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02.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-24

Variational Model Merging for Pareto Front Estimation in Multitask Finetuning

Authors:
Hugo Monz\'on Maldonado↗Nico Daheim↗Thomas M\"ollenhoff↗Iryna Gurevych↗Mohammad Emtiyaz Khan↗

arXiv:2412.08147v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Pareto fronts are useful to find good task-mixing strategies for multitask finetuning, but they are also costly to compute. To reduce costs, recent works have used existing model merging methods to help train cheap surrogate models to estimate the Pareto fronts. However, no work has yet considered designing new model-merging methods to directly, and provably, improve the quality of Pareto fronts. Here, we fill this gap by proposing a new Bayesian approach called Variational Model Merging. In this approach, existing model-merging methods are obtained as special cases of "posterior-merging" when Gaussian posteriors are used and new model-merging strategies can be derived by using non-Gaussian posteriors. Our main theoretical result is to show that more flexible posteriors necessarily yield better estimates of Pareto fronts. For instance, a Pareto front estimate obtained by merging full-Gaussian posteriors is expected to be better than that obtained by using isotropic Gaussian posteriors. We validate the theory through extensive empirical results on vision and language transformers where better Gaussian families consistently yields better or comparable Pareto fronts. Our work is a rare instance where Bayesian ideas are used to improve Pareto analysis.

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03.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-15

Cluster LOCO: Feature Importance For Interpreting Clusters

Authors:
Claire M. He↗Genevera I. Allen↗

arXiv:2606.14592v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Clustering is widely used for exploratory analysis and scientific discovery, driving insights from market segmentation to biological data analysis, but its outputs can be difficult to interpret, audit, and reproduce as modern datasets become increasingly large and complex. Reliable use of clustering requires understanding which features drive the discovered structure, yet feature-level explanations for clustering remain scarce compared with methods in supervised learning. Furthermore, existing clustering feature importance scores are often tied to specific algorithms and data assumptions. To address these challenges, we propose Cluster LOCO (Leave-One-Covariate-Out), a family of model-agnostic feature importance scores for clustering. Cluster LOCO is built on feature occlusion and clustering generalizability, defined as whether cluster labels learned on one subset of the data can be accurately predicted on held-out samples. For any chosen clustering algorithm, Cluster LOCO quantifies a feature's importance by measuring how much its removal degrades generalizability. We first introduce Cluster LOCO-Split, which relies on data splitting, and then extend it to Cluster LOCO-MP, a minipatch ensemble-based version designed for large-scale data. Across synthetic simulations and an application to cell-type discovery in single-cell transcriptomics, we show that Cluster LOCO more reliably recovers informative features than existing clustering feature importance methods.

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04.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-24

The most discriminable quantum states in the multicopy regime

Authors:
Maria Kvashchuk↗Polina Chernyshova↗Lucas E. A. Porto↗Ties-A. Ohst↗Lucas B. Vieira↗Marco T\'ulio Quintino↗

arXiv:2604.26927v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This work investigates which sets of quantum states give rise to the highest achievable success probability in minimum-error state discrimination if multiple copies of the unknown state are given. Specifically, we consider uniformly distributed ensembles of the form $\left\{\frac{1}{N},\rho_i^{\otimes k}\right\}_{i=1}^N$, where $N$ states in dimension $d$ are provided in $k$ identical copies, and derive universal limits in this scenario. For pure state ensembles, we prove that whenever $N$ is large enough to support a state $k$-design, these designs will exactly give rise to the maximally discriminable sets. We further show that when $N$ exceeds the size required for a $k$-design, mixed states can outperform all pure state ensembles. We then recognise that the problem of most discriminable classical states in the multi-copy regime is in one-to-one correspondence to the concept of the multiplicative Bayes capacity of independent uses of classical channels, a concept that emerges naturally in the context of classical information leakage. This connection allows us to completely solve the classical analogue of our problem when $N\geq \binom{d + k - 1}{k}$, and to prove that quantum systems offer a quadratic advantage (in number of copies $k$) over classical ones. Then, we prove that this classical over quantum advantage is strongly reduced when one is restricted to real quantum states, more precisely, when $N \geq k + 1$, pure real qubits only offer a constant advantage over classical bits. Finally, we introduce computational techniques to find sets of most discriminable ensembles and to obtain rigorous universal upper bounds on the maximal success probability for multi-copy state discrimination in cases that are analytically intractable.

