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

SEAGym: An Evaluation Environment for Self-Evolving LLM Agents

arXiv:2606.17546v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Self-evolving LLM-based agents improve mainly by changing their agent harness: the structured execution layer around a base model, including prompts, memory, tools, middleware, runtime state, and the model-tool interaction loop. Existing evaluations often reduce this process to isolated task scores or a single sequential curve, obscuring whether an update produces reusable improvement, overfits recent tasks, increases cost, or harms older behavior. We introduce SEAGym, an evaluation environment for measuring agent harness updates across training, validation, test, replay, and cost records. SEAGym turns Harbor-compatible benchmarks into dynamic self-evolution task sources with train batches, frozen update-validation, held-out ID and OOD transfer views, replay diagnostics, and saved snapshot and metric records. Instantiating SEAGym on Terminal-Bench 2.0 and HLE, we compare ACE, TF-GRPO, and AHE under a shared epoch/batch protocol. The results show that these evaluation views provide complementary signals about the evolution process: frequent updates may fail to improve held-out performance, useful intermediate snapshots may collapse later, and source diversity and model backend can affect harness reliability.

02.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12

The Safety-Aware Denoiser for Text Diffusion Models

arXiv:2605.08116v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Recent work on text diffusion models offers a promising alternative to autoregressive generation, but controlling their safety remains underexplored. Existing safety approaches are geared toward autoregressive models and typically rely on post-hoc filtering or inference-time interventions. These are inadequate for effectively addressing safety risks in text diffusion models. We propose the Safety-Aware Denoiser (SAD), a safety-guidance framework in text diffusion models. The SAD modifies the iterative denoising process such that the text sample at the final denoising step is steered toward provably safe regions of the text space. This inference-time method can integrate safety constraints into the denoiser, avoiding computationally expensive retraining of the underlying diffusion model and enabling flexible, lightweight safety guidance. We evaluate the safety of the generated text using the SAD, with respect to hazard taxonomy, memorization, and jailbreak. Experimental results show that SAD substantially reduces unsafe generations while preserving generation quality, diversity, and fluency, outperforming existing methods. These results demonstrate that our safety guidance during denoising provides an effective and scalable mechanism for enforcing safety in text diffusion models.

03.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-17

Creating squeezed and non-classical collective motional many-body states through stroboscopic Rydberg dressing

arXiv:2606.17849v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Realizing conditional quantum operations, e.g., quantum gates, for quantum computing and simulation requires controlled interactions between particles. Often, these interactions depend on the interparticle distance, and accordingly, an uncertainty of the relative particle position may translate into gate infidelities. We consider here a quantum computing platform based on an array of neutral atoms and present a method that allows to reduce the uncertainty of all interatomic distances. Our approach exploits the coupling between atomic motion and stroboscopically excited atomic Rydberg states. It allows to collectively squeeze the modes corresponding to interatomic displacements, thereby reducing distance fluctuations down to a fraction of the motional vacuum state. Furthermore, the method permits the creation of non-classical states with substantial Wigner negativity. These correlated states may allow reducing motional decoherence, increasing gate fidelity, and potentially yield a resource for quantum-enhanced metrology.

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

The Information-Theoretic Benefit of Shared Representations under Orthogonality Constraints

arXiv:2606.16028v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Modern deep learning architectures are increasingly multi-task and multi-modal, using a pretrained foundation model combined with task-specific, fine-tuned models. Empirically, exploiting similarity across different problems, instead of solving them individually, can significantly improve overall performance. While the generalization and sample complexity properties of multitask learning have been widely studied, the parametric complexity of joint approximation in comparison to separate approximation remains less well understood. The question is particularly relevant in modern deep learning, where models are increasingly required to satisfy structural constraints such as equivariance, conservation laws, or orthogonality. We prove lower and upper bounds on the description-length for separate and joint approximation classes, respectively, in uniform norm. We build a class of orthogonal functions by composing a shared hard feature, realized by a Rademacher-Haar wavelet series, with Sawtooth-Walsh readouts to enforce orthogonality of output coordinates. The dyadic tree structure of the Rademacher-Haar wavelet concentrates the approximation hardness in the common feature component, while the readouts act as task-specific heads. Using an information-theoretic framework, we obtain a sharp gap between the optimal approximation rates achievable by joint and separate coding. Finally, we realize this separation in a neural network model using Heaviside activations via reduction to triangle-wave approximation. Our results show that even under an orthogonality constraint joint approximation requires strictly fewer bits in compositional architectures, provided the tasks share a latent hard feature. This provides theoretical insight into the description-length-efficiency of compositional multi-output architectures and clarifies how neural networks can retain expressivity under geometric constraints.

