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

Beyond the GUI Paradigm: Do Mobile Agents Need the Phone Screen?

Recent advances in mobile agents are dominated by the GUI paradigm, in which agents perceive UI information and emit screen interactions. However, mobile platforms also expose a command-line interface (CLI) that provides direct access to device services and data. We argue CLI deserves first-class consideration alongside GUI. We evaluate three coding agents (Claude Code, Terminus-2, mini-swe-agent) across four model APIs on AndroidWorld and MobileWorld without any mobile-specific post-training, comparing against three reproducible GUI baselines (GUI-Owl-1.5-32B, MAI-UI, Qwen3-VL-32B). Claude Code (Opus 4.7) reaches 71.8\% and 51.9\%, outperforming every reproducible GUI baseline (69.3/68.1/57.8\% on AndroidWorld; 43.2/26.3/13.3\% on MobileWorld), while every other CLI configuration remains competitive. To establish the paradigm's ceiling, we provide oracle CLI solutions that reach 88.8\% on AndroidWorld (103/116 tasks CLI-solvable) and 86.3\% on MobileWorld (101/117 tasks CLI-solvable), indicating substantial room for future improvement. To cover everyday user intents beyond the GUI scope, we introduce the CLI-Advantage Task Suite, comprising 45 templates across five categories: bulk operations, multi-condition filtering, aggregation, cross-app workflows, and hidden device state. Every CLI agent outperforms every GUI baseline in all five categories, with substantially fewer steps per task (10.7 vs.\ 18.6). To support future research on mobile CLI agents, we will open-source agent implementations, oracle solutions, the CLI-Advantage suite, and evaluation infrastructure.

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

Where Do Backdoors Live? A Component-Level Analysis of Backdoor Propagation in Speech Language Models

Speech language models (SLMs) are systems of systems: independent components that unite to achieve a common goal. Despite their heterogeneous nature, SLMs are often studied end-to-end; how information flows through the pipeline remains obscure. We investigate this question through the lens of backdoor attacks. We first establish that backdoors can propagate through the SLM, leaving all tasks highly vulnerable. From this, we design a component analysis to discover the role each component takes in backdoor learning. We find that backdoor persistence or erasure is highly dependent on the targeted component. Beyond propagation, we examine how backdoors are encoded in shared multitask embeddings, showing that poisoned samples are not directly separable from benign ones, challenging a common separability assumption used in filtering defenses. Our findings emphasize the need to treat multimodal pipelines as intricate systems with unique vulnerabilities, not solely extensions of unimodal ones.

03.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Random Projections for Multi-Copy Quantum Algorithms

arXiv:2606.20238v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Estimating nonlinear properties of quantum states is a central task in quantum information science. Multivariate traces, $\mathrm{tr}(\rho_1 \cdots \rho_K)$, and nonlinear observables such as $\mathrm{tr}(\rho^K)$, for integer $K$, can be accessed through collective measurements on multiple state copies, but standard protocols based on swap tests require coherent operations on the full Hilbert space and become experimentally unfeasible for large systems. In this work, we introduce a framework for multi-copy measurements based on random projections onto lower-dimensional subspaces prior to the collective measurement, which is then performed only on the reduced Hilbert space. This procedure yields a tunable tradeoff between coherent quantum resources and statistical sampling overhead, allowing the amount of coherent processing to be matched to the capabilities of the underlying hardware. We derive explicit formulas relating the Haar-averaged projected moments to multivariate traces of the original states and analyze the sampling overhead induced by the projection procedure. Specifically, after compressing an $n$-qubit state to a reduced $q$-qubit subspace, estimating $\mathrm{tr}(\rho^K)$ requires approximately $O(2^{(n-q)(K-1)})$ copies of $\rho$, with each qubit projected out increasing the sampling cost by a factor of $2^{K-1}$. Our results establish how coherent multi-copy operations can be traded for additional state copies, enabling multi-copy quantum protocols to be optimized for the available hardware resources.

