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01.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-19

Humanoid Everyday: A Comprehensive Robotic Dataset for Open-World Humanoid Manipulation

arXiv:2510.08807v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: From loco-motion to dextrous manipulation, humanoid robots have made remarkable strides in demonstrating complex full-body capabilities. However, the majority of current robot learning datasets and benchmarks mainly focus on stationary robot arms, and the few existing humanoid datasets are either confined to fixed environments or limited in task diversity, often lacking human-humanoid interaction and lower-body locomotion. Moreover, there are a few standardized evaluation platforms for benchmarking learning-based policies on humanoid data. In this work, we present Humanoid Everyday, a large-scale and diverse humanoid manipulation dataset characterized by extensive task variety involving dextrous object manipulation, human-humanoid interaction, locomotion-integrated actions, and more. Leveraging a highly efficient human-supervised teleoperation pipeline, Humanoid Everyday aggregates high-quality multimodal sensory data, including RGB, depth, LiDAR, and tactile inputs, together with natural language annotations, comprising 10.3k trajectories and over 3 million frames of data across 260 tasks across 7 broad categories. In addition, we conduct an analysis of representative policy learning methods on our dataset, providing insights into their strengths and limitations across different task categories. For standardized evaluation, we introduce a cloud-based evaluation platform that allows researchers to seamlessly deploy their policies in our controlled setting and receive performance feedback. By releasing Humanoid Everyday along with our policy learning analysis and a standardized cloud-based evaluation platform, we intend to advance research in general-purpose humanoid manipulation and lay the groundwork for more capable and embodied robotic agents in real-world scenarios. Our dataset, data collection code, and cloud evaluation website are made publicly available on our project website.

02.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-11

Hyper3D-lite: count-preserving representation auditing for long-read multi-contact genome data

Authors:

Long-read and single-molecule sequencing technologies are rapidly increasing molecule-level data, with platforms such as Oxford Nanopore, PacBio HiFi, and Roche sequencing-by-expansion advancing at different technology readiness levels. In the specific context of Pore-C and HiPore-C multi-contact chromatin-conformation assays, long-read multi-contact 3D genome assays preserve molecule-level contact context, but common downstream pairwise projections can expand one multi-contact molecule into many pair records. This creates a representation problem: apparent contact evidence can increase through the counting frame before biological interpretation begins. Hyper3D-lite addresses this problem as a representation-first audit tool for read-to-fragment-style long-read multi-contact inputs. It compares all-pair projection with CPB, a count-preserving statistical accounting reference point, and separates broad software outputs from conservative higher-order candidate calls.

03.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-25

Large scale regularity and correlation length for almost length-minimizing random curves in the plane

arXiv:2412.17625v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We consider a model of random curves in the plane related to the large-scale behavior of the Random Field Ising Model (RFIM) at temperature zero in two space dimensions. Our work is motivated by attempts to quantify the Imry-Ma phenomenon concerning the rounding of the phase transition by quenched disorder, and connects to recent advances regarding the decay of correlations in the RFIM. We study a continuum model of minimal surfaces in two space dimensions subject to an external, quenched random field, and restrict ourselves to isotropic surface integrands. The random fields we consider behave like white noise on large scales with an ultra-violet regularization reminiscent of the lattice structure of the RFIM. We give a finer description of the minimizer below the length scale $ L_* $ starting from which the influence of boundary conditions is suppressed with a given probability, which has recently been shown to satisfy $ \log L_* \sim \varepsilon^{-\frac{4}{3}} $ in the amplitude $\varepsilon>0$ of the noise. More precisely, we prove flatness of the phase boundaries on scales $ L $ up to $ \log L \lesssim \varepsilon^{-\frac{4}{13}} $.

