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01.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-17

EvolveNav: Proactive Preflection and Self-Evolving Memory for Zero-Shot Object Goal Navigation

arXiv:2606.18235v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Zero-Shot Object-Goal Navigation (ZS-OGN) requires embodied agents to explore and locate target objects without any prior training. To this end, recent methods leverage foundation models. But they typically rely on static priors and lack adaptation, which leads to repeated errors and costly trial and error. In this paper, we propose a self-evolving ZS-OGN framework that enables continuous test-time improvement. Specifically, we build an agentic rule memory by extracting actionable knowledge from past trajectories. Then, we propose a retrieval strategy based on upper confidence bound, selecting effective rules by balancing semantic relevance and historical success. In addition, we introduce a memory-guided preflection module that forecasts potential outcomes before action, reducing inefficient exploration. Extensive experiments show that our method outperforms existing zero-shot baselines, achieving a 10.1\% improvement in success rate with fewer unnecessary steps.

02.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

Neuron-based Personality Trait Induction in Large Language Models

Large language models (LLMs) have become increasingly proficient at simulating various personality traits, an important capability for supporting related applications (e.g., role-playing). To further improve this capacity, in this paper, we present a neuron-based approach for personality trait induction in LLMs, with three major technical contributions. First, we construct PersonalityBench, a large-scale dataset for identifying and evaluating personality traits in LLMs. This dataset is grounded in the Big Five personality traits from psychology and is designed to assess the generative capabilities of LLMs towards specific personality traits. Second, by leveraging PersonalityBench, we propose an efficient method for identifying personality-related neurons within LLMs by examining the opposite aspects of a given trait. Third, we develop a simple yet effective induction method that manipulates the values of these identified personality-related neurons. This method enables fine-grained control over the traits exhibited by LLMs without training and modifying model parameters. Extensive experiments validate the efficacy of our neuron identification and trait induction methods. Notably, our approach achieves comparable performance as fine-tuned models, offering a more efficient and flexible solution for personality trait induction in LLMs. We provide access to all the mentioned resources at https://github.com/RUCAIBox/NPTI.

03.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-16

The optimal sub-Gaussian normalisation for randomised monotone functions

arXiv:2312.01265v5 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Let $\mathcal{M}$ denote the class of randomised monotone functions on $\mathbb{R}$ with values in $[0,1]$, and let $U_{\mathcal{M}}\colon \mathbb{R}_+\to \mathbb{R}_+$ be the minimal function for which $$ \mathbb{P}\left\{ \sqrt{\eta_f}\, \sup_{t\in\mathbb{R}} \left| f_Z(t) - \Exf{f_Z(t)} \right| \ge \varepsilon\sqrt{U_{\mathcal{M}}(\eta_f)} \right\} \le 2\e^{-2\varepsilon^2} $$ holds for every member $f_Z$ of $\mathcal{M}$ with finite effective sample size $\eta_f$ and every positive $\varepsilon$. We prove that for every $x> 1$, $$ \left| \sqrt{U_{\mathcal{M}}(x)} - \sqrt{\log_4 x} \right| \le 2 \min\!\left\{ 1,\, \frac{2 \ln(\e + \ln x)}{\sqrt{\ln x}} \right\}\,. $$ The optimal adjustment $\sqrt{U_{\mathcal{M}}(x)}$ matches $\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\ln 2}}\sqrt{\ln x}$ for all $x>1$, with residuals bounded as above.

04.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

Machine Learning and the Random Walk Puzzle: Forecasting the CAD/USD Exchange Rate with Expanding Window Evaluation and SHAP Interpretability

