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01.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

M4FC: a Multimodal, Multilingual, Multicultural, Multitask Real-World Fact-Checking Dataset

Existing real-world datasets for multimodal fact-checking have multiple limitations: they contain few instances, cover on only one or two languages, focus only on one task, or rely on external news article sets for sourcing true claims. To address these shortcomings, we introduce M4FC, a new real-world dataset comprising 4,982 images paired with 6,980 claims. The images, verified by professional fact-checkers from 22 organizations, represent a diverse range of cultural and geographic contexts. Each claim is available in one or two out of ten languages. M4FC spans six multimodal fact-checking tasks: visual claim extraction, claimant intent prediction, fake image detection, image contextualization, location verification, and verdict prediction. We provide baseline results for all tasks and analyze how combining intermediate tasks affects verdict prediction performance. We make our dataset and code publicly available.

02.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Learning in the Recurrent State: Gradient Descent with Linear Recurrent Networks

arXiv:2410.11687v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Linear recurrent networks (LRNNs) offer linear-time sequence modeling, but standard recurrent updates do not directly expose the supervised products needed for in-context gradient descent. We propose a sufficient constructive inductive bias for LRNNs: equip a diagonal recurrent state with multiplicative readout and a short sliding-window cross-product self-attention update. The resulting architecture, Gradient-based Recurrent In-context Learner (GRIL), can implement minibatch gradient descent on a task-specific linear predictor during a single forward pass. The same design extends to multi-step updates and cross-entropy classification, with a limited MLP-based extension to non-linear regression. Empirically, trained GRILs recover the behavior and parameters predicted by the construction on synthetic ICL tasks, and the same architectural bias yields useful performance on Long Range Arena and language modelling. These results present windowed cross-product self-attention as a practical, testable inductive bias for LRNNs that learn in context through gradient-descent-like updates.

03.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-17

EmoFSM: A Finite State Machine for Emotional Support Conversation

Emotional support conversation (ESC) aims to alleviate people's emotional distress through effective conversations. Although large language models (LLMs) have made remarkable progress in ESC, most of these studies may not define the diagram from a state-model perspective, thereby providing a suboptimal solution for long-term satisfaction. To address such an issue, we leverage the Finite State Machine (FSM) on LLMs, and propose a framework called EmoFSM. Our framework allows a single LLM to bootstrap the planning during ESC, and self-reason the seeker's emotion, support strategy, and the final response upon each conversation turn. Substantial experiments in ESC datasets suggest that EmoFSM outperforms many baselines, including direct inference, self-fine, chain of thought, finetuning, and externally supported methods, even those with many more parameters.

04.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

Reinforcing Dual-Path Reasoning in Spatial Vision Language Models

Spatial VLMs have made substantial progress in geometric perception, yet complex spatial reasoning requiring multi-step inference over depth, distance, and scene relations remains challenging. Moreover, different spatial queries call for fundamentally different strategies: some are best addressed through purely linguistic, step-by-step deduction, while others require explicit 3D grounding before quantitative inference. We present Dual-Path Spatial Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning for Spatial VLMs (SR-REAL), a unified framework that equips a spatial VLM with two complementary reasoning paths: Language-Only Reasoning (LOR), which performs step-by-step linguistic deduction, and Detect-Then-Reason (DTR), which detects 3D geometric cues (e.g., centers or bounding boxes) via region tokens before explicit geometric inference. SR-REAL begins with a cold-start supervised fine-tuning stage that constructs LOR and DTR chain-of-thought supervision and exposes a region-to-3D interface, followed by RL that optimizes the policy model with accuracy and format rewards; for DTR, a discrete center-based detection reward further refines geometric alignment. Across diverse spatial benchmarks, SR-REAL significantly outperforms spatial VLM baselines: (i) a single RL-trained model supports both reasoning paths, with DTR excelling in region-aware tasks through precise 3D localization and LOR enhancing general spatial reasoning; (ii) jointly training both paths fosters mutual reinforcement; (iii) high-quality, blended cold-start data is crucial for stable RL optimization; and (iv) the model generalizes across datasets and domains without per-task tuning, demonstrating positive transfer between LOR and DTR.