04.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-19

Quantum ring all-reduce: communication and privacy advantages for distributed learning

arXiv:2606.20344v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Machine learning models have scaled to unprecedented sizes, making training across distributed devices the de facto standard in the field. In this work, we explore how quantum communications can make distributed training both more communication-efficient and information-theoretically private, for both classical and quantum learning models. Ring all-reduce is the foundational communication primitive for large-scale distributed training. We present a quantum version that reduces per-link online communication by a provably optimal factor of two using pre-shared entanglement and superdense coding, without requiring the learning model or gradient computation to change. Beyond bandwidth, the primitive enables privacy guarantees that are information-theoretically impossible for any classical protocol, achieving composable {\epsilon}-secure aggregation, via verified entanglement, at a 2x overhead in GHZ copies. Our hybrid quantum-classical communication architecture yields simultaneous communication and security advantages for large scale distributed training, regardless of whether the learning itself is quantum or classical. Finally, we characterise quantum advantages in gradient conflict detection for server-to-client communication under bandwidth constraints, a setting that arises after ring all-reduce is completed, when full gradient broadcast to external clients is infeasible. Two variants of the problem admit different separations. For margin-based alignment testing (\textsc{GapIP}_{\tau}), the quantum advantage is quadratic in the margin parameter: \widetilde{O}({\tau}^{-1}\log P) qubits versus \widetilde{O}(\min(\{\tau}^{-2},P)) bits. For sign-consistency auditing against a private parameter matching (\textsc{TieAudit}_{\epsilon}), the advantage represents an exponential separation in communication complexity: \Omega(\sqrt{P}) bits whereas O({\epsilon}^{-2}\log P) qubits suffice.

05.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

DYNA-PRUNER: Input-Adaptive Data-Model Co-Pruning for Efficient and Scalable Spatio-Temporal Media Prediction

Spatio-temporal prediction supports radar/satellite nowcasting and city-scale traffic monitoring, but modern models are often too expensive for real-time deployment. This stems from a mismatch between dense computation and strong input-dependent redundancy (e.g., calm seas or clear skies). To enable automated, resource-aware architecture optimization in scalable media analysis, we propose Dyna-Pruner, an end-to-end framework for input-dependent co-pruning of data and model structure. A shared-importance synchronization mechanism generates coupled masks that prune redundant regions and their corresponding computational units (e.g., convolutional filters), yielding per-sample sparse sub-networks at inference time. Experiments on WeatherBench, SEVIR, and TaxiBJ show seamless integration with CNN, RNN, and Transformer backbones, reducing FLOPs by up to $70\%$ and achieving a $2.5\times$ speedup on NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin with negligible accuracy loss ($

06.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-15

A New Multi-Domain Benchmark for Micro-Action Recognition and Detection

Micro-actions are short-duration, low-amplitude subtle body movements at the whole-body level that can reveal latent intentions, involuntary reactions, and fine-grained affective changes. Our previous MA-52 benchmark has provided an important foundation for micro-action recognition, but it remains limited in scale, scene diversity, task coverage, and evaluation protocols. To advance micro-action analysis toward more realistic and comprehensive settings, we introduce MMA-82, a large-scale multi-domain extension of MA-52. MMA-82 expands the label space from 52 to 82 fine-grained micro-action categories and covers four distinct domains, including laboratory interviews, street interviews, psychiatric patient interviews, and emotion-rich television videos, resulting in 77,856 annotated instances from 454 subjects. Built upon MMA-82, we establish two core tasks: Micro-Action Recognition and Multi-label Micro-Action Detection. For recognition, we further define in-domain and cross-domain protocols, including few-shot and zero-shot settings, to evaluate model robustness, transferability, and generalization. Extensive experiments show that current methods still struggle with realistic micro-action understanding, especially under domain shift, long-tailed category distributions, and complex temporal localization. Beyond benchmarking, we investigate the relationship between micro-actions and emotion, showing that micro-actions are strongly associated with emotional states and provide complementary cues to facial micro-expressions for improved emotion recognition. These results demonstrate that MMA-82 serves as a comprehensive and challenging benchmark for realistic micro-action analysis and a valuable resource for human-centered AI. MMA-82 is available at https://github.com/LpyNow/MMA-82.