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05.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-24

MMed-Bench-IR: A Heterogeneous Benchmark for Multilingual Medical Information Retrieval

Authors:
Junhyeok Lee↗Han Jang↗Hyeonjin Goh↗Kyu Sung Choi↗

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) in clinical settings increasingly requires multilingual retrieval against predominantly English evidence corpora. Multilingual medical retrieval demands three capabilities: cross-lingual alignment, concept discrimination, and evidence retrieval. However, existing benchmarks evaluate these only in isolation, leaving the interaction between biomedical expertise and multilingual coverage unmeasured. We introduce MMed-Bench-IR, a benchmark designed to disentangle these axes across 6 languages and three structurally heterogeneous tasks: (1) cross-lingual medical QA retrieval with 6,127 queries grounded in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), (2) concept discrimination over 4,975 confusion sets at three difficulty tiers, and (3) multilingual evidence retrieval for RAG with 2,040 quality-assured queries. The three tasks share zero concept and query overlap by design, ensuring that aggregate scores reflect genuine capability breadth. Evaluation of ten systems across six paradigm families reveals severe cross-lingual failure: biomedical encoders that score 0.818 nDCG@10 in English drop to 0.056 in Japanese, a gap that English-only benchmarks cannot detect.

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

Nonlinear Two-Time-Scale Stochastic Approximation: A Sharp Phase Transition and How to Beat It

Authors:
Dhruv Sarkar↗Vaneet Aggarwal↗

arXiv:2606.14488v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent finite-time analyses of nonlinear two-time-scale stochastic approximation show that under contractive assumptions the slow iterate $Y_k$ with stepsizes $\beta_k=\Theta(k^{-1})$ and $\alpha_k=\Theta(k^{-a})$, $a\in(1/2,1)$, generally satisfies a mean-square rate of order $k^{-a}$; decoupled $k^{-1}$ rates require strong local linearity. We identify a sharp regularity-dependent boundary. In a rate-determining normal form where the slow drift contains a locally linear leakage and a nonlinear remainder of order $1+\rho$ ($\rho\in[0,1]$), the uncorrected recursion satisfies \[ \mathbb{E}\|Y_k\|^2 \le C\bigl(k^{-1}+k^{-a(1+\rho)}\bigr), \] and a matching scalar Gaussian lower bound shows that the slower term is unavoidable without modifying the update. Thus the decoupled $k^{-1}$ rate is guaranteed for the uncorrected recursion exactly when $a(1+\rho)\ge 1$. This lower bound concerns only the naive update; it is not an information-theoretic obstruction. We demonstrate this by equipping the normal-form recursion with an auxiliary online bias estimator \[ M_{k+1}=M_k+\gamma_k(R(X_k)-M_k),\qquad \beta_k\ll\gamma_k\ll\alpha_k, \] and subtracting $M_k$ from the slow update. Under the same stability, moment, and remainder assumptions, the corrected recursion achieves $\mathbb{E}\|\widetilde Y_k\|^2=O(k^{-1})$ for every $\rho\in[0,1]$, including regimes where the uncorrected update provably suffers the slower rate. Finally, we prove localized transfer theorems that extend the phase-transition mechanism to general nonlinear TTSA in fast-manifold coordinates. The proofs are non-asymptotic and rely on two Abel-transform cancellations: one for the locally linear fast-error leakage, and one for the tracked nonlinear bias.

