Large Language Models are increasingly popular in genomics due to their potential to decode complex biological sequences. Hence, researchers require a standardized benchmark to evaluate DNA Language Models (DNA LMs) capabilities. However, evaluating DNA LMs is a complex task that intersects genomic's domain-specific challenges and machine learning methodologies, where seemingly minor implementation details can significantly compromise benchmark validity. We demonstrate this through BEND (Benchmarking DNA Language Models), where hardware-dependent hyperparameters -- number of data loading workers and buffer sizes -- create spurious performance variations of up to 4% for identical models. The problem stems from inadequate data shuffling interacting with domain specific data characteristics. Experiments with three DNA language models (HyenaDNA, DNABERT-2, ResNet-LM) show these artifacts affect both absolute performance and relative model rankings. We propose a simple solution: pre-shuffling data before storage eliminates hardware dependencies while maintaining efficiency. This work highlights how standard ML practices can interact unexpectedly with domain-specific data characteristics, with broader implications for benchmark design in specialized domains.

We introduce Meta Agents Research Environments (ARE), a research platform for scalable creation of environments, integration of synthetic or real applications, and execution of agentic orchestrations. ARE provides simple abstractions to build complex and diverse environments, each with their own rules, tools, content, and verifiers, helping to bridge the gap between model development and real-world deployment. We also propose Gaia2, a benchmark built in ARE and designed to measure general agent capabilities. Beyond search and execution, Gaia2 requires agents to handle ambiguities and noise, adapt to dynamic environments, collaborate with other agents, and operate under temporal constraints. Unlike prior benchmarks, Gaia2 runs asynchronously, surfacing new failure modes that are invisible in static settings. Our experiments show that no system dominates across the intelligence spectrum: stronger reasoning often comes at the cost of efficiency, and budget scaling curves plateau, highlighting the need for new architectures and adaptive compute strategies. Perhaps more importantly, ARE abstractions enable continuous extension of Gaia2 to other environments, empowering the community to rapidly create new benchmarks tailored to their domains. In AI's second half, progress increasingly depends on defining meaningful tasks and robust evaluations to drive frontier capabilities forward.

Learning and optimal control under robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) have received increasing attention, yet most existing theory, algorithms, and applications focus on finite-horizon or discounted models. Long-run average-reward formulations, while natural in many operations research and management contexts, remain underexplored. This is primarily because the dynamic programming foundations are technically challenging and only partially understood, with several fundamental questions remaining open. This paper steps toward a general framework for average-reward robust MDPs by analyzing the constant-gain setting. We study the average-reward robust control problem with possible information asymmetries between the controller and an S-rectangular adversary. Our analysis centers on the constant-gain robust Bellman equation, examining both the existence of solutions and their relationship to the optimal average reward. Specifically, we identify when solutions to the robust Bellman equation characterize the optimal average reward and stationary policies, and we provide one-sided weak communication conditions ensuring solutions' existence. These findings expand the dynamic programming theory for average-reward robust MDPs and lay a foundation for robust dynamic decision making under long-run average criteria in operational environments.

Subseasonal-to-seasonal forecasting is crucial for public health, disaster preparedness, and agriculture, and yet it remains a particularly challenging timescale to predict. We explore the use of an interpretable AI-informed model analog forecasting approach, previously employed on longer timescales, to improve S2S predictions. Using an artificial neural network, we learn a mask of weights to optimize analog selection and showcase its versatility across three varied prediction tasks: 1) classification of Week 3-4 Southern California summer temperatures; 2) regional regression of Month 1 midwestern U.S. summer temperatures; and 3) classification of Month 1-2 North Atlantic wintertime upper atmospheric winds. The AI-informed analogs outperform traditional analog forecasting approaches, as well as climatology and persistence baselines, for deterministic and probabilistic skill metrics on both climate model and reanalysis data. We find the analog ensembles built using the AI-informed approach also produce better predictions of temperature extremes and improve representation of forecast uncertainty. Finally, by using an interpretable-AI framework, we analyze the learned masks of weights to better understand S2S sources of predictability.