04.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Chiral Lattice Gauge Theories from Symmetry Disentanglers

arXiv:2601.04304v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We propose a Hamiltonian framework for constructing chiral gauge theories on the lattice based on symmetry disentanglers: constant-depth circuits of local unitaries that transform not-on-site symmetries into on-site ones. When chiral symmetry can be realized not-on-site and such a disentangler exists, the symmetry can be implemented in a strictly local Hamiltonian and gauged by standard lattice methods. Using lattice rotor models, we realize this idea in 1+1 and 3+1 spacetime dimensions for $U(1)$ symmetries with mixed 't Hooft anomalies, and show that symmetry disentanglers can be constructed when anomalies cancel. As an example, we present an exactly solvable Hamiltonian lattice model of the (1+1)-dimensional "3450" chiral gauge theory, and we argue that a related construction applies to the $U(1)$ hypercharge symmetry of the Standard Model fermions in 3+1 dimensions. Our results open a new route toward fully local, nonperturbative formulations of chiral gauge theories.

05.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-15

CANN-EUCLID: unsupervised constitutive artificial neural network model discovery from full-field data

arXiv:2606.14565v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Constitutive artificial neural networks (CANNs) provide interpretable material model discovery, but have so far been used in stress-supervised settings based on apparent stress-strain data from homogeneous tests. Because each test samples only a narrow loading path and provides homogenized rather than local stress information, robust discovery typically requires multiple loading modes to constrain the multidimensional response. This is challenging for soft biological tissues, where repeated testing, damage, and sample variability limit reliable information from a single specimen. Here, we combine CANNs with the stress-unsupervised full-field discovery framework EUCLID to identify sparse hyperelastic laws directly from displacement fields and reaction forces in one heterogeneity-inducing loading case. CANN-EUCLID minimizes equilibrium imbalance with sparsity-promoting regularization selecting compact active terms, without local stress measurements or a prescribed law. We evaluate the approach on isotropic and anisotropic benchmarks with prescribed ground-truth laws. When the ground truth is representable by the chosen CANN basis, our method recovers the correct terms with near-exact accuracy, including exponential terms with embedded parameters. When it is not contained in the basis, the method retains shared terms and approximates missing contributions using available basis functions. Generalization depends strongly on sampled deformation states: exponential strain-stiffening terms can be recovered accurately when sufficiently probed, but can produce large extrapolation errors when the stiffening regime lies outside the sampled domain. Forward FE validation simulations show that the discovered behavior accurately replicates the ground truth. These results establish stress-unsupervised CANN discovery as a promising framework for interpretable full-field constitutive model identification.

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

Embedded Machine Learning for Microcontroller-Class Edge Devices: Data, Feature, Evaluation, and Deployment Pipelines

arXiv:2606.18122v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Embedded machine learning moves inference from cloud services to resource-constrained devices that must acquire data, preprocess signals, run a model, and act within tight limits on memory, energy, and latency. This paper presents a systems-oriented synthesis of an embedded machine-learning workflow for microcontroller-class platforms. The emphasis is placed on engineering decisions that are often hidden in generic machine-learning introductions: sampling and buffering, feature extraction as dimensionality reduction, validation under class imbalance, model/runtime co-design, and streaming deployment. Two representative signal families are used throughout the paper. The first is inertial motion recognition, where a two-second, three-axis accelerometer window is transformed from raw samples into root-mean-square and spectral features before classification. The second is keyword spotting, where audio is sampled, anti-aliased, transformed into mel-frequency cepstral coefficients, and processed by a compact one-dimensional convolutional network. The paper concludes with practical design rules for robust on-device inference, including data curation, quantization, thresholding, scheduling, and field monitoring.

