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Discrete Flow Matching

Neural Information Processing Systems

Despite Flow Matching and diffusion models having emerged as powerful generative paradigms for continuous variables such as images and videos, their application to high-dimensional discrete data, such as language, is still limited. In this work, we present Discrete Flow Matching, a novel discrete flow paradigm designed specifically for generating discrete data. Discrete Flow Matching offers several key contributions: (i) it works with a general family of probability paths interpolating between source and target distributions; (ii) it allows for a generic formula for sampling from these probability paths using learned posteriors such as the probability denoiser (x-prediction) and noise-prediction (ϵ-prediction); (iii) practically, focusing on specific probability paths defined with different schedulers improves generative perplexity compared to previous discrete diffusion and flow models; and (iv) by scaling Discrete Flow Matching models up to 1.7B parameters, we reach 6.7% Pass@1 and 13.4% Pass@10 on HumanEval and 6.7% Pass@1 and 20.6% Pass@10 on 1-shot MBPP coding benchmarks. Our approach is capable of generating high-quality discrete data in a non-autoregressive fashion, significantly closing the gap between autoregressive models and discrete flow models.


Ukrainian drones target Russian airbases in unprecedented operation

Al Jazeera

Officials say multiple military airbases have come under drone attacks in Russia in a major operation taking place ahead of peace talks with Ukraine due to start in Istanbul on Monday. The Russian Defence Ministry said that Ukraine had launched drone strikes targeting Russian military airfields across five regions on Sunday, causing several aircraft to catch fire. The attacks occurred in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions. Air defences repelled the assaults in all but two regions – Murmansk and Irkutsk, the ministry said. "In the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, the launch of FPV drones from an area in close proximity to airfields resulted in several aircraft catching fire," the ministry said.


Two killed in Russian attacks on Ukraine before possible talks in Turkiye

Al Jazeera

Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine have killed at least two people, according to officials, as Ukraine ordered the evacuation of 11 more villages in its Sumy region bordering Russia. Russian troops launched an estimated 109 drones and five missiles across Ukraine on Friday and overnight, the Ukrainian air force said on Saturday, adding that three of the missiles and 42 drones were destroyed and another 30 drones failed to reach their targets without causing damage. The attacks came amid uncertainty over whether Kyiv will take part in a new round of peace talks early next week in Istanbul. In the Russian attacks on Saturday, a child was killed in a strike on the front-line village of Dolynka in the Zaporizhia region, and another was injured, Zaporizhia's Governor Ivan Fedorov said. The shockwave from the blast also damaged several other houses, cars, and outbuildings," Fedorov wrote on Telegram.


'One day I overheard my boss saying: just put it in ChatGPT': the workers who lost their jobs to AI

The Guardian

I've been a freelance journalist for 10 years, usually writing for magazines and websites about cinema. I presented a morning show on Radio Kraków twice a week for about two years. It was only one part of my work, but I really enjoyed it. It was about culture and cinema, and featured a range of people, from artists to activists. I remember interviewing Ukrainians about the Russian invasion for the first programme I presented, back in 2022. I was let go in August 2024, alongside a dozen co-workers who were also part-time. We were told the radio station was having financial problems.


SEN. JEANNE SHAHEEN: If Trump wants a Ukraine deal, he should reread his own book

FOX News

Since his first day in office, President Donald Trump has mismanaged negotiations over an end to the war in Ukraine. More than 100 days later, innocent Ukrainians are still dying while the president gets played by Russian President Vladimir Putin – illustrated starkly by the barrages of drones and missiles continually aimed at Ukrainian cities as Trump posts online. It's good to hear Trump finally express some frustration toward Putin and admit that his negotiating tactics aren't working, that, as he says, Putin is "just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently." The reasons for this aren't complicated. Instead of increasing his leverage over Russa, Trump offered concession after concession before talks even began.


Ukraine's Zelenskyy to meet Germany's Merz in Berlin, seeks more support

Al Jazeera

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to meet with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, as Ukraine seeks further military support amid a recent escalation in Russia's bombing campaign, despite United States-led efforts to end the war. During their talks in Berlin on Wednesday, Zelenskyy and Merz are also expected to discuss sanctions on Russia. According to a German government spokesperson, Merz will receive Zelenskyy with military honours at the federal chancellery at 10:00 GMT. The Berlin talks follow Russia and Ukraine's direct face-to-face talks in Turkiye earlier in May. Despite pressure from United States President Donald Trump to end the war, the talks failed to produce a ceasefire agreement.


Drone war, ground offensive continue despite new Russia-Ukraine peace push

Al Jazeera

Russia and Ukraine have launched a wave of drone attacks against each other overnight, even as Moscow claimed it was finalising a peace proposal to end the war. Ukrainian air force officials said on Tuesday that Russia deployed 60 drones across multiple regions through the night, injuring 10 people. Kyiv's air defences intercepted 43 of them – 35 were shot down while eight were diverted using electronic warfare systems. In Dnipropetrovsk, central Ukraine, Governor Serhiy Lysak reported damage to residential properties and an agricultural site after Russian drones led to fires during the night. In Kherson, a southern city frequently hit by Russian strikes, a drone attack on Tuesday morning wounded a 59-year-old man and six municipal workers, officials said.


Ukraine under Russian missile, drone attacks for second night, 12 killed

Al Jazeera

Russia has targeted Ukraine for a second consecutive night with drones and missiles, killing at least 12 people as the two countries pursue a major prisoner swap. Ukraine's air force said on Sunday that Russian forces attacked Ukrainian regions with 298 drones and 69 missiles overnight, one of the largest aerial attacks of the war. "Most regions of Ukraine were affected by the hostile attack. Enemy air strikes were recorded in 22 areas, and downed cruise missiles and attack UAVs (drones) fell in 15 locations," the air force said on Telegram. Ukraine's security service reported that at least four people were killed and 16 were injured in the capital, Kyiv.


An NLP Benchmark Dataset for Assessing Corporate Climate Policy Engagement

Neural Information Processing Systems

As societal awareness of climate change grows, corporate climate policy engagements are attracting attention. We propose a dataset to estimate corporate climate policy engagement from various PDF-formatted documents. Our dataset comes from LobbyMap (a platform operated by global think tank InfluenceMap) that provides engagement categories and stances on the documents. To convert the LobbyMap data into the structured dataset, we developed a pipeline using text extraction and OCR. Our contributions are: (i) Building an NLP dataset including 10K documents on corporate climate policy engagement.


Ukraine calls for new sanctions as Russia hits Kyiv amid prisoner exchanges

Al Jazeera

Ukrainian officials have renewed their calls for more sanctions on Russia after Russian forces launched dozens of attack drones and ballistic missiles at Kyiv overnight ahead of a second exchange of soldiers and civilians. Ukraine's military on Saturday said overnight attacks launched from multiple Russian regions used 250 drones and 14 ballistic missiles to hit Kyiv, damaging several apartment buildings and a shopping mall, and injuring at least 15 people. Sites in the Ukrainian regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa and Zaporizhia were also hit, with Ukrainian forces saying six of the ballistic missiles were shot down by its air defences, along with 245 drones, many of which were said to be Iranian-designed. Oleh Syniehubov, head of Kharkiv's regional state administration, said on Saturday morning that four Ukrainians were killed and several others injured over the past 24 hours in the region as a result of multiple Russian attacks. Meanwhile, Russia's Ministry of Defence on Saturday said at least 100 Ukrainian drones attempted to strike Russian targets overnight.