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Science Journals

Peer-reviewade publikationer — 56237 artiklar

The Efficiency Costs of Information Assurance in AI-Enabled Labor Markets: Evidence from LinkedIn's Policy Changes
arXiv:2511.01923v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) systems rely heavily on user-generated data for training. As governments and platforms impose increasing restrictions on the use of personal data, an important question is whether limiting access to user data for AI training affects the performance of AI-enabled economic systems. We examine this question in the context of labor-market matching. Our setting exploits a unique sequence of LinkedIn policy changes: the quiet introduction of user data collection for AI training in August 2024, the restriction of Hong Kong user data from AI training in October 2024, and the subsequent restoration of data access in November 2025. Using employment and job-posting data from Revelio Labs and a Difference-in-Differences design comparing Hong Kong and Singapore, we find that the restriction significantly increased labor-market frictions: employee turnover increased and tenure declined, vacancies remained open longer, job-posting match rates fell, and wages decreased. To strengthen the causal interpretation, we examine the full policy lifecycle: labor market outcomes improved following LinkedIn's initial AI rollout, deteriorated after the restriction, and recovered after the restoration. Similar patterns emerge in an independent cross-country comparison between regions with and without access to LinkedIn's user data for AI training. The effects are strongest among firms that rely more heavily on platform-mediated recruitment. Our findings show that restricting access to user data for AI training can affect labor-market outcomes through AI-enabled matching systems and contribute to ongoing discussions regarding AI governance, privacy regulation, and the economic consequences of data access.
A Space-Time Transformer for Precipitation Nowcasting
arXiv:2511.11090v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Until recently, numerical weather prediction (NWP) models have stood rivalless in operational forecasting despite a few limitations. Namely, physically-based models are computationally demanding and struggle at short lead times, reducing their utility for nowcasting. Motivated by these shortcomings, recent work proposes AI-weather prediction (AI-WP) alternatives that emulate analysis data with neural networks. While these data-driven approaches have achieved high skill for medium-range forecasting-applications of AI-WP to precipitation and to nowcasting are less explored. To these ends, this paper discusses \textit{SaTformer}: a video transformer adapted for precipitation nowcasting. To ameliorate some problems related to what is essentially a fat-tailed regression task, we find it prudent to formulate nowcasting as a classification problem and employ a frequency-weighted loss. This straightforward approach scored first on the NeurIPS Weather4Cast 2025 ``Cumulative Rainfall'' challenge. Code and model weights are available: \texttt{\href{github.com/leharris3/w4c-25}{github.com/leharris3/satformer}}.
Executing Discrete/Continuous Declarative Process Specifications via Complex Event Processing
arXiv:2512.05653v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Traditional Business Process Management (BPM) focuses on discrete events and fails to incorporate critical continuous sensor data in cyber-physical environments. Hybrid declarative specifications, utilizing Signal Temporal Logic (STL), address this limitation by allowing constraints over both discrete events and real-valued signals. However, existing work has been limited to monitoring and post-hoc conformance checking. This paper introduces a novel execution architecture based on Complex Event Processing (CEP) that enables the real-time execution and enforcement of hybrid declarative models. Our three-layer approach integrates STL-inspired predicates into the execution flow, allowing the system to actively trigger activities and enforce process boundaries based on continuous sensor behavior. This approach bridges the gap between hybrid specification and operational control.
Control-Oriented System Identification: Classical, Learning, and Physics-Informed Approaches
arXiv:2512.06315v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We survey classical, machine learning, and data-driven system identification approaches to learn control-relevant and physics-informed models of dynamical systems. Recently, machine learning approaches have enabled system identification from noisy, high-dimensional, and complex data. However, their utility is limited by their ability to provide provable guarantees on control-relevant properties. Meanwhile, control theory has identified several properties that are useful in analysis and control synthesis, such as dissipativity, monotonicity, energy conservation, and symmetry-preserving structures. We posit that merging system identification with such control-relevant or physics-informed properties can provide useful inductive bias, enhance explainability, enable control synthesis with provable guarantees, and improve sample complexity. We formulate system identification as an optimization problem where control-relevant properties can be enforced through direct parameterization (constraining the model structure to satisfy a desired property by construction), soft constraints (encouraging control-relevant properties through regularization or penalty terms), and hard constraints (imposing control-relevant properties as constraints in the optimization problem). Through this lens, we survey methods to learn physics-informed and control-relevant models spanning classical linear and nonlinear system identification, machine learning approaches, and direct identification through data-driven and behavioral representations. We also provide several expository examples that are accompanied by code and brief tutorials on a public Github repository. We also describe challenging directions for future research, including identification in networked, switched, and time-varying systems, experiment design, and bridging the gaps between data-driven, learning-based, and control-oriented approaches.