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

Navigating the Safety-Fidelity Trade-off: Massive-Variate Time Series Forecasting for Power Systems via Probabilistic Scenarios

arXiv:2606.13338v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Probabilistic forecasting models are increasingly deployed on multivariate systems with distinct channel physics and operational constraints, but existing benchmarks evaluate neither property at scale. Public canonical multivariate benchmarks cap out at 2,000 channels, while power-system benchmarks either lack temporal structure or probabilistic evaluation. We introduce PowerPhase, a probabilistic forecasting benchmark built on six transmission grids ranging from 2,000 to 36,964 jointly forecasted channels, more than an order of magnitude beyond popular canonical multivariate benchmarks. Each target trajectory is the output of an AC power-flow solve, and PowerPhase ships with constraint-aware metrics, including Safety_mBrier, NECV, and CVaR-alpha, that complement CRPS and Distortion. Across eight baselines and three seeds, distributional accuracy and constraint satisfaction rank models differently, a trade-off we term safety-fidelity. We further propose PowerForge, a scenario-based quantile forecaster with type-specific decoding heads and a causal bridge between variable groups, which achieves the best average rank on every grid.

08.
Nature Biotechnology 2026-06-09

Hybrid solid−liquid optics enable scalable, high-resolution light-sheet microscopy across diverse immersion media

作者:

Many data-driven approaches rely on scalable and affordable three-dimensional (3D) imaging across subcellular to organ scales. Although advances in tissue clearing, expansion microscopy and light-sheet microscopy (LSM) have enabled high-resolution imaging of intact specimens, scalability in sample size, throughput and accessibility remains fundamentally limited by detection optics. Here we introduce hybrid solid−liquid optics (HySIL), a flexible refractive design framework in which a solid optical element and a refractive index (RI)-matched liquid function as a continuous optical system for wavefront correction and numerical aperture enhancement. We implement this framework as SCOPE and Super-SCOPE, enabling submicron-resolution, aberration-corrected LSM using long-working-distance air objectives. We demonstrate high-resolution volumetric imaging across diverse biological contexts, including cleared and expanded mouse, salamander and cavefish brains, human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived brain organoids and large intact human tissues for 3D histopathology. By combining enhanced optical performance with low-cost, long-working-distance and multi-immersion compatibility, HySIL provides an accessible and scalable foundation for next-generation volumetric imaging and data-driven biological discovery. Hybrid solid–liquid optics improve light-sheet imaging of intact biological samples.

09.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-19

Composed Object Retrieval: Object-level Retrieval via Composed Expressions

Retrieving fine-grained visual content based on user intent remains a challenge in multimodal systems. Although current Composed Image Retrieval (CIR) methods combine reference images with retrieval texts, they are constrained to image-level matching and cannot localize specific objects. To this end, we propose Composed Object Retrieval (COR), a new object-level retrieval task that retrieves target object(s) from candidate objects in a target image and grounds the retrieved result with pixel-level masks. Given a reference object, its mask, a target image, and a retrieval text describing the desired modification, COR requires models to perform composed visual-textual reasoning rather than relying on explicit category names. This setting introduces several challenges, including fine-grained compositional matching, negative-object filtering under visually similar distractors, and flexible single- or multi-object retrieval. We construct COR125K, the first large-scale COR benchmark, containing 125,541 retrieval triplets across 408 categories with base/novel splits for evaluating category-level generalization. We also present CORE, a unified end-to-end model that integrates reference region encoding, adaptive vision-text interaction, and region-level contrastive learning to align composed representations with target objects while suppressing background and distractors. Extensive experiments demonstrate that CORE significantly outperforms existing CIR-based pipelines and strong baselines in both base and novel categories, establishing a simple and effective foundation for fine-grained object-level multimodal retrieval. Code will be released publicly at https://github.com/wangtong627/COR.

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

Coercivity and Local Convergence of Physical Learning in Linear Circuits

arXiv:2606.15443v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Physical learning methods train physical networks to perform computational tasks using only local update rules, exploiting the physics of the system to handle the global transfer of information. We provide the first local convergence analysis of three such methods – Equilibrium Propagation (EP), Coupled Learning (CL), and a new method we call Adjoint Coupled Learning (AL) – for linear circuits, in the limit of small-nudging for both discrete and continuous time. EP and AL perform gradient descent on a natural loss function, while CL follows modified dynamics with an additional cubic correction. Assuming the existence of a solution, we identify a coercivity condition, expressed as a rank condition on a matrix built from the network's incidence structure, under which the training loss decays exponentially and the parameters converge to the solution manifold. We show that coercivity can fail by exhibiting a kite circuit in which a symmetry causes the coercivity constant to degenerate on the solution manifold, but prove using Sard's theorem that such degeneracies are non-generic: coercivity holds at every point of the solution manifold for almost every choice of desired output.

