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12,815 papers

#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Mean-based algorithms: A lower bound and regret

Mean-based algorithms are online learning algorithms that assign low probability to actions with low average rewards. Recent research shows that they converge to serially undominated actions, which serve as approximations to Nash equilibria in economic games. However, empirical studies indicate that mean-based algorith...

Julius Durmann, Amelie Kleber · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

FFR: Forward-Forward Learning for Regression

The Forward-Forward (FF) algorithm offers a computationally efficient and biologically plausible alternative to backpropagation (BP) by training neural networks through purely local, layer-wise optimization. However, FF is inherently designed for classification via contrastive positive-negative sample pairs, and extend...

Xinyang Liu, Xuanyu Liang, Shiqi Ding et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Task diversity produces systematic transfer but inhibits continual reinforcement learning

Continual reinforcement learning (RL) aims to produce agents that never stop adapting to new tasks. A key question is how this interacts with the diversity of tasks an agent experiences. Prior work has shown that training on many diverse tasks leads to agents with strong zero-shot and in-context adaptation. However, th...

Purab Seth, Neil Shah, Ishaan Sinha et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

The Terminal Representation in Reinforcement Learning

Representation learning is a powerful tool for spatio-temporal abstraction within reinforcement learning (RL). Two well established approaches are through the successor representation (SR) and the default representation (DR). The SR encodes states by the future trajectories they induce, capturing information flow decou...

Amir Esterhuysen, Anders Jonsson · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

SeedER: Seed-Expand-Retrieve for Efficient Knowledge Graph Retrieval

Knowledge graphs (KGs) offer a rich representation for relational knowledge, but their irregular structure makes retrieval challenging: ego-graph expansion grows rapidly, and dense embedding methods struggle with multi-hop compositional queries. Several approaches use LLM agents to explore the KG, analyze candidate nod...

Hamed Shirzad, Frederik Wenkel, Dominique Beaini et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Reinforcement Learning over Predictive Distributions for LLM Regression

Large language models (LLMs) have emerged as flexible regressors capable of predicting real-valued quantities from heterogeneous inputs. Yet most LLM regression objectives optimize predictions independently, often yielding poor calibration. We introduce Distribution-Aware Reward (DAR), an on-policy reinforcement learni...

Jungsoo Park, Hyungjoo Chae, Ethan Mendes et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

To Call or Not to Call: Diagnosing Intrinsic Over-Calling Bias in LLM Agents

LLM agents exhibit a consistent tendency to over-call, invoking tools even in situations where none is needed. On the When2Call benchmark, six models from three families show high call accuracy but much lower no-call accuracy, leaving overall accuracy in the 55%-70% range. We trace this to an Intrinsic Bias Hypothesis...

Wei Shi, Ziheng Peng, Sihang Li et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Stochastic Penalty-Barrier Method for Constrained Machine Learning

Constrained Machine Learning (CML) enables fairness-aware training, physics-informed neural networks, and integration of symbolic domain knowledge into statistical models. In this work, we introduce the Stochastic Penalty-Barrier Method (SPBM) for CML problems. SPBM extends classical penalty and barrier methods by inco...

Adam Bos\'ak, Andrii Kliachkin, Gilles Bareilles et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Behavioral Guarantees for Proxy-Based Unlearning

This paper proposes a framework generalizing recent proxy-based unlearning methods and proves theoretical guarantees about the behavior of the resulting unlearned model: upper bounds on its Kullback-Leibler divergence to the ideal posterior distribution of the retain data. We model approximate unlearning as a constrain...

Virgile Dine, Teddy Furon · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

MSPR: Multi-scale Predictive Representations for Goal-conditioned Reinforcement Learning

This paper investigates robust representation learning in offline goal-conditioned reinforcement learning (GCRL). Particularly in sparse reward scenarios, learning representations that align state and goal latents is a challenge, as the encoder can learn goal-agnostic features that destabilize policy learning. We addre...

Valliappan Chidambaram Adaikkappan, Sai Rajeswar, Pietro Mazzaglia et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Observable Neural ODEs for Identifiable Causal Forecasting in Continuous Time

Causal inference in continuous-time sequential decision problems is challenged by hidden confounding and partially observed states. We show that, under explicit structural assumptions, observability of the latent state enables identification of dynamic treatment effects through a continuous-time conditional front-door...

Jennifer Wendland, Nicolas Freitag, Maik Kschischo · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Can an MLP Absorb Its Own Skip Connection Exactly?

The benefits usually attributed to skip connections are optimization-theoretic: a smoother loss landscape and better gradient propagation. We ask a representational question instead: given a residual block x -> x + MLP(x), does a residual-free MLP of the same width compute the same function? The answer is no, unconditi...

Antonij Mijoski, Marko Karbevski · 0 citations

From tech blogs

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MIT News · Artificial Intelligence Oct 7, 2026

Discovering the value of humanistic inquiry

Students in MIT’s Concourse program delve deeply into the human condition, debate challenging questions, and learn to develop judgment about issues that can’t be quantified.

Microsoft Research Blog Oct 7, 2026

Agent Lightning v1.0: A 3,500-Line Lightweight Agentic RL Framework for Training Agents with Real Harnesses

Training AI agents with reinforcement learning can be challenging because their tools, context, and decision-making are managed by complex frameworks. Agent Lightning connects existing agents to RL training, making it easier to improve them without rebuilding them. The post Agent Lightning v1.0: A 3,500-Line Lightweight Agentic RL Framework for Training Agents with Real Harnesses appeared first on Microsoft Research.

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