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01.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

GePBench: Evaluating Fundamental Geometric Perception for Multimodal Large Language Models

Geometric shapes play important roles in both physical world and human cognition. While multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have made significant advancements in visual understanding, their abilities to recognize geometric shapes and their spatial relationships, which we term geometric perception, are not explicitly and systematically explored. To address this gap, we introduce GePBench, a novel benchmark specifically designed to assess the geometric perception capabilities of MLLMs. Our extensive evaluations reveal that even the current state-of-the-art MLLMs exhibit significant deficiencies in geometric perception tasks. Furthermore, we show that models trained with GePBench data demonstrate considerable improvements on a wide range of downstream tasks, highlighting the critical role of geometric perception in enabling advanced multimodal applications. Our code and datasets are available at \href{https://github.com/Changhao-Xiang/GePBench}{https://github.com/Changhao-Xiang/GePBench}.

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

LabOSBench: Benchmarking Computer Use Agents for Scientific Instrument Control

arXiv:2606.16802v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Current computer-use benchmarks primarily focus on software operation tasks in virtualized systems, whereas scientific instrumentation scenarios require coordinated control over complex interfaces, and feedback-driven parameter adjustment. However, directly evaluating agents on physical high-precision instruments is impractical due to high cost, safety risks, limited accessibility, and difficulty in ensuring reproducible evaluation. This motivates the need for a simulated yet realistic testbed that preserves the operational challenges of scientific instruments while enabling scalable and safe benchmarking. To this end, we introduce LabOSBench, a challenging benchmark for multimodal GUI agents built on a suite of web-based scientific-instrument simulators. Operating directly via a browser, LabOSBench avoids resource-heavy OS virtualization while supporting flexible task configuration and execution-based evaluation. Specifically, LabOSBench constructs 96 subtasks across eight instrument simulators, covering workflows from sample loading, alignment, parameter tuning, and data acquisition to result inspection. We evaluate general-purpose vision-language models, specialized GUI agent models, and advanced agentic frameworks at both subtask and end-to-end levels. Our experiments reveal that while existing agents can complete many structured GUI subtasks, they still struggle with feedback-driven operations and long-horizon workflow execution. Overall, LabOSBench provides a reproducible, low-cost testbed for advancing computer-using agents toward scientific-instrument control.

03.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

How Much Memory Do We Need? Adaptive Memory Gate for Neural Operators

arXiv:2606.13443v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Neural operators have emerged as a powerful data-driven approach for solving time-dependent PDEs. Among recent advances, memory-augmented neural operators explicitly incorporate past states and have achieved remarkable performance under low-resolution observation settings. However, existing approaches apply a fixed memory weight regardless of observation conditions, such as resolution or physical parameters, limiting their adaptability. Our preliminary experiments reveal that optimal memory weight varies with resolution and viscosity, implying that a fixed memory weight cannot simultaneously optimize performance across diverse settings. We propose AMGFNO, which dynamically modulates memory weight through a learnable gate. On the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky and Burgers' equations, AMGFNO achieves 55-79% nRMSE reduction over at low resolution, with the learned gate value automatically decreasing from $\bar{g} \approx 0.7$ to near-zero as resolution increases.

04.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

RedAct: Redacting Agent Capability Traces for Procedural Skill Protection

Users rely on execution traces to observe agent behavior, diagnose failures, and ensure accountability. These traces contain rich procedural detail, including tool invocations, intermediate decisions, and error-recovery logic. Yet this detail can expose private procedural skills, allowing downstream methods to recover key formulas, thresholds, and strategies without access to model weights or skill files. To quantify this risk and evaluate protection, we construct \textsc{CapTraceBench}, a benchmark of 75 specialized long-horizon tasks and 154 curated skills across seven domains. We also introduce \textsc{RedAct} https://github.com/XuShuwenn/RedAct, a protected trace release framework that localizes protected key information, rewrites traces while preserving verifier-critical evidence, and embeds behavioral watermarks for downstream provenance analysis. Across representative trace reuse methods, \textsc{RedAct} reduces normalized skill transfer (NST) from 44.7–67.1\% on raw traces to below the no-skill baseline, while preserving audit evidence. Its standalone behavioral watermarks reach 93.6–100.0\% true detection with a false alarm rate of at most 1.9\%. These results frame public agent traces as security interfaces and show that selective redaction can reduce procedural capability leakage without removing audit evidence.