11.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-19

Establishing an $\Omega(\sqrt{d})$ complexity lower bound for PDMP samplers and how to break it: a sub-$\sqrt{d}$ algorithm for Gaussian-tailed targets

arXiv:2606.19909v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Despite the theoretical appeal of their non-reversibility, to date, no Piecewise Deterministic Markov Process (PDMP) samplers have been developed that scale better than $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{d})$ in computational complexity with respect to the target dimension $d$. We prove that this is a fundamental limitation by establishing an $\Omega(\sqrt{d})$ lower bound on the algorithmic complexity of PDMP samplers in a standard setup. By relaxing the assumption that the target density must remain invariant at all continuous times, we then demonstrate how to bypass this barrier. Specifically, we introduce a novel PDMP sampling scheme and show that it achieves an empirical complexity of $\mathcal{O}(d^\alpha)$, where $\alpha \in [0.2, 0.3]$ for Gaussian-tailed targets. In addition, this PDMP scheme is locally adaptive in both trajectory length and distance between velocity updates.

12.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

Calibration Without Comprehension: Diagnosing the Limits of Fine-Tuning LLMs for Vulnerability Detection in Systems Software

arXiv:2606.20502v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Whether LLMs scoring well on vulnerability benchmarks genuinely reason about security or merely pattern-match on contaminated data remains unresolved. We present CWE-Trace, a framework for LLM vulnerability detection built from 834 manually curated Linux kernel samples spanning 74 CWEs. The framework enforces a strict temporal split (pre-2025 historical set / post-cutoff leakage-free set), preserves context-aware vulnerable–patched pairs, and introduces two diagnostic metrics: the Directional Failure Index (DFI) and Hierarchical Distance and Direction (HDD). We evaluate eight vanilla LLMs and 15 LoRA fine-tuned variants across non-targeted detection, targeted detection, and CWE classification. Our analysis yields two key results. First, data contamination provides no measurable advantage. Function-level analysis shows that 84% of nominally contaminated samples carry no usable memorization signal: vulnerable functions are absent or cross-mapped across datasets, and ~31% of contaminated samples carry CWE misclassification. Second, backbone directional priors dominate fine-tuning. Models exhibit stable, systematic failure modes (DFI ranging from -85.5 to +94.8 pp) that persist from historical to post-cutoff data and resist correction. Fine-tuning shifts the output threshold without changing the decision policy. This is calibration without comprehension: output distributions adapt to training data while the underlying security reasoning remains absent. The weakest backbone at binary detection (DeepSeek-R1) gains the most in coarse CWE classification, revealing that detection and understanding are decoupled capabilities. The best detection score reaches only 52.1% (+2.1 pp above chance); exact CWE ranking remains below 1.3% Top-1 accuracy, confirming that current LLMs lack reliable security reasoning for systems software, regardless of fine-tuning strategy.

13.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-18

Improve Large Language Model Systems with User Logs

Scaling training data and model parameters has long driven progress in large language models (LLMs), but this paradigm is increasingly constrained by the scarcity of high-quality data and diminishing returns from rising computational costs. As a result, recent work is increasing the focus on continual learning from real-world deployment, where user interaction logs provide a rich source of authentic human feedback and procedural knowledge. However, learning from user logs is challenging due to their unstructured and noisy nature. Vanilla LLM systems often struggle to distinguish useful feedback signals from noisy user behavior, and the disparity between user log collection and model optimization (e.g., the off-policy optimization problem) further strengthens the problem. To this end, we propose UNO (User log-driveN Optimization), a unified framework for improving LLM systems (LLMsys) with user logs. UNO first distills logs into semi-structured rules and preference pairs, then employs query-and-feedback-driven clustering to manage data heterogeneity, and finally quantifies the cognitive gap between the model's prior knowledge and the log data. This assessment guides the LLMsys to adaptively filter out noisy feedback and construct different modules for primary and reflective experiences extracted from user logs, thereby improving future responses. Extensive experiments show that UNO achieves state-of-the-art effectiveness and efficiency, significantly outperforming Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and memory-based baselines. We have open-sourced our code at https://github.com/bebr2/UNO .