07.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

m2sv: A Scalable Benchmark for Map-to-Street-View Spatial Reasoning

Vision–language models (VLMs) achieve strong performance on many multimodal benchmarks but remain brittle on spatial reasoning tasks that require aligning abstract overhead representations with egocentric views. We introduce m2sv, a scalable benchmark for map-to-street-view spatial reasoning that asks models to infer camera viewing direction by aligning a north-up overhead map with a Street View image captured at the same real-world intersection. We release m2sv-20k, a geographically diverse benchmark with controlled ambiguity, along with m2sv-sft-11k, a curated set of structured reasoning traces for supervised fine-tuning. Despite strong performance on existing multimodal benchmarks, the best evaluated VLM achieves only 65.2% accuracy on m2sv, below human annotators who reach 72.0% on average (and 95% for an expert) with strong inter-annotator agreement ($\kappa$ up to 0.76). While supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning yield consistent gains, cross-benchmark evaluations reveal limited transfer. Beyond aggregate accuracy, we systematically analyze difficulty in map-to-street-view reasoning using both structural signals and human effort, and conduct an extensive failure analysis of adapted open models. Our findings highlight persistent gaps in geometric alignment, evidence aggregation, and reasoning consistency, motivating future work on grounded spatial reasoning across viewpoints.

08.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-19

How LLMs Fail and Generalize in RTL Coding for Hardware Design?

Translating sequential programming priors into the parallel temporal logic of hardware design remains a crucial bottleneck for large language models(LLM). To investigate this, we introduce a new error taxonomy grounded in problem solvability, inspired by cognitive theory. Our taxonomy categorizes failures into syntactic, semantic, solvable functional, and unsolvable functional types. Evaluations reveal a strict empirical ceiling on the VerilogEval benchmark, as frontier models plateau at a 90.8% initial pass rate. These plateaus are defined by unsolvable functional errors, exposing persistent knowledge gaps immune to test time compute scaling. Furthermore, we expose a striking surface convergence gap: optimization readily eliminates syntax errors but concurrently exacerbates deeper functional failures. Our findings demonstrate that alignment techniques merely teach models to compile. While repeated sampling strategies can patch solvable errors, register-transfer level(RTL) coding capacity remains strictly bounded by pretraining knowledge. Addressing challenges in the current LLM based hardware generation pipeline requires more studies in model reasoning rather than alignment interventions.

09.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-15

Dealing with locality in QAOA

arXiv:2606.14447v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Shallow-depth QAOA on sparse, high-diameter MaxCut instances faces a locality bottleneck: at depth \(p\), local observables can depend only on a bounded neighborhood of the circuit interaction graph. We propose a transport-augmented QAOA that keeps the MaxCut cost Hamiltonian unchanged but enriches the mixer with optimized, unweighted shortcut couplings (scheduled \(XX+YY\)) to collapse the effective interaction-graph diameter. Using exact finite-depth support recursions, we relate optimal shortcut placement to bounded-diameter graph augmentation, and show in benchmarks that (unlike ma-QAOA) performance becomes effectively size-invariant once the diameter is reduced. For bipartite families (base diameter 4), reducing the interaction path to \(d=1\) raises the ensemble-averaged approximation ratio from 0.7378 (ma-QAOA) to 0.9767 at \(p=1\) (\(\sigma=0.0251\), nine system sizes); on random trees (base diameter 10), at \(p=2\) it improves from 0.9226 to 0.9997 (\(\sigma=0.0001\)).

10.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-17

Average entropy of Bogoliubov-Kubo-Mori random state ensemble

arXiv:2606.17960v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Random states play a foundational role in different branches of modern quantum science. In this work, we study a recently proposed random state ensemble induced from von Neumann entropy through the Bogoliubov-Kubo-Mori (BKM) metric. In particular, we derive an exact yet explicit formula of average entanglement entropy over BKM ensemble. In obtaining the formula, we only make use of properties of normalization constant of the ensemble in the absence of its correlation kernel, contrary to average entropy computation of other ensembles. This new framework paves the way for calculating higher-order cumulants of BKM ensemble beyond the average.