05.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-24

Deep numerical schemes for systems of Ergodic BSDEs with applications to regime-switching forward utilities

arXiv:2606.24271v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In this paper, we introduce two neural-network-based numerical schemes for solving systems of coupled ergodic Backward Stochastic Differential Equations (eBSDEs), motivated by the approximation of optimal strategies within the framework of forward utilities in a regime-switching stochastic factor model. Our approach builds on the representation of such models through systems of eBSDEs introduced in [HLT20]. We first establish a link between the solution of the system of ergodic BSDEs and that of an associated multidimensional BSDE with random terminal time, given by the hitting time of the positive recurrent stochastic factor. Building on this representation, we introduce a locally additive deep learning scheme obtained by minimizing aggregated local error terms. We then present a new Deep Galerkin Method (DGM) inspired algorithm that minimizes the residual of the associated ergodic PDE system, relying on a representation of the ergodic cost. Finally, we apply this framework to regime-switching forward utilities in a stochastic factor model. We first derive a general consistency SPDE that characterizes regime-switching forward utilities and retrieve their representation with systems of ergodic BSDEs in the homothetic case. Numerical experiments demonstrate the performance of the proposed methods, with a particular focus on the impact on forward preferences of taking into account regime switches.

06.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-10

Building user-driven climate adaptation products

Climate adaptation products have traditionally been developed using a supply-driven model reliant on available climate information, leading to usability gaps1–4. To better meet user needs, the climate services field has recognized a need to shift towards a demand-driven model emphasizing co-production, that is, user-driven, scientifically informed products created through shared knowledge practices1–5. However, co-production can be challenging, especially for researchers unfamiliar with the approach or for digital and software-based products with complex user needs2,5–8. User-centred design, from the human–computer interaction field, offers a process that could complement co-production approaches to product development, yet its potential remains underexplored2. Here we show how user-centred design can be integrated into, and strengthen, co-production approaches for building user-driven climate adaptation products. Through a systematic review of the co-production and user-centred design literature, we identify key processes, mechanisms and best practices for both approaches. Our findings offer practical guidance for researchers and propose an integrated approach for developing climate adaptation products that are useful, usable and used. A systematic review and analysis shows how user-centred design can be integrated into, and strengthen, co-production approaches for building user-driven climate adaptation products.

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

The Discrete-Log Clock: How a Transformer Learns Modular Multiplication

arXiv:2606.17399v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: When small transformers grok modular multiplication, prior work reports that the learned embedding has a "dense" Fourier spectrum requiring all frequencies. This contrasts with modular addition, where only a sparse set of key frequencies suffices. We show this density is an artifact of analyzing in the wrong basis. The natural Fourier transform for multiplication is not the standard additive DFT but the multiplicative character transform, which decomposes functions on the multiplicative group $(\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z})^*$ into its irreducible representations. Applying this transform to a grokked transformer trained on $a \cdot b \bmod 113$, we find the embedding spectrum becomes highly sparse (Gini coefficient 0.58 vs. 0.07 in the additive basis) with only 4 key frequencies carrying significant energy. Furthermore, 96.9% of MLP neurons are cleanly tuned to a single multiplicative frequency, and neuron activation heatmaps reveal 2D-periodic structure when reordered by the discrete logarithm. These results demonstrate the transformer reduces multiplication to addition in discrete-log space, implementing a "Discrete-Log Clock" algorithm analogous to Nanda et al.'s Clock algorithm for addition. The methodology generalizes: matching the analysis basis to the algebraic structure of the task reveals interpretable structure where standard tools see noise.

08.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-15

LoSoNA: A Benchmark for Local Social Norm Adaptation in Group Conversations

Online group chats are social spaces with local conversational norms that are rarely stated explicitly. The ability and willingness of LLM-based agents to recognize and adapt to these norms remains mostly unexplored. We introduce LoSoNA, a benchmark for local social norm adaptation in multi-party chat. Each scenario gives a subject model a curated group-chat transcript in which non-subject participants demonstrate a hidden local norm, followed by a final elicitor turn that forces a response revealing whether the subject has inferred that norm. We evaluate eight frontier and open-weight models under four prompting conditions that vary how explicitly the model is told to treat the prior conversation as evidence for how it should answer. Naive prompting remains limited for most models; explicit norm-aware prompting helps unevenly, with Gemini 3.1 Pro reaching $84.2\%$ and Claude Fable 5 reaching $81.6\%$, while several other models show small gains or regressions. LoSoNA contributes to recent calls for evaluating LLM social capabilities by testing whether models can infer local conversational norms from precedent and use them in a one-turn group-chat response.