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

Unraveling Syntax: Language Modeling and the Substructure of Grammars

While language models achieve impressive results, their learning dynamics are far from understood. Many domains of interest – such as natural language syntax, coding languages, arithmetic – are captured by context-free grammars (CFGs). In this work, we extend prior work on neural language modeling of CFGs in a novel direction: how language modeling behaves with respect to CFG substructure, namely subgrammars. We define subgrammars, and prove a set of fundamental theorems connecting language modeling and subgrammars. We show that language modeling loss recurses linearly over its top-level subgrammars; applied recursively, the loss decomposes into losses for "irreducible" subgrammars. Under additional assumptions, and empirically, parametrized models learn subgrammars in parallel, unlike children who first master simple substructures. We find that subgrammar pretraining can improve final performance, but only for tiny models relative to the grammar, while alignment analyses show that pretraining consistently leads to internal representations that better reflect the grammar's substructure.

07.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

Taming I2V models for Image HOI Editing: A Cognitive Benchmark and Agentic Self-Correcting Framework

Current image editing methods excel at static attributes but fail at complex Human-Object Interactions (HOI), a critical challenge unaddressed by existing benchmarks that conflate HOI with static attributes, relying on global metrics incapable of simultaneously assessing dynamic interaction validity and entangled human-object pair preservation. Thus, we first introduce HOI-Edit, a comprehensive benchmark with three progressive cognitive levels, which features an automated metric HOI-Eval that reliably evaluates instance-level interaction by letting VLM Q&A after thinking with images containing grounded Human-Object pairs. Considering the task's essence of remodeling dynamic relationships, we benchmark Image-to-Video (I2V) models, finding them inherently suited for dynamic editing due to their temporal generation capabilities. Crucially, beyond superior performance, this capability provides a "replay of the failure process," offering unique diagnosability into why errors occur. We thus propose SCPE (Self-Correcting Process Editing), a novel, agentic self-correcting framework that constrains the generation of I2V models through iteratively refined prompts, enabling the generated videos to more accurately present the target HOI. Extracted frames from these videos are the final editing results. On HOI-Edit, SCPE achieves performance competitive with state-of-the-art (SOTA) editing models like Nano Banana on interaction. Code is available at https://github.com/oceanflowlab/HOI-Edit.

08.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-18

Bridging Data Gaps in Structural Fragility Modeling through Transfer Learning: Methodology and Case Studies

arXiv:2606.18567v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This paper presents a methodology-centered transfer learning framework for fragility adaptation under domain shift, class imbalance, and scarce target labels while preserving engineering interpretability and supporting decision-making under uncertainty. Four transfer learning strategies (instance-based, parameter-based, hierarchical Bayesian, and multi-source) are demonstrated through three complementary case studies: (i) instance-based transfer learning via importance weighting, demonstrated on coastal bridge fragility using Hurricane Katrina observations; (ii) parameter-based transfer learning together with hierarchical Bayesian transfer learning, enabling partial pooling across strata and posterior uncertainty quantification, demonstrated on residential building fragility using Hurricane Ian observations; and (iii) multi-source transfer learning that fuses multiple analytical fragility models with learned source weights and regularized target-domain adaptation, demonstrated on seismic bridge fragility using observations from the 2001 Nisqually earthquake. Across these case studies, direct transfer of source models (i.e. using existing state-of-the-art models) fails under domain shift and severe class imbalance, while targeted adaptation substantially improves failure detection and predictive stability in low-data regimes. These findings highlight the need for systematic guidance on diagnostics, strategy selection, and uncertainty reporting when developing and adapting fragility models.

