Industry
Counting Without Running: Evaluating LLMs' Reasoning About Code Complexity
Bolet, Gregory, Georgakoudis, Giorgis, Parasyris, Konstantinos, Menon, Harshitha, Hasabnis, Niranjan, Cameron, Kirk W., Oren, Gal
Modern GPU software stacks demand developers who can anticipate performance bottlenecks before ever launching a kernel; misjudging floating-point workloads upstream can derail tuning, scheduling, and even hardware procurement. Yet despite rapid progress in code generation, today's Large Language Models (LLMs) are rarely tested on this kind of forward-looking reasoning. We close that gap with gpuFLOPBench, a benchmark that asks models to "count without running" by predicting single and double-precision FLOP counts for 577 CUDA kernels drawn from HeCBench, annotated with ground-truth profiles and eight execution attributes that distinguish trivially analyzable code from kernels whose FLOPs depend on hidden compiler or runtime behavior. Evaluating current closed-source reasoning models shows clear but uneven progress: the newest LLMs achieve perfect classification on straightforward kernels but still incur multiple order-of-magnitude errors whenever implicit FLOPs arise from division, intrinsic math functions, or common subexpressions. These results surface a core limitation of existing code assistants -- the inability to internalize hardware-specific microcode effects -- and position gpuFLOPBench as a focused testbed for developing LLM tooling that can reason about performance with the same rigor as experienced GPU developers. Sources are available at our repository: https://github.com/Scientific-Computing-Lab/gpuFLOPBench
SmartAlert: Implementing Machine Learning-Driven Clinical Decision Support for Inpatient Lab Utilization Reduction
Liang, April S., Amrollahi, Fatemeh, Jiang, Yixing, Corbin, Conor K., Kim, Grace Y. E., Mui, David, Crowell, Trevor, Acharya, Aakash, Mony, Sreedevi, Punnathanam, Soumya, McKeown, Jack, Smith, Margaret, Lin, Steven, Milstein, Arnold, Schulman, Kevin, Hom, Jason, Pfeffer, Michael A., Pham, Tho D., Svec, David, Chu, Weihan, Shieh, Lisa, Sharp, Christopher, Ma, Stephen P., Chen, Jonathan H.
Repetitive laboratory testing unlikely to yield clinically useful information is a common practice that burdens patients and increases healthcare costs. Education and feedback interventions have limited success, while general test ordering restrictions and electronic alerts impede appropriate clinical care. We introduce and evaluate SmartAlert, a machine learning (ML)-driven clinical decision support (CDS) system integrated into the electronic health record that predicts stable laboratory results to reduce unnecessary repeat testing. This case study describes the implementation process, challenges, and lessons learned from deploying SmartAlert targeting complete blood count (CBC) utilization in a randomized controlled pilot across 9270 admissions in eight acute care units across two hospitals between August 15, 2024, and March 15, 2025. Results show significant decrease in number of CBC results within 52 hours of SmartAlert display (1.54 vs 1.82, p <0.01) without adverse effect on secondary safety outcomes, representing a 15% relative reduction in repetitive testing. Implementation lessons learned include interpretation of probabilistic model predictions in clinical contexts, stakeholder engagement to define acceptable model behavior, governance processes for deploying a complex model in a clinical environment, user interface design considerations, alignment with clinical operational priorities, and the value of qualitative feedback from end users. In conclusion, a machine learning-driven CDS system backed by a deliberate implementation and governance process can provide precision guidance on inpatient laboratory testing to safely reduce unnecessary repetitive testing.
A Conceptual Model for AI Adoption in Financial Decision-Making: Addressing the Unique Challenges of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
Vu, Manh Chien, Dinh, Thang Le, Vu, Manh Chien, Le, Tran Duc, Nguyen, Thi Lien Huong
The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) offers transformative potential for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), particularly in enhancing financial decision-making processes. However, SMEs often face significant barriers to implementing AI technologies, including limited resources, technical expertise, and data management capabilities. This paper presents a conceptual model for the adoption of AI in financial decision-making for SMEs. The proposed model addresses key challenges faced by SMEs, including limited resources, technical expertise, and data management capabilities. The model is structured into layers: data sources, data processing and integration, AI model deployment, decision support and automation, and validation and risk management. By implementing AI incrementally, SMEs can optimize financial forecasting, budgeting, investment strategies, and risk management. This paper highlights the importance of data quality and continuous model validation, providing a practical roadmap for SMEs to integrate AI into their financial operations. The study concludes with implications for SMEs adopting AI-driven financial processes and suggests areas for future research in AI applications for SME finance.
