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

AoiZora: Topology-Aware Auto-Parallel Optimization for Inference of Diffusion Transformers

arXiv:2606.17566v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Video diffusion has quickly grown into a key generative serving workload, yet producing each clip demands many denoising iterations over large spatio-temporal latents, which puts low-latency inference out of reach on a single device. A denoising step is therefore typically distributed across multiple accelerators, and TPU sub-slices have become an attractive and practical fabric for doing so. Current auto-parallel systems, however, search almost exclusively over logical device meshes and disregard how a chosen sharding is actually laid out on the physical TPU interconnect – an oversight that leaves large, topology-dependent performance on the table. We address this gap with AoiZora, a compiler-mediated topology planner built for low-latency video diffusion inference on TPU sub-slices. Its guiding principle is to reconnect logical sharding with physical placement by drawing on different points in the compilation flow: AoiZora first eliminates weak sharding candidates from inexpensive pre-compilation IRs, then compiles only the ones that survive and orders their physical placements using compiled HLO together with a topology-aware communication model. The winning plan is realized along the ordinary compiler path, leaving model code, compiler lowering, collective kernels, and network routing entirely intact. On TPU v5e sub-slices, AoiZora reduces Wan 2.1 one-step denoising latency by as much as 1.42x relative to existing solutions.

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

Do Safety Monitors Stay Reliable After an Update? Benchmarking and Predicting Activation-Monitor Staleness

作者:

Activation monitors-lightweight probes trained on a language model's internal representations-are an increasingly common layer in deployment safety stacks. Deployed models however are rarely static: they are quantized, fine-tuned, adapted with LoRA, or served with merged adapters while the monitor remains frozen. We present the first systematic test of whether this implicit contract holds: whether activation monitors trained on a base model remain reliable after these routine model updates. Across multiple safety-relevant monitors, model depths, update families, and open-weight models, we find a sharp split: quantization-style updates largely preserve frozen probe performance, while fine-tuning-style updates frequently make probes stale. Fragility is highly monitor-dependent, with privacy/PII probes most affected and refusal-compliance probes comparatively stable, showing that retraining a behavior need not stale its corresponding monitor. QLoRA is especially damaging despite NF4 quantization alone being relatively benign, suggesting that quantization becomes riskier when combined with adaptation. We further show that degradation is predictable from pre-deployment features, enabling revalidation budgets to be triaged toward the monitors most likely to fail. These results suggest that fine-tuning should trigger activation-monitor revalidation by default, while prediction can help prioritize which monitors to check first.

03.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-11

Structure-Preserving Neural Surrogates with Tractable Uncertainty Quantification

arXiv:2606.11650v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent advances in scientific machine learning provide a means of near-real-time solution to partial differential equations (PDEs), but lack the theoretical underpinnings of conventional simulators that support contemporary verification and validation. In this work, we construct data-driven reduced-order models that serve as structure-preserving, real-time surrogates. Remarkably, the exterior calculus that imposes physical conservation structure also exposes topological structure that we use to build a Gaussian process (GP) representation of uncertainty in state-flux relationships, ultimately yielding a Dirichlet-to-Neumann map for quantities of interest with closed-form expressions for posterior uncertainty. We specifically propose structure-preserving $H(\mathrm{div})$–$L^2$ subspaces of conventional Raviart–Thomas and $dgP_0$ elements prescribed by a lightweight transformer. Reduced-order dynamics consistent with this subspace are learned by posing a conservation law in which a GP describes the fluxes between volumes. This work hinges on a novel interface between mixed FEM spaces and GP regression; when training is posed as the optimal recovery problem (ORP), the resulting GP regression can be written as an optimization problem with equality constraints that impose a conservation structure, amenable to a fast Schur-complement training strategy. The trained model can then be solved in real time with closed-form estimators for boundary fluxes driven by prescribed Dirichlet data. The paper includes RKHS posterior error bounds for linear functionals to support uncertainty quantification, as well as numerical experiments demonstrating the accuracy of the posterior distribution as a surrogate for error estimation.

