Deep Learning
Human Texts Are Outliers: Detecting LLM-generated Texts via Out-of-distribution Detection
The rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Claude has significantly increased the presence of AI-generated text in digital communication. This trend has heightened the need for reliable detection methods to distinguish between human-authored and machine-generated content.
Open-Reasoner-Zero: An Open Source Approach to Scaling Up Reinforcement Learning on the Base Model
We introduce Open-Reasoner-Zero, the first open source implementation of large-scale reasoning-oriented RL training on the base model focusing on scalability, simplicity and accessibility. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that a minimalist approach, vanilla PPO with GAE ($\lambda=1$, $\gamma=1$) and straightforward rule-based rewards, without any KL regularization, is sufficient to scale up both benchmark performance and response length, replicating the scaling phenomenon observed in DeepSeek-R1-Zero. Using the same base model as DeepSeek-R1-Zero-Qwen-32B, our implementation achieves superior performance across AIME2024, MATH500, and GPQA Diamond, while demonstrating remarkable efficiency--requiring only 1/10 of the training steps compared to the DeepSeek-R1-Zero pipeline.
The Rich and the Simple: On the Implicit Bias of Adam and SGD
Adam is the de facto optimization algorithm for several deep learning applications, but an understanding of its implicit bias and how it differs from other algorithms, particularly standard first-order methods such as (stochastic) gradient descent (GD), remains limited. In practice, neural networks (NNs) trained with SGD are known to exhibit simplicity bias --- a tendency to find simple solutions. In contrast, we show that Adam is more resistant to such simplicity bias. First, we investigate the differences in the implicit biases of Adam and GD when training two-layer ReLU NNs on a binary classification task with Gaussian data. We find that GD exhibits a simplicity bias, resulting in a linear decision boundary with a suboptimal margin, whereas Adam leads to much richer and more diverse features, producing a nonlinear boundary that is closer to the Bayes' optimal predictor. This richer decision boundary also allows Adam to achieve higher test accuracy both in-distribution and under certain distribution shifts. We theoretically prove these results by analyzing the population gradients. Next, to corroborate our theoretical findings, we present extensive empirical results showing that this property of Adam leads to superior generalization across various datasets with spurious correlations where NNs trained with SGD are known to show simplicity bias and do not generalize well under certain distributional shifts.
Robot-R1: Reinforcement Learning for Enhanced Embodied Reasoning in Robotics
Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) have recently shown great promise in advancing robotics by combining embodied reasoning with robot control. A common approach involves training on embodied reasoning tasks related to robot control using Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT). However, SFT datasets are often heuristically constructed and not explicitly optimized for improving robot control. Furthermore, SFT often leads to issues such as catastrophic forgetting and reduced generalization performance. To address these limitations, we introduce Robot-R1, a novel framework that leverages reinforcement learning to enhance embodied reasoning specifically for robot control. Robot-R1 learns to predict the next keypoint state required for task completion, conditioned on the current scene image and environment metadata derived from expert demonstrations. Inspired by the DeepSeek-R1 learning approach, Robot-R1 samples reasoning-based responses and reinforces those that lead to more accurate predictions. Our experiments show that models trained with Robot-R1 outperform SFT methods on embodied reasoning tasks. Despite having only 7B parameters, Robot-R1 even surpasses GPT-4o on reasoning tasks related to low-level action control, such as spatial and movement reasoning.
Consistency of Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Second-Order Elliptic Equations
The physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) are widely applied in solving differential equations. However, few studies have discussed their consistency. In this paper, we consider the consistency of PINNs when applied to second-order elliptic equations with Dirichlet boundary conditions. We first provide the necessary and sufficient condition for the consistency of the physics-informed kernel gradient flow algorithm, and then as a direct corollary, when the neural network is sufficiently wide, we obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the consistency of PINNs based on the neural tangent kernel theory. We also estimate the non-asymptotic loss bounds of physics-informed kernel gradient flow and PINN under suitable stronger assumptions. Finally, these results inspires us to construct a notable pathological example where the PINN method is inconsistent.
Do Language Models Use Their Depth Efficiently?
