Learning Graphical Models
TRACE Back from the Future: A Probabilistic Reasoning Approach to Controllable Language Generation
Weng, Gwen Yidou, Wang, Benjie, Broeck, Guy Van den
As large language models (LMs) advance, there is an increasing need to control their outputs to align with human values (e.g., detoxification) or desired attributes (e.g., personalization, topic). However, autoregressive models focus on next-token predictions and struggle with global properties that require looking ahead. Existing solutions either post-train LMs for each new attribute--expensive and inflexible--or approximate the Expected Attribute Probability (EAP) of future sequences by sampling or training, which is slow and unreliable for rare attributes. We introduce TRACE (Tractable Probabilistic Reasoning for Adaptable Controllable gEneration), a novel framework that efficiently computes EAP and adapts to new attributes through tractable probabilistic reasoning and lightweight control. TRACE distills a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) from an LM and pairs it with a small classifier to estimate attribute probabilities, enabling exact EAP computation over the HMM's predicted futures. This EAP is then used to reweigh the LM's next-token probabilities for globally compliant continuations. Empirically, TRACE achieves state-of-the-art detoxification results with only 20% decoding overhead, yields 76 low-resource personalized LMs within seconds, and seamlessly extends to composite attributes. Our code is available at: https://github.com/yidouweng/trace.
Do Repetitions Matter? Strengthening Reliability in LLM Evaluations
Gonzalez, Miguel Angel Alvarado, Hernandez, Michelle Bruno, Perez, Miguel Angel Peñaloza, Orozco, Bruno Lopez, Soto, Jesus Tadeo Cruz, Malagon, Sandra
LLM leaderboards often rely on single stochastic runs, but how many repetitions are required for reliable conclusions remains unclear. We re-evaluate eight state-of-the-art models on the AI4Math Benchmark with three independent runs per setting. Using mixed-effects logistic regression, domain-level marginal means, rank-instability analysis, and run-to-run reliability, we assessed the value of additional repetitions. Our findings shows that Single-run leaderboards are brittle: 10/12 slices (83\%) invert at least one pairwise rank relative to the three-run majority, despite a zero sign-flip rate for pairwise significance and moderate overall interclass correlation. Averaging runs yields modest SE shrinkage ($\sim$5\% from one to three) but large ranking gains; two runs remove $\sim$83\% of single-run inversions. We provide cost-aware guidance for practitioners: treat evaluation as an experiment, report uncertainty, and use $\geq 2$ repetitions under stochastic decoding. These practices improve robustness while remaining feasible for small teams and help align model comparisons with real-world reliability.
Guide: Generalized-Prior and Data Encoders for DAG Estimation
Roy, Amartya, N, Devharish, Ganguly, Shreya, Ghosh, Kripabandhu
Modern causal discovery methods face critical limitations in scalability, computational efficiency, and adaptability to mixed data types, as evidenced by benchmarks on node scalability (30, $\le 50$, $\ge 70$ nodes), computational energy demands, and continuous/non-continuous data handling. While traditional algorithms like PC, GES, and ICA-LiNGAM struggle with these challenges, exhibiting prohibitive energy costs for higher-order nodes and poor scalability beyond 70 nodes, we propose \textbf{GUIDE}, a framework that integrates Large Language Model (LLM)-generated adjacency matrices with observational data through a dual-encoder architecture. GUIDE uniquely optimizes computational efficiency, reducing runtime on average by $\approx 42%$ compared to RL-BIC and KCRL methods, while achieving an average $\approx 117%$ improvement in accuracy over both NOTEARS and GraN-DAG individually. During training, GUIDE's reinforcement learning agent dynamically balances reward maximization (accuracy) and penalty avoidance (DAG constraints), enabling robust performance across mixed data types and scalability to $\ge 70$ nodes -- a setting where baseline methods fail.
AgentGuard: Runtime Verification of AI Agents
The rapid evolution to autonomous, agentic AI systems introduces significant risks due to their inherent unpredictability and emergent behaviors; this also renders traditional verification methods inadequate and necessitates a shift towards probabilistic guarantees where the question is no longer if a system will fail, but the probability of its failure within given constraints. This paper presents AgentGuard, a framework for runtime verification of Agentic AI systems that provides continuous, quantitative assurance through a new paradigm called Dynamic Probabilistic Assurance. AgentGuard operates as an inspection layer that observes an agent's raw I/O and abstracts it into formal events corresponding to transitions in a state model. It then uses online learning to dynamically build and update a Markov Decision Process (MDP) that formally models the agent's emergent behavior. Using probabilistic model checking, the framework then verifies quantitative properties in real-time.