09.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-12

When Iterative RAG Beats Ideal Evidence: A Diagnostic Study in Scientific Multi-hop Question Answering

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) extends large language models (LLMs) beyond parametric knowledge, yet it is unclear when iterative retrieval-reasoning loops meaningfully outperform static RAG, particularly in scientific domains with multi-hop reasoning, sparse domain knowledge, and heterogeneous evidence. We provide the first controlled, mechanism-level diagnostic study of whether synchronized iterative retrieval and reasoning can surpass an idealized static upper bound (Gold Context) RAG. We benchmark eleven state-of-the-art LLMs under three regimes: (i) No Context, measuring reliance on parametric memory; (ii) Gold Context, where all oracle evidence is supplied at once; and (iii) Iterative RAG, a training-free controller that alternates retrieval, hypothesis refinement, and evidence-aware stopping. Using the chemistry-focused ChemKGMultiHopQA dataset, we isolate questions requiring genuine retrieval and analyze behavior with diagnostics spanning retrieval coverage gaps, anchor-carry drop, query quality, composition fidelity, and control calibration. Across models, Iterative RAG consistently outperforms Gold Context, with gains up to 25.6 percentage points, especially for non-reasoning fine-tuned models. Staged retrieval reduces late-hop failures, mitigates context overload, and enables dynamic correction of early hypothesis drift, but remaining failure modes include incomplete hop coverage, distractor latch trajectories, early stopping miscalibration, and high composition failure rates even with perfect retrieval. Overall, staged retrieval is often more influential than the mere presence of ideal evidence; we provide practical guidance for deploying and diagnosing RAG systems in specialized scientific settings and a foundation for more reliable, controllable iterative retrieval-reasoning frameworks.

10.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-12

Examining the Cognitive Gap Between Authors and Peer Reviewers on Academic Paper Novelty

Novelty is a crucial metric for assessing the quality of academic papers. Scholars strive to highlight the novel aspects of their work, particularly in the title, abstract, and introduction. Peer review, serving as the gatekeeper of scientific rigor, rigorously evaluates the novelty of papers, yet a cognitive gap may exist between author self-promotion and reviewer evaluation. To investigate this, we analyzed 15,328 academic papers published in Nature Communications from 2016 to 2021, along with their peer-review comments. We found that both reviewers and authors emphasize result-oriented innovation, with reviewers adopting a more comprehensive evaluation perspective. Furthermore, by examining promotional intensity against inherent paper novelty, we found that its effect depends on the paper's actual innovation level. Highly innovative papers benefit from stronger promotional language, receiving more positive evaluations. We also found that promotional language significantly correlates with reviewer disagreement on novelty specifically for papers of moderate innovativeness, whereas it has negligible impact for papers with either very high or very low novelty. This reveals how promotional language operates most prominently in the gray area of academic evaluation.

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

Quantum Chip Paradigm Framework

arXiv:2606.17899v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Quantum Electronic Design Automation (Q-EDA) is emerging as quantum chips move from laboratory prototypes to scalable engineering systems. This paper argues that superconducting quantum chip design is approaching a "SPICE moment" similar to early classical EDA, where growing qubit scale, control complexity, frequency planning, packaging, process variation, and cryogenic measurement feedback require a shift from experience-based design to model-driven engineering. We propose a Quantum Chip Paradigm Framework that treats Q-EDA not only as software, but as part of the quantum chip development paradigm. Unlike classical HDL-first design, quantum chip design must begin with physical structures such as Josephson junctions, resonators, couplers, readout elements, control lines, and packaging environments. The framework emphasizes PCell-based modeling, SPICE-Q simulation, Quantum PDKs, and design-technology-measurement co-optimization. We further outline a hierarchical Q-EDA system spanning physical structures, qubit PCells, logical qubits, quantum arithmetic, functional quantum IP, and Quantum SoC systems. The key goal is to turn physical models, layout rules, simulation results, fabrication data, and measurement feedback into reusable and auditable engineering objects for large-scale quantum processors and fault-tolerant quantum computing.