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07.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-11

The impact of pre-stroke statin use on baseline corrected infarct volume and collateral perfusion

Authors:
Coupland↗K. G↗Toson↗Martin↗Lillicrap↗T. P↗Pinheiro↗Levi↗C. R↗Garcia-Esperon↗Spratt↗N. J↗…

Stroke is a leading cause of disability and mortality worldwide, with ischaemic stroke the most prevalent type. Statins, used for cholesterol management, have demonstrated benefits in reducing stroke risk and improving outcomes in preclinical studies. However, the impact of pre-stroke statin use on stroke outcomes remain inconsistent. In this study, we aim to evaluate whether pre-stroke statin use is associated with greater volume of salvaged tissue and improved cerebral collateral perfusion. A retrospective analysis was conducted using data from 281 patients presenting with acute ischemic stroke to the John Hunter Hospital between May 2015 and May 2020. Patients were grouped based on pre-stroke statin use, and clinical variables, including infarct volume and collateral perfusion, were assessed. The primary outcome was salvage volume derived from baseline perfusion lesion volume minus infarct volume at follow-up. Collateral perfusion was measured by the hypoperfusion volume defined by delay time (DT)>6 seconds divided by the hypoperfusion volume defined by DT >2 seconds. Patients on statins at admission were significantly older and had more comorbidities. No significant association was found between pre-stroke statin use and salvage volume or collateral perfusion after adjusting for covariates. Larger initial infarct core was a significant predictor of salvage volume due to larger salvageable tissue volume at baseline. These findings indicate that pre-morbid statin use is not associated with larger salvage volume or improved cerebral collateral perfusion.

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08.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-18

Rigidity of infinite exchangeable sequences with Gaussian marginals

Authors:
Maximillian Newman↗

arXiv:2606.18654v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study infinite exchangeable sequences with Gaussian one-dimensional marginals. We formulate the conjecture that joint Gaussianity of a single pair of coordinates forces the entire sequence to be a Gaussian process. Although this conjecture remains open, we prove that joint Gaussianity of the first four coordinates is sufficient. We also establish the corresponding two-point criterion under the additional assumption that the directing measure is almost surely infinitely divisible.

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09.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-24

DREG: A Layer-Wise Jacobian Regularization as a General-Purpose Penalty

Authors:
Rowan Martnishn↗

arXiv:2606.23942v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We present a large-scale empirical study isolating the contributions of the Derivative Regularization penalty (DREG). Across a fully-crossed factorial sweep of 960 experiments spanning 4 activations, 6 regularizers, 8 datasets, and 5 random seeds, we ask: when, where, and why does DREG work? Our results establish three principal findings. First, DREG achieves the highest overall and clean-regime accuracy among all regularizers evaluated (significantly so against the unregularized baseline, Weight Decay, and IGPen; Wilcoxon $p \leq 0.031$). It ranks second in noise robustness behind Spectral Normalization (SN) - the only two layer-wise regularizers in the study. Second, DREG is globally the best-performing regularizer under GELU, the default activation in modern transformer architectures, particularly on both messy vision and messy NLP benchmarks, suggesting direct applicability to frontier deep learning settings. Third, DREG's advantage over competing regularizers is most pronounced under data scarcity, consistent with its role as a geometric inductive bias that substitutes for the regularizing effect of data volume. Throughout, DREG is applied with a single fixed hyperparameter $\lambda = 10^{-2.5}$ and no per-dataset tuning, supporting its characterization as a plug-and-play regularizer for neural networks with nontrivial Jacobian structure. These findings are consistent with DREG's design: concentrating regularization pressure on layers where the activation derivative is largest, rather than constraining the network uniformly.

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10.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

HyperPotter: Spell the Charm of High-Order Interactions in Audio Deepfake Detection

Authors:
Qing Wen↗Haohao Li↗Zhongjie Ba↗Peng Cheng↗Miao He↗Li Lu↗Kui Ren↗

arXiv:2602.05670v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Advances in AIGC technologies have enabled the synthesis of highly realistic audio deepfakes capable of deceiving human auditory perception. Although numerous audio deepfake detection (ADD) methods have been developed, most rely on local temporal/spectral features or pairwise relations, overlooking high-order interactions (HOIs). HOIs capture discriminative patterns that emerge from multiple feature components beyond their individual contributions. We propose HyperPotter, a hypergraph-based framework designed to capture high-order relations associated with synergistic patterns through clustering-based hyperedges with class-aware prototype initialization. Extensive experiments on 13 test sets show that HyperPotter improves over the baseline on 11 sets, yielding an average relative EER reduction of 12.68\% across all test sets and 22.15\% on the improved sets. These results demonstrate strong cross-scenario generalization, while also revealing robustness limits under severe codec or channel distortion.