11.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-11

SirenFNO: Efficient and Full Frequency Learning of Fourier Neural Operators

arXiv:2606.11518v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Fourier neural operators (FNOs) are effective and efficient surrogates for approximating solutions of PDEs and generalize across discretizations. However, owing to the reliance on frequency truncation to maintain learning efficiency of FNOs, empirical studies suggest that FNOs exhibit spectral bias toward low-frequency information, which may hinder the learning capability especially for certain PDEs with strong high-frequency oscillations. To address this limitation, we propose SirenFNO, a novel framework that leverages sinusoidal representation networks (SIRENs) to learn implicit neural representations and performs mode-wise kernel parameterization. Our SIREN parameterization learns a full-grid spectrum with a constant and discretization-independent parameter count, thereby eliminating the need for frequency truncation. We further extend SirenFNO with functional tensor decompositions to enhance parameter and learning efficiency. Empirical results show that our SirenFNO consistently outperforms FNO with approximately $4$ to $15$ times parameter reductions with preserved discretization invariance, and our functional decomposition variants obtain performance improvements with a maximum of $73$ times fewer parameters across multiple PDE benchmarks.

12.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12

Will AI Agents Free Us From Meaningless Work? A Human-Centered Analysis

arXiv:2606.12430v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Some claim that AI agents will free workers from the boring parts of their jobs, yet little is known about how workers themselves identify which tasks should be automated. Prior research focuses on occupations, overlooking that workers experience varying levels of meaning across tasks within the same role. We address this gap with a task-level analysis grounded in Graeber's theory of bullshit jobs. Using ratings from 202 workers on 171 workplace tasks, we (1) validate a five-item scale of perceived bullshitness, (2) show that perceived bullshitness strongly predicts desire for AI delegation, and (3) find that such tasks are also seen as requiring less human oversight. Together, these findings suggest that tasks perceived as bullshit are natural candidates for AI delegation, aligning worker preferences with perceived feasibility.

13.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-25

Feasibility-driven QAOA with penalty scheduling

arXiv:2606.25117v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Most available quantum algorithms address constrained optimization problems by treating constraints as soft penalty terms within a QUBO formulation. This approach requires careful adjustment of the penalty coefficients, which scales poorly with the number of constraints and lacks a proper strategy to balance feasibility and solution quality. In this work, we introduce two extensions of standard linear-ramp QAOA (lr-QAOA) tailored to problems with multiple heterogeneous constraints. We first construct $\Lambda$-lr-QAOA, in which each penalty term is assigned its own linear-ramp schedule, promoting penalty weights from external hyperparameters to internal variational parameters of QAOA, similarly to the objective and mixer parameters. By optimizing all schedules jointly in a single run, this approach eliminates nested penalty tuning and scales more efficiently to multiple constraints. The optimization is guided by a feasibility-driven loss function that pushes the quantum state towards high-quality feasible solutions. As a further refinement, we introduce piecewise-ramp QAOA, in which the linear ramps are replaced by two-segment piecewise schedules, enhancing the expressiveness of the Ansatz at the cost of a small parameter overhead independent of the circuit depth. We benchmark both methods on Earth-observation satellite mission planning tasks formulated as budget-constrained Maximum Weight Independent Set problems. Numerical results show that piecewise-ramp QAOA consistently outperforms lr-QAOA and $\Lambda$-lr-QAOA across circuit depths and system sizes. Furthermore, both $\Lambda$-lr-QAOA and piecewise-ramp QAOA exhibit a high feasibility rate, which is crucial in industrial applications. Our analysis highlights an intrinsic feasibility-optimality trade-off, which we address by introducing a filtered variant of the loss providing a single hyperparameter to tune this balance.