05.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-11

Time-Frequency Grid States for Reconstruction and Correction of Channel-Induced Distortion in Entangled Photons

arXiv:2606.12216v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Characterization of time-frequency (TF) quantum states requires reliable reconstruction of their TF distributions. However, imperfect transmission or measurement channels can distort reconstructed joint spectral intensities (JSIs), especially when the underlying perturbation mechanism is unknown. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a reconstruction and correction framework that uses a TF grid state as an intrinsic frequency-domain reference. By analyzing the displacement of the grid points, a Gaussian process regression model is employed to reconstruct a correction mapping for the nonlinear coordinate deformation without assuming a prior physical model of the distortion. The learned mapping reduces the residual coordinate deviation of the TF grid state by approximately a factor of 11 and, when applied to an independent frequency-entangled test state, improves the Gaussian-shape fidelity from 76.2\% to 90.0\%. These results establish TF grid states as practical metrological resources for diagnosing and correcting distortions in TF quantum systems, providing a pathway toward distortion-resilient quantum communication and high-dimensional quantum information processing.

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

Disentangling Hallucinations: Orthogonal Semantic Projection for Robust Interpretability

As Vision-Language Models are increasingly deployed in safety-critical applications, the trustworthiness of their explanations becomes crucial. Explainable AI (XAI) methods for Vision-Language Models often suffer from semantic hallucination, where attribution maps highlight prominent image regions even when prompted with incorrect text descriptions (e.g., highlighting a dog when prompted ``cat''). Although this problem is widespread, a formal mathematical analysis of XAI methods and CLIP embeddings is largely missing in the literature. We demonstrate that this phenomenon is not specific to a single architecture but is a fundamental consequence of Linear Semantic Leakage in high-dimensional embedding spaces. We propose a unified theoretical framework, Linear Semantic Attribution (LSA), which generalizes across discriminative methods. We introduce OSP, a geometric intervention that utilizes the residual property of OMP to disentangle unique semantic signals from shared concepts. We prove theoretically and demonstrate empirically that OSP minimizes hallucination by orthogonalizing the query vector against distractor concepts, rendering the attribution model blind to shared features while preserving fidelity for correct prompts. Our code is available at: https://github.com/emirhanbilgic/Orthogonal-Semantic-Projection

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

A Variational Framework for LLM Generator-Regulator Games

作者:

arXiv:2606.18424v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This paper develops a variational framework for regulated language generation. Starting from autoregressive token sampling, we derive the induced distribution over complete messages and relate it to an entropy-regularized Gibbs law. Regulation is modeled as an optimal discriminator whose convex-dual value is an f-divergence, and the generator-regulator interaction is formulated as a saddle-point problem. The framework applies to moderation, censorship, AI deception detection, compliance auditing, phishing defense, and manipulation control, where regulation concerns a distribution over possible messages rather than a single output. The equilibrium clarifies the tradeoff among utility, entropy, regulatory alignment, and finite-length detectability. Two finite-vocabulary case studies, censorship filtering and phishing defense, illustrate how the theory can be evaluated through utility, entropy, divergence, receiver-side scores, and detection probability.

08.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

Which Pairs to Compare for LLM Post-Training?

arXiv:2606.19607v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Preference-based post-training has become a central paradigm for aligning language models. A common data-collection strategy is to generate a small set of completions for each prompt and label the resulting comparison pairs. However, human preference labels are often much more expensive than generating additional completions, suggesting a different use of the same labeling budget: generate a larger pool of completions, but label only the most informative comparison pairs. This paper studies which pairs should be compared in preference-based post-training. We formulate comparison curation as a sampling-design problem and evaluate designs by the quality of the final policy under the preference-based post-training objective. We instantiate this framework for Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), analyzing how the choice of labeled pairs propagates through DPO training to downstream policy performance. Our main results provide matching upper and lower bounds on the post-training optimality gap of the DPO-trained policy. The bounds show that comparison selection affects downstream performance through a single design-dependent information matrix, which links label allocation to parameter estimation error and policy suboptimality. This yields an explicit optimization criterion for budgeted comparison curation and motivates practical sampling designs for selecting informative pairs from large generated completion pools. Experiments on synthetic settings and language-model post-training benchmarks show that the proposed designs consistently improve sample efficiency over common comparison-selection heuristics.