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11.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-24

EERLoss: A Novel Loss Function for Training Deep Biometric Models. A Case Study in Keystroke Dynamics

Authors:
Nahuel Gonzalez↗Marta Robledo-Moreno↗Ivan DeAndres-Tame↗Ruben Vera-Rodriguez↗Ruben Tolosana↗

Deep learning approaches to biometric verification are commonly trained by optimizing indirect objectives, creating a misalignment between the optimization process and the primary evaluation metric, typically the Equal Error Rate (EER). This paper introduces EERLoss: a subdifferentiable, arbitrarily accurate approximation to EER for training deep biometric models. Furthermore, this framework has the potential to be adapted to optimize any specific operating point on the DET curve, enhancing its generalizability. To validate this approach, EERLoss is evaluated on a particularly demanding behavioral biometric modality: keystroke dynamics verification. This task is characterized by its high intra-class and low inter-class variability. Experiments are conducted on the large-scale KVC-onGoing benchmark, incorporating data from over 185,000 subjects across different scenarios. A comprehensive ablation study initially demonstrates the superiority of EERLoss in comparison to existing state-of-the-art loss functions. It also converges substantially faster compared to other losses, reducing the overall training cost. Additionally, a comparison is made between the proposed loss and the KVC-winning architecture by re-training it with EERLoss, demonstrating that the proposed approach significantly outperforms the original SoTA, achieving a relative EER reduction of up to approx. 30\%. This improvement on a challenging, large-scale benchmark validates the effectiveness of EERLoss as a task-aligned training objective specifically suited for high-variance biometric traits.

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12.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Finite-Element Matrix Product States for Continuum Models in One Dimension

Authors:
Akshay Shankar↗Karel Van Acoleyen↗Jutho Haegeman↗

arXiv:2606.14873v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We present a matrix product state framework for simulating one-dimensional quantum many-body systems in the continuum using non-orthogonal single-particle basis sets. By mapping the physical problem to an auxiliary computational space, we show that the resulting many-body overlap operator can be efficiently encoded as a matrix product operator for sufficiently localized orbitals, thereby generalizing a construction that first appeared in [arXiv:2405.10285]. This construction recasts the variational ground-state search into a generalized eigenvalue problem, which can be solved using a generalized density matrix renormalization group algorithm. As a primary application, we employ a first-order finite-element expansion to study the ground state properties of the Lieb-Liniger gas in the presence of inhomogeneities. This approach also provides a natural setting for exactly refining the lattice, thereby enabling multigrid optimization strategies for matrix product states.

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13.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

Biarchetype analysis for univariate functional data. An application to macroeconomic financial time series

Authors:
Aleix Alcacer↗Rafael Benitez↗Vicente J. Bolos↗Irene Epifanio↗

arXiv:2606.15881v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We introduce biarchetype analysis for the first time in the context of univariate functional data. This unsupervised methodology extends archetype analysis by simultaneously identifying archetypal structures across both the cases (countries, in our application) and the temporal argument. Both cases and time points are expressed as mixtures of biarchetypes, yielding a concise and highly interpretable representation of complex functional observations. Although biarchetype analysis is not intended as a clustering technique, it offers superior interpretability compared with biclustering approaches, as it is based on extreme, representative patterns rather than average centroids, thereby enhancing human comprehension. We apply the proposed method to 10-year government bond yields of European countries over the period 2001-2025. The results identify three distinct time regimes (the pre-crisis period, the euro-area sovereign debt crisis, and the post-crisis period), and reveal Germany, Greece, and Hungary as country archetypes.