05.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

In-Context Learning Is Provably Bayesian Inference: A Generalization Theory for Meta-Learning

arXiv:2510.10981v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: This paper develops a finite-sample statistical theory for in-context learning (ICL), analyzed within a meta-learning framework that accommodates mixtures of diverse task types. We introduce a principled risk decomposition that separates the total ICL risk into two orthogonal components: Bayes Gap and Posterior Variance. The Bayes Gap quantifies how well the trained model approximates the Bayes-optimal in-context predictor. For a uniform-attention Transformer, we derive a non-asymptotic upper bound on this gap, which explicitly clarifies the dependence on the number of pretraining prompts and their context length. The Posterior Variance is a model-independent risk representing the intrinsic task uncertainty. Our key finding is that this term is determined solely by the difficulty of the true underlying task, while the uncertainty arising from the task mixture vanishes exponentially fast with only a few in-context examples. Together, these results provide a unified view of ICL: the Transformer selects the optimal meta-algorithm during pretraining and rapidly converges to the optimal algorithm for the true task at test time.

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

G2IA: Geometry-Guided Instance-Aware Retrieval and Refinement for Cross-Modal Place Recognition

Cross-modal place recognition (CMPR) enables camera-only robots to localize against pre-built LiDAR maps in autonomous navigation scenarios. This image-to-point-cloud setting is challenged by two coupled ambiguities: the modality gap between perspective RGB appearance and sparse metric geometry, and perceptual aliasing among urban places with similar roads, facades, intersections, and object arrangements. Instead of treating CMPR as a single global descriptor matching problem, we argue that reliable retrieval requires both geometry-aware representation alignment and fine-grained candidate verification. In this paper, we propose G2IA, a geometry-guided instance-aware framework for image-to-point-cloud place recognition. In the retrieval stage, visual geometry priors from VGGT and instance features are integrated to construct place descriptors that are more compatible with LiDAR-derived map representations. In the refinement stage, the retrieved candidates are re-ranked by explicitly verifying whether local instance shapes and their relative spatial layouts are consistent across modalities. Experiments on public benchmarks demonstrate that G2IA consistently improves image-to-point-cloud place recognition under different localization thresholds, and exhibits strong cross-dataset generalization.

07.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-17

Analysis of the asymmetric shelf shuffle

arXiv:2606.18047v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In an asymmetric shelf shuffle, a deck of $n$ cards is dealt sequentially from the bottom and assigned one of the $m$ shelves uniformly at random. The card is placed at the top of the assigned shelf with probability $p$, and at the bottom of the assigned shelf with probability $(1-p)$. Analysis of the shelf shuffle has gained much attention recently, and the case $p=1/2$ was first treated by Diaconis–Fulman–Holmes [Ann. Appl. Prob. 23 (2013), no. 4, 1692–1720]. In this paper, we extend the analysis of the shelf shuffle to general $p\in (0, 1)$. In particular, we study the distribution of cycles, cycle lengths, number of descents, number of valleys, number of inversions, and the RSK shape of a permutation obtained from an asymmetric shelf shuffle. Our results extend the analysis of Diaconis–Fulman–Holmes to arbitrary $p$. Furthermore, our analysis of the distribution of descents and inversions is new even for $p=1/2$.

09.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Initiation of Superradiance from Different Collective Spin States

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

10.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-19

An Information Theoretic Framework for Graph Novelty Generation via Latent Mixture Modeling

arXiv:2606.19770v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We propose an information-theoretic framework for graph novelty generation, which aims to generate data that are distinct from existing patterns while preserving global structural consistency. Our approach embeds data into a latent space, models the latent distribution using finite mixture models, and generates novel samples by imposing explicit novelty and reliability conditions formulated in terms of description length. Specifically, novelty is enforced by requiring generated samples to be poorly explained by all existing mixture components, while reliability constrains their impact on the overall mixture structure under the Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle. We provide a theoretical analysis showing that, with appropriate threshold choices, the probabilities of misclassifying non-novel or unreliable samples converge to zero with explicit rates. Experiments on synthetic and benchmark graph datasets demonstrate that the proposed method enables principled novelty generation with quantifiable risk.

11.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-17

A Diffusion Approximation for Temporal-Difference Learning with Linear Features under Markovian Noise

arXiv:2606.18183v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Temporal difference (TD) learning with linear function approximation is a core method for policy evaluation. Its classical continuous-time description is an ordinary differential equation (ODE), which captures the asymptotic mean dynamics but neglects stochastic fluctuations determining the error floor. We introduce a stochastic differential equation (SDE) approximation for linear TD(0) under Markovian noise. The resulting model distinguishes the contraction dynamics governed by the projected Bellman operator from the influence of Markovian sampling. As a consequence, the model explains the constant-stepsize error floor through the interaction between Markovian long-run covariance and the contraction geometry of the projected Bellman operator.