14.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-17

ResAware: Cross-Environment Website Fingerprinting via Resource-Privileged Distillation

arXiv:2606.17462v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: While Website Fingerprinting (WF) attacks achieve high accuracy in controlled laboratory settings, they often degrade substantially in real-world environments due to spatio-temporal drift, browser heterogeneity, proxy obfuscation and etc. This limitation stems from their sole reliance on low-level traffic features that are noisy and highly sensitive to environmental perturbations. To address this problem, we propose ResAware, a cross-environment resource-aware distillation framework under a training-rich/inference-poor asymmetric setting. Specifically, ResAware trains a teacher model on resource-level features, and then distills the resulting privileged knowledge into a student model through heterogeneous knowledge distillation. At deployment time, the student model performs inference using only encrypted traffic, incurring zero additional cost. We evaluate ResAware on a large-scale dataset collected over five months from six globally distributed vantage points, comprising more than $160{,}000$ paired samples. The results show that ResAware significantly enhances the cross-environment robustness of diverse WF baselines. Under a 150-day temporal drift, for example, ResAware improves the F1-score of Var-CNN from $72.77\%$ to $81.49\%$ and the open-world $TPR@1\%FPR$ from $22.40\%$ to $27.20\%$. Our results demonstrate that resource-level supervision improves WF robustness without expanding online observation capabilities.

15.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-16

Care Delivery Gap framework: a proof-of-concept patient-reported measure of guideline-referenced care-process omissions in sickle cell disease

Abstract Background:Sickle cell disease (SCD) is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, where delivery of guideline-referenced care remains challenging. Current evaluation approaches rely largely on access indicators and clinical outcomes, which do not directly measure care delivery. We developed the Care Delivery Gap (CDG) framework, a patient-reported approach for identifying care-process omissions, and conducted a proof-of-concept study to assess feasibility and explore variation across income strata. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional framework-development study involving a proof-of-concept sample of 52 individuals with SCD or caregivers recruited through clinics and moderated SCD communities across Africa, North America, and Europe between June 2025 and March 2026. The CDG framework assessed patient-reported omissions in specialist involvement, follow-up continuity, cardiovascular screening, and biochemical surveillance. Analyses were descriptive. Results: Substantial multi-domain care-process omissions were identified despite high reported healthcare engagement. Across geographic income strata, cardiovascular screening was reported by 4/35 (11%) LMIC versus 16/17 (94%) HIC participants, and regular follow-up within the preceding 12 months by 14/35 (40%) versus 16/17 (94%), respectively. High CDG scores, representing 1 omissions across three or four domains, occurred in 20/35 (57%) LMIC compared with 1/17 (6%) HIC participants. Similar disparities were observed across specialist review and vitamin B12 surveillance domains. Conclusion: A structured patient-reported framework identified multi-domain omissions in guideline-referenced SCD care, including among individuals reporting healthcare access. The divergence between access indicators and reported care delivery suggests that service contact alone may not reflect care quality. The framework provides a feasible foundation for future process-level quality measurement in high-burden settings.

