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01.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-19

Theory of uncertain probability: can we derive the probability density function of uncertain random experiments with continuously changing conditions?

作者:

arXiv:2606.20169v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper aims to explore the formation mechanism of probability distribution in situations where the differences among random experiments are distinguishable, and these differences continue to evolve along with the dynamic changes in conditions and their mechanisms of action. To this end, we are motivated to devise a new theoretical system – theory of uncertain probability (TUP) with Kolmogorov's system and nonlinear theories as special cases. TUP develops a novel model that integrates probability and uncertainty as well as the known and unknown to more accurately depict numerous typical random phenomena under more realistic assumptions, and thus provides appropriate tools for greater variety of real needs. It also allows for pioneering interpretation of the causal mechanisms underlying many important distributional characteristics and incorporation of pathwise property to distribution model.

02.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-19

World Engine: Towards the Era of Post-Training for Autonomous Driving

Autonomous vehicles must operate safely in the real world, where errors can have severe consequences. Although modern end-to-end driving policies excel in routine scenarios, their reliability is limited by the scarcity of safety-critical ``long-tail'' events in real driving datasets. These rare interactions define the practical safety boundary of the learned policy, yet they are difficult to collect at scale in the real world. Here we show that this fundamental limitation can be addressed by post-training pre-trained driving models on synthesized high-stakes interactions. We introduce World Engine, a generative framework that reconstructs high-fidelity interactive environments from real-world logs and systematically extrapolates them into realistic safety-critical variations. This paradigm enables reinforcement-based post-training to align policies with safety constraints, circumventing the physical risks inherent in real-world exploration. On a public benchmark built on nuPlan, World Engine substantially reduces failures in rare safety-critical scenarios and yields significantly larger gains than scaling pre-training data alone. Furthermore, when deployed on a production-scale autonomous driving system, the resulting policy reduces simulated collisions and demonstrates measurable improvements in on-road testing, showing that post-training on synthesized, safety-critical interactions offers a scalable and effective pathway to safer autonomous driving. The full codebase suite, including training, is released to the public.

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

The Almost Intelligent Revolution: Options for Scaling Up Deliberation and Empowering People with AI

The increasing prominence of Large Language Models (LLMs) in public discourse presents both opportunities and challenges for democratic deliberation. While red teaming strategies help mitigate specific risks, broader concerns persist regarding linguistic constraints, biases, and the sycophantic tendencies of LLMs. This chapter explores how LLMs can be used to significantly scale up and democratise deliberation, particularly in fostering inclusivity and empowering traditionally marginalised groups. Drawing on concepts from Systemic-Functional Linguistics, the chapter examines how variations across language users (for example, with respect to socio-demographic groups) and across language use (for example, with respect to communicative functions) shape participation in AI-supported deliberation. The chapter presents AI-driven deliberation studies and assesses their potential to scaffold argumentation, enhance access, and reduce the influence of exclusionary linguistic norms and biases which are embedded in prestigious registers. At the same time, the chapter cautions against both overclaiming, which leads to unrealistic expectations, and underclaiming, which risks missed opportunities for AI-assisted engagement. The chapter concludes by identifying future research directions to maximise the democratic potential of AI-assisted participation while embedding ethical safeguards to counteract the reproduction of linguistic inequalities.

05.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-17

RepSelect: Robust LLM Unlearning via Representation Selectivity

Making large language models (LLMs) deeply forget specific knowledge and values without sacrificing general capabilities remains a central challenge in unlearning. However, current methods are easily reversed by fine-tuning or few-shot prompting, suggesting their forgetting is only shallow. We identify the root cause. Existing methods target representations shared with both the retain set and the subspace recovered by a fine-tuning attacker, making unlearning both disruptive to general capabilities and easy to reverse. We propose RepSelect (Representation Selectivity), isolates forget-set-specific representations by collapsing top principal components of weight gradients before each update, leaving general capabilities intact while limiting what fine-tuning can recover. We evaluate across two forget categories, biohazardous knowledge and abusive tendencies, and four model families spanning dense and Mixture-of-Experts architectures (Llama 3, Qwen 3.5, Gemma 4 E4B, DeepSeek V2 Lite). Compared to five popular baselines (GradDiff, NPO, SimNPO, RMU, UNDIAL), RepSelect achieves a 4-50x larger reduction in post-relearning answer accuracy than the strongest baseline, and is near-perfectly robust to few-shot prompting attacks. Targeting selective representations is thus an important step towards deep and robust LLM forgetting.

