequently abandon correct answers when users push back. We study this in two small instruction-tuned models from different families, Qwen2.5-1.5B and Llama-3.2-1B, over TriviaQA: the model answers, is challenged with one of four scripted pushback styles, and answers again. Conditioned on an initially correct answer, the models flip to a wrong answer in 41.8% and 43.1% of episodes. Which pressure works is a property of the model, no

arXiv:2609.17552v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Moral-reward RL can make language-model agents more cooperative, but whether that alignment survives adversarial persona pressure is unknown. Such attacks are realistic: retrieved context, tool outputs, or multi-turn framing can all inject role instructions that compete with the agent's moral objective. We red-team morally trained Gemma-2-27B/9B and Llama-3.1-8B agents with five persona attacks, then probe causality with noise-reward controls, adve

arXiv:2609.17602v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Computational text-based ideal point estimation (CT-IPE) methods are usually compared as named algorithms, yet applying them involves numerous researcher choices that configure how political text is turned into position estimates. This paper argues that CT-IPE methods are better understood as configurable measurement pipelines than as fixed estimators. Building on a large-scale comparative experiment spanning 17 CT-IPE algorithms, 5,537 experimenta

arXiv:2609.17708v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reliable confidence estimation is increasingly central to the trustworthy deployment of language models: a calibrated estimate of the probability that an output is correct decides what to ship, what to escalate, and what to retry. Existing confidence estimators, however, share one design premise: they only read the current inference process, either by introspecting on it, scoring its token probabilities, or resampling it. We argue that the current

arXiv:2609.17764v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Attention-based rerankers score documents by aggregating query-to-document attention and subtracting a null-query calibration pass to remove positional and structural bias. Although widely used, this calibration assumes that the null pass removes irrelevant signal from each document. We show that modern prompt content, e.g. constraints, instructions, personas, and demonstrations can violate this assumption when it enters the scoring readout, making

arXiv:2609.17846v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Autonomous research agents aim to automate scientific workflows, from proposing ideas to conducting experiments and analyzing results. Yet current AI and research agents can propose more directions than available resources allow them to pursue. Moreover, each attempt could consume substantial resources, requiring agents to reconsider how to invest in subsequent research. Thus, deciding how to invest research effort strategically should be a definin

arXiv:2609.17848v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Limited controlled evidence exists on how training data, adaptation method, and model scale jointly affect tool-calling performance in language-model agents. We evaluate supervised fine-tuning (SFT) with LoRA, reinforcement learning (RL) via Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), and SFT followed by GRPO across six Qwen3 models from 0.6B to 32B parameters, covering both in-distribution performance and cross-dataset transfer. SFT with LoRA is th

arXiv:2609.17857v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Who the judge is can affect an LLM-as-judge result, but measuring that effect without confusing it with candidate quality is difficult. We study four open-weight families (Llama 3.1, Qwen 2.5, Gemma 2, and Yi 1.5) in a fully crossed pairwise design with 9,312 judgments. A common per-family statistic is strongly confounded with candidate quality and correlates with Bradley-Terry ability at r = 0.95. We derive a corrected estimator that holds the can