16.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

How Well Do Large Language Models Capture Human Personality?

arXiv:2606.18263v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to simulate human populations via persona prompting, often under the assumptions that richer persona descriptions improve behavioral fidelity, similarly sized attribute combinations are equally simulatable, and persona definitions generalize across tasks. In this work, we formalize these assumptions and systematically evaluate them across multiple architectures, scales, and simulation settings. We identify a fundamental limitation we term persona manifold collapse, where increasingly expressive persona specifications lead to systematic contraction of representational and behavioral diversity. Across models, increasing persona complexity consistently reduces inter-persona separation in latent space and weakens behavioral differentiation in downstream simulation tasks. These effects persist across multiple analyses as richer personas fail to preserve human subgroup disagreement, performance varies across attribute combinations of similar size, and adding descriptive detail often degrades rather than improves simulation fidelity. Surprisingly, simple Age-Gender personas consistently outperform richly specified Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) across industries, achieving substantially higher downstream prediction accuracy. We find that collapse is not uniform across attributes. Certain combinations remain behaviorally stable and preserve stronger alignment with human responses, forming localized regions we term alignment bridges. Together, our results provide empirical and conceptual foundations for understanding the limits of persona-conditioned simulation, highlighting the need for representation-aware persona construction rather than increasing persona expressivity alone.

17.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

Local-GS: Accelerating 3D Gaussian Splatting via Tile-Local Warp Coherence

3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has significantly advanced real-time novel view synthesis by representing scenes as dense collections of anisotropic 3D Gaussian primitives. However, the irregular spatial distribution of Gaussians often leads to poor GPU utilization, as warp divergence and redundant computation degrade rendering performance. To address this, we present Local-GS, a warp-coherent rendering paradigm that, organizes Gaussian primitives with respect to SIMT (Single Instruction, Multiple Threads) execution boundaries rather than scene geometry. Specifically, we propose three warp-coherent stages: a hoisting stage that precomputes shared parameters at tile level, a culling stage that discards warps with no contribution, and a blending stage that replaces per-pixel branching with a uniform instruction stream. Across extensive benchmarks on multiple datasets, Local-GS improves efficiency without compromising quality. As a plug-and-play optimization, it provides additional performance gains to all tested baselines, culminating in a $7.76\times$ speedup on Deep Blending scenes.

18.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-17

Stochastic signal sensing with finite energy and dead time at the fundamental quantum limit

arXiv:2606.18133v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: State preparation, measurement, and reset operations take finite time and use finite energy in realistic experiments, yet the impact of this on optimal quantum metrological protocols is not properly understood. We study the effect on sensing a stochastic signal, relevant for the detection of ultralight dark matter and other searches for fundamental physics. We prove that two-mode squeezed vacuum is the optimal probe state given a finite mean-energy constraint for a family of incoherent sensing problems, including noise sensing and quantum illumination. For estimating a gain independent of a loss, we show that entanglement is a required resource to achieve the fundamental quantum limit and observe a non-Gaussian to Gaussian transition in the optimal unentangled state as the dead time increases. We apply our results to bulk acoustic wave resonators.

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

Harness In-Context Operator Learning with Chain of Operators

arXiv:2606.12318v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Neural operators approximate mappings between function spaces, but often generalize poorly to other operators and usually require fine-tuning or retraining. In-Context Operator Networks (ICON) addresses this issue by prompting the model with numerical context so that the model learns specific operators from prompts and adapt to different operators without fine-tuning. However, ICON may still fail to generalize to out-of-distribution (OOD) operator tasks. Inpired by the success of harness engineering of Large Language models (LLMs), we introduce Chain of Operators (CHOP), a framework that harness a frozen ICON to OOD operator tasks without updating its parameters. Specifically, CHOP constructs a chain of operators consisting of explicit elementary transformations and the frozen ICON. Experiments on a scalar conservation law and a mean-field control problem show that CHOP reduces relative inference error over direct ICON evaluation, while each operator in the chain remains interpretable and in closed form. A chain constructed on one PDE family further generalizes to a different family, indicating shared mechanisms across harness systems.