09.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

Cascaded Sparse Autoencoders Learn Multi-Level Visual Concepts in Multimodal LLMs

Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have demonstrated strong performance on vision-language tasks, yet their internal visual representations remain difficult to interpret. Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) provide a scalable way to decompose dense model activations into sparse, interpretable features. However, existing SAE architectures primarily recover flat feature dictionaries and are less suited for explicit multi-level concept organization. In this paper, we introduce cascaded sparse autoencoders (CSAEs) for learning hierarchical visual concepts in MLLMs. Rather than nesting or stacking SAE sparse activation codes, CSAEs train a second-level SAE directly on the decoder weights of the first-level SAE, treating learned low-level feature directions as inputs for higher-level abstraction. This design enables CSAEs to learn "concepts of concepts" while avoiding drawbacks from the shared-prefix coupling of nesting, Matryoshka-style hierarchies and the bottlenecks of naively stacked SAEs. Experiments across Qwen3-VL, Gemma-3, and LLaVA on multiple visual datasets show that CSAEs improve interpretability in terms of hierarchical concept coherence over state-of-the-art SAE baselines. Results on concept steering further demonstrate that the learned concept groups support effective group-level interventions in MLLM outputs.

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

DF3DV-1K: A Large-Scale Dataset and Benchmark for Distractor-Free Novel View Synthesis

arXiv:2604.13416v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Advances in radiance fields have enabled photorealistic novel view synthesis. In several domains, large-scale real-world datasets have been developed to support comprehensive benchmarking and to facilitate progress beyond scene-specific reconstruction. However, for distractor-free radiance fields, a large-scale dataset with clean and cluttered images per scene remains lacking, limiting the development. To address this gap, we introduce DF3DV-1K, a large-scale real-world dataset comprising 1,048 scenes, each providing clean and cluttered image sets for benchmarking. In total, the dataset contains 89,924 images captured using consumer cameras to mimic casual capture, spanning 128 distractor types and 161 scene themes across indoor and outdoor environments. A curated subset of 41 scenes, DF3DV-41, is systematically designed to evaluate the robustness of distractor-free radiance field methods under challenging scenarios. Using DF3DV-1K, we benchmark nine recent distractor-free radiance field methods and 3D Gaussian Splatting, identifying the most robust methods and the most challenging scenarios. Beyond benchmarking, we demonstrate an application of DF3DV-1K by fine-tuning a diffusion-based 2D enhancer to improve radiance field methods, achieving average improvements of 0.96 dB PSNR and 0.057 LPIPS on the held-out set (e.g., DF3DV-41) and the On-the-go dataset. We hope DF3DV-1K facilitates the development of distractor-free vision and promotes progress beyond scene-specific approaches. The dataset and leaderboard are available at https://johnnylu305.github.io/df3dv1k_web/.

11.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

Individual Control Barrier Functions-Guided Diffusion Model for Safe Offline Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2606.12640v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Offline reinforcement learning allows control policies to be learned directly from data without online interaction, making it suitable for safety-critical tasks. Recent studies have applied diffusion models to offline reinforcement learning to leverage their strong capacity for modeling complex data distributions. However, existing approaches primarily focus on single-agent settings, leaving the safety challenges in multi-agent environments largely unexplored. In this work, we propose a safe offline multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm that embeds neural individual control barrier functions into the diffusion model to enhance safety during trajectory generation, with control policies recovered through inverse dynamics. We evaluate our algorithm across diverse benchmarks, demonstrating substantial safety improvements while maintaining competitive rewards.

12.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

It's About Time: Temporal References in Emergent Communication

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

13.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-19

The Representational Limit of Scalar Interactions: An Interventional Decomposition

arXiv:2606.19410v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Signed pairwise interaction scores fundamentally conflate uniqueness (U), redundancy (R), and synergy (S). We prove this on a minimal 3-way XOR structural causal model: faithful indices such as Shapley-Taylor return zero per pair, whereas projective indices such as Shapley Interaction spread the third-order effect into pair scalars that conflate the three mechanisms. We introduce Stochastic Hi-Fi, a post-hoc, retraining-free predictability decomposition that estimates per-feature U/R/S profiles by interventional masked inference. The estimator provides exact interventional semantics, finite-sample Monte Carlo bounds, strict variance reduction from coupled diamond sampling, and uniform finite-vocabulary convergence. Across tabular SCMs, Stochastic Hi-Fi recovers structure missed by scalar baselines (up to 411x larger interaction-magnitude recovery ratios). It also separates redundant and synergistic heads in the GPT-2 IOI circuit. On NIH ChestX-ray14, Stochastic Hi-Fi matches GradCAM on Pointing Game and improves substantially on Deletion AUC.