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

RankVR: Low-Rank Structure Perception and Value Recalibration for Robust Composed Image Retrieval

Composed Image Retrieval (CIR) constitutes a pivotal paradigm requiring models to perform joint reasoning on reference images and modification texts. However, the prevalence of Noisy Triplet Correspondence (NTC) in large-scale datasets severely constrains model performance. Existing denoising methods either target binary mismatches or rely on scalar-based point-wise estimation, neglecting rich global structural correlations among sample populations and dynamic value variations during training, thereby yielding suboptimal results. This paper identifies two critical unresolved challenges: Global Structural Inconsistency of Semantic Correlations and Hard Sample Discrimination Uncertainty. To address these, we propose RankVR, a framework designed to construct a robust CIR model via global structure consistency and dynamic value perception. Specifically, we introduce the Global Structure Consistency Perception (GSCP) module, which utilizes the Effective Rank of the Correlation Matrix to decouple clean samples from structural noise. By measuring rank difference, GSCP identifies samples disrupting macroscopic semantic symmetry. Furthermore, we develop the Adaptive Semantic Value Calibration (ASVC) module to distinguish high-value hard clean samples. By integrating training potential and reliability, it dynamically quantifies the semantic value of each triplet, ensuring effective utilization of hard samples while suppressing noise characterized by logical conflicts. Extensive experiments on the FashionIQ and CIRR benchmark datasets demonstrate that RankVR significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods, validating its superior robustness in noisy environments.

07.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-15

Synchronization of Quasi-Particle Excitations in a Quantum Gas with Cavity-Mediated Interactions

arXiv:2504.17731v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Driven-dissipative quantum systems can undergo transitions from stationary to dynamical phases, reflecting the emergence of collective non-equilibrium behavior. We study such a transition in a Bose-Einstein condensate coupled to an optical cavity and develop a cavity-assisted Bragg spectroscopy technique to resolve its collective modes. We observe dissipation-induced synchronization at the quasiparticle level, where two roton-like modes coalesce at an exceptional point. This reveals how dissipation microscopically drives collective dynamics and signals a precursor to a dynamical phase transition.

08.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Evidence of an Emergent "Self" in Continual Robot Learning

arXiv:2603.24350v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: A key challenge to understanding self-awareness has been a principled way of quantifying whether an intelligent system has a concept of a "self", and if so how to differentiate the "self" from other cognitive structures. We propose that the "self" can be isolated by seeking the invariant portion of cognitive process that changes relatively little compared to more rapidly acquired cognitive skills - because our self is the most persistent aspect of our experiences. We used this principle to analyze the cognitive structure of robots under two conditions: One robot learns a constant task, while a second undergoes continual learning under variable tasks. We find that robots subjected to continual learning develop an invariant subnetwork that is significantly more stable (p < 0.001) compared to the control, and that this subnetwork is also functionally important: preserving it aids adaptation while damaging it impairs performance. We validate this pattern across three different robots spanning locomotion and manipulation.

09.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

Enhancing Fatigue Detection through Heterogeneous Multi-Source Data Integration and Cross-Domain Modality Imputation

arXiv:2507.16859v5 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Fatigue detection for human operators is important in safety-related applications such as aviation, mining, and long-haul transport. Reliable estimation of operator fatigue can support timely warnings, adaptive task scheduling, takeover reminders, and other safety-management decisions in human-machine systems. However, the effectiveness of these functions depends on whether fatigue-related signals can be reliably captured in the deployment environment. While many studies have shown the value of high-fidelity sensors in controlled laboratory environments, their performance often degrades when used in real-world settings because of noise, lighting conditions, and field-of-view constraints, thereby limiting their practical use. This paper formalizes a deployment-oriented setting for real-world fatigue detection, where high-quality sensors are often unavailable in practical applications. To address this issue, we use knowledge from heterogeneous source domains, including high-fidelity sensors that are difficult to deploy in the field but commonly used in controlled environments, to assist fatigue detection in the real-world target domain. Based on this idea, we design a heterogeneous and multi-source fatigue-detection framework that uses the available modalities in the target domain while leveraging diverse configurations in the source domains through cross-domain modality imputation based on shared modalities.