Agile perceptive multi-skill locomotion for quadrupedal robots in the wild
arXiv:2607.13579v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Enabling quadrupedal robots to traverse complex terrains-from rugged outdoor environments to urban landscapes-requires seamless integration of multiple motor skills, smooth transitions between gaits, and high-speed perceptive locomotion using only onboard sensors. We present APT-RL (Action Pretrained Transformer-based Reinforcement Learning), a unified framework that enables multi-skill locomotion to achieve high-speed traversal in complex environments through autonomous skill transitions utilizing only onboard perception and computation. Our approach generates large-scale, feature-rich 2D motion datasets through trajectory optimization with simplified dynamics. These datasets enable training of diverse, reusable locomotion skills that transfer effectively to a real quadruped robot operating on complex uneven terrains. The resulting high-quality skills serve as strong priors for efficient learning of complex downstream tasks and extend naturally to 3D environments, enabling smooth, high-speed multi-skill locomotion in deployed policy. Real-world experiments demonstrate the framework's capabilities: the robot performs agile maneuvers through complex indoor obstacles and outdoor wild environments, including dynamic drop-down maneuvers that reach instantaneous peak speeds of up to 6 meters per second. A single onboard policy enables robust traversal of diverse obstacles, including stairs, hurdles, stepping stones, gaps, and fallen branches, demonstrating the versatility and effectiveness of our approach.
Koopman-driven grip force prediction through EMG sensing
arXiv:2409.17340v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Loss of hand function due to conditions like stroke or multiple sclerosis significantly impacts daily activities. Robotic rehabilitation provides tools to restore hand function, while novel methods based on surface electromyography (sEMG) enable the adaptation of the device's force output according to the user's condition, thereby improving rehabilitation outcomes. This study aims to achieve accurate force estimations during medium wrap grasps using a single sEMG sensor pair, thereby addressing the challenge of escalating sensor requirements for precise predictions. We conducted sEMG measurements on 13 subjects at two forearm positions, validating results with a hand dynamometer. We established flexible signal-processing steps, yielding high peak cross-correlations between the processed sEMG signal (representing meaningful muscle activity) and grip force. Influential parameters were subsequently identified through sensitivity analysis. Leveraging a novel data-driven Koopman operator theory-based approach and problem-specific data lifting techniques, we devised a methodology for the estimation and short-term prediction of grip force from processed sEMG signals. A weighted mean absolute percentage error (wMAPE) of approx. 5.5% was achieved for the estimated grip force, whereas predictions with a 0.5-second prediction horizon resulted in a wMAPE of approx. 17.9%. The methodology proved robust regarding precise electrode positioning, as the effect of sensing position on error metrics was non-significant. The algorithm executes exceptionally fast, processing, estimating, and predicting a 0.5-second sEMG signal batch in just approx. 30 ms, facilitating real-time implementation.
ClusIR: Towards Cluster-Guided All-in-One Image Restoration
arXiv:2512.10948v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: All-in-One Image Restoration (AiOIR) aims to recover high-quality images from diverse degradations within a unified framework. However, existing methods often fail to explicitly model degradation types and struggle to adapt their restoration behavior to complex or mixed degradations. To address these issues, we propose ClusIR, a Cluster-Guided Image Restoration framework that explicitly models degradation semantics through learnable clustering and propagates cluster-aware cues across spatial and frequency domains for adaptive restoration. Specifically, ClusIR comprises two key components: a Probabilistic Cluster-Guided Routing Mechanism (PCGRM) and a Degradation-Aware Frequency Modulation Module (DAFMM). The proposed PCGRM disentangles degradation recognition from expert activation, enabling discriminative degradation perception and stable expert routing. Meanwhile, DAFMM leverages the cluster-guided priors to perform adaptive frequency decomposition and targeted modulation, collaboratively refining structural and textural representations for higher restoration fidelity. The cluster-guided synergy seamlessly bridges semantic cues with frequency-domain modulation, empowering ClusIR to attain remarkable restoration results across a wide range of degradations. Extensive experiments on diverse benchmarks validate that ClusIR reaches competitive performance under several scenarios.