Modern deep learning models are highly overparameterized, resulting in large sets of parameter configurations that yield the same outputs. A significant portion of this redundancy is explained by symmetries in the parameter space--transformations that leave the network function unchanged. These symmetries shape the loss landscape and constrain learning dynamics, offering a new lens for understanding optimization, generalization, and model complexity that complements existing theory of deep learning. This survey provides an overview of parameter space symmetry. We summarize existing literature, uncover connections between symmetry and learning theory, and identify gaps and opportunities in this emerging field.

We address the problem of Gaussian Process (GP) optimization in the presence of unknown and potentially varying adversarial perturbations. Unlike traditional robust optimization approaches that focus on maximizing performance under worst-case scenarios, we consider a robust satisficing objective, where the goal is to consistently achieve a predefined performance threshold $τ$, even under adversarial conditions. We propose two novel algorithms based on distinct formulations of robust satisficing, and show that they are instances of a general robust satisficing framework. Further, each algorithm offers different guarantees depending on the nature of the adversary. Specifically, we derive two regret bounds: one that is sublinear over time, assuming certain conditions on the adversary and the satisficing threshold $τ$, and another that scales with the perturbation magnitude but requires no assumptions on the adversary. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that our approach outperforms the established robust optimization methods in achieving the satisficing objective, particularly when the ambiguity set of the robust optimization framework is inaccurately specified.

This study explores the potential of using acoustic features of segmental speech sounds to detect deepfake audio. These features are highly interpretable because of their close relationship with human articulatory processes and are expected to be more difficult for deepfake models to replicate. The results demonstrate that certain segmental features commonly used in forensic voice comparison (FVC) are effective in identifying deep-fakes, whereas some global features provide little value. These findings underscore the need to approach audio deepfake detection using methods that are distinct from those employed in traditional FVC, and offer a new perspective on leveraging segmental features for this purpose. In addition, the present study proposes a speaker-specific framework for deepfake detection, which differs fundamentally from the speaker-independent systems that dominate current benchmarks. While speaker-independent frameworks aim at broad generalization, the speaker-specific approach offers advantages in forensic contexts where case-by-case interpretability and sensitivity to individual phonetic realization are essential.

Motion Transfer is a technique that synthesizes videos by transferring motion dynamics from a driving video to a source image. In this work we propose a deep learning-based framework to enable real-time video motion transfer which is critical for enabling bandwidth-efficient applications such as video conferencing, remote health monitoring, virtual reality interaction, and vision-based anomaly detection. This is done using keypoints which serve as semantically meaningful, compact representations of motion across time. To enable bandwidth savings during video transmission we perform forecasting of keypoints using two generative time series models VRNN and GRU-NF. The predicted keypoints are transformed into realistic video frames using an optical flow-based module paired with a generator network, thereby enabling efficient, low-frame-rate video transmission. Based on the application this allows the framework to either generate a deterministic future sequence or sample a diverse set of plausible futures. Experimental results demonstrate that VRNN achieves the best point-forecast fidelity (lowest MAE) in applications requiring stable and accurate multi-step forecasting and is particularly competitive in higher-uncertainty, multi-modal settings. This is achieved by introducing recurrently conditioned stochastic latent variables that carry past contexts to capture uncertainty and temporal variation. On the other hand the GRU-NF model enables richer diversity of generated videos while maintaining high visual quality. This is realized by learning an invertible, exact-likelihood mapping between the keypoints and their latent representations which supports rich and controllable sampling of diverse yet coherent keypoint sequences. Our work lays the foundation for next-generation AI systems that require real-time, bandwidth-efficient, and semantically controllable video generation.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. 'Waymo problems': Man jumps into trunk of driverless taxi in L.A., gets stuck and is removed by police This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . A man hopped into the open trunk of a Waymo in L.A. only to get stuck inside. Police removed the man after the next Waymo passenger discovered him in the trunk.

Elon Musk attends the Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center, on 19 November, in Washington DC. Elon Musk attends the Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center, on 19 November, in Washington DC. President Nayib Bukele entrusting chatbot known for calling itself'MechaHitler' to create'AI-powered' curricula Elon Musk is partnering with the government of El Salvador to bring his artificial intelligence company's chatbot, Grok, to more than 1 million students across the country, according to a Thursday announcement by xAI. Over the next two years, the plan is to "deploy" the chatbot to more than 5,000 public schools in an "AI-powered education program". Over the past year, the chatbot has spewed various antisemitic content, decried "white genocide" and claimed Donald Trump won the 2020 election .