20.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

The Market in the Model: Latent Diffusion as Neural Economy

Valuable critique of generative image models within visual culture and the humanities has emphasized the role of datasets in shaping the images they produce. Yet, close studies of the ideological positions embedded into the mechanism of the models have been neglected, leaving them imagined as "black boxes." In a bid to expand, rather than replace, dataset critique, this paper examines the mechanisms of the latent diffusion model in terms of the problems they were brought in to solve on behalf of computer vision engineers, and the decisions each component was tasked with automating. I interpret that ensemble through the histories of its parts and the theory of vision the system inscribes into every generated image. Drawing on Impett and Offert's notion of neural exchange value, I offer this analysis to argue that the model operates as a neural economy: a contained symbolic system that abstracts social communication into commensurable vectors as it transfers the social sphere into parcels for sale. Tracing the training and generation pipelines component by component reveals what each operation displaces, and how it further entrenches the logics of platform and attention economies over social communication. The paper warns that any critique fixated exclusively on copyright and commodity defenses risks reaffirming the very fetishism the model produces, and argues instead for centering social exchange.

21.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

X-Tokenizer: A Multimodal Action Tokenizer for Vision-Language-Action Pretraining

Modern Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models must bridge pretrained vision-language reasoning and precise continuous robot control. Existing action tokenizers discretize actions primarily for reconstruction, producing codes that preserve motion geometry but provide only weak semantic supervision to the backbone. We therefore formulate action tokenization not as mere compression, but as semantic interface learning between multimodal reasoning and executable control. To this end, we introduce X-Tokenizer, a lightweight encoder-Semantic Residual Quantization (SRQ)-decoder architecture that provides a shared action interface across diverse robotic arm embodiments. Its key component, SRQ, imposes an asymmetric structure on residual vector quantization: the first level is trained with Masked Action Modeling (MAM) to form a discrete action language that captures coarse motion intent, while deeper levels remain reconstruction-oriented residuals that preserve fine-grained details. To further align action tokens with multimodal semantics, X-Tokenizer is pretrained with contrastive alignment to the representation space of a pretrained foundation model and with next-frame vision-language feature prediction. Pretrained on 2.4M trajectories (2.0B action frames), a single frozen X-Tokenizer plugs into a mixed discrete-continuous VLA as a representation-shaping supervision signal. X-Tokenizer achieves top real-world aggregate and strong RoboTwin 2.0 simulation results. Outperforming FAST in multimodal grounding (+13.5%) and long-horizon tasks (+8.25), it shows that action tokenizers serve as semantic interfaces for VLA pretraining beyond mere action compression.

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

Agentic Discovery of Non-Canonical Antimicrobial Peptides with AMPGAN v3

arXiv:2606.17127v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Antimicrobial resistance causes to over a million deaths annually. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are a promising solution, but generative AMP models are not yet ready to design peptides with non-natural amino acids and/or chemical modifications, which are essential for real-world peptide drugs. We present AMPGAN v3, a multi-objective conditional GAN that expands the generative vocabulary to D-amino acids and N/C-terminus modifications such as amidation. By separating adversarial and activity-aware supervision across two specialized discriminators, AMPGAN v3 substantially improves training stability and outperforms prior generative AMP models on external classifiers. We validated five candidates spanning three structural classes in vitro; two showed activity against Gram-positive strains, with the best candidate reaching MIC 8 {\mu}g/mL against B. subtilis. To support downstream curation, we further present PepCraft, a multi-agent framework for end-to-end AMP discovery in which a Planning Agent orchestrates specialized executors for generation, filtering, and verification. Its prioritization recommendations align with our in vitro outcomes. Together, these contributions let us examine, on a small but real scale, how generative and agentic AI compose in therapeutic peptide discovery. Code: https://github.com/marszzibros/AMPGANv3

23.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

Learning to Distort: Weakly-Supervised Image Quality Transfer for Prostate DWI Correction