arXiv:2606.15058v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This study examines whether machine learning (ML) models can outperform the naive random walk benchmark in forecasting the monthly USD/CAD exchange rate. Using daily data from the Bank of Canada spanning January 2017 to May 2026, resampled into 113 monthly observations, five ML models are evaluated: linear regression, random forest, gradient boosting, XGBoost, and AdaBoost. These models are benchmarked against the naive random walk model and exponential smoothing with Holt-Winters seasonality (ETS). All models are evaluated using an expanding-window framework to maintain strict out-of-sample integrity, and forecast-accuracy differences are assessed using the Diebold-Mariano (DM) test. Structural break detection identifies four significant breakpoints in the series, corresponding to the escalation of the US-China trade war in 2018, the COVID-19 economic recovery in 2020, the peak of the Bank of Canada rate-hiking cycle in 2022, and the start of the Bank of Canada rate-cutting cycle in 2024. SHAP, or Shapley Additive Explanations, analysis is applied to interpret the drivers of the best-performing ML model. The results show that the naive random walk model remains a formidable benchmark. Linear regression is the only model that statistically outperforms the naive random walk model, with a DM statistic of 3.0585 and a p value of 0.0071, whereas the ML ensemble models show only marginal differences. Random Forest with an expanding-window framework achieves the lowest MAPE of 1.17 percent among all models except the random walk. SHAP analysis confirms that short-term lags, particularly lag1 and lag2, and recent rolling means dominate predictions, consistent with the near-random-walk behavior of exchange rates.

05.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-12

DIMOS: Disentangling Instance-level Moving Object Segmentation

Moving instance segmentation (MIS) attracts increasing attention due to its broad applications in traffic surveillance, autonomous driving, and animal tracking. Event cameras record asynchronous brightness changes, providing high temporal resolution and dynamic range, which makes them highly sensitive to motion information. By fusing event and image features, motion cues from events can complement spatial details from images, enhancing the performance of MIS. However, current multimodal MIS methods still struggle to segment small moving instances, as event cameras often yield sparse features under limited resolution. Moreover, event features entangle appearance attributes with motion cues, which further restricts effective cross-modal fusion. To address these challenges, we first propose a dual-disentangling feature extraction framework that separates and extracts appearance and motion information within both image and event modalities, thereby improving feature density. Subsequently, a multi-granularity cross-modal alignment is introduced to align distributionally and semantically consistent features across modalities, enabling more effective fusion with rich spatial and temporal details. The experiment results demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance in multimodal MIS, especially for small instances under challenging conditions such as fast motion and low-light settings.

06.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-16

Integrative Transfer Network: Deep Transfer Learning Across Populations and Prediction Targets

作者:

Large-scale clinical and biomedical datasets increasingly contain both diverse subgroup attributes (e.g., demographic or clinical subgroups) and multiple prediction targets. Although various machine learning approaches can address subgroup differences or multi-target prediction, they often consider these aspects independently rather than jointly. To more effectively capture the shared and subgroup-specific information in such complex datasets, we propose the Integrative Transfer Network (ITN), a deep neural network designed to leverage data across subgroups and multiple related outcomes simultaneously. In extensive experiments, including time-to-event and classification tasks where demographic subgroups and multiple disease endpoints are prevalent, ITN demonstrates consistent improvements in subgroup-specific prediction by borrowing strength from other subgroups and outcomes. We envision ITN as a unified framework for learning from heterogeneous datasets where subgroup-specific insights are critical.

07.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12

Graph Reduction in Multirelational Networks: A Spreading-Oriented Reduction Benchmark

arXiv:2606.12581v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Real-world networks are inherently incomplete, noisy, and dynamically evolving, making it difficult to capture all actors and their relationships. Their scale often renders direct analysis computationally demanding. While influence maximisation (IM) has been widely studied, the role of graph reduction as a preprocessing step, and its impact on IM accuracy, remains underexplored. In this work, we introduce the Spreading-Oriented Reduction Benchmark (SORB), an open-source, standardised framework for systematically evaluating IM models across diverse task settings. SORB provides an extensible pipeline operating on a representative collection of real-world networks, including single- and multilayer structures, and accounts for graph reduction directly into the evaluation process. This design shifts the focus from analysing IM algorithms in isolation to quantifying how graph reduction alters predictive performance. Using SORB, we study the effects of sparsification and coarsening across multiple IM scenarios. Our results show that the impact of reduction is strongly dependent on both the network type (single-layer vs. multirelational) and the downstream task ($Gain@k$ vs. $\mathrm{AUC}_{\mathrm{cutoff}}$): sparsification preserves seed set quality on single-layer networks, whereas flattened multilayer networks exhibit systematic ranking degradation regardless of reduction strategy. These findings highlight the importance of reduction-aware, multi-task evaluation when studying spreading processes in complex networks.