12.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

ReAge3D: Re-Aging 3D Faces with View Consistency

We present a novel framework for realistic and controllable 3D face re-aging which produces highly detailed, identity-preserving results. Existing 3D editing methods, while effective for coarse semantic changes, are not well suited for re-aging, as even small inconsistencies across re-aged 2D views can lead to over-smoothing of subtle but perceptually important age-related details. To address this challenge, we first introduce a 2D diffusion-based re-aging model, DiffReaging, trained on synthetically generated image pairs. We further propose a center-out editing propagation strategy that leverages this re-aging model to reconstruct multi-view-consistent re-aged images. Specifically, starting from a re-aged frontal pivot view, we reconstruct the remaining views through warping and our proposed Masked-DiffReaging process. By injecting existing content at every step of the diffusion process, Masked-DiffReaging ensures that the reconstructed regions remain coherent with existing pixels. The resulting consistent set of re-aged views supervises the optimization of the re-aged 3D representation. Our method outperforms existing 3D editing techniques both visually and quantitatively, enabling smooth, fine-grained control over age transformations in 3D face models.

13.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-17

Short-term relaxation after cervical rotatory manipulation is more closely associated with somatosensory input than cracking sound: a randomized controlled EEG study

Background Cervical rotatory manipulation is commonly used for neck-related symptoms and is often accompanied by a cracking sound. This sound is frequently regarded as a sign of successful manipulation, but whether it contributes substantially to the immediate relaxation response remains unclear. Objective This study examined whether short-term relaxation after cervical rotatory manipulation is more closely related to manipulation-associated sensory input than to the cracking sound cue alone. Methods In this single-session, three-arm, parallel randomized controlled study, 54 healthy volunteers were allocated to cervical rotatory manipulation, sham manipulation, or sham manipulation plus simulated cracking sound. Subjective outcomes were assessed before and after intervention, including positive affect, negative affect, comfort, and satisfaction. Eyes-closed resting-state electroencephalography was recorded before and after intervention. Prespecified neural outcomes included frontal alpha power, frontal alpha/beta ratio, occipital individual alpha frequency, and alpha-band fronto-parietal and fronto-temporal functional connectivity. Results Cervical rotatory manipulation produced greater improvements in positive affect, comfort, and satisfaction than sham manipulation or sham manipulation plus simulated cracking sound, whereas negative affect remained generally stable across groups. These subjective responses were accompanied by short-term electroencephalography changes, particularly in frontal alpha/beta and alpha-band fronto-parietal and fronto-temporal functional connectivity. Changes in frontal alpha/beta ratio were positively associated with changes in positive affect. In contrast, simulated cracking sound alone did not reproduce the full subjective or electroencephalography response observed after real manipulation. Conclusions The immediate relaxation response after cervical rotatory manipulation appears to be more closely related to manipulation-associated sensory input than to the cracking sound cue alone. These findings provide preliminary neurophysiological evidence for distinguishing real manipulation effects from sound-related contextual cues.

14.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

Rethinking Backdoor Adversarial Unlearning through the Lens of Catastrophic Forgetting in Continual Learning

arXiv:2606.14078v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Existing studies reveal that current backdoor defenses exhibit limited robustness and often fail against specific types of attacks. More concerningly, prevailing safety tuning strategies tend to provide only superficial safety protection, as they fall short of completely eliminating the backdoor effects. In this work, we present a novel formulation of backdoor learning and unlearning as a sequential, three-stage process from a continual learning perspective. Within this framework, we formally define complete backdoor unlearning and further derive the necessary conditions for achieving it based on the mechanism of catastrophic forgetting. Guided by these insights, we propose Blind Inversion-Backdoor Adversarial Unlearning (BI-BAU), which formulates the generation of adversarial examples satisfying the unlearning conditions as a blind inversion problem. We solve this by integrating the bi-level optimization process of adversarial training into an Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm framework to optimize the maximum a posteriori (MAP) objective. Furthermore, BI-BAU is extended to untargeted adversarial scenarios with unknown target classes, as well as to multi-modal contrastive learning tasks, enhancing its applicability to real-world deployment scenarios where pre-trained models may be compromised. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method exhibits general applicability across a wide spectrum of backdoor attacks and can effectively and thoroughly eliminate the backdoor effects from a backdoor model.