One Detector Fits All: Robust and Adaptive Detection of Malicious Packages from PyPI to Enterprises
Montaruli, Biagio, Compagna, Luca, Ponta, Serena Elisa, Balzarotti, Davide
The rise of supply chain attacks via malicious Python packages demands robust detection solutions. Current approaches, however, overlook two critical challenges: robustness against adversarial source code transformations and adaptability to the varying false positive rate (FPR) requirements of different actors, from repository maintainers (requiring low FPR) to enterprise security teams (higher FPR tolerance). We introduce a robust detector capable of seamless integration into both public repositories like PyPI and enterprise ecosystems. To ensure robustness, we propose a novel methodology for generating adversarial packages using fine-grained code obfuscation. Combining these with adversarial training (AT) enhances detector robustness by 2.5x. We comprehensively evaluate AT effectiveness by testing our detector against 122,398 packages collected daily from PyPI over 80 days, showing that AT needs careful application: it makes the detector more robust to obfuscations and allows finding 10% more obfuscated packages, but slightly decreases performance on non-obfuscated packages. We demonstrate production adaptability of our detector via two case studies: (i) one for PyPI maintainers (tuned at 0.1% FPR) and (ii) one for enterprise teams (tuned at 10% FPR). In the former, we analyze 91,949 packages collected from PyPI over 37 days, achieving a daily detection rate of 2.48 malicious packages with only 2.18 false positives. In the latter, we analyze 1,596 packages adopted by a multinational software company, obtaining only 1.24 false positives daily. These results show that our detector can be seamlessly integrated into both public repositories like PyPI and enterprise ecosystems, ensuring a very low time budget of a few minutes to review the false positives. Overall, we uncovered 346 malicious packages, now reported to the community.
Bayes-DIC Net: Estimating Digital Image Correlation Uncertainty with Bayesian Neural Networks
Chen, Biao, Lei, Zhenhua, Zhang, Yahui, Niu, Tongzhi
This paper introduces a novel method for generating high-quality Digital Image Correlation (DIC) dataset based on non-uniform B-spline surfaces. By randomly generating control point coordinates, we construct displacement fields that encompass a variety of realistic displacement scenarios, which are subsequently used to generate speckle pattern datasets. This approach enables the generation of a large-scale dataset that capture real-world displacement field situations, thereby enhancing the training and generalization capabilities of deep learning-based DIC algorithms. Additionally, we propose a novel network architecture, termed Bayes-DIC Net, which extracts information at multiple levels during the down-sampling phase and facilitates the aggregation of information across various levels through a single skip connection during the up-sampling phase. Bayes-DIC Net incorporates a series of lightweight convolutional blocks designed to expand the receptive field and capture rich contextual information while minimizing computational costs. Furthermore, by integrating appropriate dropout modules into Bayes-DIC Net and activating them during the network inference stage, Bayes-DIC Net is transformed into a Bayesian neural network. This transformation allows the network to provide not only predictive results but also confidence levels in these predictions when processing real unlabeled datasets. This feature significantly enhances the practicality and reliability of our network in real-world displacement field prediction tasks. Through these innovations, this paper offers new perspectives and methods for dataset generation and algorithm performance enhancement in the field of DIC.
RNNs perform task computations by dynamically warping neural representations
Pellegrino, Arthur, Chadwick, Angus
Analysing how neural networks represent data features in their activations can help interpret how they perform tasks. Hence, a long line of work has focused on mathematically characterising the geometry of such "neural representations." In parallel, machine learning has seen a surge of interest in understanding how dynamical systems perform computations on time-varying input data. Yet, the link between computation-through-dynamics and representational geometry remains poorly understood. Here, we hypothesise that recurrent neural networks (RNNs) perform computations by dynamically warping their representations of task variables. To test this hypothesis, we develop a Riemannian geometric framework that enables the derivation of the manifold topology and geometry of a dynamical system from the manifold of its inputs. By characterising the time-varying geometry of RNNs, we show that dynamic warping is a fundamental feature of their computations.