08.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

The Geometry of Phase Transitions in Generative Dynamics via Projection Caustics

arXiv:2606.13191v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Continuous-state generative samplers, including diffusion and flow-matching models, evolve through continuous reverse-time dynamics, yet their samples often undergo abrupt qualitative changes: trajectories commit to modes, semantic alternatives collapse, and small perturbations in narrow time windows can produce large downstream effects. This paper develops a geometric account of such phase-transition-like behaviour. We view denoising as gradient descent on a free energy landscape and show that sharp transitions arise near projection caustics, where the nearest-point projection onto the data support ceases to be unique. Motivated by this perspective, we introduce the Critical Boundary Detector (CBD), as practical diagnostics for score-direction instability. Across toy models, standard diffusion models, and latent text-to-image diffusion models, CBD localises mode commitment, predicts intervention-sensitive windows, and supports targeted control in geometrically sensitive regions. Our results connect geometry of data and dynamics of diffusion generation.

09.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-18

novelBGC: An interactive dual-score framework for biosynthetic gene cluster novelty assessment and candidate prioritisation

Genome mining now yields tens of thousands of putative biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) per project, yet, separating genuinely novel candidates from rediscoveries of known compounds remains the rate-limiting step before experimental validation. Single-axis prioritisation tools, antiSMASH similarity, BiG-FAM GCF distance, and self-resistance-enzyme (SRE) filters such as ARTS, each surface a different facet of evidence, yet their isolated use systematically over-ranks rediscovery-prone BGCs and overlooks genuinely orphan clusters. We present novelBGC, a web-hosted framework that converts these disparate outputs into two deliberately non-inverse continuous metrics per BGC, a Novelty (N) and a Reference Similarity (RS) score which together define a 2D decision plane that resolves rediscoveries, divergent family members, contig-edge artefacts, and uncharted chemistry with interactive visualisations, with all component weights user-tuneable at submission. Retrospective validation across three independent experimental datasets demonstrates the utility of the framework for candidate prioritization. Within the first 186-BGC SRE-guided cloning study, every confirmed bioactive product fell within the low-to-mid N band whereas 55 high-N (N [≥] 0.50) BGCs were never selected. Moreover, in the other two studies, it correctly prioritised the fully orphan lariocidin BGC of Paenibacillus sp. M2 and the divergent within-family indanopyrrole-A idp BGC of Streptomyces sp. CNX-425. Together, these case studies demonstrate that the joint (N, RS) space facilitates prioritization decisions that are difficult to achieve using any single criterion alone. from identical input data. novelBGC requires no command-line expertise, no local tool installation, and no manual integration of intermediate output formats, addressing a well-documented accessibility barrier for wet-laboratory researchers engaging with genome-mining workflows. novelBGC is freely available at https://project.iith.ac.in/sharmaglab/novelbgc/.

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

Graph Structured Combinatorial Semi-Bandit with Nonlinear Reward Associations through Separable Signals

arXiv:2606.14650v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The identification of optimal structures within vast arrays of interconnected data necessitates significant sampling- and computational effort. Learning and leveraging underlying signal dependencies can improve efficiency and predictive capabilities considerably, but the ubiquity of nonlinear statistical relations amplifies the complexity of such undertakings. In this paper, we develop novel generic and adaptive strategies equipped with routines for graph-based causal reward modeling, analytic reproducing kernel methods, and Taylor approximation of functional processes. We establish theoretical performance guarantees sublinear in time and linear in data volume over time. Our analyses cover robustness to a multitude of uncertainties arising from noise interference, gradual model convergence, and solution space mismatch. The framework's general appeal is substantiated by a minimalistic set of conditions or reliance on prior estimates, while various outlined modifications address specific or extended settings. To demonstrate practical effectiveness, we conduct numerical experiments using both benchmarked synthetic and real-world transportation datasets.

11.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-19

Perturbation Curve models continuous transcriptional response trajectories and improves prediction of genetic modulations

Single-cell CRISPR screens, Perturb-seq, have revolutionized functional genomics by revealing biological causality. However, although perturbation assignments are typically represented as discrete labels, the cell-level effective strength of perturbations is often continuous and diverse. Current analytical frameworks struggle to decouple the variability in perturbation strength from the diversity of downstream responses. Here, we present Perturbation Curve (PertCurve), a nonlinear, curve-based computational framework that models the trajectories of transcriptomic responses by explicitly incorporating diverse perturbation magnitudes and strengths. By ordering cells by perturbation strength, we demonstrate that PertCurve accurately recapitulates the response magnitudes and reveals the distinct modularity and asynchrony patterns of downstream gene behaviors. These patterns are categorized into archetypes, including proportional, sensitive, and threshold responses. By applying this framework across CRISPRi/a modalities, we identify universal response patterns in viral infection, apoptosis, and proliferation genes, and reveal previously overlooked context-specific regulatory features in cell differentiation. Finally, incorporating PertCurve into perturbation prediction models and evaluation metrics enhances predictive performance, delivering actionable insights for refining established models.