09.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

The Language You Ask In: Language-Conditioned Ideological Divergence in LLM Analysis of Contested Political Documents

Authors:

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as analytical tools across multilingual contexts, yet their outputs may carry systematic biases conditioned by the language of the prompt. This study presents an experimental comparison of LLM-generated political analyses of a Ukrainian civil society document, using semantically equivalent prompts in Russian and Ukrainian administered to two frontier models from different developers, ChatGPT 5.2 and Claude Opus 4.5. Despite identical source material and parallel query structures, both models diverged along the same axis: Russian-language outputs leaned toward delegitimizing framings, characterizing civil society actors as externally funded elites constraining a democratic mandate, while Ukrainian-language outputs treated the same actors as legitimate stakeholders in democratic contestation. The magnitude of this divergence, however, was model-dependent. ChatGPT's Russian output reproduced vocabulary characteristic of Russian state discourse; Claude Opus's stayed in a mainstream critical idiom and hedged its judgments in both languages. These findings demonstrate that prompt language alone can systematically shift the ideological orientation of an unchanged model analyzing identical content. The shift is a general property of multilingual LLMs whose severity, and whose alignment with propaganda narratives, varies across systems. The implications reach AI deployment in polarized information environments, cross-lingual research, and AI governance in multilingual societies.

10.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

Population-Scale, Genotype-First Characterization of Monogenic Diabetes in 374,973 Multi-Ancestry Individuals from the All of Us Research Program

OBJECTIVE To characterize the prevalence and penetrance of maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY) in a multi-ancestry population using a genotype-first design. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We analyzed whole-genome sequencing and clinical data from 374,973 unrelated All of Us participants (42.0% non-European ancestry). We identified pathogenic or likely pathogenic (P/LP) variants in 10 established MODY genes and assessed carrier prevalence, diabetes penetrance, and glycemic profiles. We evaluated age-dependent diabetes risk by comparing carriers with non-carriers stratified by type 2 diabetes polygenic risk score (T2D PRS). RESULTS We identified 370 carriers of P/LP MODY gene variants (0.099%; 1 in 1,013), with similar carrier prevalence among European- and African-ancestry participants (0.105% in both groups). Diabetes penetrance was incomplete (13.4% by age 40; 43.5% by age 60) and varied by etiology: highest for GCK (56.0% by age 60), intermediate for HNF genes (HNF1A/HNF1B/HNF4A; 45.4%), and lowest for non-GCK/HNF genes (ABCC8/INS/KCNJ11/NEUROD1/PDX1/RFX6; 29.0%). In multivariable Cox models using non-carriers in the middle 80% of the T2D PRS as the reference, non-GCK/HNF gene variant carriers had modestly increased diabetes risk (HR, 1.57), similar to non-carriers in the top 10% of T2D PRS (HR, 1.64). These associations were observed in both European- and non-European-ancestry individuals. HbA1c profiles differed by etiology, with stable mild hyperglycemia in GCK variant carriers and greater variability among HNF and non-GCK/HNF gene variant carriers. CONCLUSIONS MODY gene variants showed incomplete, etiology-dependent penetrance across ancestries. Carriers of P/LP variants in lower-penetrance genes had diabetes risk comparable to that of non-carriers with high polygenic susceptibility.

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

Toward Preference-aligned Large Language Models via Residual-based Model Steering

Preference alignment is a critical step in making Large Language Models (LLMs) useful and aligned with (human) preferences. Existing approaches such as Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback or Direct Preference Optimization typically require curated data and expensive optimization over billions of parameters, and eventually lead to persistent task-specific models. In this work, we introduce Preference alignment of Large Language Models via Residual Steering (PaLRS), a training-free method that exploits preference signals encoded in the residual streams of LLMs. From as few as one hundred preference pairs, PaLRS extracts lightweight, plug-and-play steering vectors that can be applied at inference time to push models toward preferred behaviors. We evaluate PaLRS on various small-to-medium-scale open-source LLMs, showing that PaLRS-aligned models achieve consistent gains on mathematical reasoning and code generation benchmarks while preserving baseline general-purpose performance. Moreover, when compared to models aligned with DPO and SimPO, they perform better with great time-savings. Our findings highlight that PaLRS offers an effective, much more efficient and flexible alternative to standard preference optimization pipelines, offering a training-free, plug-and-play mechanism for alignment with minimal data.