10.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

Beyond NL2Code: A Structured Survey of Multimodal Code Intelligence

While LLMs have substantially advanced text-to-code synthesis, many real programming tasks specify intent through visual artifacts such as screenshots, charts, documents, vector drawings, videos, and interactive states. These tasks require models to connect visual perception to executable programs, because correctness depends not only on syntax but also on layout, geometry, data semantics, editability, interaction behavior, and domain-specific constraints that apply after execution. This survey examines Multimodal Code Intelligence, covering systems that generate, edit, refine, execute, or reason with code under visually grounded inputs and outputs. We first formulate the field by the role that code plays in each task, distinguishing code as a rendered artifact, an editable symbolic structure, a scientific representation, an intermediate reasoning trace, or an executable policy or tool interface. We then organize benchmarks and methods into four domains: Graphical User Interface, Scientific Visualization, Structured Graphics, and Frontier Tasks and Frameworks. This taxonomy connects mature artifact-generation problems to emerging agentic and unified settings and allows us to compare how different tasks treat evidence of correctness. Looking ahead, we argue that future research may benefit from four verification-centered directions. Multi-signal validation can combine complementary evidence of correctness, multi-state verification can test behavior across execution trajectories, cross-task transfer testing can probe reusable visual-code skills, and verifiable agent traces can reveal whether agent actions are grounded in visual evidence. Together, these directions may move multimodal code generation from single-output imitation toward evidence-grounded executable systems.

11.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-12

Exact Fourier dimensions of dyadic Mandelbrot cascades under minimal integrability

arXiv:2606.08683v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We determine the Fourier dimension of dyadic Mandelbrot cascades under the minimal Kahane-Peyriere integrability condition. The interval theorem is proved in a vector-valued dyadic cascade model in which sibling weights may have arbitrary dependence. For every balanced energy-admissible vector law, almost surely on non-extinction, dim_F(mu)=dim_E(mu)=dim_2(mu)=D_E(X). In the canonical scalar case, under W>=0, E W=1, E[W log_2^+ W]

12.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-17

<i>CHPO</i> coordinates chilling recovery and nitrogen use in rice

作者:

Global rice production faces mounting challenges from abnormal temperature fluctuations and nitrogen-fertilizer-driven environmental pollution1–7. Developing varieties that balance chilling resilience and nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE) offers a promising solution, but the molecular networks coordinating these traits remain poorly understood. Here we identify CHILLING PHOENIX (CHPO), a major gene underlying the quantitative trait locus shared by both chilling tolerance and resilience. It encodes a MYB transcription factor that acts as a key regulator coordinating post-chilling recovery with nitrogen use in rice. Natural variation in a GCG-repeat-encoded polyalanine tract alters CHPO DNA-binding preference and redirects regulatory outputs between the japonica-type (CHPOjap) and indica-type (CHPOind), causing opposing effects on chilling tolerance and resilience. This allelic variation is shaped by domestication selection, with the CHPOjap allele probably derived from Chinese wild rice. CHPOjap directly targets OsTCP19 and OsNRT2.4 to fine-tune NUE, thereby enhancing chilling tolerance and resilience. These findings provide a mechanistic framework for a chilling-induced high-nitrogen-utilization module that alleviates the damage caused by chilling stress, and a potential molecular design&nbsp;strategy for breeding rice varieties with both chilling resilience and high NUE at the&nbsp;recovery stage. A rice gene, CHPO, links chilling resilience with nitrogen-use efficiency, revealing a domestication-shaped regulatory mechanism that could guide breeding of climate-resilient, sustainable rice varieties.