ResponsibleRobotBench: Benchmarking Responsible Robot Manipulation using Multi-modal Large Language Models
Zhang, Lei, Dong, Ju, Bai, Kaixin, Ni, Minheng, Marton, Zoltan-Csaba, Chen, Zhaopeng, Zhang, Jianwei
Recent advances in large multimodal models have enabled new opportunities in embodied AI, particularly in robotic manipulation. These models have shown strong potential in generalization and reasoning, but achieving reliable and responsible robotic behavior in real-world settings remains an open challenge. In high-stakes environments, robotic agents must go beyond basic task execution to perform risk-aware reasoning, moral decision-making, and physically grounded planning. We introduce ResponsibleRobotBench, a systematic benchmark designed to evaluate and accelerate progress in responsible robotic manipulation from simulation to real world. This benchmark consists of 23 multi-stage tasks spanning diverse risk types, including electrical, chemical, and human-related hazards, and varying levels of physical and planning complexity. These tasks require agents to detect and mitigate risks, reason about safety, plan sequences of actions, and engage human assistance when necessary. Our benchmark includes a general-purpose evaluation framework that supports multimodal model-based agents with various action representation modalities. The framework integrates visual perception, context learning, prompt construction, hazard detection, reasoning and planning, and physical execution. It also provides a rich multimodal dataset, supports reproducible experiments, and includes standardized metrics such as success rate, safety rate, and safe success rate. Through extensive experimental setups, ResponsibleRobotBench enables analysis across risk categories, task types, and agent configurations. By emphasizing physical reliability, generalization, and safety in decision-making, this benchmark provides a foundation for advancing the development of trustworthy, real-world responsible dexterous robotic systems. https://sites.google.com/view/responsible-robotbench
Evaluating Long-Context Reasoning in LLM-Based WebAgents
Chung, Andy, Zhang, Yichi, Lin, Kaixiang, Rawal, Aditya, Gao, Qiaozi, Chai, Joyce
As large language model (LLM)-based agents become increasingly integrated into daily digital interactions, their ability to reason across long interaction histories becomes crucial for providing personalized and contextually aware assistance. However, the performance of these agents in long context scenarios, particularly for action-taking WebAgents operating in realistic web environments, remains largely unexplored. This paper introduces a benchmark for evaluating long context reasoning capabilities of WebAgents through sequentially dependent subtasks that require retrieval and application of information from extended interaction histories. We develop a novel evaluation framework that simulates multi-session user interactions by injecting irrelevant task trajectories between dependent subtasks, creating contexts ranging from 25,000 to 150,000 tokens. Through extensive evaluation of four popular models, Claude-3.7, GPT-4.1, Llama 4, and o4-mini, we observe a dramatic performance degradation as context length increases, with success rates dropping from 40-50\% in baseline conditions to less than 10\% in long context scenarios. Our detailed error analysis reveals that agents primarily fail due to getting stuck in loops and losing track of original task objectives. We further propose an implicit RAG approach that provides modest improvements by generating task-relevant summaries, though fundamental limitations in long context reasoning persist. These findings highlight critical challenges for deploying WebAgents in realistic, long-term user interaction scenarios and provide insights for developing more robust agent architectures capable of maintaining coherent task execution across extended contexts.
Towards better dense rewards in Reinforcement Learning Applications
Finding meaningful and accurate dense rewards is a fundamental task in the field of reinforcement learning (RL) that enables agents to explore environments more efficiently. In traditional RL settings, agents learn optimal policies through interactions with an environment guided by reward signals. However, when these signals are sparse, delayed, or poorly aligned with the intended task objectives, agents often struggle to learn effectively. Dense reward functions, which provide informative feedback at every step or state transition, offer a potential solution by shaping agent behavior and accelerating learning. Despite their benefits, poorly crafted reward functions can lead to unintended behaviors, reward hacking, or inefficient exploration. This problem is particularly acute in complex or high-dimensional environments where handcrafted rewards are difficult to specify and validate. To address this, recent research has explored a variety of approaches, including inverse reinforcement learning, reward modeling from human preferences, and self-supervised learning of intrinsic rewards. While these methods offer promising directions, they often involve trade-offs between generality, scalability, and alignment with human intent. This proposal explores several approaches to dealing with these unsolved problems and enhancing the effectiveness and reliability of dense reward construction in different RL applications.
SQuARE: Structured Query & Adaptive Retrieval Engine For Tabular Formats
Gondhalekar, Chinmay, Patel, Urjitkumar, Yeh, Fang-Chun
Abstract--Accurate question answering over real spreadsheets remains difficult due to multirow headers, merged cells, and unit annotations that disrupt naive chunking, while rigid SQL views fail on files lacking consistent schemas. It computes a continuous score based on header depth and merge density, then routes queries either through structure-preserving chunk retrieval or SQL over an automatically constructed relational representation. A lightweight agent supervises retrieval, refinement, or combination of results across both paths when confidence is low. This design maintains header hierarchies, time labels, and units, ensuring that returned values are faithful to the original cells and straightforward to verify. Evaluated on multi-header corporate balance sheets, a heavily merged World Bank workbook, and diverse public datasets, SQuARE consistently surpasses single-strategy baselines and ChatGPT-4o on both retrieval precision and end-to-end answer accuracy while keeping latency predictable. By decoupling retrieval from model choice, the system is compatible with emerging tabular foundation models and offers a practical bridge toward a more robust table understanding. I. Introduction Spreadsheets constitute the predominant medium for quantitative analysis across numerous disciplines, particularly in the field of finance.