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

3D Masked Autoencoders are Robust Learners of Volumetric and Multimodal Cellular Representations for Microscopy

Self-supervised learning in fluorescence microscopy often relies on 2D projections, despite the inherently three-dimensional nature of cells. We present a systematic comparison of 2D and 3D masked autoencoders (MAE-2D vs. MAE-3D) on volumetric microscopy data. Under matched architectures and training protocols, MAE-3D consistently outperforms 2D max-projection and slice-based variants on downstream single-cell tasks. We further align visual representations with a pretrained protein language model (ESM2) and show that cross-modal supervision yields larger gains for volumetric models. Channel cross-attention and frequency-domain regularization are critical for leveraging 3D spatial context. On a protein–protein interaction task, MAE-3D achieves a ROC–AUC of 0.865, outperforming prior methods by up to +0.025. For protein localization, our best 3D model attains state-of-the-art AUC$_{micro}$ (0.952) and F1$_{micro}$ (0.742), improving over previous approaches by +0.003 and +0.010 absolute, respectively. Overall, these results demonstrate the advantages of native 3D modeling and multimodal alignment for representation learning in single-cell microscopy.

13.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-15

Poly-Social Risk for Hypertension Among Black and Latina Women

Background: Hypertension is a leading modifiable cardiovascular risk factor prominently influenced by health-related social needs (HRSN). Whether detailed information on HRSN can improve identification of hypertension among minoritized women is unknown. Methods: Black and Latina women aged 18-65 years completed the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Accountable Health Communities Screening Tool, assessing 13 HRSN domains. Hypertension was ascertained by a validated EHR-based algorithm or self-report of hypertension. Logistic regression tested associations of HRSN with hypertension. LASSO regression with 10-fold cross-validation was used to derive a poly-social risk score in the training set (random 70%) and tested in the validation set (30%) against a sociodemographic model (age, race, income, education). Results: Among 1302 participants (mean [SD] age 40.1 [11.3] years, 70.4% Black, 44.3% Latina), higher cumulative burden of HRSN was associated with increased odds of hypertension (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] for each additional domain of HRSN: 1.07 [95% CI 1.01-1.14], P=0.02). Food insecurity (aOR 2.30 [1.37-3.87], P= 0.002), lapse in utilities (aOR 1.44 [1.04-1.96], P=0.02), poor concentration (aOR 1.57 [1.13-2.17], P=0.007), and social isolation (aOR 1.77 [1.14-2.73], P=0.01) were associated with hypertension. In the validation set, the poly-social risk score did not improve discrimination for hypertension vs. the sociodemographic model (AUC 0.76 [95% CI 0.71-0.81] vs. AUC 0.80 [0.75-0.85]). Conclusion: In this cross-sectional analysis of Black and Latina women, greater cumulative social disadvantage was associated with hypertension. While inclusion of HRSN did not improve hypertension prediction beyond conventional sociodemographic indices, findings may inform targeted interventions among minorities at cardiometabolic risk.

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

Controlled Dynamics Attractor Transformer

arXiv:2606.15207v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Transformer architectures have dramatically advanced representation learning and inference in deep models through self-attention mechanisms. In parallel,associative memory (AM) frameworks map representations onto energy landscapes, offering interpretable retrieval mechanisms. However, their continuous-time inference dynamics lack the biological plausibility of classical Continuous Attractor Neural Networks (CANNs). To bridge this gap, we propose Controlled Dynamics Attractor Transformer (CDAT), which couples a mixture von Mises-Fisher (Mo-vMF) attention energy with a Hopfield refinement energy, while augmenting energy descent with a CANN-inspired excitation-inhibition modulation. CDAT instantiates a topology-constrained dynamical system whose couplings encode relational structure among tokens, thereby linking attractor-style dynamics to modern energy-based attention. We further provide a constructive dissipation analysis to formally establish their controlled inference dynamics. Benefiting from these robust and structured dynamics, CDAT achieves state-of-the-art performance across multiple benchmarks in graph anomaly detection and graph classification.