Lag Operator SSMs: A Geometric Framework for Structured State Space Modeling
arXiv:2512.18965v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Structured State Space Models (SSMs), which are at the heart of the recently popular Mamba architecture, are powerful tools for sequence modeling. However, their theoretical foundation relies on a complex, multistage process of continuous-time modeling and subsequent discretization, which can obscure intuition. We introduce a direct, first-principles framework for constructing discrete-time SSMs that is both flexible and modular. Our approach is based on a novel lag operator, which geometrically derives the discrete-time recurrence by measuring how the system's basis functions undergo what we call a domain expansion from one timestep to the next. The resulting state matrices are computed via a single inner product involving this operator, enabling a modular design space for creating novel SSMs by flexibly combining different basis functions and time-warping schemes. To validate our framework, we demonstrate that a specific instance exactly recovers the recurrence of the influential HiPPO model. Numerical simulations confirm our derivation, providing new theoretical tools for designing flexible and robust sequence models.
Machine Learning Challenges in Intelligent Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Operations in Developing Economie
arXiv:2607.13447v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) environments present significant challenges for machine learning (ML) due to limited platform resources, heterogeneous sensor data, dynamic mission conditions, and safety-critical requirements. This paper examines these constraints across the core functional areas of UAV intelligence, including navigation, perception, communication-aware operation, and resilience specifically in the context of developing economies. In such settings, these challenges are often amplified by constraints such as cost sensitivity, limited infrastructure, intermittent connectivity, regulatory uncertainty, and harsh or variable operating environments. The discussion highlights the gap between ML performance in controlled experimental backgrounds and dependable deployment in real-world UAV missions within developing economies context.
Rethinking the Capability of Fine-Tuned Language Models for Automated Vulnerability Repair
arXiv:2512.22633v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Learning-based automated vulnerability repair (AVR) techniques that utilize fine-tuned language models have shown promise in generating vulnerability patches. However, questions remain about their ability to repair unseen vulnerabilities. Our empirical study reveals that state-of-the-art models often overfit to the training set and are evaluated using training, validation, and test sets that are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, relying on match-based metrics that compare generated patches to reference fixes at the token level has some limitations, failing to account for the possibility of various valid ways to patch the vulnerability. In this paper, we examine the capabilities of state-of-the-art fine-tuned AVR models and the adequacy of match-based evaluation metrics in three ways. First, we apply semantic-preserving transformations to test sets in order to determine whether models truly learn robust vulnerability-repair patterns or simply rely on spurious features. Second, we re-split the training, validation, and test sets to be mutually exclusive and evaluate the models on the revised test set to assess their generalization capabilities. Third, we introduce L-AVRBench, a test-based benchmark tailored for learning-based AVR, to overcome the limitations of match-based metrics and examine the AVR models' true repair capabilities.
Mechanistic Evidence for Preserved-but-Misaligned Representations in Non-IID FedAvg
arXiv:2512.23043v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Federated Averaging (FedAvg) often degrades under non-IID client data, but it remains unclear whether this degradation reflects the loss of client-learned representations or a failure to use representations that are still present. We study this question mechanistically in sparse client-trained vision models, using dense-model controls to test whether the observed effects depend on sparsity. Our analysis combines class-specific circuit discovery, linear probing of frozen representations, head-only finetuning, and sparse feature dictionaries. Across CNN and ResNet models on CIFAR-10 and Fashion-MNIST, severe label skew can drive some per-class accuracies near zero even when class-specific internal structure remains recoverable. Linear probes substantially outperform the aggregated classifier, head-only finetuning partially restores accuracy, and USAE transfer reveals a largely shared feature basis between IID and non-IID models. Together, these diagnostics suggest that, in our setting, non-IID FedAvg degradation is not fully explained by representational erasure; it also reflects misalignment between preserved internal structure and the final prediction pathway.