15.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Large Language Models as Optimizers: A Survey of Direct vs. Tool-Augmented Approaches and Their Performance Frontiers

arXiv:2606.15577v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly involved in complex mathematical optimization, even if the pragmatic user who triggers them is unaware of it. After all, many real-world problems reduce to the search for better or the best solutions. The field of LLM-as-optimizer has three paradigms: direct optimization, tool-augmented optimization, and tool-creating optimization. Direct optimization uses iterative prompting and heuristic generation to navigate solution spaces. Tool-augmented optimization translates natural language problems into formal specifications and orchestrates external solvers. Tool-creating optimization goes further, using LLMs to discover reusable algorithms or heuristics that can be deployed at zero marginal LLM cost. We describe current performance frontiers based on the benchmarks from the literature. We identify the critical reasoning gap in current architectures and argue for trade-offs between the future potential of direct optimization and the auditability of tool-augmented optimization. Even future, more powerful models might opt for tool-making to improve operational efficiency for repetitive families of problems.

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

Subliminal Learning Is Steering Vector Distillation

arXiv:2606.00995v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Subliminal learning refers to a student language model acquiring a teacher's traits (e.g. a system-prompted preference for owls) when fine-tuned on the teacher's outputs, despite the outputs being semantically unrelated to those traits. It remains poorly understood how data without semantic meaning can transfer specific semantic traits. In this work, we show that subliminal learning is mediated by a single steering vector, i.e. a vector added to the model's activations. Across two open-source models, we find that the teacher's system prompt is well approximated by a steering vector, and that the student's behavior is driven by learning an aligned vector over fine-tuning. System prompts that are not well approximated by steering vectors are not subliminally learned. This is a special case of steering vector distillation, in which a student trained on the outputs of a steered teacher learns to imitate that steering. We demonstrate steering vector distillation on a range of semantic and random vectors. Adding a semantic vector to a model's activations can have both model-independent and model-specific (i.e. non-semantic) effects on its behavior, so generated data that is non-semantic can transmit a vector with semantic effects, enabling subliminal learning. This also explains why subliminal learning does not transfer between models. We find that adaptive optimizers are necessary for subliminal learning in language models: activation gradients on steered data carry a small but consistent component along the steering direction, and non-adaptive optimizers impede this by allowing outlier gradients to dominate.

17.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-15

A Water Efficiency Dataset for African Data Centers

arXiv:2412.03716v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) computing and data centers consume large amounts of freshwater, both directly for cooling and indirectly for electricity generation. While most attention has been paid to developed countries such as the U.S., this paper presents the first-of-its-kind dataset that combines nation-level weather and electricity generation data to estimate water usage effectiveness for data centers in 41 African countries across five different climate regions. We also use our dataset to evaluate and estimate the water consumption of inference on two large language models (i.e., Llama-3-70B and GPT-4) in 11 selected African countries. Our estimates suggest that writing a 10-page report using Llama-3-70B could consume as much as {0.66 liters} of water, while the water consumption by GPT-4 for the same task may go up to about {59 liters}. For writing a medium-length email of 120-200 words, Llama-3-70B and GPT-4 could consume about {0.13 liters} and {2.9 liters} of water, respectively. All the numbers for generative model inference tasks are based on public information available in 2024, when we initially prepared the analysis. Since then, AI inference systems have improved substantially. For example, recent disclosures suggest that energy efficiency improved by more than 30x between May 2024 and May 2025. Accordingly, our 2024 estimates should be interpreted as historical reference values rather than as representative of current performance. Interestingly, given the same AI model, 9 of the 11 selected African countries consume less water than the global average, mainly because of lower water intensities for electricity generation.

18.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-11

My Chemical Harness: Evolutionary Molecular Design over Synthetic Pathways with Large Language Model Agents

arXiv:2606.11256v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Designing molecules with target properties is most useful when candidate structures are accompanied by feasible synthetic routes. We introduce My Chemical Harness, a route-native evolutionary framework for goal-directed molecular design in which the search population consists of executable synthetic pathways rather than isolated molecular graphs. Each route is built from purchasable building blocks and reaction templates, executed by deterministic chemistry tools, and scored through task-specific molecular oracles. Large language models (LLMs) are used only as strategy controllers that select high-level preferences over route length, move type, reaction families, motifs, and exploration pressure, while local code performs route construction, validation, deduplication, scoring, selection, and memory updates. This separation lets the LLM guide exploration without allowing it to introduce hallucinated products or unsupported reaction steps. On a soluble epoxide hydrolase proxy task, our LLM agent improves over single pass LLM and deterministic controllers, reaching state-of-the-art performance across the sEH score, synthetic accessibility score, and AiZynthFinder success rate metrics. These results suggest that constrained LLM agents can play a significant role in molecular discovery without requiring training, fine-tuning, or dedicated generative models.