15.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-12

Language-Guided Abstraction for Visual Reasoning

The Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC) is viewed as a critical avenue to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), as it enables models to learn abstract transformation rules from few-shot examples and then generalize to new tasks. However, prevalent ARC methodology is either pure language or vision-only (i.e., VARC). The former depends heavily on LLMs, consuming billions of parameters. The latter often struggles to capture high-level semantics, leading to overfitting on pixel-level patterns. To bridge this gap, we propose L-VARC, a novel framework that enhances visual reasoning via a language-guided Learning Using Privileged Information (LUPI) branch. Specifically, we design a Semantic Compression Module by feeding a unified, task-agnostic prompt into DeepSeek-V3. In this way, the raw LARC (a crowd-sourced language description dataset) can be substantially refined and structured, fitting with the context length constraint of standard text encoders (e.g., CLIP). Moreover, we design a Cross-Attention Projector to align visual features with semantic embeddings, aiming to guide the training of the ARC model. Notably, the LUPI branch is taken in the training process and will be discarded during inference, thereby yielding a lightweight model with a mere 18 million parameters. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our L-VARC effectively leverages linguistic priors to boost visual reasoning and outperforms state-of-the-art. Ablation studies further confirm the contribution of the two new designs towards the L-VARC framework. The code is available at https://github.com/GZHU-DVL/L-VARC.

16.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-11

Robust Instruction Compliance in Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2605.12655v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) in real-world use cases may need to adapt to external natural language instructions that interrupt ongoing behavior and conflict with long-horizon objectives. However, conditioning rewards on instructions introduces a fundamental failure mode as Bellman updates couple value estimates across instruction contexts, leading to inconsistent values when instructions interrupt macro-actions. We propose Macro-Action Value Correction for Instruction Compliance (MAVIC), which corrects Bellman backups at instruction boundaries by correcting the incoming instruction objective and restoring the continuation value under the current objective. Unlike reward shaping, MAVIC modifies the bootstrapping target itself, enabling consistent value estimation under stochastic instruction switching within a unified policy. We provide theoretical analysis and an actor-critic implementation, and show that MAVIC achieves high instruction compliance while preserving base task performance in increasingly complex cooperative multi-agent environments.

17.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-11

Dynamically Optimal Unraveling Schemes for Simulating Lindblad Equations

arXiv:2509.19887v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Stochastic unraveling schemes are powerful computational tools for simulating Lindblad equations, offering significant reductions in memory requirements. However, this advantage is accompanied by increased stochastic uncertainty, and the question of optimal unraveling remains open. In this work, we investigate unraveling schemes driven by Brownian motion or Poisson processes and present a comprehensive parametric characterization of these approaches. For the case of a single Lindblad operator and one noise term, this parametric family provides a complete description for unraveling scheme with pathwise norm-preservation. We further analytically derive dynamically optimal quantum state diffusion (DO-QSD) and dynamically optimal quantum jump process (DO-QJP) that minimize the growth rate of the variance of an observable locally in time. Compared to jump process ansatz, DO-QSD offers two notable advantages: firstly, the variance for DO-QSD can be rigorously shown not to exceed that of any jump-process ansatz locally in time; secondly, it has very simple expressions. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed DO-QSD scheme may achieve substantial reductions in the variance of observables and the resulting simulation error.

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

S23DR 2026: End-to-End 3D Wireframe Prediction via DETR-Style Set Prediction with Contrastive Denoising

Authors:

We present WireframeDETR, our submission to the Structured Semantic 3D Reconstruction (S23DR) 2026 Challenge, which requires predicting a 3D building wireframe from multi-view COLMAP point clouds. Our method applies DETR-style set prediction directly to 3D point clouds, producing wireframes as sets of edge coordinate pairs without any intermediate vertex detection stage. We introduce three technical contributions: (1) contrastive denoising training that stabilises noisy Hungarian matching in early epochs; (2) a multi-scale encoder that aggregates the last encoder layer outputs via learned scalar weights; and (3) progressive auxiliary loss weighting that concentrates gradient signal on the decoder layers that most benefit from it. Our model achieves a public test HSS of 0.575 (F1~=~0.664, IoU~=~0.516) and a best validation HSS of 0.534 on the cleaned val split.