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

Evaluating deep learning models for fault diagnosis of a rotating machinery with epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty

arXiv:2412.18980v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Uncertainty-aware deep learning (DL) models recently gained attention in fault diagnosis as a way to promote the reliable detection of faults when out-of-distribution (OOD) data arise from unseen faults (epistemic uncertainty) or the presence of noise (aleatoric uncertainty). In this paper, we present the first comprehensive comparative study of state-of-the-art uncertainty-aware DL architectures for fault diagnosis in rotating machinery, where different scenarios affected by epistemic uncertainty and different types of aleatoric uncertainty are investigated. The selected architectures include sampling by dropout, Bayesian neural networks, and deep ensembles. Moreover, to distinguish between in-distribution and OOD data in the different scenarios two uncertainty thresholds, one of which is introduced in this paper, are alternatively applied. Our empirical findings offer guidance to practitioners and researchers who have to deploy real-world uncertainty-aware fault diagnosis systems. In particular, they reveal that, in the presence of epistemic uncertainty, all DL models are capable of effectively detecting, on average, a substantial portion of OOD data across all the scenarios. However, deep ensemble models show superior performance, independently of the uncertainty threshold used for discrimination. In the presence of aleatoric uncertainty, the noise level plays an important role. Specifically, low noise levels hinder the models' ability to effectively detect OOD data. Even in this case, however, deep ensemble models exhibit a milder degradation in performance, dominating the others. These achievements, combined with their shorter inference time, make deep ensemble architectures the preferred choice.

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

Physics-Driven Zero-Shot MRI Reconstruction with Non-local Image Priors

Zero-Shot Self-Supervised Learning (ZS-SSL) has emerged as a promising paradigm for accelerated Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) reconstruction, eliminating the reliance on fully-sampled external datasets. However, learning solely from a single under-sampled scan suffers from supervision scarcity and optimization instability, often leading to overfitting or artifacts. To address these challenges, we propose a robust physics-driven ZS-SSL framework that synergizes physical consistency with image-domain non-local priors. Our method introduces three core innovations: (1) a Coil Sensitivity Map (CSM)-Guided Dynamic Repository, which stabilizes the training trajectory by filtering physically inconsistent artifacts based on coil sensitivity constraints; (2) a SPIRiT-based regularization, which enforces k-space self-consistency via a learned correlation kernel and stochastic masking; (3) a Non-Local Self-Similarity (NSS) Pixel Bank, which leverages the high-fidelity reference established by the former modules to explicitly mine non-local anatomical similarities, thereby augmenting supervision in the image domain. Extensive experiments on the FastMRI dataset demonstrate that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance, particularly under high acceleration factors, effectively bridging the gap between zero-shot learning and supervised methods. The code is available at https://github.com/Zolento/NS-SSL.

14.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

QueryGaussian: Scalable and Training-Free Open-Vocabulary 3D Instance Retrieval

arXiv:2606.19733v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Efficiently retrieving specific 3D instances from large-scale scenes via natural language prompts remains a formidable challenge in multimedia analysis. Existing approaches predominantly follow a "scene-level embedding" paradigm, which requires distilling high-dimensional semantic features into every 3D primitive. This strategy suffers from a fundamental architectural bottleneck: memory and computational costs scale linearly with scene complexity, inevitably triggering out-of-memory (OOM) failures in city-scale environments. To address this barrier, we propose QueryGaussian, a training-free framework for expeditious and scalable open-vocabulary 3D instance retrieval. Unlike holistic semantic distillation, QueryGaussian employs an instance-level query mechanism that decouples semantic understanding from geometric representation. Specifically, we leverage pre-trained 2D vision models to interpret user prompts and lift segmentation masks into 3D via a concurrent maximum-weight association strategy, ensuring semantic-visual consistency. To mitigate projection ambiguity, we introduce a temporal fusion module with multi-stage adaptive density clustering. Experimental results demonstrate that QueryGaussian not only matches the accuracy of state-of-the-art methods but also delivers a decisive efficiency leap, reducing GPU memory usage by over 70% and accelerating inference by 180x. Crucially, QueryGaussian enables expeditious instance retrieval on city-scale scenes containing tens of millions of Gaussians using consumer-grade hardware.