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

Vision-Language-Action Jump-Starting for Reinforcement Learning Robotic Agents

arXiv:2604.13733v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) enables high-frequency, closed-loop control for robotic manipulation, but scaling to long-horizon tasks with sparse or imperfect rewards remains difficult due to inefficient exploration and poor credit assignment. Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models leverage large-scale multimodal pretraining to provide generalist, task-level reasoning, but current limitations hinder their direct use in fast and precise manipulation. In this paper, we propose Vision-Language-Action Jump-Starting (VLAJS), a method that bridges sparse VLA guidance with on-policy RL to improve exploration and learning efficiency. VLAJS treats VLAs as transient sources of high-level action suggestions that bias early exploration and improve credit assignment, while preserving the high-frequency, state-based control of RL. Our approach augments Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) with a directional action-consistency regularization that softly aligns the RL agent's actions with VLA guidance during early training, without enforcing strict imitation, requiring demonstrations, or relying on continuous teacher queries. VLA guidance is applied sparsely and annealed over time, allowing the agent to adapt online and ultimately surpass the guiding policy. We evaluate VLAJS on six challenging manipulation tasks: lifting, pick-and-place, peg reorientation, peg insertion, poking, and pushing in simulation, and validate a subset on a real Franka Panda robot. VLAJS consistently outperforms PPO and distillation-style baselines in sample efficiency, reducing required environment interactions by over 50% in several tasks. Real-world experiments demonstrate zero-shot sim-to-real transfer and robust execution under clutter, object variation, and external perturbations.

21.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-11

Continual Quadruped Robots Coordination via Semantic Skill Discovery

arXiv:2606.08102v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Multi-quadruped coordination has attracted increasing attention due to its enhanced payload capacity, broader contact coverage, and improved adaptability to challenging tasks. Existing methods for multi-quadruped manipulation typically focus on predefined or closed task families, often relying on multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) to train task-specific coordination policies. However, such methods struggle in open-ended continual learning settings, where tasks arrive sequentially and robots are expected to acquire new coordination skills while reusing previously learned ones without catastrophic forgetting. To address this challenge, we propose Conquer, a semantic skill-library framework that formulates continual multi-quadruped coordination as a retrieve-adapt-update process. First, to accommodate varying team sizes across tasks, we design a team-structured Self-Allies-Goal (SAG) backbone that supports variable-cardinality robot teams by explicitly modeling each robot's own state, teammate context, and task goal. For each incoming task, Conquer constructs a task-level semantic descriptor from pre-execution information and retrieves a relevant skill from the library for adaptation. After successful execution, Conquer updates the skill library by extracting trajectory-level semantic descriptors and organizing them according to semantic distance, thereby enabling continual skill accumulation and cross-task knowledge transfer. Simulation experiments show that Conquer achieves a final average success rate of 95.6%, demonstrating strong forward transfer and negligible catastrophic forgetting. Real-world rollouts on Unitree Go2 teams further validate the deployment feasibility of Conquer for practical multi-quadruped coordination. Simulation and real-robot demonstration videos are available at: https://conquer-project.pages.dev/.

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

InnoEval: On Research Idea Evaluation as a Knowledge-Grounded, Multi-Perspective Reasoning Problem

The rapid evolution of Large Language Models has catalyzed a surge in scientific idea production, yet this leap has not been accompanied by a matching advance in idea evaluation. The fundamental nature of scientific evaluation needs knowledgeable grounding, collective deliberation, and multi-criteria decision-making. However, existing idea evaluation methods often suffer from narrow knowledge horizons, flattened evaluation dimensions, and the inherent bias in LLM-as-a-Judge. To address these, we regard idea evaluation as a knowledge-grounded, multi-perspective reasoning problem and introduce InnoEval, a deep innovation evaluation framework designed to emulate human-level idea assessment. We apply a heterogeneous deep knowledge search engine that retrieves and grounds dynamic evidence from diverse online sources. We further achieve review consensus with an innovation review board containing reviewers with distinct academic backgrounds, enabling a multi-dimensional decoupled evaluation across multiple metrics. We construct comprehensive datasets derived from authoritative peer-reviewed submissions to benchmark InnoEval. Experiments demonstrate that InnoEval can consistently outperform baselines in point-wise, pair-wise, and group-wise evaluation tasks, exhibiting judgment patterns and consensus highly aligned with human experts.