13.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-12

Computational Design of Optimal Sequences for Targeted Hypermutagenesis Using Recombination-Coupled Diversity-Generating Retroelements

Diversity-generating retroelements (DGRs) are natural systems that accelerate evolution via targeted hypermutation at adenines. We previously developed DGRec, a system combining DGRs and recombineering for programmable mutagenesis in Escherichia coli. We here address two important issues with DGRec: the dependence of mutagenesis efficiency on the dgrRNA secondary structure and the variability of the reverse-transcription biases with sequence context and position. First, we introduce and validate a method to recode non-functional templates, i.e. with low mutagenesis efficiency, into highly functional ones through synonymous mutations. Second, we develop a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model to predict DGRec mutational profiles for any given template sequence. By integrating this LSTM model with our recoding method, we establish a comprehensive workflow for customized directed evolution, enabling researchers to precisely fine-tune DGRec in vivo mutagenesis to their engineering needs.

14.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12

Multi-Field Hybrid Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Maritime Accident Root Cause Analysis

arXiv:2606.13249v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Maritime accident adjudication reports contain critical tribunal findings for root cause analysis (RCA), yet retrieving relevant precedents and drafting consistent reports from decades of records remains labor-intensive. This paper proposes a multi-field hybrid retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) framework for automated maritime RCA, utilizing a comprehensive dataset of 13,329 Korea Maritime Safety Tribunal (KMST) reports (1971-2025). We transform raw adjudications into a structured knowledge base of "incident cards", indexing three distinct fields-Summary, Causes, and Disposition-alongside a hierarchical L1/L2 cause taxonomy. Our retrieval strategy employs a field-aware hybrid approach, fusing sparse and dense rankings via Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF). Given the lack of large-scale expert relevance labels, we evaluate retrieval performance using ceiling-normalized recall and nDCG based on a metadata-derived proxy relevance score. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed retrieval significantly outperforms baseline methods, improving NormRecall@100 from 0.18 to 0.55. Furthermore, grounding the generator on the retrieved precedents enhances RCA generation quality over an LLM-only baseline, increasing the LLM-as-a-judge score from 3.34 to 3.72. These findings suggest that field-aware RAG can substantially streamline maritime safety investigation workflows by enabling faster precedent search and more consistent, evidence-based RCA drafting.

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

From Sorting Algorithms to Scalable Kernels: Bayesian Optimization in High-Dimensional Permutation Spaces

arXiv:2507.13263v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Bayesian Optimization (BO) is a powerful tool for black-box optimization, but its application to high-dimensional permutation spaces is severely limited by the challenge of defining scalable representations. The current state-of-the-art BO approach for permutation spaces relies on an exhaustive $\Omega(n^2)$ pairwise comparison, inducing a dense representation that is impractical for large-scale permutations. To break this barrier, we introduce a novel framework for generating efficient permutation representations via kernel functions derived from sorting algorithms. Within this framework, the Mallows kernel can be viewed as a special instance derived from enumeration sort. Further, we introduce the Merge Kernel , which leverages the divide-and-conquer structure of merge sort to produce a compact, $\Theta(n\log n)$ to achieve the lowest possible complexity with no information loss and effectively capture permutation structure. Our central thesis is that the Merge Kernel performs competitively with the Mallows kernel in low-dimensional settings, but significantly outperforms it in both optimization performance and computational efficiency as the dimension $n$ grows. Extensive evaluations on various permutation optimization benchmarks confirm our hypothesis, demonstrating that the Merge Kernel provides a scalable and more effective solution for Bayesian optimization in high-dimensional permutation spaces, thereby unlocking the potential for tackling previously intractable problems such as large-scale feature ordering and combinatorial neural architecture search.