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14.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-24

MotifGen: Spatiotemporal interpolation of misaligned satellite images via multi-source generative modeling, in an application to tropical cyclones

Authors:
Cl\'ement Dauvilliers↗Claire Monteleoni↗

Microwave satellite imagery plays a crucial role in monitoring tropical cyclone precipitation and intensity worldwide, but suffers from long revisit times, potentially missing rapid storm evolution phases. While this raises the need for an interpolation method, it is made challenging by the high level of heterogeneity of microwave data coming from different instruments. In this work, we introduce the first generative model that can be applied to multiple geospatial sources that change across samples, occur at irregular time intervals, are misaligned geographically, and come from instruments with varying characteristics. We apply this model to the case of spatio-temporal interpolation of tropical cyclone microwave images from other microwave and infrared instruments. We train using a self-supervised task in which a random source is masked and reconstructed, and show that it leads to a significant decrease in Continuous Ranked Probability Score over supervised training. We show a further improvement by combining infrared and microwave data compared to microwave only. Using these improvements, the generative model produces an ensemble mean on par with that of a deterministic model, while generating a power spectrum significantly closer to that of true observations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first generative model that interpolates microwave images of cyclones by combining multiple microwave instruments and infrared observations at irregular time intervals.

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16.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Initiation of Superradiance from Different Collective Spin States

Authors:
Adnan Alabbar↗Zhenghao Zhang↗Girish S. Agarwal↗

arXiv:2606.14949v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Superradiance is an extensive cooperative spontaneous emission phenomenon. Some atomic collective spin states exhibit it. However, distinct initial states differ in their decay dynamics. Dicke states with different numbers of excitations have their peak emission intensity shifted in time depending on the number of excitations. Emission intensity in atomic coherent states depends on their polarization. Some specific states undergo a squeezing controlled crossover, making the emission character dependent on the amount of squeezing in the state. We present detailed results on the superradiant dynamics of a representative selection of Dicke states. For large N, we are able to predict fairly accurately the pulse profile in each case using the mean field approximation, an approach based on the Fokker Planck Equation. We also present results on the intensity correlation function of the emission.

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

SciRisk-Bench: A Risk-Dimension-Aware Benchmark for AI4Science Safety

Authors:
Linghao Feng↗Yinqian Sun↗Dongqi Liang↗Sicheng Shen↗Chenfei Yan↗Yuxuan Peng↗Yilin Zhao↗Haibo Tong↗Kai Li↗FeiFei Zhao↗Yi Zeng↗

arXiv:2606.18936v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly embedded in AI for Science (AI4Science) workflows, from scientific question answering and literature analysis to laboratory planning and autonomous discovery. This progress creates an urgent need for safety benchmarks that evaluate not only scientific competence, but also whether models recognize and avoid risks in high-stakes scientific contexts. Existing AI4Science safety datasets cover several disciplines and task formats, leaving the underlying risk dimensions underspecified. We introduce SciRisk-Bench, a benchmark designed to evaluate AI4Science safety from two complementary perspectives: explicit risk dimensions and scientific disciplines. SciRisk-Bench covers 7 disciplines, 31 subdisciplines and 10 risk dimensions. In the experimental section, we evaluate both mainstream LLMs and science-oriented LLMs across risk dimensions, disciplines, and sub-disciplines, enabling fine-grained diagnosis of where scientific models remain unsafe.

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18.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

Evaluating and Enhancing Negation Comprehension in Remote Sensing MLLMs

Authors:
Haochen Han↗Jue Wang↗Alex Jinpeng Wang↗Fangming Liu↗

arXiv:2606.20177v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have demonstrated remarkable success in various Remote Sensing (RS) tasks. However, their ability to comprehend negation remains underexplored, limiting deployment in real-world applications where models must explicitly identify what is false or absent, e.g., emergency responders need to locate non-flooded routes for evacuation. To comprehensively study this limitation, we introduce RS-Neg, the first benchmark to evaluate negation understanding across region-level to scene-level tasks. Specifically, we design an automated data generation pipeline for RS imagery, using LLMs to synthesize diverse negation queries, and introduce a dynamic visual focus module for verification. Our evaluation reveals that advanced RS MLLMs struggle with negation, exhibiting hallucinations and substantial performance degradation. To close this gap, we propose NeFo, a novel test-time learning method that explicitly incorporates the logical role of negation into the model optimization. Remarkably, using about 5\% unlabeled test samples, NeFo significantly improves the negation understanding of models and shows strong generalization to unseen tasks. Code and data will be released upon acceptance.

