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12,815 papers

#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Common-Mode Errors Limit Low-Timestep Deep Spiking Q-Networks

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) offer sparse and event-driven computation, making them attractive for energy-constrained reinforcement learning (RL) on edge devices. In value-based RL, deep spiking Q-networks (DSQNs) combine such efficiency with action-value estimation for decision making. However, existing DSQNs often...

Zijie Xu, Bingrui Guo, Yiding Sun et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Oct 2026

Persistent Memory in Multi-Agent LLM Inference: What It Costs, What It Buys, and When You Can Tell

Decomposing long-context inference across cooperating agents bounds the active KV cache per call rather than total evidence, which matters when KV-cache memory binds. Many such systems add a persistent tier storing and recalling reasoning traces, usually validated by an ablation reporting an accuracy gain. We measure b...

Ho-Chan Son, Kyungdoe Han, Jaehan Koh et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Quantization Effects on Tool-Failure Recovery Vary Across Prompts and Evaluation Designs

Post-training quantization reduces the cost of deploying language-model agents, but its effect on recovery from temporary tool failures can depend on how recovery is evaluated. We compare 8-bit and 4-bit variants of Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct and Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct on twenty deterministic tool-use tasks and five prompts. T...

Yuhe Hu · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

APEX: Speculate smarter, not deeper

Speculative decoding reduces large language model inference latency by drafting multiple tokens before target-model verification, but its effectiveness depends on both the proposal mechanism and draft depth. Fixed configurations cannot respond to changes in predictability, repetition, and acceptance during generation,...

Manvi Jha, Zach Zhang, Zhichao Xu et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Oct 2026

Trustworthy Method Comparison with AI Judges: Estimation and Design under Order, Batch, and Aggregation Effects

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used as judges for automated AI evaluation. A common practice is to randomize prompt sequences and average the resulting scores, but its statistical validity remains unclear. We show that LLM evaluation mechanisms can be approximated by a class of Markov generalized linear...

Tian-Xi Li, Jie Ding · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

High-dimensional online calibration from harmonic weights

We study the online calibration of multidimensional forecasts over an arbitrary convex set $Y\subseteq\mathbb{R}^d$ relative to an arbitrary error norm $\|\cdot\|_{L}$. For forecasting $d$ binary outcomes simultaneously ($Y=[0,1]^d$), we give the first algorithm that achieves $\varepsilon$-calibration in a number of ro...

Maxwell Fishelson, Mehryar Mohri · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Nash Social Welfare for Multi Armed Bandits: Trajectory-wise Expected and High Probability Regret

We study fair multi-armed bandits under the Nash Social Welfare (NSW) objective, which measures performance via the geometric mean of accumulated rewards. Existing work defines Nash regret as $\mathrm{NR}_T = \mu^\star - (\prod_{t=1}^T \mathbb{E}\mu_{I_t})^{1/T}$, where $\mu_{I_t}$ is the mean reward of the recommended...

Avishek Ghosh · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Oct 2026

Learning to Retrieve via Reinforcement Learning in Embedding Space

Dense retrieval models are typically trained with contrastive objectives that learn effective representations but do not directly optimize retrieval metrics or downstream task performance. To address this problem, we introduce RELER (REinforcement LEarning for Retrieval), a reinforcement learning framework that enables...

Qi Liu, Feng-Ming Liang, Yi-Qun Chen et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

SanSi: A Looped Typed Decision Model for System 1.5 Thinking

Typed decision models answer a declared question without generating text: a decision head returns a probability for each of the declared options in a single forward pass. A single pass is fast, intuitive System 1 thinking. We study what lies between one pass and generated reasoning: looping, in which the same layers ar...

Shuyu Gan, Young-Jun Lee, Dongyeop Kang · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Oct 2026

The Model Plants the Trigger: Answer-Side Backdoor Attacks in Multi-Turn Large Language Models

Safety alignment in Large Language Models (LLMs) remains vulnerable to backdoor attacks. Existing LLM backdoors are almost all input-centric: activation depends on explicit trigger patterns in the user input, so modern guardrails are built to sanitize the input space. We challenge this assumption with a novel answer-si...

Yi-Bo Zhang, Tian-Rong Guan, Liang Lin et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Exact Calibration and Sharp Risk Geometry for Volume-Sampled Ridge Regression

We study ridge regression from exactly $s$ distinct rows of a fixed design. Responses are fixed, and only the subset is random. The determinant law and selected ridge fit share one positive definite penalty. Established mean identities and exponential-family duality give the unique penalty that matches a prescribed ful...

Kihun Rhee · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

RefRoute: Decoupling Conditioning Cost from References via Compact Residual Conditioning and Spatial Routing

Multi-reference image generation requires preserving the appearance of multiple subjects while composing them into a coherent scene. However, existing diffusion transformers commonly encode references as dense visual token grids and jointly process them with global attention, making conditioning increasingly expensive...

Wanning He, Yuyao Zhang, Yu-Wing Tai · 0 citations

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Microsoft Research Blog Oct 12, 2026

Simulating student learning for better AI tutoring

StudentSim is a research system for evaluating and improving AI tutoring tools before they are tested with learners. It models how individuals may engage with tutors, giving feedback to improve tutor performance across subjects like chess, writing, and mathematics. The post Simulating student learning for better AI tutoring appeared first on Microsoft Research.

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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