14.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-15

The Holistic Storage of Verb+Up Phrases in Text-based and Audio-based Language Models

A crucial aspect of linguistic capability is the ability to trade off between stored representations and abstract knowledge: one must retrieve learned representations, but also generate novel ones by applying productive rules. While recent work has examined abstract knowledge in language models, holistic storage of multi-word units has received far less attention. We probe internal representations in text-based LLMs and an ASR model, testing whether V+up phrasal verbs develop distinct representations as a function of frequency and predictability. All models show evidence of holistic storage driven by frequency and predictability, further supporting usage-based theories of language.

15.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-15

Testing For Distribution Shifts with Conditional Conformal Test Martingales

arXiv:2602.13848v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We propose a sequential test for detecting arbitrary distribution shifts that allows conformal test martingales (CTMs) to work under a fixed, reference-conditional setting. Existing CTM detectors construct test martingales by continually growing a reference set with each incoming sample, using it to assess how atypical the new sample is relative to past observations. While this design yields anytime-valid type-I error control, it suffers from test-time contamination: after a change, post-shift observations enter the reference set and dilute the evidence for distribution shift, increasing detection delay and reducing power. In contrast, our method avoids contamination by design by comparing each new sample to a fixed null reference dataset. Our main technical contribution is a robust martingale construction that remains valid conditional on the null reference data, achieved by explicitly accounting for the estimation error in the reference distribution induced by the finite reference set. This yields anytime-valid type-I error control together with guarantees of asymptotic power one and bounded expected detection delay. Empirically, our method detects shifts faster than standard CTMs, providing a powerful and reliable distribution-shift detector.

16.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

Assessment of adaptive functioning in Angelman syndrome using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Third Edition

Purpose: This study examined longitudinal trajectories of adaptive functioning in 331 individuals with Angelman syndrome (AS) using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Third Edition (Vineland-3) and examined differences by molecular subtype. Methods: A total of 331 individuals (156 females, 47%) with genetically confirmed AS (ages 6 months to 52 years) were assessed between 2018 and 2025, including 207 with a deletion subtype, 63 with uniparental disomy or imprinting defect, and 61 with a UBE3A point mutation. Growth scale values were analyzed using linear mixed-effects models with log2-transformed age. Results: Individuals with deletion subtypes demonstrated significantly lower adaptive functioning across domains compared to those with non-deletion subtypes. Adaptive skills across all Vineland-3 subdomains increased nonlinearly with age, showing faster growth early in life that slowed over time, with largely parallel trajectories across subtypes. Conclusion: Individuals with AS demonstrate slow but steady growth in adaptive functioning that continues into adulthood, with progress varying by molecular subtype. These findings provide updated natural history benchmarks and demonstrate the utility of the Vineland-3 for clinical trials.

17.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

The use of Peres lattices in periodically driven systems

arXiv:2606.20009v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We demonstrate the strength of the method of Peres lattices in periodically driven quantum systems. The method, which has previously been used mostly in stationary systems, enables us to efficiently detect resonances in the driven system, to monitor the onset of chaos, and to recognize critical properties of the Floquet modes. It also allows quick comparisons of the spectra of Floquet modes for various driving Hamiltonians and transparent tests of the iterative approximation techniques based on effective stationary Hamiltonians.

18.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

RAIGen: Rare Attribute Identification in Text-to-Image Generative Models

Text-to-image diffusion models achieve impressive generation quality but inherit and amplify training-data biases, skewing coverage of semantic attributes. Prior work addresses this in two ways. Closed-set approaches mitigate biases in predefined fairness categories (e.g., gender, race), assuming socially salient minority attributes are known a priori. Open-set approaches frame the task as bias identification, highlighting majority attributes that dominate outputs. Both overlook a complementary task: uncovering rare or minority features underrepresented in the data distribution (social, cultural, or stylistic) yet still encoded in model representations. We introduce RAIGen, the first framework, to our knowledge, for label-free rare-attribute discovery in diffusion models, requiring no predefined minority categories. RAIGen leverages Matryoshka Sparse Autoencoders and a novel minority metric combining neuron activation frequency with semantic distinctiveness to identify interpretable neurons whose top-activating images reveal underrepresented attributes. Experiments show RAIGen discovers attributes beyond fixed fairness categories in Stable Diffusion, scales to larger models such as SDXL, supports systematic auditing across architectures, and enables targeted amplification of rare attributes during generation. The project page is available at https://vssilpa.github.io/RAIGen_webpage/ .