12.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-11

MetaPlate: Counterfactual-Guided RAG-LLM Tool for Personalized Food Recommendation and Hyperglycemia Prevention

arXiv:2606.10120v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Postprandial hyperglycemia is a key risk factor for metabolic disorders; however, existing dietary guidance is often static, impractical, and insufficiently personalized, providing recommendations that are difficult to follow or not impactful. While recent advances leverage continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) and machine learning to predict glycemic responses, these approaches are largely predictive and lack actionable guidance. Moreover, recommendation systems are often misaligned with user goals and require extensive input. We present MetaPlate, a counterfactual explanation (CF) guided, context-aware decision-support framework that generates personalized meal recommendations to mitigate postprandial glucose excursions in healthy adults. MetaPlate integrates multimodal data, including CGM readings, wearable-derived physiological signals, and user-provided meal inputs from $25$ individuals to model pre-meal context. A machine learning model predicts glucose response, while a CF optimization module adjusts meal composition modifying macronutrient amounts to maintain glucose levels within a target range ($\leq 140$ mg/dL). An LLM-based retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) layer enhances interpretability by producing human-readable recommendations using constrained search of the USDA food database. We evaluate MetaPlate via a structured expert-in-the-loop assessment with registered dietitians (RDs), comparing performance before and after prompt refinement. Results show improvements in meal realism, portion suitability, and recommendation likelihood, with expert feedback indicating a shift from clinically implausible outputs to actionable, contextually appropriate recommendations. Our findings emphasize the importance of domain knowledge and structured constraints in LLM-driven systems and highlight the potential of MetaPlate as a real-time personalized dietary decision-support tool.

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

T-Mem: Memory That Anticipates, Not Archives

Long-term memory is essential for conversational agents to remain coherent across extended dialogues, follow through on commitments made many sessions earlier, and adapt their behaviour to each user. Current LLM-backed long-term conversational memory, however, is reachability-bounded by the similarity between a query and stored content, both lexical and dense-vector. The approach is effective when query and memory share surface features such as wording or named entities (we call this descriptive). But it misses another, equally valuable class of cases, where query and memory do not share surface features and are tied only by a latent semantic arc (associative). On this regime prevailing long-term memory systems collectively fail. Covering this other half is what allows an assistant, for the first time, to actively draw on past dialogue as a semantic asset. On the memory side, this is the engineering counterpart of what cognitive science calls episodic future thinking: rehearsing past experience for the future contexts under which it will need to be found. We call these write-time rehearsals triggers. We propose T-Mem, the first long-term conversational memory architecture that covers both descriptive and associative recall. At each of two evidence granularities, single facts and full exchanges, T-Mem instantiates one descriptive trigger family and one associative trigger family, so that every memory remains reachable from both surface-similar and relevance-bound queries. As empirical validation, T-Mem reaches state-of-the-art on both LoCoMo and LoCoMo-Plus.

14.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

Object Tokens as a Bridge Between Segmentation and Visual Question Answering in Robotic Surgery

Visual Question Answering (VQA) in robotic surgery, referred to as surgical VQA, requires high-level understanding of complex surgical scenes and the integration of visual perception with language reasoning, with the potential to support surgical training and intraoperative decision-making. Recent Vision-Language Models (VLMs) have shown promising performance through parameter-efficient fine-tuning; however, most existing approaches rely on coarse visual grounding, typically limited to bounding boxes, which fails to capture the fine-grained spatial structure of surgical objects. In this work, we propose a unified framework that jointly performs pixel-level segmentation and visual question answering within a single framework. Our approach integrates a VLM with a Segment Anything Model (SAM)-based decoder and represents scene elements as object tokens generated by the VLM. These object tokens guide answer prediction and are further projected to the SAM-based decoder to produce segmentation masks. By optimizing the object token embeddings through both segmentation and question answering objectives, the model learns spatially grounded representations that enhance visual reasoning while providing explicit pixel-level grounding. We evaluate the proposed method on the private RAMIE (Robot-Assisted Minimally Invasive Esophagectomy) dataset and the public EndoVis18 dataset, where it consistently outperforms baseline methods for surgical VQA. These results demonstrate that incorporating context-aware object tokens into vision-language models improves fine-grained surgical scene understanding.