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19.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

Similarity-based representation factorization for revealing interpretable dimensions in representational data

Authors:
Florian P. Mahner↗Ka Chun Lam↗Francisco Pereira↗Martin N. Hebart↗

The study of representations is widespread across fields, including neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence. While representations are often studied and compared through similarities between stimuli, current methods provide only limited access to the dimensions that shape these representations and are often limited in interpretability. To overcome these challenges, here we introduce Similarity-Based Representation Factorization (SRF), a general computational method for recovering low-dimensional, non-negative, interpretable embeddings from similarity matrices derived from measured data. Across simulations and many neural, behavioral, and computational datasets, SRF recovers interpretable dimensions from diverse forms of representational data, even for very sparsely sampled, incomplete data. The dimensions derived from these datasets match those obtained by task-specific models, predict independent behavioral properties, improve exploratory analysis, and offer higher power for confirmatory hypothesis testing than comparing similarity matrices. Together, these results establish SRF as a general-purpose method with broad applications for uncovering, understanding, and using the dimensions underlying representations.

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20.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-15

AgentSpec: Understanding Embodied Agent Scaffolds Through Controlled Composition

Authors:
Jixuan Chen↗Jianzhi Shen↗Haoqiang Kang↗Zhi Hong↗Qingyi Jiang↗Soham Bose↗Yiming Zhang↗Leon Leng↗Amit Vyas↗Lingjun Mao↗Siru Ouyang↗Kun Zhou↗…

LLM agents are increasingly built not as single model calls, but as scaffolded systems that combine reasoning, memory, reflection, action execution, and learning. While such scaffolds often improve performance, they are often embedded in tightly coupled pipelines, making it difficult to isolate component contributions, compare alternative designs, or understand how module interactions shape agent behavior. We introduce AgentSpec, a modular specification framework that represents embodied agents as typed compositions of reusable policy components with standardized interfaces. AgentSpec standardizes the interfaces among perception, memory, reasoning, reflection, action, and optional learning, enabling components to be swapped and recombined under controlled conditions. We instantiate this framework across DeliveryBench, ALFRED, MiniGrid, and RoboTHOR, and analyze reasoning, memory, reflection, and reinforcement-learning modules across model backbones. Our results show that agent performance is governed by scaffold compatibility and interaction effects rather than isolated module strength. In particular, structured multi-granularity memory improves long-horizon state tracking, reasoning and memory interact non-uniformly across environments, reflection trades off correction and cost, and RL-trained policies compose best when optimized with deployment-time scaffold structure. AgentSpec provides a controlled foundation for studying, comparing, and designing composable LLM agents. Our code, baselines and interactive playground are publicly available at https://agentspec-embodied.github.io.

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21.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-18

As Easy as Rocket Science: Assessing the Ability of Large Language Models to Interpret Negation in Figurative Language

Authors:
Jasmine Owers↗Edwin Simpson↗Martha Lewis↗

Figurative language and negation are two areas that challenge current language models, however, both are widely used throughout written and spoken language. Large language models (LLMs) are also widely used in everyday contexts where they cannot necessarily be tuned for a specific dataset. It is therefore essential to understand the ability of LLMs to correctly interpret text that includes both negation and figurative language. To investigate this, we develop a set of new annotations to an existing dataset of figurative language, and test a range of language models on the dataset. We find that the combination of negation and figurativeness can present a particular challenge, and that performance overall and across different negation types is particularly dependent on the prompt style used.

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22.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

The Tao of Agency: Autotelic AI, Embedded Agency and Dissolution of the Self

Authors:
Aritra Sarkar↗

arXiv:2606.19924v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Most artificial intelligence systems are built on the assumption that goals are exogenous and specified by the designer. Exploring what happens when an agent begins generating its own goals opens the field of autotelic AI. Agents are expected not merely to pursue objectives but to discover them. In this article, we trace its consequences through intrinsic motivation, resource-driven priors, causal-interventional learning, homeostasis, and embeddedness; the last of which is found to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for autotelic agency. Embeddedness individuates the agent at the cost of revealing that the individuation is non-unique, such that the same dynamics admit many valid partitions, each defining a different candidate self. The deepest problem with autotelic AI is therefore not how the agent generates goals, but how it generates and relativizes the self to which the goals are assigned. The agent must believe in its own boundary in order to act, and see through that boundary in order to understand. We consolidate these developments into a single framework and extend it along three directions: a quantum formulation in which the agent-environment cut becomes physical, a philosophical reading against non-dual contemplative traditions, and a concrete LLM-based agentic instantiation.