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

SAG: SQL-Retrieval Augmented Generation with Query-Time Dynamic Hyperedges

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) offers an effective approach for large language models to access external knowledge. However, existing methods rely on dense similarity retrieval and face inherent limitations in handling structured constraints and multi-hop reasoning. Incorporating knowledge graphs partially alleviates these issues, but at the cost of semantic fragmentation, high maintenance overhead, and difficult incremental updates. This paper introduces SAG (SQLRetrieval Augmented Generation), a structured architecture for retrieval and agent systems. Instead of pre-building a global static graph, SAG converts each chunk into one semantically complete event and a set of indexing entities, then uses SQL join queries to dynamically link events that share entities into local hyperedges,constructing, at query time, a dynamically instantiated local index structure. This design avoids the need for global graph rebuilding and ongoing maintenance; the system naturally supports incremental writes, concurrent processing, and continuous scaling through its reliance on standard database infrastructure. Across HotpotQA, 2WikiMultiHop, and MuSiQue, three standard multi-hop benchmarks,SAG achieves the best results on 8 out of 9 Recall@K metrics, reaching 80.0% Recall@5 on MuSiQue, the benchmark with the highest multi-hop reasoning demands.SAG has also been deployed at a production scale of hundreds of millions of data items, with online retrieval latency kept within seconds. Project site and code are available at https://github.com/Zleap-AI/SAG-Benchmark.

17.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-12

High coverage, persistent gaps: quality of Antenatal Care and its determinants in Zambia based on the 2024 Demographic and Health Survey.

Abstract Background Evaluating antenatal care (ANC) quality is critical to reducing maternal and neonatal mortality. In Zambia, despite high basic ANC attendance, comprehensive national evidence on the clinical content and quality of services remains limited. This study assessed the coverage of WHO-recommended ANC interventions and identified factors associated with care quality using the latest national data. Methods A cross-sectional analysis was conducted using data from the 2024 Zambia Demographic and Health Survey. The final analytic sample comprised 4,829 women aged 15-49 with a live birth in the preceding 5 years. A composite index of 15 selected, equally weighted WHO-recommended components evaluated clinical assessment, counseling/screening, preventive interventions, and utilization. Survey-weighted Poisson regression estimated adjusted incidence rate ratios (aIRRs) for the count of ANC components received. Results The mean ANC quality score was 12.5 out of 15 (95% CI: 12.4-12.6), and 78.5% (95% CI: 77.0-80.0) of women achieved adequate ANC ([&ge;] 12/15 components). While individual clinical and counseling coverage generally exceeded 90%, only 47.2% (95% CI: 45.3-49.0) of women initiated care during the first trimester, and just 4.8% (95% CI: 4.1-5.6) achieved [&ge;] 8 ANC contacts. Maternal education was the strongest and most stable predictor of quality across all models. Compared to no education, higher education was associated with an 8.0% higher expected quality score (aIRR = 1.080, 95% CI: 1.051-1.110). Lower ANC quality was significantly associated with unwanted pregnancies (aIRR = 0.970, 95% CI: 0.956-0.993) and with residence in Western (aIRR = 0.923, 95% CI: 0.897-0.951) and North Western (aIRR = 0.966, 95% CI: 0.937-0.996) provinces. Absence of distance barriers and residence in Eastern, Luapula, and Copperbelt provinces were associated with higher quality scores. Conclusion While average ANC component coverage in Zambia is high, critical gaps persist in early initiation and total contact frequency. Care adequacy is strongly influenced by maternal education, relationship status, pregnancy intention, and regional inequities. These findings underscore the need for interventions targeted at uneducated women, preventing unintended pregnancies, and underserved regions such as Western and North Western Provinces. Keywords: Antenatal care quality, ANC content, Zambia, maternal education.

18.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Matrix Product Operator Encodings of the Magnus Expansion and Dyson Series

arXiv:2605.21597v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We introduce a matrix product operator (MPO) encoding of the Magnus expansion and the Dyson series for one-dimensional quantum lattice models with time-dependent Hamiltonians. The MPO construction can be made accurate up to arbitrary order in the time step, it can be applied to both finite and infinite systems, and it can handle long-range interactions. The resulting MPO can be combined with state-of-the-art time evolution algorithms based on matrix product states, allowing for drastic improvements in simulating evolution under time-dependent Hamiltonians. Our MPO construction can also be used for the optimization of quantum circuits in the context of quantum simulation of time-dependent Hamiltonians.