15.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

Regional Service-System Conditions Associated with Facility-Linked Home-Based Specialist Care in Japan: A Claims-Based Ecological Study of Home Dialysis

Background Complex chronic care is increasingly delivered in patients' homes while remaining linked to specialist facilities for training, monitoring, and backup care. Home dialysis provides a useful case because peritoneal dialysis (PD) and home hemodialysis (HHD) share a home-facility delivery structure but differ in technical and operational requirements. This study examined regional service-system conditions associated with the presence and scale of PD and HHD in Japan. Methods This ecological study used publicly available claims, administrative, census, and geospatial data harmonized to 334 Secondary Medical Areas. Regional indicators were organized into four domains: dialysis service delivery, implementation support for home-based care, hospital backup capacity, and living and sociodemographic context. Diffusion was examined using claims-based indicators of regional presence and post-presence scale, analyzed separately for PD and HHD with Firth penalized logistic regression and zero-truncated negative binomial regression, respectively. Results PD was observed in 271 regions and HHD in 109. Patterns of associated regional conditions differed by modality and stage. PD was associated mainly with existing dialysis-service organization, whereas HHD was associated with broader regional supports, including home-care delivery, living infrastructure, transition support, and hospital-system indicators. Conditions associated with presence differed from those associated with scale. Cross-modality associations suggested that shared regional factors may shape the distribution of both modalities. Conclusions Regional conditions for home dialysis diffusion in Japan differed by modality and stage. PD was linked mainly to existing dialysis-service organization, whereas HHD was linked to multi-domain regional support for technically demanding home treatment. Under standardized reimbursement, local service-system capacity may remain important for modality- and stage-specific diffusion of home dialysis.

16.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Steady-state entanglement of spin qubits mediated by nonreciprocal and chiral magnons

arXiv:2509.13094v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We propose a hybrid quantum system in which a magnet supporting non-reciprocal magnons, chiral magnons, or both mediates the dissipative and unidirectional coupling of spin qubits. By driving the qubits, the steady state of this qubit-qubit coupling scheme becomes the maximally entangled Bell state. We devise a protocol where the system converges to this entangled state and benchmark it including qubit decay and dephasing. The protocol is numerically tested on a hybrid system consisting of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers coupled to magnon surface modes of an yttrium iron garnet (YIG) film. We show that the dephasing time of the NV centers forms the bottleneck for achieving the entanglement of NV centers separated by a distance within the magnon coherence length. Our findings identify the key technological requirements and demonstrate a viable route toward steady-state entanglement of solid-state spins over distances of several microns using magnonic quantum networks, expanding the toolbox of magnonics for quantum information purposes.

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

Gaussian Light Field Splatting: A Physical Prior-Driven Vision Transformer for Unsupervised Low-Light Image Enhancement

Existing unsupervised low-light image enhancement methods often encounter local exposure imbalance and color distortion under complex non-uniform illumination. In addition, most Vision Transformers lack an explicit mechanism for modeling the physical priors of illumination degradation. To address these limitations, we propose GLFS, a Gaussian light field splatting-based Vision Transformer that integrates continuous physical illumination modeling from Gaussian splatting into the Transformer architecture. In GLFS, scene illumination is represented by a superposition of anisotropic Gaussian basis functions. Physics-guided biases are introduced into self-attention to adaptively infer a spatial gain field, enabling accurate and uniform restoration under complex illumination. To reduce color bias and structural degradation during enhancement, a color-vector angular loss and a luminance-edge loss are further developed. These losses enforce hue consistency and improve the structural fidelity of local details. Extensive ablation studies and quantitative evaluations show that GLFS provides clear advantages in illumination correction and detail preservation. It achieves state-of-the-art performance and offers a new representation paradigm for low-light image enhancement.