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

Diffuse AI Control on Fuzzy Tasks

arXiv:2606.08892v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: AI models deployed in critical domains, such as AI safety research, may subtly sabotage our efforts due to misalignment. Diffuse AI Control is a subfield of AI safety concerned with mitigating risks from AI sabotage distributed over long deployment horizons (diffuse threats). These risks are particularly pernicious on fuzzy tasks, i.e. tasks which are hard to grade or require intuition. To understand diffuse threats on fuzzy tasks, we introduce a framework that considers AI control as an adversarial game between a blue team and a red team. The blue team uses a weak trusted model to construct a weak score against which they would train a strong, potentially subversive model to remove the subversion propensity if it were present. The red team then tries to find model behaviors that are rated highly by the weak score, and thus might not be trained out, but actually correspond to poor performance. We test our framework on the task of writing experimental proposals for research questions from recent ML papers. We use a language model with access to the original paper as a proxy "ground-truth" scorer. Our red team discovers subversive behaviors using multi-objective evolutionary prompt optimization. We show that Opus~4.6 can write proposals that are worse according to the ground truth proxy than those of GPT-OSS-20B, while the weak scorer rates them as highly as the best proposals from Opus 4.6. We then propose an adversarial optimization algorithm for the blue team that discovers more robust prompts for the weak model. This algorithm produces a blue team prompt that our red team optimization fails to exploit.

24.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-18

Elucidating the Design Space of Generative Models for Single-Cell Perturbation Prediction

Next-token prediction has produced predictable scaling in language, but the recipe presumes a sequence of tokens with a meaningful order. Single-cell RNA-seq counts have no natural gene ordering, so applying the recipe directly to raw expression fails under an ill-suited left-to-right bias. We instead ask whether a learned latent can supply the structure the recipe needs. We introduce texttt{ExpressionVAE} (eVAE), a discrete-latent perturbation model that compresses each cell into a short sequence of discrete codes through a finite-scalar-quantization (FSQ) bottleneck and trains a perturbation-conditioned discrete prior over those codes. On Replogle and Parse~1M, eVAE sets a new state of the art on every distributional metric and leads on most cell-eval perturbation metrics, with Fr'echet distance and $mathrm{MMD}^2$ roughly $3$ to $20times$ lower than the strongest continuous-latent baseline. Swapping the prior between autoregressive and masked discrete diffusion leaves performance near-identical, isolating the gain to the discrete latent itself rather than the prior family. A decoder-head ablation then exposes a single design axis, the richness of the predictive distribution at inference, that splits the standard metrics into two groups, variance-sensitive and mean-sensitive, which move in opposite directions along the axis. Finally, on a held-out CRISPRi reversion benchmark of $1{,}732$ perturbations under inflammatory cytokine stress, the frozen eVAE encoder outperforms UMAP and differential expression and matches scGPT on perturbation ranking at a fraction of the data.

25.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

Moonlight in Latent Space: Chirality and Structural Correspondence Between Beethoven's Op. 27 No. 2 and Machine Learning Mechanisms

arXiv:2606.14612v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We show that the three movements of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" (Op. 27 No. 2) instantiate three distinct machine learning architectures – not by analogy, but by structural correspondence. Through computational analysis of the score (entropy, Jensen-Shannon divergence, dissonance, hand distributional overlap, self-similarity matrices, temporal memory decay, and contextual pitch embeddings), we establish four counterintuitive findings: (1) perceived musical "temperature" is governed by throughput, not distributional width; (2) the lightest movement carries the highest dissonance; (3) the movements implement streaming, recurrent, and periodic positional encoding memory architectures; and (4) the same pitch class acquires different contextual identities across movements, analogous to contextual vs.static embeddings in NLP – and unsupervised clustering recovers the tonal structure without music-theoretic input. We construct a reverse sonification (decoding analytical features back into MIDI) and quantify the chirality of the encode-decode cycle: what distributions preserve and sequential ordering destroys. Prompted by a listener's observation that the decoded piece sounds like "mirror isomers that can't be superimposed," the chirality measurement reveals reconstruction loss increasing monotonically with n-gram order. Bootstrap baselines and subsample checks confirm all movements carry sequential information above noise, though raw values are confounded by sample size. Cross-domain comparison shows natural language has higher chirality than music, reflecting stronger sequential constraints.