Modern LLMs are increasingly deep, and depth correlates with performance, albeit with diminishing returns. However, do these models use their depth efficiently? Do they compose more features to create higher-order computations that are impossible in shallow models, or do they merely spread the same kinds of computation out over more layers? To address these questions, we analyze the residual stream of the Llama 3.1, Qwen 3, and OLMo 2 family of models. We find: First, comparing the output of the sublayers to the residual stream reveals that layers in the second half contribute much less than those in the first half, with a clear phase transition between the two halves.
Improving LLM General Preference Alignment via Optimistic Online Mirror Descent
Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has demonstrated remarkable effectiveness in aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. Many existing alignment approaches rely on the Bradley-Terry (BT) model assumption, which assumes the existence of a ground-truth reward for each prompt-response pair. However, this assumption can be overly restrictive when modeling complex human preferences. In this paper, we drop the BT model assumption and study LLM alignment under general preferences, formulated as a two-player game. Drawing on theoretical insights from learning in games, we integrate optimistic online mirror descent into our alignment framework to approximate the Nash policy. Theoretically, we demonstrate that our approach achieves an $\mathcal{O}(T^{-1})$ bound on the duality gap, improving upon the previous $\mathcal{O}(T^{-1/2})$ result. Meanwhile, it enjoys a linear convergence rate in the last iterate, a property not achieved by previous methods. More importantly, we implement our method and show through experiments that it outperforms state-of-the-art RLHF algorithms across multiple representative benchmarks.
Bridging Symmetry and Robustness: On the Role of Equivariance in Enhancing Adversarial Robustness
Adversarial examples reveal critical vulnerabilities in deep neural networks by exploiting their sensitivity to imperceptible input perturbations. While adversarial training remains the predominant defense strategy, it often incurs significant computational cost and may compromise clean-data accuracy. In this work, we investigate an architectural approach to adversarial robustness by embedding group-equivariant convolutions--specifically, rotation-and scale-equivariant layers--into standard convolutional neural networks (CNNs). These layers encode symmetry priors that align model behavior with structured transformations in the input space, promoting smoother decision boundaries and greater resilience to adversarial attacks. We propose and evaluate two symmetry-aware architectures: a parallel design that processes standard and equivariant features independently before fusion, and a cascaded design that applies equivariant operations sequentially. Theoretically, we demonstrate that such models reduce hypothesis space complexity, regularize gradients, and yield tighter certified robustness bounds under the CLEVER (Cross Lipschitz Extreme Value for nEtwork Robustness) framework. Empirically, our models consistently improve adversarial robustness and generalization across CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and CIFAR-10C under both FGSM and PGD attacks, without requiring adversarial training. These findings underscore the potential of symmetry-enforcing architectures as efficient and principled alternatives to data augmentation-based defenses.
Accelerating Feature Conformal Prediction via Taylor Approximation
Conformal prediction is widely adopted in uncertainty quantification, due to its post-hoc, distribution-free, and model-agnostic properties. In the realm of modern deep learning, researchers have proposed Feature Conformal Prediction (FCP), which deploys conformal prediction in a feature space, yielding reduced band lengths. However, the practical utility of FCP is limited due to the time-consuming non-linear operations required to transform confidence bands from feature space to output space. In this paper, we present Fast Feature Conformal Prediction (FFCP), a method that accelerates FCP by leveraging a first-order Taylor expansion to approximate these non-linear operations. The proposed FFCP introduces a novel non-conformity score that is both effective and efficient for real-world applications. Empirical validations showcase that FFCP performs comparably with FCP (both outperforming the vanilla version) while achieving a significant reduction in computational time by approximately 50x in both regression and classification tasks.
Deep Edge Filter: Return of the Human-Crafted Layer in Deep Learning
We introduce the Deep Edge Filter, a novel approach that applies high-pass filtering to deep neural network features to improve model generalizability. Our method is motivated by our hypothesis that neural networks encode task-relevant semantic information in high-frequency components while storing domain-specific biases in low-frequency components of deep features. By subtracting low-pass filtered outputs from original features, our approach isolates generalizable representations while preserving architectural integrity. Experimental results across diverse domains such as Vision, Text, 3D, and Audio demonstrate consistent performance improvements regardless of model architecture and data modality. Analysis reveals that our method induces feature sparsification and effectively isolates high-frequency components, providing empirical validation of our core hypothesis.