Loss of plasticity (LoP) is the primary cause of cognitive decline in normal aging brains next to cell loss. Recent works show that similar LoP also plagues neural networks during deep continual learning (DCL). While it has been shown that random perturbations of learned weights can alleviate LoP, its underlying mechanisms remain insufficiently understood. Here we offer a unique view of LoP and dissect its mechanisms through the lenses of an innovative framework combining the theory of neural collapse and finite-time Lyapunov exponents (FTLE) analysis. We show that LoP actually consists of two contrasting types: (i) type-1 LoP is characterized by highly negative FTLEs, where the network is prevented from learning due to the collapse of representations; (ii) while type-2 LoP is characterized by excessively positive FTLEs, where the network can train well but the growingly chaotic behaviors reduce its test accuracy. Based on these understandings, we introduce Generalized Mixup, designed to relax the representation space for prolonged DCL and demonstrate its superior efficacy vs. existing methods.

Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated powerful in-context learning capabilities. However, their predictions can be disrupted by factually correct context, a phenomenon known as context hijacking, revealing a significant robustness issue. To understand this phenomenon theoretically, we explore an in-context linear classification problem based on recent advances in linear transformers. In our setup, context tokens are designed as factually correct query-answer pairs, where the queries are similar to the final query but have opposite labels. Then, we develop a general theoretical analysis on the robustness of the linear transformers, which is formulated as a function of the model depth, training context lengths, and number of hijacking context tokens. A key finding is that a well-trained deeper transformer can achieve higher robustness, which aligns with empirical observations. We show that this improvement arises because deeper layers enable more fine-grained optimization steps, effectively mitigating interference from context hijacking. This is also well supported by our numerical and real-world experiments. Our findings provide theoretical insights into the benefits of deeper architectures and contribute to enhancing the understanding of transformer architectures.

Industrial Anomaly Detection (IAD) is an indispensable quality control technology in modern production processes. Recently, on account of the outstanding visual comprehension and cross-domain knowledge transfer capabilities of Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), existing studies have explored the application of MLLMs in the IAD domain and established some multimodal IAD datasets. However, although the latest datasets contain various fundamental IAD tasks, they formulate tasks in a general question-and-answer format lacking a rigorous reasoning process, and they are relatively limited in the diversity of scenarios, which restricts their reliability in practical applications. In this paper, we propose AnomalyCoT, a multimodal Chain-of-Thought (CoT) dataset for multi-scenario IAD tasks. It consists of 37,565 IAD samples with the CoT data and is defined by challenging composite IAD tasks. Meanwhile, the CoT data for each sample provides precise coordinates of anomaly regions, thereby improving visual comprehension of defects across different types. AnomalyCoT is constructed through a systematic pipeline and involves multiple manual operations. Based on AnomalyCoT, we conducted a comprehensive evaluation of various mainstream MLLMs and fine-tuned representative models in different ways. The final results show that Gemini-2.0flash

The performance of learning-based object detection algorithms, which attempt to both classify and locate objects within images, is determined largely by the quality are prev of alent: the annotated objects that dataset are incorrectly used for training.

Training LLMs relies on distributed implementations using multiple GPUs to compute gradients in parallel with sharded optimizers. However, synchronizing gradients in data parallel setups introduces communication overhead that grows with the number of workers, limiting parallelization efficiency. Local optimization algorithms reduce communications but incur high memory costs as they prevent optimizer state sharding, hindering scalability. To address this, we propose ACcumulate while COmmunicate (ACCO), a memory-efficient optimization algorithm for distributed LLM training. By synchronizing delayed gradients while computing new ones, ACCO reduces GPU idle time and supports heterogeneous hardware. To mitigate the convergence issues caused by delayed updates, we introduce a novel technique ensuring training dynamics align with standard distributed optimization. Compared to ZeRO-1, our approach is significantly faster and scales effectively across heterogeneous hardware.

Proprietary large language models (LLMs) exhibit strong generalization capabilities across diverse tasks and are increasingly deployed on edge devices for efficiency and privacy reasons. However, deploying proprietary LLMs at the edge without adequate protection introduces critical security threats. Attackers can extract model weights and architectures, enabling unauthorized copying and misuse. Even when protective measures prevent full extraction of model weights, attackers may still perform advanced attacks, such as fine-tuning, to further exploit the model. Existing defenses against these threats typically incur significant computational and communication overhead, making them impractical for edge deployment. To safeguard the edge-deployed LLMs, we introduce CoreGuard, a computationand communication-efficient protection method. CoreGuard employs an efficient protection protocol to reduce computational overhead and minimize communication overhead via a propagation protocol. Extensive experiments show that CoreGuard achieves upper-bound security protection with negligible overhead.

As Visual Language Models (VLMs) continue to evolve, they have demonstrated increasingly sophisticated logical reasoning capabilities and multimodal thought generation, opening doors to widespread applications. However, this advancement raises serious concerns about content security, particularly when these models process complex multimodal inputs requiring intricate reasoning. When faced with these safety challenges, the critical competition between logical reasoning and safety objectives of VLMs is often overlooked in previous works. In this paper, we introduce Visualization-of-Thought Attack (VoTA), a novel and automated attack framework that strategically constructs chains of images with risky visual thoughts to challenge victim models.

When a prediction algorithm serves a collection of users, disparities in prediction quality are likely to emerge. If users respond to accurate predictions by increasing engagement, inviting friends, or adopting trends, repeated learning creates a feedback loop that shapes both the model and the population of its users. In this work, we introduce evolutionary prediction games, a framework grounded in evolutionary game theory which models such feedback loops as natural-selection processes among groups of users. Our theoretical analysis reveals a gap between idealized and real-world learning settings: In idealized settings with unlimited data and computational power, repeated learning creates competition and promotes competitive exclusion across a broad class of behavioral dynamics. However, under realistic constraints such as finite data, limited compute, or risk of overfitting, we show that stable coexistence and mutualistic symbiosis between groups becomes possible. We analyze these possibilities in terms of their stability and feasibility, present mechanisms that can sustain their existence, and empirically demonstrate our findings.

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) has widely enhanced mathematical reasoning in Large Language Models (LLMs), but it still remains challenging for extending it to multimodal domains. Existing works either adopt a similar textual reasoning for image input, or seek to interleave visual signals into mathematical CoT. However, they face three key limitations for math problem-solving: reliance on coarsegrained box-shaped image regions, limited perception of vision encoders on math content, and dependence on external capabilities for visual modification. In this paper, we propose MINT-CoT, introducing Mathematical INterleaved Tokens for Chain-of-Thought visual reasoning. MINT-CoT adaptively interleaves relevant visual tokens into textual reasoning steps via an Interleave Token, which dynamically selects visual regions of any shapes within math figures. To empower this capability, we construct the MINT-CoT dataset, containing 54K mathematical problems aligning each reasoning step with visual regions at the token level, accompanied by a rigorous data generation pipeline. We further present a threestage MINT-CoT training strategy, progressively combining text-only CoTSFT, interleaved CoTSFT, and interleaved CoTRL, which derives our MINT-CoT-7B model. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our method for effective visual interleaved reasoning in mathematical domains, where MINTCoT-7B outperforms the baseline model by +34.08% on MathVista, +28.78% on GeoQA, and +23.2% on MMStar, respectively.

We introduce AUTOGRAPH, a scalable autoregressive model for attributed graph generation using decoder-only transformers. By flattening graphs into random sequences of tokens through a reversible process, AUTOGRAPH enables modeling graphs as sequences without relying on additional node features that are expensive to compute, in contrast to diffusion-based approaches.