18.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-11

Superspace Concentration and Adversarial Robustness in Quantum Algorithms

arXiv:2606.11580v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study superspace concentration as a quantum resource, formalized through the focus measure F(\r{ho}) = {\lambda}_max(\r{ho}_super) - the largest eigenvalue of the reduced superspace state - which quantifies the capacity of a quantum system to concentrate informational weight into a preferred subspace of an extended degree-of-freedom space. We develop a complete resource-theoretic framework around this measure and validate its properties through GPU-accelerated numerical simulation. Analytic decoherence predictions are confirmed to machine precision (1.11 x 10^{-16}) for superspace dimensions dS in {2,4,8,16,32}. Focus monotonicity holds across 10,000 random states with zero violations under four focus-non-generating channels across six system configurations. Focused quantum states resist coherent unitary attacks with significantly greater resilience than standard fidelity predicts, with focus remaining above 0.9 at attack strength {\epsilon} = 0.302 versus {\epsilon} = 0.174 for fidelity. We further demonstrate that the focus measure and the U(dS)-asymmetry measure are operationally distinct: asymmetry remains near zero and provides no robustness signal under coherent and targeted attacks while focus tracks spectral concentration and remains robust until {\epsilon} > 0.3. The connection between Grover's algorithm and superspace concentration is made explicit via the identity F(|{\psi}_k>

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

A Multifaceted Analysis of Social Biases in Large Language Models

Large language models (LLMs) have rapidly become indispensable tools for acquiring information and supporting human decision-making. However, ensuring that these models uphold fairness across varied contexts is critical to their safe and responsible deployment. In this study, we undertake a comprehensive examination of four widely adopted LLMs, probing their underlying biases and inclinations across the dimensions of politics, ideology, alliance, language, and gender. Through a series of carefully designed experiments, we investigate their political neutrality using news summarization, ideological biases through news stance classification, tendencies toward specific geopolitical alliances via United Nations voting patterns, language bias in the context of multilingual story completion, and gender-related affinities as revealed by responses to the World Values Survey. Results indicate that while the LLMs are aligned to be neutral and impartial, they still show biases and affinities of different types.

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

Direct Fisher Score Estimation for Likelihood Maximization

arXiv:2506.06542v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We study the problem of likelihood maximization when the likelihood function is intractable but model simulations are readily available. We propose a sequential, gradient-based optimization method that directly models the Fisher score based on a local score matching technique which uses simulations from a localized region around each parameter iterate. By employing a linear parameterization to the surrogate score model, our technique admits a closed-form, least-squares solution. This approach yields a fast, flexible, and efficient approximation to the Fisher score, effectively smoothing the likelihood objective and mitigating the challenges posed by complex likelihood landscapes. We provide theoretical guarantees for our score estimator, including bounds on the bias introduced by the smoothing. Empirical results on a range of synthetic and real-world problems demonstrate the superior performance of our method compared to existing benchmarks.

21.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-17

From Reasoning Traces to Reusable Modules: Understanding Compositional Generalization in Language Model Reasoning

arXiv:2606.18089v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Post-training pipelines that combine supervised fine-tuning (SFT) with reinforcement learning (RL) have emerged as the key recipe for transforming large language models (LLMs) into robust reasoners. We argue that this combined success is driven by compositional generalization, which we formalize through a hierarchical latent selection model. In this framework, reasoning traces are generated by a cascade of discrete latent selection variables corresponding to reusable atomic modules, including both skills (local operations) and routing mechanisms (how intermediate information is selected, reused, and composed). Within this model, we theoretically show that SFT and RL play asymmetric, complementary roles: SFT supplies the raw module materials in compositional traces, and RL decomposes those traces to identify the latent atomic modules and enable compositional generalization. We design controlled experiments to validate this theory. Our results demonstrate that RL can extract atomic modules from compound traces supplied by SFT and recombine them to solve new configurations. Moreover, we find that training on compound traces yields stronger generalization than training on isolated atomic modules. Finally, we investigate the relationship between SFT and RL data and identify an effective protocol in which SFT ensures coverage of all atomic modules through compositional traces, while RL focuses on novel compositions outside the SFT support to drive exploration.