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23.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-15

An integrated ultrahigh vacuum cluster tool for diamond surface science and single nitrogen-vacancy center measurements

Authors:
Zhiyang Yuan↗Sorawis Sangtawesin↗Lila V. H. Rodgers↗Kalliope Zervas↗James J. Allred↗Jared Rovny↗Patryk Gumann↗Nathalie P. de Leon↗

arXiv:2606.13961v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We present a custom-designed ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) cluster tool developed for studying shallow nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond, enabling in situ diamond surface preparation, characterization, and single NV center dynamics measurements within a single connected platform. The system combines a surface science chamber for controlled surface modification and analysis with a cryogenic confocal microscope chamber dedicated to NV spin and optical measurements. This integrated approach enables a direct correlation between diamond surface chemistry and the resulting NV spin and charge properties. The instrument provides a versatile platform for systematic studies of surface-induced decoherence mechanisms and charge dynamics for shallow NV centers, and establishes a pathway toward reproducible surface engineering for quantum sensing applications.

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24.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

The Journal of Prompt-Engineered (Moral) Philosophy Or: Why AI-Assisted Ethics Research Requires Process Transparency

Authors:
Michele Loi↗

arXiv:2511.08639v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Existing AI disclosure mandates in scholarship require that AI assistance be reported but leave transparency philosophically unspecified: they fix the duty without explaining what the duty serves. We argue that ethical inquiry is essentially contested at two independent levels – about what it is, and about what it demands of the inquirer – defeating output-only evaluation and welfare-economic dismissal of the transparency question, and, by extension, reproducibility framings imported from the empirical sciences. The transparency duty is grounded instead in agent-integrity: the legibility, before a community of inquiry, of the identity-constituting commitments that the author's mode of philosophising expresses. Because the standards for evaluating such work are not communally settled, the achievable goal for transparency is not evaluation against agreed criteria but tracking – accumulating the evidentiary record that lets each tradition assess the work on its own terms and makes future normative judgments possible. We develop a documentation-adequacy framework that operationalises Meaningful Human Control through five transparency elements – declaration, navigation, documentation account, process documentation, and development records – demonstrated by the paper itself, whose full documentation record is archived at a persistent identifier. The framework is a first iteration subject to revision, not a settled standard.

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25.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-19

Indexed Bellman Information Complexity

Authors:
Yunbei Xu↗

arXiv:2606.11171v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We develop indexed Bellman information complexity, a representation-level theory of interactive decision making centered on information indices and reference histories. The representation strips away problem-specific syntax and retains only the ingredients needed for dynamic programming and information accounting, thereby unifying the earlier framework of indexed algorithmic information ratios (AIR). On the upper-bound side, regret is controlled by Bellman supersolutions or potential identities whose gradient bracket is paid for by indexed information. Upper-confidence-bound (UCB), estimation-to-decision/decision-estimation-coefficient (E2D/DEC), and adaptive-minimax-sampling or exploration-by-optimization (AMS/EBO) methods appear as three relaxations of this same identity. On the lower-bound side, the posterior-reference trajectory supplies both the information telescope and the ghost quantile of small-regret trajectories. The resulting critical radius in the lower bound is an effective-dimension-scale quantity, as in Fano and local-prior-mass lower bounds, rather than the constant radius of a two-point Le Cam argument. The examples show that DEC is best viewed as a one-step relaxation of indexed Bellman information complexity, not as a universally tight conversion mechanism. We illustrate the framework through several applications, with particular emphasis on kernel bandits. In this setting, the active action marginal provides a concrete basis for comparing UCB, E2D, and AMS/EBO.

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