Single-shot echo-planar prostate diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) is frequently complicated by geometric distortions, which impact the ability to derive reliable diagnoses from such images. Developing automated correction methods is challenged by the absence of paired distorted and undistorted clinical scans. In this paper, we first propose a novel weakly-supervised image quality transfer (IQT) framework from undistorted to distorted images that utilizes image quality assessment (IQA) signals to supervise the transfer process. Unlike traditional methods that require expensive, voxel-wise paired data or resort to developing unpaired algorithms, our approach utilizes image-level quality labels (here, distorted vs. undistorted) to establish latent quality prototypes within a pre-trained feature space. Recognizing that simulating realistic distortions is more reliable than direct unpaired correction, we describe a weakly-supervised prototype flow matching algorithm to explicitly regularize generative trajectories towards distorted prototypes, producing realistic susceptibility artifacts that mimic clinical degradations. By synthesizing these realistic pairs, we enable a second IQT model to be trained in the forward direction for distortion correction. Experimental results demonstrate that our generated images successfully mimic the diagnostic interference of real-world artifacts, which leads to more capable distortion correction IQT models. In addition to qualitative comparisons, we also conduct exhaustive quantitative evaluations that compare our approach with existing unpaired approaches (e.g., CycleGAN, UNIT-DDPM, and OT-FM) - as either forward or reverse alternatives - by assessing clinical downstream task performance in PI-RADS and Gleason score classification, using both in-distribution and external data sets.

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

Automated Mediator for Human Negotiation: Pre-Mediation via a Structured LLM Pipeline

arXiv:2606.11379v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Pre-mediation, the preparatory phase preceding direct human negotiation, plays a critical role in achieving mutually beneficial agreements, yet is often omitted due to cost, time, and limited access to trained mediators. We introduce an automated mediator for human negotiation, implemented as a structured pipeline of LLM modules, that supports pre-mediation in integrative negotiation settings. The pipeline decomposes preparation into specialized modules for dialogue, preference prediction, response-level critique, and structured summarization, separating inference, generation, and evaluation to address limitations of monolithic single-prompt approaches. We use the term "agent" for each module following common LLM-systems terminology, but the components are not autonomous and do not interact peer-to-peer; outputs are passed forward in a fixed sequence. We evaluate the system in two controlled human-subject experiments comparing AI-based pre-mediation with professional human mediators in a multi-issue negotiation scenario. On short-term self-reported measures, the automated mediator achieves preparation outcomes broadly comparable to human mediators, including trust in the mediator and confidence in reaching mutually beneficial agreements, while achieving substantially lower error on the preference-inference task under our scenario and prompts (36% lower RMSE). A second study shows that targeted prompt refinements reduce excessive affirmation patterns from 36.6% to 16.8%, matching human mediator baselines. Our findings suggest that structured LLM pipelines can provide scalable, low-effort pre-mediation support broadly comparable to human mediators on short-term self-reported preparation outcomes. The pipeline's single-party design mirrors how human mediators run pre-mediation today and enables parallel deployment across all parties to a dispute, supporting scalability.

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

Can LLMs Be CEOs? Benchmarking Strategic Resource Reallocation with Multi-Role Agent Simulation

arXiv:2606.17459v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Evaluating the decision-making capabilities of large language models (LLMs) is a growing research priority, yet existing benchmarks focus on isolated cognitive tasks such as reasoning, knowledge retrieval, and economic rationality in stylized settings. These evaluations overlook the defining challenge of real executive decision-making: integrating conflicting recommendations from specialized stakeholders under information asymmetry, organizational constraints, and temporal dependencies. We introduce \textsc{CEO-Bench}, a multi-agent benchmark that evaluates LLMs on CEO-level strategic resource reallocation – the process of redirecting capital across business units in a multi-round, constraint-rich organizational environment. In \textsc{CEO-Bench}, LLM agents receive conflicting advice from four role-conditioned C-suite advisors (CFO, CTO, COO, CMO), each with private signals and distinct priorities, and must synthesize these into a concrete allocation plan evaluated along four dimensions: role integration, conditional boldness, history-sensitive judgment, and plan validity. Experiments across five frontier models on 13 scenarios reveal that all models achieve high structural validity but diverge sharply on strategic calibration – the hardest capability layer. We identify systematic failure modes including single-advisor capture, conservative default under ambiguity, and historical amnesia, and uncover a structural integration-boldness tradeoff: models that engage more deeply with conflicting perspectives tend to produce less decisive action. These findings delineate the current capability boundary of LLMs as organizational decision-makers and inform the design of future AI-assisted executive systems.