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

A Composite Activation Function for Learning Stable Binary Representations

arXiv:2605.11558v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Activation functions play a central role in neural networks by shaping internal representations. Recently, learning binary activation representations has attracted significant attention due to their advantages in computational and memory efficiency, as well as interpretability. However, training neural networks with Heaviside activations remains challenging, as their non-differentiability obstructs standard gradient-based optimization. In this paper, we propose Heavy Tailed Activation Function (HTAF), a smooth approximation to the Heaviside function that enables stable training with gradient-based optimization. We construct HTAF as a sigmoid hyperbolic tangent composite function and theoretically show that it maintains a large gradient mass around zero inputs while exhibiting slower gradient decay in the tail regions. We show that Spiking Neural Networks, Binary Neural Networks and Deep Heaviside neural Networks can be trained stably using HTAF with gradient-based optimization. Finally, we introduce Implicit Concept Bottleneck Models (ICBMs), an interpretable image model that leverages HTAF to induce discrete feature representations. Extensive experiments across various architectures and image datasets demonstrate that ICBM enables stable discretization while achieving prediction performance comparable to or better than standard models.

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

BadWorld: Adversarial Attacks on World Models

Visual world models (VWMs) synthesize interactive, action-conditioned rollouts from a single context image. However, it remains an open question how robust these models are to adversarial perturbations. Standard adversarial attacks fail to assess this vulnerability because attackers lack ground-truth future videos and cannot predict subsequent user controls. We introduce BadWorld, a label-free adversarial framework tailored for autoregressive VWMs that systematically overcomes both constraints. First, to bypass the need for future supervision, we propose a self-supervised velocity attack that directly disrupts the early denoising dynamics of the model. Second, to ensure the attack generalizes across unpredictable user actions, we formulate a trajectory-adaptive bi-level optimization that actively mines hard control sequences to forge control-agnostic perturbations. Evaluated on representative VWMs with continuous and discrete controls, BadWorld exposes severe structural fragility. Visually indistinguishable adversarial images reliably trigger catastrophic degradation in future rollouts, leading to incomplete denoising, structural collapse, and control inconsistency. These findings reveal critical risks for deploying VWMs in safety-critical systems while highlighting a practical mechanism for privacy protection.

16.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12

Benchmarking AI Agents for Addressing Scientific Challenges Across Scales

arXiv:2606.12736v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI agents are increasingly being developed to accelerate scientific discovery, yet their practical capabilities in real research settings remain poorly understood. Existing benchmarks for AI agents rarely capture the complexity, heterogeneity, and extended reasoning required by scientific work, whereas benchmarks for scientific tasks often reduce research to static, direct problems and provide limited support for interactive evaluation. Here, we introduce SciAgentArena, a systematic benchmark for evaluating AI agents in real-world scientific research scenarios drawn from emerging needs across multiple domains. SciAgentArena comprises approximately 200 tasks with stepwise verification and an interactive, agent-agnostic environment for assessing diverse AI agents. Using this benchmark, we find that current agents can contribute effectively to well-specified data-analysis workflows, particularly when the task structure and evaluation criteria are clear. However, their performance remains uneven across scientific contexts: agents struggle to generate genuinely novel insights, sustain self-directed exploration, and formulate robust solutions for open-ended research questions. We further characterize common failure modes across agents and identify opportunities for improving their reliability, autonomy, and scientific reasoning. Together, SciAgentArena provides a practical framework for measuring progress in AI agents for science and for guiding the design of future agents capable of addressing complex scientific challenges. Full codes, tasks, and datasets can be accessed via this link: https://sciagentarena.github.io/.

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

MMRINet: Efficient Mamba-Based Segmentation with Dual-Path Refinement for Low-Resource MRI Analysis

Automated brain tumor segmentation in multi-parametric MRI remains a critical yet underserved challenge in resource-constrained clinical settings, where deep 3D networks requiring high-end GPUs are not viable. This is particularly acute across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where low-field scanners, heterogeneous patient demographics, and severe data scarcity compound the difficulty of applying standard deep learning pipelines. We present MMRINet, a lightweight segmentation architecture purpose-built for these constraints. At its core, MMRINet replaces quadratic-complexity self-attention with linear-complexity Mamba state-space models, enabling efficient long-range volumetric context modeling without the computational overhead of Transformer-based approaches. We combine two lightweight refinement components:Dual-Path Feature Refinement (DPFR), which extracts complementary detail and contextual representations to improve feature diversity under limited data, and Progressive Feature Aggregation (PFA), which hierarchically fuses multi-scale decoder outputs for sharper segmentation boundaries. Evaluated on the BraTS-Lighthouse SSA 2025 challenge dataset, comprising 3D MRI scans from Nigerian clinical sites, MMRINet achieves an average Dice score of 0.752 and an average HD95 of 12.23 mm with only ~2.5M parameters, outperforming all evaluated baselines, including UNETR, Swin-UNETR, SegMamba, and SegResNet3D. These results indicate that strong validation-set segmentation performance can be achieved with substantially reduced computation, offering a practical step toward AI-assisted neuro-oncology in low-resource clinical environments. Our GitHub repository can be accessed here: BioMedIA-MBZUAI/MMRINet.