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

SafeLLM: Extraction as a Hallucination-Resistant Alternative to Rewriting in Safety-Critical Settings

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to access organisational documentation, including standard operating procedures (SOPs), HR policies and institutional guidelines. However, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems that rely on free-form rewriting can introduce hallucinations and unstable trade-offs between completeness and conciseness, particularly in safety- and compliance-critical settings. Objectives: To evaluate extraction as a hallucination-resistant alternative to rewriting-based RAG and compare strategies that balance precision, recall and safety across document types and model scales. Methods: We compare multiple prompting strategies, including line-number-based source selection, extraction of relevant guideline sentences with explicit safety annotations, and a multi-stage pipeline that refines draft answers using supporting evidence from source guidelines. Experiments are conducted on documents of varying length and structure, including local NHS acute care and oncology guidelines and UK-wide NICE guidelines, using both frontier-scale and locally deployable models. Performance is assessed using automatic metrics and human expert evaluation of relevance and completeness. Results: Line-number selection achieves the strongest results, outperforming direct copying and safety-focused strategies across both large and small models while maintaining high term recall (up to 95%) and close alignment with source text. Safety-oriented approaches improve precision but introduce systematic omissions, while multi-stage filtering further amplifies this trade-off. Performance varies with document structure: line-based extraction excels in protocol-like content, whereas alternative strategies perform better on more verbose documents (up to 97% term recall).

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

Data-Centric Benchmarking of Exploit Generation in LLMs: Understanding the Impact of Fine-Tuning

arXiv:2606.15123v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We study the task of CVE-conditioned exploit generation, where a model drafts proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits given software vulnerability context. We adopt a data-centric approach, constructing a high-quality dataset via multi-stage preprocessing and introducing a scalable evaluation framework with LLM-as-judge and fine-grained rubrics. Under this unified setup, we benchmark 17 large language models across 8 evaluation criteria, providing systematic insights into their zero-shot capabilities. We further show that a compact 8B open-weight model, when fine-tuned on curated data, achieves over 42.5% improvement in exploit quality and rivals some proprietary models when combined with simple test-time rejection strategies. Our results highlight the importance of data quality, structured supervision, and evaluation design for reliable exploit generation, suggesting that these factors can be as critical as model scale in adapting LLMs to cybersecurity tasks.

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

Physics-Informed Neural Network with Squeeze-Excitation-like Attention

arXiv:2606.19853v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We introduce SEA-PINN, a novel architecture that incorporates a Squeeze-Excitation-like attention mechanism into physics-informed neural networks to dynamically recalibrate the importance of neurons across layers. A key feature of SEA-PINN is its highly stable initialization. On 17 out of 20 benchmark problems, SEA-PINN exhibit nearly negligible variance and significantly reduced initial loss, establishing a quasi-deterministic and favorable starting point for optimization. Notably, without employing Fourier feature embeddings or periodic activation functions, SEA-PINN attained competitive accuracy (83\% vs. 90\% improvement relative to FNN-PINN on the high-frequency case 7) as compared with TSA-PINN-a model specifically engineered for high-frequency problems via learnable frequencies in sinusoidal activations. Furthermore, integrating SEA-PINN into TSA-PINN boosted performance by 42.49\%. These results underscore SEA-PINN as a lightweight plug-in module that enhances nonlinear representation power, promotes more robust and efficient convergence, and strengthens the overall reliability of physics-informed learning.