Calibration Meets Reality: Making Machine Learning Predictions Trustworthy
Sinaga, Kristina P., Nair, Arjun S.
Post-hoc calibration methods are widely used to improve the reliability of probabilistic predictions from machine learning models. Despite their prevalence, a comprehensive theoretical understanding of these methods remains elusive, particularly regarding their performance across different datasets and model architectures. Input features play a crucial role in shaping model predictions and, consequently, their calibration. However, the interplay between feature quality and calibration performance has not been thoroughly investigated. In this work, we present a rigorous theoretical analysis of post-hoc calibration methods, focusing on Platt scaling and isotonic regression. We derive convergence guarantees, computational complexity bounds, and finite-sample performance metrics for these methods. Furthermore, we explore the impact of feature informativeness on calibration performance through controlled synthetic experiments. Our empirical evaluation spans a diverse set of real-world datasets and model architectures, demonstrating consistent improvements in calibration metrics across various scenarios. By examining calibration performance under varying feature conditions utilizing only informative features versus complete feature spaces including noise dimensions, we provide fundamental insights into the robustness and reliability of different calibration approaches. Our findings offer practical guidelines for selecting appropriate calibration methods based on dataset characteristics and computational constraints, bridging the gap between theoretical understanding and practical implementation in uncertainty quantification. Code and experimental data are available at: https://github.com/Ajwebdevs/calibration-analysis-experiments.
Entering the Era of Discrete Diffusion Models: A Benchmark for Schrödinger Bridges and Entropic Optimal Transport
Carrasco, Xavier Aramayo, Ksenofontov, Grigoriy, Leonov, Aleksei, Koshelev, Iaroslav Sergeevich, Korotin, Alexander
The Entropic Optimal Transport (EOT) problem and its dynamic counterpart, the Schrödinger bridge (SB) problem, play an important role in modern machine learning, linking generative modeling with optimal transport theory. While recent advances in discrete diffusion and flow models have sparked growing interest in applying SB methods to discrete domains, there is still no reliable way to evaluate how well these methods actually solve the underlying problem. We address this challenge by introducing a benchmark for SB on discrete spaces. Our construction yields pairs of probability distributions with analytically known SB solutions, enabling rigorous evaluation. As a byproduct of building this benchmark, we obtain two new SB algorithms, DLightSB and DLightSB-M, and additionally extend prior related work to construct the $α$-CSBM algorithm. We demonstrate the utility of our benchmark by evaluating both existing and new solvers in high-dimensional discrete settings. This work provides the first step toward proper evaluation of SB methods on discrete spaces, paving the way for more reproducible future studies.
Space Robotics Bench: Robot Learning Beyond Earth
Orsula, Andrej, Geist, Matthieu, Olivares-Mendez, Miguel, Martinez, Carol
The growing ambition for space exploration demands robust autonomous systems that can operate in unstructured environments under extreme extraterrestrial conditions. The adoption of robot learning in this domain is severely hindered by the prohibitive cost of technology demonstrations and the limited availability of data. To bridge this gap, we introduce the Space Robotics Bench, an open-source simulation framework for robot learning in space. It offers a modular architecture that integrates on-demand procedural generation with massively parallel simulation environments to support the creation of vast and diverse training distributions for learning-based agents. To ground research and enable direct comparison, the framework includes a comprehensive suite of benchmark tasks that span a wide range of mission-relevant scenarios. We establish performance baselines using standard reinforcement learning algorithms and present a series of experimental case studies that investigate key challenges in generalization, end-to-end learning, adaptive control, and sim-to-real transfer. Our results reveal insights into the limitations of current methods and demonstrate the utility of the framework in producing policies capable of real-world operation. These contributions establish the Space Robotics Bench as a valuable resource for developing, benchmarking, and deploying the robust autonomous systems required for the final frontier.