Survival Dynamics of Neural and Programmatic Policies in Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning
arXiv:2601.04365v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: In evolutionary reinforcement learning tasks (ERL), agent policies are often encoded as small artificial neural networks (NERL). Such representations lack explicit modular structure, limiting behavioral interpretation. We investigate whether programmatic policies (PERL), implemented as soft, differentiable decision lists (SDDL), can match the performance of NERL. To support reproducible evaluation, we provide the first fully specified and open-source reimplementation of the classic 1992 Artificial Life (ALife) ERL testbed. We conduct a rigorous survival analysis across 4000 independent trials utilizing Kaplan-Meier curves and Restricted Mean Survival Time (RMST) metrics absent in the original study. We find a statistically significant difference in survival probability between PERL and NERL. PERL agents survive on average 201.69 steps longer than NERL agents. Moreover, SDDL agents using learning alone (no evolution) survive on average 73.67 steps longer than neural agents using both learning and evaluation. These results demonstrate that programmatic policies can exceed the survival performance of neural policies in ALife.
Pursuing transparency: How research performing organizations in Germany collect data on publication costs
arXiv:2601.08340v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This article presents the results of a survey conducted in 2024 among research performing organizations (RPOs) in Germany on how they collect data on publication costs. Of the 583 invitees, 258 (44.3%) completed the questionnaire. This survey is the first comprehensive study on the recording of publication costs at RPOs in Germany. The results show that the majority of surveyed RPOs recorded publication costs at least in part. However, procedures in this regard were often non-binding. Respondents' ratings of the reliability of the collection of data on publication costs varied by the source of publication funding. Eighty percent of respondents rated the contribution of collecting data on publication costs to shaping the open access transformation as "very important" or "important." Yet, these data were used as a basis for strategic decisions in only 59% of the surveyed RPOs. Moreover, most respondents considered the implementation of an information budget at their institutions by 2025 unlikely. We discuss the implications of these findings for the open access transformation.
Attentive multilayer fusion for vision transformers
arXiv:2601.09322v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: With the rise of large-scale foundation models, efficiently adapting them to downstream tasks remains a central challenge. Linear probing, which freezes the backbone and trains a lightweight head, is computationally efficient but often restricted to last-layer representations. We show that task-relevant information is distributed across the network hierarchy rather than encoded solely in the last layers. To leverage this distribution of information, we apply an attentive probing mechanism that dynamically fuses representations from all layers of a Vision Transformer. This attentive layer fusion (ALF) learns to identify the most relevant layers for a target task and combines low-level structural cues with high-level semantic abstractions. Across 20 diverse datasets and multiple pretrained foundation models, ALF achieves consistent, substantial gains over standard linear probes. Attention heatmaps further reveal that tasks different from the pre-training domain benefit most from intermediate representations. Overall, our findings underscore the value of intermediate layers and demonstrate a principled, task-aware approach for unlocking their potential for probing-based adaptation.
Nested hyperedges promote the onset of collective transitions but suppress explosive behavior
arXiv:2601.10522v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Higher-order interactions can induce abrupt collective transitions, yet the microscopic mechanisms controlling macroscopic critical behavior remain unclear. Here we show that nested hyperedges generate a dual effect on dynamical processes: they promote the onset of collective behavior while suppressing the explosive transitions driven by higher-order feedback. To uncover the mechanism, we develop an analytically tractable theory of contagion on hypergraphs that explicitly tracks nestedness between groups of different sizes, allowing us to identify the microscopic mechanism responsible for this dual behavior. By disentangling contagion pathways, we find that nestedness redirects transmission from external links to internal, group-embedded routes -- boosting early activation but making dyadic and triadic channels increasingly redundant. This loss of structural independence quenches the nonlinear amplification required for bistability, progressively smoothing the transition as hyperedges become nested. The phenomenology holds for groups of any size, and is not specific to spreading dynamics but also emerges in higher-order Ising and Kuramoto dynamics. Overall, our results identify nestedness between group interactions as a general structural mechanism governing critical transitions in complex systems.