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

Hierarchical Advantage Weighting for Online RL Fine-Tuning of VLAs from Sparse Episode Outcomes

arXiv:2606.17043v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: When pretrained VLA policies are fine-tuned through online RL, each rollout episode produces only a single binary outcome (success or failure), yet the actor update requires per-transition supervision. Existing approaches commonly reduce this sparse outcome to a single scalar reward or advantage signal, which conflates distinct forms of transition-level feedback and provides limited guidance once basic task success becomes achievable. First, a single scalar signal conflates the two objectives of viability and efficiency; once basic success is achieved, the binary label provides no gradient to distinguish efficient completions from slow ones. Second, real-world rollouts mix autonomous and intervention segments; naively assigning episode outcomes across these boundaries introduces incorrect credit assignment. To address these issues, we propose Hierarchical Advantage-Weighted Behavior Cloning (HABC), which trains separate critic heads for these two objectives on different data subsets and combines their outputs with a state-adaptive balance. A state-adaptive gate $g_t$ merges their one-step advantages, prioritizing viability when success is uncertain and shifting to efficiency only when viability is high, and converts the result into per-transition weights on the actor loss. Intervention-aware credit assignment further restricts outcome labels to segments executed by the current policy, preventing supervision from leaking across intervention boundaries. In real-robot experiments on three contact-rich bimanual tasks, HABC raises success from supervised fine-tuning (SFT) baselines of 36%, 44%, and 12% to 92%, 88%, and 38%.

19.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Towards Verifiable Agentic Data Science: Solving Irregular TSQA Via Tool-Grounded Reasoning

arXiv:2606.15107v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Time series data in real-world deployments is overwhelmingly irregular. Observations are asynchronous, missing values are informative rather than random, and sampling frequencies vary across sensors and operational windows. However, existing Time Series Question Answering (TSQA) benchmarks mostly assume regularly sampled inputs, leaving a fundamental gap in understanding how large language models (LLMs) and AI agents perform under irregular conditions. To bridge this gap, we introduce IRTS-ToolBench, a benchmark of 1,700 questions spanning 10 task types across 13 domains. IRTS-ToolBench is designed to be used independently by any researcher working on LLM-based irregular time series analysis, providing standardized inputs and a reproducible evaluation protocol. Code can be found in https://github.com/SanhornC/IRTS-ToolBench.

20.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-19

OTCHA: Optimal Transport-driven Confidence-aware Latent Hub Alignment for Multi-View Medical Image Classification

Multi-view imaging, such as mammography and chest radiography, is a standard component of clinical practice. However, medical images are often unregistered and contain view-specific artifacts or irrelevant background cues that can obscure diagnostically relevant findings. Many existing methods directly fuse per-view representations, allowing such irrelevant content to contaminate the fused embedding and reducing robustness under varying view configurations. We propose OTCHA, a confidence-aware latent hub token alignment module based on optimal transport (OT) that refines patch tokens before fusion for multi-view classification. OTCHA introduces a set of learnable latent hub tokens shared across views. For each view, we compute an OT plan between patch tokens and hub tokens that jointly considers feature similarity and geometry, and augment the OT formulation with token-conditional dustbins to enable partial matching and discard irrelevant tokens. The resulting transport plan provides token-wise matching confidence, which gates hub-mediated message passing and weights a novel optimal-transport-based representation alignment loss to stabilize refinement. Experiments on three multi-view medical image datasets demonstrate consistent improvements over competing baselines across diverse anatomies and view configurations. Our code is available at https://github.com/labhai/OTCHA.

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

P3B3: A Multi-Turn Conversational Benchmark for Measuring European and Brazilian Portuguese Variety Bias in LLMs

As Large Language Models (LLMs) become embedded in everyday communication, capturing regional linguistic variation is essential for reliable and equitable language use. In Portuguese, European (pt-PT) and Brazilian (pt-BR) varieties remain unevenly represented, with pt-BR dominating in data quantity, while LLM preference for Portuguese variants remains underexplored. To address this gap, we introduce P3B3, an expert-curated language variety agnostic benchmark of conversational prompts, along with an evaluation framework for measuring variety bias and controllability. Experiments on several models show that most LLMs exhibit a strong bias toward pt-BR, with variation in controllability across models. These results highlight the need for more balanced multilingual representation across language varieties.