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

Your AI Travel Agent Would Book You a Bullfight: An Agentic Benchmark for Implicit Animal Welfare in Frontier AI Models

AI agents are moving from advisors to actors, booking travel, planning menus, and running procurement on behalf of users. Existing benchmarks for AI and animal welfare evaluate model text responses to question-answer prompts, leaving open whether the welfare reasoning surfaced in those responses transfers to agentic deployment where the model must take actions with tools. We introduce TAC (Travel Agent Compassion), the first agentic benchmark measuring whether AI agents avoid options involving animal exploitation when acting on behalf of users. TAC presents an AI agent with twelve hand-authored travel booking scenarios across six categories of animal exploitation, augmented to forty-eight samples to control for price, rating, and position confounds. We evaluate seven frontier models from four labs. Every model scores below the chance level of sixty-four percent, with the best performer (Claude Opus 4.7) at fifty-three percent. A single welfare-aware sentence in the system prompt yields gains of forty-seven to sixty-three percentage points in Claude and GPT-5.5, twenty-six points in GPT-5.2, and under twelve points in DeepSeek and Gemini. An auxiliary Inspect Scout audit of 288 base-condition transcripts from the top two performers, using Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite as judge, flags zero transcripts for evaluation awareness, suggesting the below-chance rates do not stem from the models recognising the evaluation. We discuss implications for category-level variation across cultural domains, the limits of text-response welfare benchmarks, and the EU General-Purpose AI Code of Practice systemic risk framework.

20.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-11

SpikeDecoder: Realizing the GPT Architecture with Spiking Neural Networks

arXiv:2606.12287v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The Transformer architecture is widely regarded as the most powerful tool for natural language processing, but due to a high number of complex operations, it inherently faces the issue of high energy consumption. To address this issue, we consider Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), which are an energy-efficient alternative to conventional Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) due to their naturally event-driven approach to processing information. However, this inherently makes them difficult to train. Often, many SNN-based models circumvent this issue by converting pre-trained ANNs. More recently, attempts have been made to design directly trainable SNN-based adaptations of the Transformer model structure. Although the results showed great promise, the application field was computer vision. Moreover, the proposed model incorporates only encoder blocks. In this paper, we propose SpikeDecoder, a fully SNN-based implementation of the Transformer decoder block, for applications in natural language processing. In a series of experiments, we analyze the impact of exchanging different blocks of the ANN model with spike-based alternatives to identify trade-offs and significant sources of performance loss. We further investigate the role of residual connections and the selection of SNN-compatible normalization techniques. Besides the work on the model architecture, we formulate and compare different embedding methods to project text data into spikes. Finally, we demonstrate that our proposed SNN-based decoder block reduces the theoretical energy consumption by 87% to 93% compared to the ANN baseline.

21.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-12

Counterintuitive problems in discrete probability

arXiv:2606.07516v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This manuscript contains a collection of counterintuitive problems in discrete probability, together with detailed solutions. The dataset was constructed as part of a broader research project investigating the capabilities of the latest-generation Large Language Models (LLMs) in solving discrete probability problems, in order to assess whether LLMs tend to make systematic reasoning errors associated with known cognitive biases. The problems collected here are specifically designed to challenge heuristic reasoning strategies that often lead to intuitively appealing but mathematically incorrect conclusions. The dataset combines several types of problems. Some are adapted from classical probabilistic paradoxes and cognitive-bias literature, while others originate from recreational mathematics sources or were developed by ourselves following similar principles. The primary purpose of this document is to provide a transparent and publicly accessible reference for the problems used in our experimental evaluation of language models, as well as providing detailed human-made solutions. At the same time, we believe that this collection may also prove useful for future research on probabilistic reasoning, cognitive biases, and the evaluation of reasoning capabilities in artificial intelligence systems.

22.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

It's About Time: Temporal References in Emergent Communication

Emergent communication enables agents to develop bespoke languages that improve communication efficiency. Despite the known importance of temporal structure in natural language, there is no existing evidence of temporal references in emergent communication. This paper addresses this gap, by exploring how agents communicate about temporal relationships. We analyse three potential factors for the emergence of temporal references: environmental, external, and architectural. Our experiments demonstrate that altering the loss function is insufficient for temporal references to emerge; rather, architectural changes are necessary. A minimal change in agent architecture, using a different batching method, allows the emergence of temporal references. This modified design is compared with the standard architecture in a temporal referential games environment, which emphasises temporal relationships. The analysis shows that over 95% of the agents with the modified batching method develop temporal references, without changes to their loss function. We consider temporal referencing necessary for future improvements to the agents' communication efficiency, enabling future agents to use a closer to optimal coding as compared to purely compositional languages. These insights provide the basis for incorporation of temporal references into other emergent communication settings, and investigation of other aspects of language.