19.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

Agreement in Representation Space for Open-Ended Self-Consistency

Self-consistency improves LLM reasoning by sampling multiple outputs and selecting the most consistent answer, but existing formulations largely rely on exact matching and therefore remain limited to tasks with categorical outputs. In this work, we study self-consistency in open-ended generation tasks such as code synthesis and text summarization. We hypothesize that consistency can be understood as a geometric property of the generation space, where semantically compatible generations concentrate in similar regions of representation space. To study this hypothesis, we introduce Embedding-Based Agreement (EBA), a simple training-free operationalization that estimates agreement by clustering sampled generations in embedding space. Through experiments on mathematical reasoning, code generation, and summarization, we show that agreement in representation space provides a robust and scalable signal of self-consistency for open-ended tasks. In particular, EBA consistently outperforms random selection and exhibits more stable scaling behavior than recent selection approaches based on LLM evaluation or uncertainty estimation. We further show that these agreement signals remain stable across model families and embedding spaces, even with native hidden representations. Finally, our analysis shows that the geometric location occupied by sampled generations is strongly correlated with generation quality: generations concentrated near central regions of representation space tend to correspond to more reliable outputs, whereas peripheral generations are substantially less accurate. Overall, our findings support viewing self-consistency as a property of the geometric organization of sampled generations rather than exact symbolic overlap.

20.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-19

The t-Split Two-Periodic Aztec Diamond Model

Authors:

arXiv:2606.19507v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In this work we consider an Aztec diamond model split into two unequal regions which are asymptotically fixed in size. Each region is weighted with a distinct two-periodic weighting. We refer to this model as the t-split two-periodic Aztec diamond, to signify its difference from the previous work title Split Two-Periodic Aztec Diamond, where the model was split into two equal regions. We derive an integral expression for the correlation kernel of the model and give a partial description of the scaling limit behavior, along with a conjecture for the remainder. We refer to the larger and smaller sides of the model as the dominant and non-dominant sides, and to the location of the weight change as the interface. The dominant side exhibits a limit shape that depends only on its own weighting and is identical to that of the two-periodic Aztec diamond, while the non-dominant side appears to have a novel limit shape that depends on both weightings and the location of the interface. Lastly, we consider the complete limit shape in the case where the dominant side two-periodic parameter goes to 0.

21.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-24

Free-Space CV-QKD with Single-Mode Fiber Reception: Effective Coupling Statistics and Protocol-Dependent Reference Noise

arXiv:2606.24431v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study free-space continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) with single-mode fiber (SMF) reception under atmospheric turbulence. The optical channel is modeled by split-step propagation through random phase screens, followed by finite-aperture collection and projection onto the guided receiving mode. We first examine the standard GG02 setting and ask which receiver-side observable is sufficient for effective key-rate prediction. We show that a mean-loss description is generally too optimistic, whereas a scalar effective law for the SMF coupling efficiency provides an accurate downstream Gaussian-channel description within the effective model considered here. We then extend the optical model to a pilot-assisted architecture in which the signal and pilot propagate through correlated but non-identical turbulent realizations generated by a frozen-flow construction. In this case, the signal coupling law alone is no longer sufficient: signal–pilot phase mismatch and loss of post-coupling coherence produce an additional protocol-dependent reference-noise penalty. The results distinguish two regimes: a scalar coupling description is largely adequate for GG02, while transmitted-reference architectures require an additional differential reference observable beyond the signal coupling statistics.