Where to Touch, How to Contact: A Hierarchical RL-MPC Framework for Geometry-Aware Sim-to-Real Manipulation
arXiv:2601.10930v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: A key challenge in contact-rich dexterous manipulation is the need to jointly reason over global geometry and nonsmooth contact dynamics. End-to-end policies bypass this complexity, but often require large amounts of data and transfer poorly from simulation to reality. We address the limitations with a simple insight: dexterous manipulation is inherently hierarchical--at a high level, a robot decides where to touch (geometry); at a low level it determines how to move the object through contact dynamics. Building on this insight, we propose a hierarchical RL--MPC framework in which a high-level reinforcement learning (RL) policy predicts a contact intention, a novel object-centric interface that specifies (i) an object-surface contact location and (ii) a post-contact object subgoal pose. Conditioned on the contact intention, a low-level contact-implicit model predictive control (MPC) optimizes local contact modes and real-time (re)plans through contact dynamics to generate robot actions that robustly move the object toward each subgoal. We evaluate the framework on non-prehensile tasks, including geometry-generalized pushing across diverse object shapes, pivoting/flipping-based object reorientation, and environment-assisted object repositioning. It achieves high success rate with substantially reduced data (10 times less than end-to-end baselines), highly robust performance, and zero-shot sim-to-real transfer.
A unified multiscale 3D printer combining single-photon Tomographic Volumetric Additive Manufacturing and Two-Photon Polymerization
arXiv:2601.13457v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Single-photon polymerization ensures rapid photopolymerization of centimeter-scale structures with features on the order of tens of micrometers, whereas 2PP provides sub-micrometer features at sub-millimeter scales. Existing hybrid approaches combining these techniques typically rely on stitched or layer-by-layer fabrication and often require separate printing platforms, making mesoscale manufacturing time-consuming. Here, we introduce a hybrid unified 3D printer that leverages the complementary strengths of both printing mechanisms to bridge this scale resolution-fabrication time gap. We propose integrating 2PP for high-resolution, localized spatial control with single-photon TVAM for enabling rapid, high-throughput 3D fabrication. In this approach, TVAM first forms millimeter-scale volumetric structures attached on a glass rod, via overprinting, which is then accessible, on the same platform, for subsequent high-resolution 2PP. Without needing to change the photoresin or introducing intermediate post-processing steps, we proceed to demonstrate finely printed structures via 2PP, fabricated both inside (embedded within) and on the surface of the millimeter-scale 3D objects printed with TVAM. Here, TVAM contributes in two distinct ways: by generating a pre-polymerized volume that facilitates subsequent 2PP, and by directly driving layer-less volumetric polymerization in designated regions within seconds. We experimentally demonstrate that this dual-mode strategy provides a mesoscale approach spanning three orders of magnitude in scale for rapid fabrication of millimeter-scale structures featuring 830 nm details. For applications such as micro-optics, biomedical scaffolds and tissue engineering, tens-of-micrometer features are sufficient across the majority of the volume, with higher resolution confined to localized functional regions.
Libby-Fox perturbations and the semi-analytic adjoint solution for laminar viscous flow along a flat plate
arXiv:2601.16718v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The properties of the solution to the adjoint two-dimensional boundary layer (BL) equations on a flat plate are investigated from the viewpoint of Libby-Fox theory, which describes the algebraic perturbations to the Blasius boundary layer. The adjoint solution is obtained from the Green's function of the perturbation equation as a sum over the infinite perturbation modes of the Blasius solution. The explicit representation of the adjoint solution allows us to derive constraints on the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions, explicitly compute the Adjoint Transport Convection (ATC) term and evaluate flow sensitivities for shape design, initial-value perturbations, and active flow control. The extension of the analysis to the case with non-zero pressure gradient, corresponding to the Falkner-Skan solution, is also briefly discussed.