22.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12

Teach-and-Repeat: Accurately Extracting Operational Knowledge from Mobile Screen Demonstrations to Empower GUI Agents

arXiv:2606.12817v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Understanding the digital world on mobile devices is shifting from static UI perception to dynamic action comprehension. This capability enables models to convert visual state transitions into operational knowledge, defined as short natural-language sentences that describe action types, target UI elements, textual arguments, and execution orders. However, due to the highly diverse and heterogeneous UI designs across applications, existing vision-language models (VLMs) struggle to accurately infer these underlying operations. To bridge this gap, we introduce Teach VLM, a core model designed to translate mobile screen trajectories into step-wise operational knowledge by extracting and analyzing operation-related keyframes from demonstration videos. To address the scarcity of aligned training data, we develop a systematic data flywheel for scalable data acquisition. We further introduce a novel Chinese Mobile Screen Teach Benchmark for fine-grained evaluation. Building upon Teach VLM, we propose the Teach-and-Repeat paradigm, where the generated operational knowledge serves as an interpretable procedural reference to guide downstream screen-based execution agents. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that Teach VLM significantly outperforms strong VLM baselines, achieving state-of-the-art performance in operation semantics prediction. Furthermore, experiments in Android World show that our paradigm yields consistent Task Success Rate improvements for downstream agents. Together, Teach VLM and the Teach-and-Repeat paradigm offer a practical pathway from raw demonstrations to reusable task automation.

23.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-19

On the Redundancy of Timestep Embeddings in Diffusion Models

arXiv:2606.20416v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Diffusion models rely heavily on explicit timestep embeddings to modulate the denoising process across various noise scales. In this work, we challenge the necessity of these temporal signals by analyzing their impact on U-Net and Diffusion Transformer architectures. Beyond empirical evidence, we provide a theoretical framework demonstrating that, under certain conditions, the global minimizer of the diffusion training objective can be achieved without explicit timestep conditioning. Our findings reveal a surprising robustness when timestep embeddings are completely removed. Extensive ablation studies on the CelebA and CIFAR-10 datasets show that these time-agnostic models can maintain high structural fidelity and even surpass their conditioned counterparts in competitive metrics, including FID, precision, and recall. Our analysis suggests these architectures can implicitly infer noise scales from the corrupted input under specific assumptions, rendering explicit temporal conditioning redundant. This study challenges long-standing temporal conditioning paradigms and paves the way for more efficient and structurally focused generative architectures.

24.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

Human-AI Agent Interaction in a Business Context

arXiv:2606.18716v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: As AI agents are increasingly integrated into core business processes, understanding and designing effective interaction patterns between humans and AI agents becomes crucial for value creation. This study identifies and evaluates principles and criteria for a positive User Experience (UX) with AI agents, along with methods for its measurement. We identify user expectations and needs to facilitate adoption, build trust, and support user-centered decision-making by development teams. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines qualitative and quantitative techniques, we explore interaction patterns between humans and AI agents. The findings from this exploratory research serve as the basis to develop a survey experiment which evaluates the effectiveness of specific design elements on a larger scale. This foundational research contributes to the development of more intuitive and effective human-AI agent interactions in business settings.

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

CUPID: Reconstructing UV Texture Maps for Interpretable Person-of-Interest Deepfake Detection

Deepfakes targeting a high-profile individual, known as Person-of-Interest (POI), are a threat to modern democracies and societies. Current POI deepfake detection methods still struggle to combine robustness to post-processing, efficiency and interpretability, focal aspects of modern deepfake detectors. In this paper we propose CUPID, a POI video deepfake detector that combines UV texture maps, a facial appearance representation derived from 3D face reconstructions, with the representation learning capabilities of the Masked Autoencoder (MAE). Our method does not require any deepfake videos in its training phase. Moreover, it does not even require to include a specific POI in the training set: the combination of UV texture maps extracted from real video frames and the MAE context-guided reconstruction yields a latent space that captures rich and discriminative facial features also for identities unseen during training. In the testing phase, the embeddings extracted from a query video depicting the POI can be matched against pristine reference videos to assess the video authenticity. Furthermore, operating in the UV space naturally provides an additional layer of interpretability. Specifically, we can extract decoded residual maps that highlight which facial regions of a test video deviate most from the identity representation of the corresponding POI. Experiments on four deepfake datasets show that CUPID outperforms current state of the art on most datasets and achieves the best overall robustness against strong downscaling and compression, providing also substantially faster inference. Our experimental code will be released at https://github.com/polimi-ispl/CUPID.