22.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-17

Dissociating Decodability and Causal Use in Bracket-Sequence Transformers

When trained on tasks requiring an understanding of hierarchical structure, transformers have been found to represent this hierarchy in distinct ways: in the geometry of the residual stream, and in stack-like attention patterns maintaining a last-in, first-out ordering. However, it remains unclear whether these representations are causally used or merely decodable. We examine this gap in transformers trained on the Dyck language (a formal language of balanced bracket sequences), where the hierarchical ground truth is explicit. By probing and intervening on the residual stream and attention patterns, we find that depth, distance, and top-of-stack signals are all decodable, yet their causal roles diverge. Specifically, masking attention to the true top-of-stack position causes a sharp drop in long-distance accuracy, while ablating low-dimensional residual stream subspaces has comparatively little effect. These results, which extend to a templated natural language setting, suggest that even in a controlled setting where the relevant hierarchical variables are known, decodability alone does not imply causal use.

23.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

Fast When, Careful Who: Dual-Process Multiparty Turn-Taking with Diffusion Augmentation

Reliable turn-taking is essential for spoken dialogue systems. However, most existing methods are designed for two-speaker interaction and struggle with realistic multiparty audio containing overlap and rapid speaker changes. We study multiparty turn-taking on the VoxConverse dataset and propose an audio-only two-stage pipeline that separates when to trigger a turn boundary from whether the floor is actually transferring. A fast trigger scans the audio and proposes candidate end-of-turn times, while a lightweight verifier runs only at those times to decide \textsc{Hold} or \textsc{Shift} and support next-speaker prediction. We report results in the full multiparty setting and a controlled dyadic top-2 projection for comparability. We also investigate diffusion-based, label-preserving background-audio mixing as a data augmentation strategy. Results show improved shift detection over a baseline, with further improvements from diffusion augmentation.

24.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-25

Multi-Task Optimization over Networks of Tasks

arXiv:2604.21991v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Multi-task optimization is a powerful approach for solving a large number of tasks in parallel. However, existing algorithms face distinct limitations: Population-based methods scale poorly and remain underexplored for large task sets. Approaches that do scale beyond a thousand tasks are mostly MAP-Elites variants and rely on a fixed, discretized archive that disregards the topology of the task space. We introduce MONET (Multi-Task Optimization over Networks of Tasks), a multi-task optimization algorithm that models the task space as a graph: tasks are nodes, and edges connect tasks in the task parameter space. This representation enables knowledge transfer between tasks and remains tractable for high-dimensional problems while exploiting the topology of the task space. MONET combines social learning, which generates candidates from neighboring nodes via crossover, with individual learning, which refines a node's own solution independently via mutation. We evaluate MONET on four domains (archery, arm, and cartpole with 5,000 tasks each; hexapod with 2,000 tasks) and show that it matches or exceeds the performance of existing MAP-Elites-based baselines across all four domains.

25.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-17

When Life Gives You BC, Make Q-functions: Extracting Q-values from Behavior Cloning for On-Robot Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2605.05172v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Behavior Cloning (BC) has emerged as a highly effective paradigm for robot learning. However, BC lacks a self-guided mechanism for online improvement after demonstrations have been collected. Existing offline-to-online learning methods often cause policies to replace previously learned good actions due to a distribution mismatch between offline data and online learning. In this work, we propose Q2RL, Q-Estimation and Q-Gating from BC for Reinforcement Learning, an algorithm for efficient offline-to-online learning. Our method consists of two parts: (1) Q-Estimation extracts a Q-function from a BC policy using a few interaction steps with the environment, followed by online RL with (2) Q-Gating, which switches between BC and RL policy actions based on their respective Q-values to collect samples for RL policy training. Across manipulation tasks from D4RL and robomimic benchmarks, Q2RL outperforms SOTA offline-to-online learning baselines on success rate and time to convergence. Q2RL is efficient enough to be applied in an on-robot RL setting, learning robust policies for contact-rich and high precision manipulation tasks such as pipe assembly and kitting, in 1-2 hours of online interaction, achieving success rates of up to 100% and up to 3.75x improvement against the original BC policy. Code and video are available at https://pages.rai-inst.com/q2rl_website/