ELF: A Family of Encoder-Free ECG-Language Models
arXiv:2601.18798v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: ECG-Language Models (ELMs) extend recent advances in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) to automated ECG interpretation. However, most existing ELMs inherit Vision-Language Model (VLM) design choices and rely on pretrained ECG encoders, introducing substantial architectural and training complexity. Inspired by encoder-free VLMs, we introduce ELF, a family of three encoder-free ELMs that remain competitive with, and often outperform, prior state-of-the-art ELMs across two datasets despite substantially simpler architectures and training pipelines. All code and data are available at github.com/ELM-Research/ECG-Language-Models.
A Comparative Evaluation of Large Vision-Language Models for 2D Object Detection under SOTIF Conditions
arXiv:2601.22830v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Reliable environmental perception remains one of the main obstacles for safe operation of automated vehicles. Safety of the Intended Functionality (SOTIF) concerns safety risks from perception insufficiencies, particularly under adverse conditions where conventional detectors often falter. While Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) demonstrate promising semantic reasoning, their quantitative effectiveness for safety-critical 2D object detection is underexplored. This paper presents a systematic evaluation of ten representative LVLMs using the PeSOTIF dataset, a benchmark specifically curated for long-tail traffic scenarios and environmental degradations. Performance is quantitatively compared against two specialized detectors: the anchor-based YOLOv5 and the transformer-based RT-DETRv4. Experimental results reveal a critical trade-off: top-performing LVLMs (e.g., Gemini 3) surpass the YOLOv5 in recall by over 25% and closely match RT-DETRv4 under natural visual degradation, while specialized detectors retain an advantage in geometric precision for handcrafted perturbations. These findings highlight the complementary strengths of semantic reasoning versus geometric regression, supporting the use of LVLMs as high-level safety validators in SOTIF-oriented automated driving systems.
PokeNet: Learning Kinematic Models of Articulated Objects from Human Observations
arXiv:2602.02741v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Articulation modeling enables robots to learn joint parameters of articulated objects for effective manipulation which can then be used downstream for skill learning or planning. Existing approaches often rely on prior knowledge about the objects, such as the number or type of joints. Some of these approaches also fail to recover occluded joints that are only revealed during interaction. Others require large numbers of multi-view images for every object, which is impractical in real-world settings. Furthermore, prior works neglect the order of manipulations, which is essential for many multi-DoF objects where one joint must be operated before another, such as a dishwasher. We introduce PokeNet, an end-to-end framework that estimates articulation models from a single human demonstration without prior object knowledge. Given a sequence of point cloud observations of a human manipulating an unknown object, PokeNet predicts joint parameters, infers manipulation order, and tracks joint states over time. PokeNet outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods, improving joint axis and state estimation accuracy by an average of over 27% across diverse objects, including novel and unseen categories. We demonstrate these gains in both simulation and real-world environments.
A unified framework for imitation dynamics on higher-order networks
arXiv:2602.09503v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Cooperation is central to human societies and often unfolds within groups. Higher-order networks, such as hypergraphs, naturally represent these groups as hyperedges. Network structures and update rules, by which individuals revise their strategies, are the two fundamental components that shape the evolution of cooperation in structured populations. Yet while the effects of network structure have been studied extensively, update rules have been examined mostly through isolated models, leaving their relationships and the origins of their differing evolutionary outcomes poorly understood. Here we develop a unified framework for imitation dynamics on higher-order networks, parameterizing imitation-based update rules by the number of groups an individual samples and the number of peers consulted within each group. Under weak selection, we derive a closed-form condition for the success of cooperation in any multiplayer social dilemma on homogeneous hypergraphs, encompassing games with both linear and nonlinear payoff structures. The framework places previously disconnected update rules within a single family and reduces their effects on cooperation to one interpretable quantity, which we term information diversity. Update rules inducing higher information diversity promote cooperation more effectively, and we prove that this ordering holds strictly across the entire space of multiplayer social dilemmas. Simulations extend this principle to heterogeneous hypergraphs constructed both synthetically and from empirical data. Our framework provides a systematic way to represent, analyze, and compare update rules on higher-order networks, turning a fragmented collection of microscopic updating mechanisms into a tractable and interpretable theory.