18.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-11

Quantum optimal control of the Dicke manifold in dipolar Rydberg atom arrays

arXiv:2606.02283v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The ability to engineer and control quantum states of many-body systems is a central challenge in quantum information science. For a register of $N$ qubits, the full Hilbert space dimension grows exponentially as $2^N$, rendering generic state preparation and control infeasible without exploiting structure or symmetry. A particularly important and physically motivated restriction is to the fully symmetric subspace, spanned by the Dicke states, which are simultaneous eigenstates of collective spin $J=N/2$. Ensembles of Rydberg atoms interacting via electric dipoles in two-dimensional tweezer arrays form a promising platform for achieving such control. However, the finite range of dipole-dipole interactions poses a challenge to generating and controlling the Dicke manifold because the Hamiltonian incurs leakage from the computational subspace. To counteract this leakage, we perform quantum optimal control algorithms on a truncated Hilbert space according to our newly developed method of ``irrep distillation'' (IRD), which captures the process by which the symmetric subspace couples to leakage error-spaces, using only linear-scaling Hilbert dimension. We implement gradient ascent pulse engineering (GrAPE) on control schemes with little or no local addressing, to generate resourceful states like Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger, Dicke, and extremal quantum states. We benchmark each scheme of IRD-GrAPE for its quantum speed limit (QSL), as well as exactly testing pulse fidelities on small system sizes and predicting fidelities using higher-order IRD on larger systems.

19.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

Learned Radius Estimation for UDF-Based Point Cloud Reconstruction

Surface reconstruction from point clouds is important for consumer-grade 3D capture, including AR/VR and indoor scanning. Local-patch Unsigned Distance Field (UDF) methods are lightweight and generalizable, but their accuracy depends on the support radius, traditionally fixed or selected by a one-dimensional curvature heuristic that cannot capture heterogeneous local geometry. We propose a learned per-query radius selector that predicts a continuous support radius and plugs into a frozen LoSF-UDF backbone. The selector is trained using off-grid target radii obtained by parabolic interpolation of cached UDF error curves. Experiments show improved fine-scale reconstruction accuracy.

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

Machine-learning-based multipoint optimization of fluidic injection parameters for improving nozzle performance

arXiv:2409.12707v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Fluidic injection offers a promising solution to improve the performance of the overexpanded single expansion ramp nozzles (SERNs) during vehicle acceleration. However, determining the injection parameters that yield the best overall performance across multiple nozzle operating conditions remains a challenge. The gradient-based optimization method requires gradients of injection parameters at each design point, which can lead to high computational costs when using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. This paper uses a pretrained neural network to replace CFD during optimization, enabling quick calculation of the nozzle flow field at multiple design points. Considering the physical characteristics of the nozzle flow field, a prior-based prediction strategy is adopted to enhance the model's accuracy. In addition, the neural network's back-propagation algorithm computes gradients quickly by running the computation only once, thereby greatly reducing gradient computation time compared to the finite difference method. As a test case, the average nozzle thrust coefficient of an SERN at seven design points is optimized, resulting in a 1.14\% improvement. The time cost is greatly reduced compared with traditional optimization methods, even when the time required to establish the training database is included.