Transfer Learning and Machine Learning for Training Five Year Survival Prognostic Models in Early Breast Cancer
Pilgram, Lisa, Yang, Kai, Beltran-Bless, Ana-Alicia, Pond, Gregory R., Vandermeer, Lisa, Hilton, John, Savard, Marie-France, Leblanc, Andréanne, Sheperd, Lois, Chen, Bingshu E., Bartlett, John M. S., Taylor, Karen J., Bayani, Jane, Barker, Sarah L., Spears, Melanie, van der Velde, Cornelis J. H., Kranenbarg, Elma Meershoek-Klein, Dirix, Luc, Mallon, Elizabeth, Hasenburg, Annette, Markopoulos, Christos, Juwara, Lamin, Dankar, Fida K., Clemons, Mark, Emam, Khaled El
Prognostic information is essential for decision-making in breast cancer management. Recently trials have predominantly focused on genomic prognostication tools, even though clinicopathological prognostication is less costly and more widely accessible. Machine learning (ML), transfer learning and ensemble integration offer opportunities to build robust prognostication frameworks. We evaluate this potential to improve survival prognostication in breast cancer by comparing de-novo ML, transfer learning from a pre-trained prognostic tool and ensemble integration. Data from the MA.27 trial was used for model training, with external validation on the TEAM trial and a SEER cohort. Transfer learning was applied by fine-tuning the pre-trained prognostic tool PREDICT v3, de-novo ML included Random Survival Forests and Extreme Gradient Boosting, and ensemble integration was realized through a weighted sum of model predictions. Transfer learning, de-novo RSF, and ensemble integration improved calibration in MA.27 over the pre-trained model (ICI reduced from 0.042 in PREDICT v3 to <=0.007) while discrimination remained comparable (AUC increased from 0.738 in PREDICT v3 to 0.744-0.799). Invalid PREDICT v3 predictions were observed in 23.8-25.8% of MA.27 individuals due to missing information. In contrast, ML models and ensemble integration could predict survival regardless of missing information. Across all models, patient age, nodal status, pathological grading and tumor size had the highest SHAP values, indicating their importance for survival prognostication. External validation in SEER, but not in TEAM, confirmed the benefits of transfer learning, RSF and ensemble integration. This study demonstrates that transfer learning, de-novo RSF, and ensemble integration can improve prognostication in situations where relevant information for PREDICT v3 is lacking or where a dataset shift is likely.
CREPE: Controlling Diffusion with Replica Exchange
He, Jiajun, Jeha, Paul, Potaptchik, Peter, Zhang, Leo, Hernández-Lobato, José Miguel, Du, Yuanqi, Syed, Saifuddin, Vargas, Francisco
Inference-time control of diffusion models aims to steer model outputs to satisfy new constraints without retraining. Previous approaches have mostly relied on heuristic guidance or have been coupled with Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) for bias correction. In this paper, we propose a flexible alternative based on replica exchange, an algorithm designed initially for sampling problems. We refer to this method as the CREPE (Controlling with REPlica Exchange). Unlike SMC, CREPE: (1) generates particles sequentially, (2) maintains high diversity in the generated samples after a burn-in period, and (3) enables online refinement or early termination. We demonstrate its versatility across various tasks, including temperature annealing, reward-tilting, model composition and classifier-free guidance debiasing, with competitive performance compared to prior SMC methods.
AI-Enhanced Distributed Channel Access for Collision Avoidance in Future Wi-Fi 8
Pan, Jinzhe, Wang, Jingqing, Ouyang, Yuehui, Cheng, Wenchi, Zhang, Wei
The exponential growth of wireless devices and stringent reliability requirements of emerging applications demand fundamental improvements in distributed channel access mechanisms for unlicensed bands. Current Wi-Fi systems, which rely on binary exponential backoff (BEB), suffer from suboptimal collision resolution in dense deployments and persistent fairness challenges due to inherent randomness. This paper introduces a multi-agent reinforcement learning framework that integrates artificial intelligence (AI) optimization with legacy device coexistence. We first develop a dynamic backoff selection mechanism that adapts to real-time channel conditions through access deferral events while maintaining full compatibility with conventional CSMA/CA operations. Second, we introduce a fairness quantification metric aligned with enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) principles to ensure equitable medium access opportunities. Finally, we propose a centralized training decentralized execution (CTDE) architecture incorporating neighborhood activity patterns as observational inputs, optimized via constrained multi-agent proximal policy optimization (MAPPO) to jointly minimize collisions and guarantee fairness. Experimental results demonstrate that our solution significantly reduces collision probability compared to conventional BEB while preserving backward compatibility with commercial Wi-Fi devices. The proposed fairness metric effectively eliminates starvation risks in heterogeneous scenarios.