When Vision Overrides Language: Evaluating and Mitigating Counterfactual Failures in VLAs
arXiv:2602.17659v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Vision-Language-Action models (VLAs) promise to ground language instructions in robot control, yet in practice often fail to faithfully follow language. When presented with instructions that lack strong scene-specific supervision, VLAs suffer from counterfactual failures: they act based on vision shortcuts induced by dataset biases, repeatedly executing well-learned behaviors and selecting objects frequently seen during training regardless of language intent. To systematically study it, we introduce LIBERO-CF, the first counterfactual benchmark for VLAs that evaluates language following capability by assigning alternative instructions under visually plausible LIBERO layouts. Our evaluation reveals that counterfactual failures are prevalent yet underexplored across state-of-the-art VLAs. We propose Counterfactual Action Guidance (CAG), a simple yet effective dual-branch inference scheme that explicitly regularizes language conditioning in VLAs. CAG combines a standard VLA policy with a language-unconditioned Vision-Action (VA) module, enabling counterfactual comparison during action selection. This design reduces reliance on visual shortcuts, improves robustness on under-observed tasks, and requires neither additional demonstrations nor modifications to existing architectures or pretrained models. Extensive experiments demonstrate its plug-and-play integration across diverse VLAs and consistent improvements. For example, on LIBERO-CF, CAG improves $\pi_{0.5}$ by 9.7% in language following accuracy and 3.6% in task success on under-observed tasks using a training-free strategy, with further gains of 15.5% and 8.5%, respectively, when paired with a VA model. In real-world evaluations, CAG reduces counterfactual failures of 9.4% and improves task success by 17.2% on average.
1D-Bench: A Benchmark for Iterative UI Code Generation with Visual Feedback in Real-World
arXiv:2602.18548v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Design-to-code translates high-fidelity UI designs into executable front-end implementations, but progress remains hard to compare due to inconsistent datasets, toolchains, and evaluation protocols. We introduce 1D-Bench, a benchmark grounded in real e-commerce workflows, where each instance provides a reference rendering and an exported intermediate representation that may contain extraction errors. 1D is short for one day, representing the efficient completion of design-to-code tasks in less than one day. Models take both as input, using the intermediate representation as structural cues while being evaluated against the reference rendering, which tests robustness to intermediate representation defects rather than literal adherence. 1D-Bench requires generating an executable React codebase under a fixed toolchain with an explicit component hierarchy, and defines a multi-round setting in which models iteratively apply component-level edits using execution feedback. Experiments on commercial and open-weight multimodal models show that iterative editing generally improves final performance by increasing rendering success and often improving visual similarity. We further conduct a pilot study on post-training with synthetic repair trajectories and reinforcement learning based editing, and observe limited and unstable gains that may stem from sparse terminal rewards and high-variance file-level updates. The data and scripts used in this study are available in an anonymized repository at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/d2c-benchmark-A9C4/.
When Audio Separation Hurts Zero-Shot ASR: Evaluating SAM-Audio with Whisper on Bengali and English Speech
arXiv:2603.04710v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Recent advances in automatic speech recognition (ASR) and speech enhancement have strengthened the common belief that cleaner audio should lead to more accurate transcription. In this work, we examine whether this assumption holds for modern zero-shot ASR systems. We conduct a structured empirical study of SAM-Audio as a preprocessing step for zero-shot transcription with OpenAI Whisper. Five Whisper variants are evaluated on noisy Bengali and English speech datasets. On the English dataset, SAM-Audio increases the average PSNR from 32.28 dB to 35.99 dB and achieves higher PSNR for 71.84% of the utterances. However, WER and CER increase in every evaluated model-dataset configuration. On the Bengali dataset, Whisper large-v3 WER increases from 65.83% to 77.35%, while CER increases from 24.13% to 34.74%. On the English dataset, Whisper base WER increases from 10.53% to 21.66%, while CER increases from 4.48% to 12.50%. Utterance-level analysis further shows that the degradation affects a substantial portion of the evaluated samples, although its severity varies across Whisper variants. These findings demonstrate that improved signal-level quality does not necessarily lead to better zero-shot ASR performance and that denoising can reduce recognition accuracy.