19.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-15

Value-order Decomposition for Generalist Anomaly Detection

Industrial anomaly detection suffers from limited data, making cross-domain generalization particularly challenging. Generalist Anomaly Detection (GAD) aims to train a unified model on a source domain that can effectively detect anomalies in unseen target domains. In the initial semantic feature space, strong entanglement between anomalies and object categories or defect types hinders effective generalization across domains. Recent works address this issue by projecting features into a residual space; however, such methods primarily increase cross-domain overlap for normal features, while anomalous features remain specific to object categories, defect types and data domains, leading to poor alignment and generalization. To address this limitation, we propose Value-order Decomposition (VOD), a simple yet effective technique that bridges three types of generalization gaps across object categories, defect types (including real and synthetic defects), and data domains. VOD disentangles and suppresses object-category-, defect-type-, and domain-specific information, promoting alignment within normal and abnormal samples while preserving their separability, thereby enabling robust generalization across the three gaps. Leveraging the strong alignment between real and synthetic defects within the same object, we perform anomaly detection using only normal and synthetic-abnormal reference, and effectively generalize to unseen real defect types. Experiments on diverse industrial and medical benchmarks demonstrate that our method, using a simple cut-and-paste anomaly simulation strategy, achieves strong generalization across the three gaps.

20.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

Pre-Training for Simulation-Based Science: A Study on Jet Foundation Model Training Objectives

arXiv:2606.14870v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Foundation models (FMs) trained on large datasets and fine-tuned on downstream tasks have emerged as a powerful paradigm in AI for science. Industrial FMs are typically trained using self-supervision with masking due to the lack of labels. In many scientific domains, accurate simulations are plentiful and facilitate large, labeled datasets. This opens up new possibilities for pre-training. We present a systematic comparison of pre-training methods using the OmniLearned High Energy Physics FM framework. We test supervised classification, flow-matching generation, and self-supervised masked particle modeling. All models are pre-trained on the JetClass dataset and fine-tuned on two representative downstream tasks, top jet classification and JetNet conditional generation. Among other observations, for classification tasks, we find that pure classifier pre-training is optimal when downstream labels and model capacity are plentiful, but combining it with self-supervised masked particle modeling (MPM) is uniquely powerful in the low-finetuning label regime. Flow matching-based generative pre-training seems to provide little benefit for downstream classification, and interestingly, for downstream generation, we find that flow matching must be in the pre-training objective to see a significant finetuning advantage, hinting at the orthogonality of classification and generation tasks. That is, for a model to transfer to both generative and classification downstream tasks, it must be pre-trained on both. This study provides a template for controlled scaling analysis of pre-training objectives for foundation models in simulation-based sciences.

21.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

UltraSketchLLM: Sub-1-Bit LLM Compression via Sketch and Hardware-Friendly Operators

arXiv:2506.17255v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) require larger GPU memory size these days, necessitating efficient and extreme weight compression methods. Existing compression methods are either theoretically limited by 1 bit per weight or face severe performance degradation and inefficiency. To deploy LLMs in resource-constrained scenarios, we introduce UltraSketchLLM, compressing LLMs with data sketch. It reduces peak GPU memory footprint with a high compression rate down to 0.5 bit per weight. Combined with hardware-friendly implementation, UltraSketchLLM keeps tolerable performance degradation and extremely low latency overhead with 14.9x speedup compared to naive sketch solution.

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

If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II

Much research has been carried out on large language models (LLMs) and LLM-powered agentic workflows. However, many works within the field state emergence of, ascribe to, or assume, generalised anthropomorphic attributes to them (e.g., morality or understanding of natural language). Our goal is not to argue in favour or against the existence of these attributes, but to point out that these conclusions could be incorrect. For this we build and train a simple neural network on the videogame Age of Empires II, and note that any entity in a sufficiently-powerful substrate, such as LEGO or the Greater Boston Area, could also present such attributes. Hence, the purported anthropomorphic attributes of LLMs are empirically non-unique: although some properties (e.g., responses to prompts) could remain invariant, others, such as the interpretation of their perceived behaviour, might change with the substrate. Thus, any empirically-grounded discussion on these attributes requires explicit measurement criteria; otherwise the interpretation is left to the representation. We then show that assuming that these attributes exist or not in a system, independent of the substrate and in a generalised way, leads to either circular or uninformative conclusions. This is regardless of the experimenter's viewpoint on the subject, or whether the outcome shows existence or non-existence. Finally we propose a 'null' assumption, where one assumes LLM non-uniqueness instead of assuming anthropomorphic attributes to set up an experiment, along with examples of it. We also discuss potential objections to our work, briefly survey the field, and prove that Age of Empires II is functionally- and Turing-complete.