23.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-12

Unsafer in Many Turns: Benchmarking and Defending Multi-Turn Safety Risks in Tool-Using Agents

LLM-based agents are becoming increasingly capable, yet their safety lags behind. This creates a gap between what agents can do and should do. This gap widens as agents engage in multi-turn interactions and employ diverse tools, introducing new risks overlooked by existing benchmarks. To systematically scale safety testing into multi-turn, tool-realistic settings, we propose a principled taxonomy that transforms single-turn harmful tasks into multi-turn attack sequences. Using this taxonomy, we construct MT-AgentRisk (Multi-Turn Agent Risk Benchmark), the first benchmark to evaluate multi-turn tool-using agent safety. Our experiments reveal substantial safety degradation: the Attack Success Rate (ASR) increases by 16% on average across open and closed models in multi-turn settings. To close this gap, we propose ToolShield, a training-free, tool-agnostic, self-exploration defense: when encountering a new tool, the agent autonomously generates test cases, executes them to observe downstream effects, and distills safety experiences for deployment. Experiments show that ToolShield effectively reduces ASR by 30% on average in multi-turn interactions. Our code is available at https://github.com/CHATS-lab/ToolShield.

24.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-12

HyperTool: Beyond Step-Wise Tool Calls for Tool-Augmented Agents

Tool-augmented LLM agents commonly rely on step-wise atomic tool calls, where each invocation, observation, and value transfer is exposed in the main reasoning trace. This creates an execution-granularity mismatch: locally deterministic tool workflows are unfolded into repeated model-visible decisions, consuming context and forcing the model to manage low-level dataflow in the trace. We introduce HyperTool, a unified executable MCP-style tool interface that changes the model-visible unit of tool execution. A model invokes HyperTool with a code block that can call existing tools through their original schemas, manipulate returned values, and pass intermediate results locally, folding deterministic tool subroutines into a single outer call. To train models to use this interface, we synthesize HyperTool-format trajectories from cross-tool compositional tasks and verify them in real MCP environments. On MCP-Universe, HyperTool improves average accuracy from 15.69\% to 35.29\% on Qwen3-32B and from 9.93\% to 33.33\% on Qwen3-8B, and surpass GPT-OSS and Kimi-k2.5 on average accuracy, showing that our HyperTool can substantially improve multi-step tool use.

25.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

Can AI Agents Synthesize Scientific Conclusions?

Scientific AI agents increasingly retrieve evidence, reason across sources, and synthesize conclusions used in consequential decisions. Yet, their ability to do so in high-stakes domains such as health remains unclear. We introduce SciConBench, a large-scale live benchmark of 9.11K questions and expert-written conclusions from systematic reviews to evaluate open-domain scientific conclusion synthesis. The benchmark draws on an expert-validated automated evaluation pipeline that decomposes conclusions into atomic facts and measures correctness and comprehensiveness via factual precision and recall. To mitigate data leakage, we further introduce SciConHarness, a clean-room evaluation harness that equips agents with controlled web interaction to ensure valid measurement. Evaluating 8 frontier models and deep research agents, we find that factual quality remains low: under clean-room settings, the best agent achieves only a factual F1 of 0.337. Our clean-room setting consistently reduces performance relative to unconstrained evaluation, suggesting that leakage inflates estimates of models' true synthesis capabilities. Finally, we audit consumer-facing agents (e.g., Google AI Overview, OpenEvidence) and find they frequently generate incomplete and sometimes contradictory conclusions, even when the ground-truth answer is available. Overall, our results show that reliable synthesis of scientific conclusions remains an open challenge, and that clean-room evaluation is essential for assessing open-domain AI agents.