21.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Matrix Product Operator Encodings of the Magnus Expansion and Dyson Series

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

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

Generative Molecular Design with Steerable and Granular Synthesizability Control

arXiv:2505.08774v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Designing molecules that are both property-optimal and readily synthesizable is a central challenge in drug discovery. Existing works that do consider synthesizability can jointly output predicted synthesis routes for generated molecules. However, there has been minimal attention in addressing the ease of synthesis and with flexibility to incorporate desired reaction constraints. On the other hand, virtual screening searches for commercially available compounds, but imposes challenges when scaling to ultra-large (billion-size and beyond) chemical spaces. Here, we propose a generative design framework that unifies synthesis-constrained molecular design and ultra-large-scale virtual screening through steerable and granular synthesizability control. Generated molecules satisfy arbitrary multi-parameter optimization objectives with predicted synthesis routes satisfying mix-and-match constraints: including or avoiding certain reactions, incorporating specific building blocks, and minimizing synthesis route length. In an end-to-end in-house campaign targeting BRD4, we designed molecules synthesizable with specific selected reactions and building blocks, synthesized all six selected compounds, and identified two micromolar binders. We further demonstrate that reaction control enables efficient navigation of ultra-large make-on-demand chemical spaces to identify property-optimal candidates. By applying our framework to Chemspace's Freedom 4.0 make-on-demand space (142 billion molecules), we generated ~320k molecules (0.00023% of the library) on a single consumer-grade GPU (with only 8 GB GPU memory) and identified a micromolar Wee1 binder amongst 60 synthesized candidates. The single unified framework thus enables generating novel synthesizable molecules and retrieving catalogue-ready candidates, offering a flexible solution to mitigating the synthesizability bottleneck.

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

The Algorithmic-Human Manager: AI, Apps, and Workers in the Indian Gig Economy

arXiv:2606.19975v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This paper examines the impact of artificial intelligence and digital technologies on the blue-collar gig economy in India, focusing on algorithmic management. This paper examines the impact of artificial intelligence and digital technologies on the blue collar gig economy in India, focusing on algorithmic management he use of automated systems to allocate, monitor, and evaluate work in location-based services such as ride sharing and delivery. Using a social justice framework and a mixed-methods approach comprising interviews with 16 gig workers and 21 key stakeholders, the study uncovers a dual reality: while AI-powered systems expand access to work and generate operational efficiencies, they simultaneously introduce significant challenges related to fairness, transparency, and worker dignity. Key findings reveal that algorithmic systems are opaque by design, produce inequitable outcomes, and are not structured to reward additional labour with proportionate pay. The study advocates for a pragmatic hybrid governance model an Algorithmic Human Manager framework in which technological efficiency and human accountability operate together rather than in opposition. The findings carry implications for policymakers, platform companies, and civil society organizations working to design equitable AI governance frameworks for the gig economy in India and across the Global South.

24.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

Flash-GRPO: Efficient Alignment for Video Diffusion via One-Step Policy Optimization

Group Relative Policy Optimization has emerged as essential for aligning video diffusion models with human preferences, but faces a critical computational bottleneck: training a 14B parametered model typically demands hundreds of GPU days per experiment. Existing efficiency methods reduce costs through sliding window subsampling training timesteps, but fundamentally compromise optimization, exhibiting severe instability and failing to reach full trajectory performance. We present Flash-GRPO, a single-step training framework that outperforms full trajectory training in alignment quality under low computational budgets while substantially improving training efficiency. Flash-GRPO addresses two critical challenges: iso-temporal grouping eliminates timestep-confounded variance by enforcing prompt-wise temporal consistency, decoupling policy performance from timestep difficulty; temporal gradient rectification neutralizes the time-dependent scaling factor that causes vastly inconsistent gradient magnitudes across timesteps. Experiments on 1.3B to 14B parameter models validate Flash-GRPO's effectiveness, demonstrating substantial training acceleration with consistent stability and state-of-the-art alignment quality.

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

Continuous-time Optimal Stopping through Deep Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2606.17545v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Simulation based solvers for optimal stopping problems must discretize the stopping decision. Under classical dynamic programming, a coarse exercise grid with only a few stopping opportunities can materially undervalue the optimal expected reward, whereas on a very fine grid, approximation errors accumulate through the backward recursion. To remove this limitation, we develop a new reinforcement-learning inspired algorithm that enables us to learn the exercise rule at arbitrarily fine time resolution. Our CARLOS (Continuous-time Adaptive Reinforcement Learning for Optimal Stopping) algorithm utilizes an aggregate deep neural network (ADNN) to learn a joint space-time decision boundary. Starting from a coarse time grid, we progressively increase the frequency of stopping opportunities, while in parallel training the ADNN to refine its timing-value estimates. We moreover design an adaptive sampling strategy that gradually concentrates training effort near the stopping boundary. Benchmarked results show that CARLOS delivers higher prices than existing Bermudan solvers, approaching the American upper bound, and achieves high computational efficiency relative to non-RL comparators.