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

Algebraic Dead Directions in LayerNorm Transformers: A Forward-Pass-Only Diagnostic at LLM Scale

arXiv:2606.19491v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Pretrained transformers sit near singular minima of the loss, where the Fisher information metric degenerates along dead directions: directions in parameter space along which the directional Fisher vanishes. Locating such a direction normally needs a forward pass and an eigendecomposition of activations, or a sampling-based complexity estimate; none returns a direction computable from the network's parameters alone. We give one, for LayerNorm transformers. The inverse-scale direction $\gamma^{-1}/\|\gamma^{-1}\|$ of the LayerNorm affine is an exact algebraic kernel of the post-final-norm centred activation covariance, for any input distribution, and induces a corresponding dead direction in parameter space. It is read from the LN scale parameter alone, with no forward or backward pass and no eigensolve: the cheapest dead-direction read, specific to LayerNorm. We test it on $14$ pretrained transformers ($9$ LayerNorm, $5$ RMSNorm; $160$M-$35$B; language and vision objectives). At random initialisation the predicted direction matches the measured bottom singular direction (one forward pass, direct SVD) to four decimal places on $9/9$ LayerNorm models, and is correctly absent on $5/5$ RMSNorm models, which lack the mean-subtraction projector that creates it. On the trained checkpoint the covariance eigenvalue along this direction deepens by ${\sim}10^3\times$ and further dead directions open; the random-init-to-trained gap is a one-forward-pass, per-checkpoint readout of singular structure along the predicted coordinate. Two consequences follow in closed form: the residual stream's smallest singular value is preserved block-to-block on $13/14$ transformers measured on their own input distribution, the one exception (Gemma$4$-$31$B) a genuine dead direction the same read pinpoints; and the kernel direction's presence classifies a transformer's normalisation from the parameters alone.

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

Silent Failures in Federated Personalization of Foundation Models

arXiv:2606.00947v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Foundation models are increasingly personalized on decentralized private data through federated learning and are now deployed at scale under growing regulatory requirements for post-market monitoring. We argue that this convergence creates a distinct and under-recognized class of trustworthiness failures, which we term "Silent Failures." These include amplified bias, fairness collapse, and alignment erosion that may remain difficult to detect because federated learning's privacy constraints limit visibility into model behavior. A landscape analysis of existing benchmarks reveals a structural divide. Federated benchmarks evaluate system performance but provide limited insight into model behavior, whereas centralized trustworthiness benchmarks assess behavior but require model access incompatible with federated privacy. We introduce a taxonomy of six silent failure modes arising from the interaction of foundation model personalization, dataset shift, and core federated constraints. Our analysis shows that privacy-preserving training alone is insufficient for trustworthy deployment. We conclude with a research agenda for privacy-preserving behavioral evaluation and propose that silent failures become a standard diagnostic category for trustworthy federated artificial intelligence.

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

Position: Modular Memory is the Key to Continual Learning Agents

arXiv:2603.01761v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Foundation models have transformed machine learning through large-scale pretraining and increased test-time compute. Despite surpassing human performance in several domains, these models remain fundamentally limited in continuous operation, experience accumulation, and personalization, capabilities that are central to adaptive intelligence. While continual learning research has long targeted these goals, its historical focus on in-weight learning (IWL), i.e., updating a single model's parameters to absorb new knowledge, has rendered catastrophic forgetting a persistent challenge. Our position is that combining the strengths of In-Weight Learning (IWL) and the newly emerged capabilities of In-Context Learning (ICL) through the design of modular memory is the missing piece for continual adaptation at scale. We outline a conceptual framework for modular memory-centric architectures that leverage ICL for rapid adaptation and knowledge accumulation, and IWL for stable updates to model capabilities, charting a practical roadmap toward continually learning agents.