22.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-18

ActMem: Bridging the Gap Between Memory Retrieval and Reasoning in LLM Agents

Memory management is essential for LLM agents in long-term interactions. Current memory frameworks typically treat agents as passive ``recorders'' and retrieve information without understanding its deeper implications. They may fail in scenarios requiring reasoning and complex decision-making. To bridge this critical gap, we propose a novel actionable memory framework called ActMem that integrates memory retrieval with active causal reasoning. ActMem transforms unstructured dialogue history into a structured causal and semantic graph. By leveraging counterfactual reasoning and commonsense completion, it enables agents to deduce implicit constraints and resolve potential conflicts between past states and current intentions. Furthermore, we introduce a comprehensive dataset ActMemEval to evaluate agent reasoning capabilities in logic-driven scenarios, moving beyond the fact-retrieval focus of existing memory benchmarks. Experiments demonstrate that ActMem significantly outperforms baselines in handling complex, memory-dependent tasks, paving the way for more consistent and reliable intelligent assistants.

23.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-16

The Winner Takes It All

arXiv:2606.16885v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The winner-takes-all (WTA) process takes place on an arbitrary graph. There is an agent on each vertex of the graph, and active agents at neighboring vertices play games. In each game, a randomly chosen agent wins, while the loser is eliminated from subsequent games. The games are played at random times; each game finishes instantaneously, and the games cease when each active agent has only losers among its neighbors. On the one-dimensional lattice, the fraction of winners in the final state is $e^{-1}$, and we also determine the fractions $w_j$ of winners who won $j=0, 1, 2$ games. For the WTA process on a segment, we determine statistics of the total number of winners (the average, the variance, and all higher cumulants), the probabilities of reaching the final state with the minimum or maximum number of winners, and establish the behavior near the boundaries. For infinite regular trees with vertices of degree $d$, i.e., Bethe lattices with coordination number $d$, the fraction of winners is $(2/d)^{d/(d-2)}$.

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

Agents' Last Exam

Recent AI systems have achieved strong results on a wide range of benchmarks, yet these gains have not translated into economically meaningful deployment across many professional domains. We argue that this gap is largely an evaluation problem: widely used benchmarks lack sustained performance measurement on real and economically valuable workflows. This paper introduces Agents' Last Exam (ALE), a benchmark designed to evaluate AI agents on long horizon, economically valuable, real world tasks with verifiable outcomes. Developed in collaboration with 250+ industry experts, ALE covers non-physical industries defined with reference to O*NET / SOC 2018 (the U.S. federal occupational taxonomy). It is organized around a task taxonomy with 55 sub fields grouped into 13 industry clusters covering 1K+ tasks. Current results show that the hardest tier remains far from saturated: across mainstream harness and backbone configurations, the average full pass rate is below 1%. ALE is designed as a living benchmark: its task pool grows continuously as new workflows and industries are onboarded. More broadly, ALE is intended not merely as another leaderboard, but as an instrument for closing the gap between benchmark success and GDP relevant impact.

25.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

HeatKV: Head-tuned KV-cache Compression for Visual Autoregressive Modeling

Visual Autoregressive (VAR) models have recently demonstrated impressive image generation quality while maintaining low latency. However, they suffer from severe KV-cache memory constraints, often requiring gigabytes of memory per generated image. We introduce HeatKV, a novel compression method that adapts cache allocation in each head based on its attention to previously generated scales. Using a small offline calibration set, the attention heads are ranked according to their attention scores over prior scales. Based on this ranking, we construct a static pruning schedule tailored to a given memory budget. Applied to the Infinity-2B model, HeatKV achieves $2 \times$ higher compression ratio in memory allocation for KV cache compared to existing methods, while maintaining similar or better image fidelity, prompt alignment and human perception score. Our method achieves a new state-of-the-art (SOTA) for VAR model KV-cache compression, showcasing the effectiveness of fine-grained, head-specific cache allocation. Code and calibration script available at https://github.com/arm-research/heatkv.